Let's clear up the ignorance about homosexuality - I hope to never hear these arguments again, page 6

reply to post by sdcigarpig

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I think gays are being used to push a Christian Right world-view.
They will not stop with gays, that is already apparent.

I don't really think that most of them will question gay salvation.
They don't want to come across too much like the American Taliban at present.
(And in fairness, there is a huge difference between heterosexism and genocidal homophobia.)

They want to sound kind and save gays from themselves, especially from the stereotype of the "bath-house" hopping gay from a very narrow historical period of the AIDS crisis between 1983-1996 (which by all scientific proof originated amongst heterosexuals).

It's part of bringing about a new fascist order, which will return some mythical "golden age of heterosexuality", or more specifically, patriarchy.

The idea to me is less about individual gays, than fighting for a Biblical theocracy.

If everybody is heterosexual (outside the Western serial monogamy at present), their kids will all turn out normal, with 'non-addictive" sex lives.
A bit like King David with all his wives and concubines.
Or perhaps a little like Jesus (who remained celibate according to the official scriptures, and that behavior would make humans extinct too).

The Bible tells us that heterosexuality results in normal children and relationships.
The Bible is full of well adjusted modern Christian families ... erm, let me just try and think of one quickly...


What is clear in Africa is that when countries tighten homophobic laws, it is the first step of dictatorship, the collapse of civilization and starvation.

All adults should have equal rights to relationships, no matter how long they last.
Or perhaps Kim Kardashian should never be allowed to marry again?
I mean, over 70 days is long for some heterosexuals.

But then one is usually talking about cult-like streams in Christianity that have landed their followers in divorce courts, psychiatric institutions or the graveyard.
It's the same nonsense as AIDS denialism.
A new phenomenon in Christianity seems to totally reject medical science, and focuses on dated material.

It's going to become an increasing problem, especially concerning chronic medication for children.

Originally posted by BO XIAN
reply to post by kaylaluv

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CONTINUED DATA . . .

www.neoteny.org...

“Human homosexual males report more stressors (such as bereavement) during their mother’s pregnancy than controls (Dorner, Schenk, Schmiedel, and Ahrens 1983).” (S. Baron-Cohen, S. Lutchmaya, and R. Kinickmeyer, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: Amniotic Fluid Studies (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 11-12.)

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Sleepy. So will get the rest of my sleep in and try and return to posting a lot of data from the research as soon as I can get back to it.

Excellent. I look forward to your data regarding children of homosexual parents and the average lifespan of gay men.

reply to post by arpgme

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Maybe youre forgetting the part where we're not animals?

If God or "nature" intended homosexuals to be "natural" we'd be seeing males getting other males pregnant, or females getting other females pregnant and we do not, therefore I refute your OP.

So far all i have seen is pure conjecture.

Oh and btw:

2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

reply to post by kaylaluv

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I hope to get to good examples of solid research on all the issues.

You are welcome to be patient or impatient.

This is not, per se, my full time hobby.

BTW, this thread is a great example . . . It's always impressive how

intolerant

those screaming their !DEMAND! FOR tolerance of their personal constructions on reality,

tend to be.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

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So Jesus was unnatural because he didn't get anyone pregnant (unless you're a Gnostic Christian)?

So all the prophets who lived in celibacy, and Paul and some of the Apostles - they were all unnatural?

Jesus said their are 3 types of men who should not take the teaching of heterorosexual marriage, which is not for everybody (Matt 19:12):

1 Those who are made eunuchs in the womb. This coincides with much science on homosexual men. So science is in the Bible if one knows where to look.
2. Eunuchs made by men (truly castrated men, common in the ancient world as spoils of war, although Philip baptizes a eunuch in Acts in violation of the old law).
3. Eunuchs who choose it for the kingdom of heaven (celibate men - the general advice is not to take a wife - for they are a spiritual distraction. Apparently some early Christians like Origen took it so literally that they castrated themselves).

reply to post by kaylaluv

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I tend to be pretty methodical. I go through topics with a keyword search . . . then I alter the keywords and search again.

I'm still on my first keyword search collection of articles. I'll get to the rest when I can manage it.

Here's the latest installment:

www.narth.com...
The Biological Research on Homosexuality
Book Excerpt:
Homosexuality and American Public Life
Edited by Christopher Wolfe
Spence Publishing Co. (Dallas, TX)
________________________________________
This book is based on papers delivered at the 1997 conference, "Homosexuality and American Public Life," held in Washington, D.C. at the Georgetown Conference Center. To order, call 1-888-773-6782.

It is important to note that serious research on the biology, innateness, or genetic determinants of homosexuality has only just recently begun. Exactly opposite to what the public is being led to believe, the research that has been done thus far suggests that genetic factors account for, at most, but a small proportion of the risk. J. M. Bailey and R. C. Pillard, two of the major researchers most widely cited as having demonstrated that "homosexuality is genetic," were forced to admit otherwise by the results of their own research. They themselves wrote:

These studies were designed to detect heritable variation, and if it was present, to counter the prevalent belief that sexual orientation is largely the product of family interactions and the social environment.... Although male and female homosexuality appear to be at least somewhat heritable, environment must also be of considerable importance in their origins.{1}

. . .

More recently, yet another difference in another part of the brain was reported, also in a prestigious publication, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. This study claimed that a difference between male homosexuals and heterosexuals was found in the anterior commissure, a structure that divides the left and right halves of the brain. The authors found that the anterior commissure was larger in women and homosexual men than in heterosexual men. This was a group statistical difference, however: the size of the anterior commissure in 27 of the 30 homosexual men actually fell within the range of sizes found among the 30 heterosexual men. As did LeVay, these authors used brain samples obtained preponderantly from men who died of AIDS, introducing another uncontrolled variable into their work.{4}

. . .

The Brain's Structure Changes with Use [extra paragraphing from BoX for easier readability]
Even if actually present, however, the discovery of brain differences per se is on a par with the discovery that athletes have bigger muscles than nonathletes. For though a genetic tendency toward larger muscles may make it easier to become an athlete, and therefore one will more likely become an athlete, becoming an athlete will also certainly give one bigger muscles. The layperson, encouraged by press accounts, is apt to assume that brain differences must be innate and unchangeable, especially differences in the number of cells as contrasted with the simple volume occupied by a collection of cells.

We tend to think of mind as "software" and brain as "hardware," the former plastic and changeable, the latter fixed at birth. We have used this analogy already to good advantage. But the analogy breaks down at a certain point. Various processes go on throughout life: the selective death of brain cells in response to training or trauma, the establishment of new connections between cells, dramatic increases or decreases in the "thickness" of connections between cells as a result of learning, the loss of interneuronal connections through "pruning."

Very unlike our modern computers, the brain's software is its hardware. We know from animal studies that early experience, and especially traumatic experience (this has special pertinence with respect to the childhood histories of male homosexuals as we will discuss later), alters the brain and body in measurable ways. Thus infant monkeys who are repeatedly and traumatically separated from their mothers suffer more or less permanent alterations in both blood chemistry and brain function.{6} A similar piece of research on homosexuals with a similarly indeterminate meaning is the recent finding of a protein--an Alpha1-Antitrypsin variant--in the blood of homosexual, but not heterosexual men.
Again, we have no way of determining whether this is an innate or an acquired difference, or whether it is even replicable.{7} There is a major current theory about the developmental causes of depression and the interaction of genetics with development. . . .

Originally posted by lonewolf19792000
reply to post by arpgme

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Maybe youre forgetting the part where we're not animals?

If God or "nature" intended homosexuals to be "natural" we'd be seeing males getting other males pregnant, or females getting other females pregnant and we do not, therefore I refute your OP.

What I find interesting about the animal world, is that they have no problem with homosexuals in their midst. They don't attack them for being homosexuals, they don't kick them out of the herd, and they don't try to change their homosexual behavior. And the animal world certainly hasn't gone extinct due to a percentage of homosexuality in their midst.

Originally posted by BO XIAN
reply to post by kaylaluv

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raise a family in a loving home. How can this be a bad thing?

It is now clear that the contention that homosexual dual fathers do NOT rear sons equally to heterosexual father and mother in terms of the sons sexuality--as the POLITICAL propaganda has contended for so long.

Oh you read that guy who misused a study.

The study was about gay fathers married to a woman. The study was not about 2 gay fathers.

reply to post by kaylaluv

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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Abstract

OBJECTIVES:

To determine the incidence of HIV seroconversion in a community-based cohort of homosexual men in Sydney from 2002 to 2006.

METHODS:
Participants were recruited between 2001 and 2004 from community-based events and venues. They were tested for HIV annually at follow-up interviews. Each year, the study database was matched against the national HIV register to identify additional HIV seroconversions among men lost to active follow up. The trend in HIV incidence over time was examined using Cox regression.
.
RESULTS:
Among 1426 participants, 52 cases of HIV seroconversion were identified between 2002 and 2006, an incidence of 0.87 per 100 person-years (95% CI: 0.65-1.14). HIV incidence varied from 1.67 per 100 person-years in 2002 to 0.39 in 2006 (P trend = 0.282). The median age of HIV seroconversion was 36.9 years, ranging from 22 to 63 years.
.
CONCLUSION:
In this community-based cohort of highly sexually active homosexual men in Sydney, HIV incidence was close to 1% each year and declined non-significantly between 2002 and 2006. These data are consistent with surveillance data suggesting no increase in recent HIV incidence in homosexual men in New South Wales.
.
PMID:
18588774
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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www.evergreeninternational.org...

. . .

Brain studies
In 1991, Dr. Simon LeVay, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, reported his findings from studying the brain structures of forty-one cadavers.10 He concluded that an area of the hypothalamus (the INAH3) was smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men. (It was also found to be smaller in women than in heterosexual men.) However, these findings do not show any direct link between the hypothalamus and sexual orientation and, furthermore, are dubious at best because of the following reasons:
.
It has not been determined that the INAH3 is involved in thedevelopment of sexual orientation.11
.
The sample size of this study was small (only forty-one). Furthermore, Dr. LeVay did not know the sexual histories of the cadavers he studied. Nineteen men apparently were homosexual and he assumed that the other sixteen men and six women were heterosexual.12Since most of the subjects had died of AIDS, the HIV virus may have affected the brains in various ways, especially the hypothalamus, which is a major player in the immune system. LeVay himself admitted this was a serious flaw in the study.13
.
There were many inconsistencies in the findings. Three of the allegedly heterosexual men had a smaller INAH3 than the mean size for the "homosexual" men and three of the "homosexual" men had a larger INAH3 than the mean size for "heterosexual" men.14
.
Many neuroscientists charge that LeVay deviated from protocol when he measured volume rather than the number of neurons in the INAH3. This is critical, since the area LeVay measured is very small (about the size of a snowflake).
.
Dr. LeVay himself cautions that the results of his study "do not allow one to decide if the size of INAH3 in an individual is the cause or consequence of that individual's sexual orientation."15
.

Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of medical science at Brown University, said, "My freshman biology students know enough to sink this study."16

Chromosome studies

In 1993, Dr. Dean Hamer announced that he had found a correlation between DNA markers on the X chromosome (region Xq28) and sexual orientation in a selected group of homosexual men and their relatives over age eighteen. In other words, "it appears that Xq28 contains a gene that contributes to homosexual orientation in males."17 In his book, Dr. Hamer stated, "We can make only educated guesses about the importance of Xq28 in the population at large." He concludes that "Xq28 plays some role in about 5 to 30 percent of gay men. The broad range of these estimates is proof that much more work remains to be done."18 Scientists have since questioned the validity of these findings and what they purport to show.19 Dr. Hammer has been charged with research improprieties and is under investigation by the federal government for improperly excluding from his study men whose genetic makeup contradicted his findings.20 A later study by the University of Western Ontario "found no consistent pattern of DNA similarity on the X chromosome."21

TO BE CONTINUED

.

Originally posted by Mister_Bit
haha so true! I had two male guinea pigs at one point, and when I let them out in their run the bigger of the two would chase the other around all afternoon and more often than not.... well... I wont go into details haha

Have you heard of the Bonobo primates? MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

Bonobo Sex and Society - The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution.

The species is best characterized as female-centered and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations--and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among bonobos than among other primates.

www.primates.com...

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