Born Gay or Not? It shouldn't Matter.

Definitely not foolproof. She might just be a greedy lover, though I do admire Matt's thought process on this.

Pillow princesses are an unquantifiable variable.

I'm afraid I'm going to need a list of such producers...preferably with links.

But back on topic, I'm really torn on this one. I'm going to say that it doesn't matter whether people are born gay or not. As with most desires, we don't actually choose what we want. I can't suddenly choose to like three bean salad (hate it!), and I can't choose to want to have sex with men (or to NOT want to have sex with certain women, which would sure make things easier!).

The problem is, of course, that we CAN refrain from fulfilling our desires, and that's where the anti-gay crowd gets you. This has been mentioned already in this thread, but the sexual ACT is a choice. As long as certain people basically see sex as a sin (perhaps a necessary sin, for procreation purposes, but basically sinful nonetheless), then any form of it that isn't strictly about procreation is going to be seen as evil. As with most situations where a someone tries to tell me what I should do for religious reasons, I say "Fuck 'em." The obsession with sex in this country is ridiculous. I don't care who is having sex with whom and in what way, any more than I care who is having dinner with whom, or who is playing a video game that I don't like (or do like...who cares!?).

Also, Brian Seiler broke my brain, damnit!

I dunno if it's just me, but I find long fingernails to be kinda freaky and gross. I have no idea why that's supposed to be a turn-on. Girls with extraneously long nails just makes me think of that guy in the Guinness Book of World Records. You know the one I mean. Ew.

You can also tell which porn is meant for men because the women aren't enjoying themselves and don't know what they're doing.

That's a bit too simplistic. All actors are performing for pay after all, regardless of who the production is aimed at. Some of them enjoy themselves in the process, others don't and pretend they do.

I just don't agree. I've never seen any credible link between genetic factors and homosexuality. The identical twin studies are pretty solid. I know there is the charge of sample bias but even still the data are strong. After all the research that has been done on this, I don't understand why so many people are married to the "genetic factors" theories... If there are genetic factors we **all** carry them and those factors can be switch on in any of us under the right circumstances. Which means homosexuality is not genetic but environmental, which is just data. I really just look for truth in things.

I just have a hard time trying to talk to people about these subjects when they begin mixing behaviors/traits. There is no evidence that they are related or have similar origins. There is just the assumption that because they relate to sexuality that they are similar, which in science is almost always proven to be the wrong assumption.

Gene expression has been shown in gender alignment but as a environmental influence not a direct link, yet. I think one (gene expression) will be found though.

I'm of the opinion that gender identification is probably more aligned with one's genetic make up due to the simple fact the data is pointing that way.

I'm of the opinion that as shown in many studies, humans sexual orientation is a sliding scale and is controlled/influenced by prenatal, and post natal environmental conditions.

If it were discovered that homosexuality could be reversed, would it be moral to do so? I think so, if the individual wanted to have it reversed.

It would be immoral to pressure people into having it reversed. It's by definition impossible for someone to dislike their sexual preferences--that's why they're called "preferences." So if anyone were to "want" their sexuality changed, that would mean that what they really wanted was to have the pressure--societal, familial, religious, whatever--taken off. Which is something that can be done without the aid of sci-fi treatments, and which desperately needs to be.

I think the debate is remarkably similar to the Deaf Culture debate. I'm not saying it is the same, I'm saying there are similarities. For example, your statement is nearly identical to the philosophy held by Deaf Culture leaders. Those Deaf Culture leaders do not believe that anyone willingly chooses to not be deaf. Everyone who gets a Cochlear Implant has been forced in to doing so.

I imagine it will be the same with the LGBT culture if homosexuality can be reversed. You realize that transgender people are already being cured... Is that wrong or is it OK that they made a choice others disagree with?

Using the word 'cured' is the problem here. With deafness, there is a clear handicap. That doesn't mean that deaf people are less important or anything like that. But it is a disadvantage in certain ways. Being 'cured' makes sense in that context. In order to apply 'cure' to homosexuality, don't you already have to assume it is a disease?

Here's what the fundamental difference there is: deafness is a disability. It has a real, substantive effect on the deaf person's quality of life, in and of itself. Now, I realize there are people who see themselves as part of a community of deaf people and who don't want to be cured, and that's fine, and I also realize that there are more extreme voices among them who don't want anyone to be cured, which is less fine, but that's the subject of a different debate.

The difference with homosexuality is that it doesn't inflict a detriment on the person. It is not a disability. It is not something that can be cured, because the word "cure" only applies to healing diseases and relieving otherwise detrimental conditions. It is a set of tastes, not really that dissimilar to our taste in food or anything else, and I maintain that there's no way to really say "I dislike my tastes." It's a contradiction in terms. Being homosexual means that you want to have sex with people of the same sex as you; in the absence of manufactured external pressures to the contrary, how could you ever say "I dislike liking this?"

Worst troll ever? People who get sex changes are indeed being cured (or at least as close to it as current science allows)... of gender identity disorder, not of homosexuality.

That isn't porn aimed at men, that's bad porn. Like, bordering on rapey. Healthy males want their partners making happy sounds during sex, not looking like they'd rather be out getting nails driven through their eyes.

I've known lesbians with long nails. Very very few, but I've known 'em.

At dyke March a few years ago, one of the local health centers was handing out nail clippers. My friends and I thought it was hilarious, but I still use that nail clipper.

I am not trolling. Your case is identical to the Deaf Culture debate, almost word for word. Except for the part where you diminish the Deaf people as being ill and having a poor quality of life... You do realize that a Deaf person could say the same thing about someone who was Gay?

Not a troll at all. In fact, you must know by now that I do not consider transgender people to be Gay. There are a lot of people on this planet who think people who seek transgender surgeries, hormone therapies, etc. to be ill mentally and that they do not need a surgery at all and that they are just crazy.

I'm not "diminishing" deaf people, or even saying they have a poor overall quality of life. Just that deafness is, in and of itself, a medical condition with adverse effects. Yes, all or almost all deaf people live lives that are just fine in spite of it, and a lot of them choose to stick with the culture that's grown up around it rather than get it fixed, but it's still a negative. That is a simple, inarguable fact.

That someone else could apply my same reasoning to something else and be wrong about it because of the huge differences between the two topics is not worrisome to me. What's your point?

Yes, and those people are wrong. What's your point?

It's not worrisome to you because you are as close minded as the individuals that would claim being Gay is an illness that needs cured or as close minded as the leaders of the Deaf Culture who see Deafness as perfectly normal and not a disability at all and shouldn't be cured.

I know you can't tell the difference. You're wrong none the less. If homosexuality can be reversed, people who want to reverse it should have the right to. And yes, I think if need be the government should cover the cost of that reversal.

I'm capable of holding contradictory points of view as valid, a rare ability these days. I don't think being Gay or Deaf or having the wrong gender identity are illness's that must be cured. I just think that if someone doesn't want to be Gay or Deaf or in a man's body, they should have the right to change that circumstance.

Someone has never watched Gianna Michaels.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a gay person say they didn't want to be gay, unless it was due to the pressure that "normal" society heaped upon them, because it was the easier route than dealing with the bullshit people have no trouble dumping on them.

No, it's not worrisome to me because you can always apply any valid argument to an inappropriate subject and come up with a ridiculous and obviously wrong result. It doesn't undermine the validity of the original argument in the context for which it was intended.

What I'm saying is that that's an impossibility in a world where we just don't do everything we can to make gay people feel awful about themselves all the time. It's not possible as far as I can tell to actually not like the things you like; that just doesn't make sense. I mean, I'm sure there's a small fraction of a percent of people who would want to medically change their tastes just for the hell of it, but that seems more likely to be due to some weird psychosis than anything else, and regardless it's hardly worth pursuing this course over. For the rest of people, a desire to start liking sexual partners you don't like makes about as much sense as a desire to start liking a food you don't like: none. One hundred percent of the reasons that currently drive gay people to wish they weren't gay are external pressures that have nothing to do with the state of being gay itself.

tl;dr: stop treating homosexuality as something that needs to be cured and people will stop feeling like they need to be cured of it.

So your opinion is a fact? Deaf people must be cured because they are ill. Gay people must remain Gay because they are normal.

I wouldn't argue that deaf people "must be cured,"but the absence of hearing is inarguably a physiological defect. Whether or not they want it fixed, or choose to cope with their condition by lying to themselves about what it is, is irrelevant.

They are all stickey wickets. I'm advocating keeping an open mind. As you just said, some see those gender identity issues who want hormone therapy or surgery as ill mentally and that they need to accept their birth gender.

We're into idiotic troll territory with that one. Back away from the keyboard, please.

Do you not understand the bigotry and hearing privilege your post implies? I guess I have to keep explaining that this isn't a troll at all. The way you see the Deaf is exactly the way many people see homosexuality. Trust me, there are Deaf people who are not lying to themselves when they say they say they are happy and don't want to hear.

Not at all. What many of you call trolling is just debate but differing opinions and pointing out logical flaws is somehow a troll.

"U R Troll'in deef peeps be sik, evry 1 nows that! Duh1"

I believe you! And that's fine. But it doesn't change the fact that deafness is a physiological defect that deprives people of the sense of hearing. Acknowledging this does not mean that we want to force deaf people to hear, nor it does not mean that we think less of them as people because they are deaf. Your claim of bigotry is absurd. Likewise, being at peace with one's deafness does not alter the facts of the condition.

Do we know that being gay has a physiological cause? Being a scientist, perhaps you can point me at the relevant literature. And if it exists, and the mechanics are well understood, then yes, I would sign off on that revised quote. Given that many gay people feel that gender preference is biological, I'm not sure that it would even be a controversial thing to say.

That isn't the zinger you think it is.

(In reference to D-0ne)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155990,00.html

I know you won't acknowledge it but I did state the arguments are similar not identical. Eventually, the cause for homosexuality for the majority of homosexuals (especially males) will be found. It will be found. When it is found, a treatment will most certainly be sought and eventually found.

I don't need your approval of my point, it'd be nice but it isn't required. The point is, eventually a treatment for homosexuality will be found, at that time, how will the community deal with it? As I've said, probably in the same fashion that Deaf Culture deals with it.

I will acknowledge it. Will you acknowledge that nobody was actually arguing that it would be okay to force deaf people to have their hearing loss reversed?

Again, you are making an assumption that the cause is physiological, and we don't know that it is. What if we find that there is no root physiological cause for homosexuality, and that it is simply a behavioral thing?

I don't contest this point. If your hypothetical came to pass, then it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that "gay culture" might view such a treatment with disdain. And it is similar to deafness in the sense that it would be wrong, in both cases, to force treatment on anyone.

So what are we actually arguing about again? Oh, right--it was you calling me a bigot for pointing out that deafness is a physiological defect. It is. It is a trait characterized by a lack of function in a specific bit of human anatomy. I know that "defect"is a loaded word, and a lot of people conflate "physiological defect" with "character defect" or "moral defect,"and that's obviously wrong-headed. There is nothing "wrong," in a moral sense, with being deaf. Deaf people can live full and fulfilling lives, and as their condition has an enormous impact on how they experience the world, it is unsurprising that many of them view it as an integral component of their persona, and would not willingly change it. And that's fine. At the same time, we don't need to pretend that deafness is not what it is: the failure of function in a specific organ.

Now, this is a key point where deafness differs from sexual orientation. We don't, AFAIK, know why people are gay. We can't point to an organ and say "that's not working." Being gay may have nothing to do with physiology at all. So in that sense, as extarbags said, it's not clear that we can call it a biological defect in the same way that we can call deafness a biological defect. This is not bigotry or a slur on deaf people: it is simply a fact. I guess you could make the case that gayness is a "defect" in the sense that it is a trait that evolution will almost unerringly select against, for obvious reasons. But my understanding is that even that is a murky issue. It's possible that homosexuality is a culturally-driven behavior that surfaces when maximizing propagation is not a driving concern, as is the case in modern human society. And it's also possible that it's not a "trait" that can even be selected against by evolution at all. It might be purely behavioral, rather than genetic.

Regardless, it is akin to deafness in that its status as a biological defect (whatever that status might be) has no bearing on whether it is a moral defect (it isn't). So if that's the point that you were trying to make, then I agree.

There's also the possibility that some % of the population being gay is seen up-and-down the length of the animal kingdom because it's evolutionarly advantageous. Which would make the "treatable defect" thing even sillier.

Wikipedia informs me she is a Seattle native and worked at Dick's.

The deaf culture analogy is a good one, and I don't think it represents an effort by D-One to label homosexuality a "treatable defect". It's just really difficult to be clear about the relationship between mainstream culture and minority groups with a medical or pseudo-medical classification without triggering all kinds of alarms for language that sounds prejudiced. If anything, I would just say that assuming a medically modifiably key variable *will* be discovered a treatment *will* be found is an unfortunate way to load the discussion, particularly once the "I am a scientist" threshold was crossed early on.

It's certainly possible that being gay represents an adaptation in some form on the evolutionary level. That does not make the "treatment" any sillier, any more than sickle cell would be immune from that consideration. Again, similar, not identical.

I don't think that's fair, because that would imply an inherent absence of agency on the part the person in question where they are not only affected by their social context but incapable of making important choices for themselves as a result. I don't think that's what you were getting at, but I would submit that there are layers of immorality in the perception of this debate.

I'm not sure where she's from but she definitely worked at dicks.

Bah-dum!

That's correct! She also either really enjoys her work or she's so good at pretending to laugh and crack wise in between the male wish fulfillment that the distinction is irrelevant to a viewer. It's quite refreshing from the constant "must always be slutty sex doll" stuff which is mostly out there.

Appears to me that Nixon is backtracking a bit with a 'clarification'. Perhaps under pressure from the gay community?