[Skybird]

Originally Posted by porphy

Sure, I agree that everything existing can't be normal, but what is normal or not, in numbers can't simply dictate what should be viewed as abnormal, meaning faulty. There is a difference between normal as in most common and normal/abnormal as in working/faulty.

Fine. then let'S say homosexuality is abnormal indeed. It is a faulty copying of man'S natural sexual orientation. For sex has a meaning and purpose, that is reproduction - the pleasure we take form it, is just a trick by nature to turn us into addicts although raising children is a tough job. And for that, memebers of a heterosexual species must be attracted by the other gender, not by their own.

Sure, but all your examples are about very clear cases of disease, or physiological problems, or organ dysfunction. As I already said, the analogy does not really hold up that well when it comes to homosexual disposition and sexual desire. Nothing is clearly wrong, or not working on that level of bodily functions, as with the eyes, blood, skin colour etc.
You actually point to a fault in how homosexual behaviour functions in relation to reproduction and the evolutionary survival of the species. This is not clearly a fault by any bodily design, as in your examples. I would agree more with you if that was the case.

We disaagree. Where homosexuality does not come as a psychological reaction to stressful experiences, traumata (never heared of just a single case liekt hat, btw.), or is not tried for reasons of curiosity (and read Henry's comments if you think homosexuals just choose to be gay/lesbian, I still wait to meet the first person ever to say that this was the case for him/her), and is correlated with hardcoded differences in physiological chemistry and brainstructure, your argument already has become invalid by your own claim. It's just that the subjective dlevel of suffering experienced form that may differ for the affected people, and not necessarily a suffering of the community. so we can afford not to impose sanctions or even brainsurgery on them. Man is not meant to be an albino. Nor is he meant to be gay or lesbian. He occasionally may try that when young, for curiosity, I suppose most do not, and those who tried it, may return to their normal sexual orientation nevertheless. For these it may be right what you say. But all-life-homosexuals do not chose their orientation. They have no other choice, like you and me do not have a choice regarding the skin colour we want to have.

I can see how it is very tempting though, to think and reason about homosexuality in that way. And I guess that is why scientific research always tries to pinpoint something abnormal and faulty in the homosexual persons body/brain that would explain this behaviour and sexual desire. In that context I find it important to remember how many of these tries that have failed to show anything conclusive throughout history, and the kind of abuse it has leant itself to.

, that it has been abused does not make it less valid. And if there is genetically encoded causes for homosexuality that represent accidents or abberations from a regular genetic copying procedure, then there is nothing discriminatory in stating that. Discirmination lies in what consequences one justifies by the scientific finding. By what you say, scientific research should be forbidden in case of any possible results eventually being unwelcomed. That is not acceptable for me. It reminds me a bot too muh of the medieval, the chruche'S power and the way it tried to silence people like Copernicus and Gallilei.

It was not that long ago that criminal behaviour was thought to be traceable to a specific subtype of human. And early classical genetics was often thought of as a promising way to finally explain the criminal that was impossible to correct. The criminal person was simply physically abnormal, a deviation or showing examples of atavisms.

We know that sociopathy can lead to criminal behavir. Sociopathy, the hints are mounting, is genetically caused, and causes a misfunctioning brain physiology. Kleptomania also is increasingly linked to neural deficits in the brain. I do not know, though, how far it has gone already. However, our behavior and acting for us humans must have correlates in the material-physical-physiological world, we do not form thoughts in a metaphysical sphere of substancelessness. there is the world of neurons, electirc potentials, chemical bridging of neural gaps. there is the reason why neurons are hardwired they way they are, and not in a different way. There is neutrotransmitter substances, hormones, pheromones. Nothing we do we do wiothout solid-matter-processes taking place somewhere in our body.

Well, you propose the thought of a homosexual world as a way of showing that it can't be of any evolutionary gain to the species reproduction. But my example of kin selection was an example of how poulation genetics have explained how a trait that in itself seems to stop its own genetic transmission, acctually is possible, or even something selected for in a positive way.

Oh, I have understood that, it'S just that I cannot see that positive, neither for the individual, nor the community. at best, it causes no negatives for anybody (which is not the case considering that a gay man meets a certain ammount of social pressure that in most cases makes him to hide. On the other hand, what is so fantatsic in letting all the world know that one is gay? As if the world must care for that).

Homosexuality is a persistent and quite frequent trait in the human population. Kinsey in his days estimated about 4% of the population as homosexual, but if you count the amount of people that say they have sexual desires for the same sex that could well be 7%. How is it that this sexual disposition and desire seem to be both persistent and not that uncommon? If trying to explain it in a biological way, it must be accounted for on a evolutionary plane as well.

Mutation, maybe, not always mutations are psoitve, or even have any meaning at all. Evolution has no linear cause, it just adds somethign here, and removes somethign there, and sometimes it is not for the better but the worse of a given design. Short-sightedness also is very priminent in our species now. It is passed from generation to generation, in families. Does thius make it a natural characteristic of ours? No. It very clearly is a fault, a sign for decreasing quality of the gen-pool. This is a contradiction to modenr medicine that many do niot like to be mentioned, and they immeditaely start arguing with the Naz9i doctors and such: but fatc is that modern medicine helps to destabilize the human gen pool, for it increases the life-expectancy of geneticall ill people that before would have died, and in enables them to reproduce and multiply their genetic defects. That'S why the number of heamophiles is rising, for example. It may be politically uncorrect to mention this, but nevertheless it is true. The scientific data and the ethical debate, are two different things here. But ethics cannot chnage the research data. they can (and should) only influence the way the data is being used for forming consequences in our decisions and deeds.

But it does live on, does it not? Again, what about kin selection? This is not the same as cross coupling where good and bad traits get inherited together. It is debatable if one can use kin selection in this case, but it shows there are biological ways to understand how seemingly self contradictory traits, like being sterile, can be transmissioned genetically within a population without being classified as a fault, disorder or disease. In this case it would explain how grounds for a sexual disposition that results in no offspring still can be within the scope of positive natural selection, it is then not a failed blueprint. Homosexuality is about sexual desire and behaviour in general is no doubt more complex to explain this way compared to being sterile, but the function you find abnormal and faulty is the same as being sterile.

As far as I understand you, I cannot agree to your argument.

I would be a bit more careful with expressions like "violation of a rule" or "intended by the genetical rule/design/evolutionary intention" in a Darwinian context. And to provoke you a bit more, doesn't it seem to be at least to some part a successful genetic accident, as it seems to live on quite happily?

That may be becasue mankind has stopped to hunt down and slaughter gay people. No, serious, that means nothing. Many genetically caused diseases are living on. As I said somewhere earlier, some of these may have advanatges for a population (see the Malaria-example), but most of them, accroding to all what we know today, simply are this: diseases, withiut comensating advantages. they remained be carried over to the next egneration before modern medicine showed up, and since moern times, medicine even may have starrted to help them being spread.

Adopting some flavour of Richard Dawkins way of thought provoking images, one could perhaps say that the "homosexual genes" have found the perfect way to live on, as the heterosexual part of the human population only is the vehicle for their propagation.

that would be called parasitism.

Yes, I agree it is not that that easy to point out what advantage the same sex sexual behaviour should give evolutionary or in a society. But for example it has been argued that homosexuality gives a more stable society, as individuals can form stable sexual relations in both homosexual and heterosexual ways.

circular logic here. A is of advantage in an arrangement with A and B present, becasue it allows to refer to not only B, but A also.

Without homosexuality existing, there would be no need to form homosexual relations.

that homosexuality helps to increase social stablity, I totally fail to see. It's just that discirmination lowers such stablity, and non-discrimination does not affect stability, leaving it at the same level where it is.

A stable society (think of a group of individuals where there is fierce competition for mating) is beneficial for reproduction in general within the group.

Or not. depends on discrimination switched on or off.

On a larger scale this could be just enough for natural selection to work on. Or as a recent study from Italy is said to have showed, that the maternal relatives of homosexual men have more children than the maternal relatives of heterosexual men. If this is true, it could suggest that there is a reproductive benefit to women whose DNA tends to result in homosexual male children. See, with biology you can argue anything.

I would instead say: with statistics you can argue anything. Even more so when many scientists do not even reliably know the most elemental basics of statistics. The novice'S fault of overinterpreting correlation coefficients is prominent even amongst high academic levels - which is a scandal.

I think I commented already about the design thing. And I don't mean that homosexuality is the norm in humans. But what is the rule and what is a deviation of the rule depends on where you start. I think you sometimes overstate the importance of the rule thinking as you connect it to intended design, hardware and blueprints.
And you know, there are three wheeled cars produced as we speak. Not only Mr Bean has one.

Please no more crippled legs and three wheeled cars! I need to sleep now... But before that, I have to say something about the terms family and marriage. I agree that you can't change them and their use according to every whim, but I think one can see where they are possible to extend. Concepts are not rigid by nature and they are usually open ended.

In this case only with chnaging the already massiveoly hurt most basic fundament of social community in Wetsern civilisation. And I am not willing to accept any more dmaages to this fundament, sicne it already is shaking. And we see the cataclysimic effects of that everywhere, in the feministic approaches, in education problems, in schools failing, in the changed and falling apart set of ethic rules in ypoung people not seeing perspectives anymore - I could write a whole social-scientific essay here. All damage done to "family" - shows as damage to our world and community.

Families are vital parts of society, true, but a homosexual family is not that far of from a heterosexual one as far as I know.

I see it from a psychologist'S view, and say there is a difference. A gay man would need to violate himself to get engaged in a heterosexual partnership and have children of his own. but the truth is, and again I say this from a psychologist'S perspective, that for many - i assume: a wide majoreity - this comes at the price of supressing a part of themnselves and experience suffering from this. Such people sometimes show up in partner- and family therapies, you know. the reasons they once choosed to go hetero, are diverse, but most often it also has something to do with a desire to be "nromal" like the normal majority around, and not being different with all the negative consequences for that, and just live a peaceful life by not attracting hostile attention. They really may love their hetero partner, yes. But still, their original orientation is - and always will be - a different one. That'S where the pressure comes from they are under, and it can make them suffer, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Two parents and a for example two adopted children (or female couple with a natural born child or two) living together and being responsible to each other.

I referred earlier to adoptation and the importance of sexual role models, which indeed is leading far beyond later sexual behavior. Adoptation by homosexual couples makes a smuch sense to me as intentionally removing a ftaher or a mother from a family. where divorces happen, it is a tragedy for the kids in most cases (only exception is wheere they suffered more from the parent'S constant battles, but that is in no way the rule). That parents nevertzheless sometimes divorce, dos not mean that adoptation by singles or dicriocing itself should be declared an arbitrary normal option that could be chosen at will. It is not normal, but it is normality failing.

there it is again, this thing normality. but man cannot help it, normality is important for us humans. We could bear to live in a world we perceive as unpredicatble and filled with more excepotions from the rules, than there are rules. Such ammount of uncertainty makes us sick easily. We need normality. and beside that, I still think it is valid to claim some things being a norm, and even being a normality beyond just statistical relations between variables and values. It also is nromal that a child has two parents. There are orphans in the world, too. but it is neither a norm, nor normal.

I'm not convinced about the role model argument you wrote about earlier. There will probably be enough of male and female role modelling available for the kids in their lives anyway. If one allow families like that, they will also be families that actually do support and bring benefits to the society, not just a cost. Isn't more working families even better from a social point of view?

I must question the easiness by which you claim it is functioning famiolies, and I have earlier referred to research data that is known since the 80s that children being grown by just one parents have a significantly higher probability of showing chnaged social behavior patterns especially rehgarding the other sex, then children from functional families. A mother is not just any female in the world, a father is different from just being a male. Both are that, too, but the role of parents leads beyodn that. And then there is the simp0le fact that you ncannot doubt that chikldren from homosexual "families" would suffer from that, and being mocked out. As Henry said: "think of the kids!". He meant whyt many of them will need to go through.

despite that, I stiuck to what I said about the importance of role modelling by father and mother, again taLKING FROM A PSYCHOLOGIST's VIEW AND THAT OF A CLOSE GIRLFRIEND OF MINE WHO IS WORKING AS A FAMILY THERAPIST: SHE HAS A LOT TO DO WITH IMMIGRANT FAMILIES with often rigid, patriarchalic structures, and thus she has a seat in the first row to watch what damage disfunctional or non existing or perverted role models by mothers and fathers do to sons and daughters.

And the ones that want to live unnoticed in peace and normality as you say, well nothing stops them from doing that, gay marriage approved or not. As I understand it, the thing is not so much about if we accept them as totally normal, the thing is about if people who prefer the same sex and that really want to have a family, children, marriage and legal rights, can have that or not.

Indeed, and I totally oppose anything that equals gay partnerships to the constitutional portected status of families, dissolves the concept of marriage in it's - you cannot help it - given definition to be a bond between heterosexual partners with an outlook to create children of their own, and adoptation of children by homosexual partners.

And from the few direct experiences with gay people that I had, I must say: all of those that I met, agreed with me. Who are we that we want to know better than they themselves what they want?

Anyway, time to sleep now. I enjoyed the discussion!

Indeed. A discussion that does not turn into name-calling and catch-phrases, most often is a good one, even where disagreement remains. Sweet dreams to you, my darling.