| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 172 Given: 549 |
according to tacitus, they were Homosexuals.Originally Posted by spik
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 6,915 Given: 7,434 |
The Evolutionary Unlikelihood of a "Gay Gene"
One major question for "gay gene" researchers to answer is why the "gay gene" hasn't been eliminated from existence by evolution. The conventional response to this question has been that gay people contribute enough to their nieces' and nephews' upbringing to increase the chance for their genes' survival. However, this argument falls apart under any kind of close scrutiny.
A parent contributes one half of their genes to a child, whereas an aunt or uncle shares only about one fourth of the genes of their nieces and nephews. Therefore, in order to compensate for not reproducing, a queer aunt or uncle's contributions to raising their siblings' children would have to be twice as strong as a parent's. Honestly, do you really think you contribute twice as much to raising your nieces and nephews than their parents do?
Okay, so a queer person could also contribute to the upbringing of great-nieces and great-nephews and perhaps an occasional cousin once removed. But seriously, there's very little evidence to indicate that queer aunts and uncles even contribute any more—in almost any culture, really—to raising their nieces and nephews than hetero aunts and uncles do.
Also: the following quote is from the pro-"gay gene" page at ReligiousTolerance.org:
—the pro-"gay gene" page at ReligiousTolerance.orgAny genetic trait that reduces a person's chance of procreating is said to have a "fitness cost." A trait that has a fitness cost of 1% lowers the probability of having children by 1%. The cost would cause the trait to essentially disappear within 100 generations. Homosexuality has a "fitness cost that is much higher than 1%." A 1981 study in San Francisco showed that gays and lesbians have only 20% of the number of children as do heterosexuals; i.e. the fitness cost factor among that sample of homosexuals is 80%. This number was probably much lower in the past, as gays and lesbians were often forced into marriages in order to escape detection. But it would only have to be 0.001% to wipe out the trait in the lifetime of the human race.
Powerful numbers, yes? And the only response the ReligiousTolerance.org site gives to its own argument is to suggest that instead of being genetic, there's always a chance that queerness could be caused by a virus, bacterium, or parasite. Ooh—now there's a liberating idea that'll make everybody glad to be gay. Well, that's why they call the site Religious Tolerance—because they think that queerness is a defect to be tolerated (and even that only as a last resort if they can first prove we "can't help it") instead of an achievement to be celebrated. The question now is this: Why are so many queer people agreeing with them?
--------
This is a site hosted by a guy that chose to be gay that is not intellectually dishonest and debunks all the born that way propaganda: http://queerbychoice.com/evolution.html
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 370 Given: 151 |
Lol, did they really say it was due to a virus or bacteria? Here’s what I found:
“Beliefs about the causes of homosexuality:
Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis. He believed that children raised by a dominating mother and emotionally distant father often became homosexuals later in life. However, after considerable research, most human sexuality researchers now believe that he was wrong. Instead, they now believe that homosexual orientation is a trait, like left-handedness. That is, a homosexual is born, not made. A person's sexual orientation is largely or completely determined before birth.
Researchers determined in the mid 20th century that homosexuality had some type of genetic cause. One really good indication is that while about 5% of male adults are gay, if one male identical twin happens to be gay, then his twin has a much higher probability than 5% of also being gay. Identical twins, of course, have identical DNA.
Researchers searched for decades to find "the homosexual gene" or genes in people's DNA, without much success. Finally, in the early 21st century, they found the answer in epigenetics.
Epigenetics involves the study of a layer of chemicals on the DNA, not in the DNA. It remains unchanged from the embryonic stage before birth, through fetalhood, birth, childhood, and throughout adulthood.
This finding solved a long-term mystery: why did identical twins -- twins with the same DNA structure -- sometimes have different sexual orientations develop as adults.
Researchers have recently developed an epigenetic test involving the analysis of saliva samples from a group of male identical twin adults of opposing sexual orientations. They were able to detect which twins had a homosexual orientation with an accuracy of 83%.
Further research will almost certainly increase the accuracy of this test in the future.
This finding cleared up a number of questions. Some are:
Why a homosexual orientation is discovered -- typically during one's teens -- and is not chosen.
Why a homosexual orientation is fixed during life and not changeable through therapy and counseling.
Why identical twins, sharing identical DNA, often discover that they have different sexual orientations.
Why homosexuals can often be detected in childhood by comparing the lengths of their fingers and other tests, even though their sexual orientation is often not obvious until they are in their teens.
However, many religious, political, and social conservatives sincerely hold very different beliefs that they have often derived from a literal interpretation of some Bible passages:
that homosexuality is defined not by one's orientation but by ones behavior.
that same-gender sexual behavior is hated by God and will prevent a person from attaining heaven.
that homosexuality is influenced by a person's upbringing, or often caused by sexual abuse at an early age.
that it is chosen later in life, and
that it can be reversed in adulthood through counseling, reparative therapy, and/or prayer.
Some argue that if the cause of homosexuals were purely genetic or epigenetic, then the percentage of male homosexuals would become successively lower with each generation. It would eventually disappear. That is because homosexuals tend to have fewer children than heterosexuals. This mystery was cleared up when it was found that close female relatives of homosexuals tend to have more children. This compensates for homosexuals themselves having fewer children and causes homosexuality to survive.”
http://www.religioustolerance.org/br...osexuality.htm
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 6,915 Given: 7,434 |
The “Animal Homosexuality” Myth
In its effort to present homosexuality as normal, the homosexual movement1 turned to science in an attempt to prove three major premises:
1. Homosexuality is genetic or innate;
2. Homosexuality is irreversible;
3. Since animals engage in same-sex sexual behavior, homosexuality is natural.
Keenly aware of its inability to prove the first two premises,2 the homosexual movement pins its hopes on the third, “animal homosexuality”.3
Animals Do It, So It’s Natural, Right?
The reasoning behind the “animal homosexuality” theory can be summed up as follows:
• Homosexual behavior is observable in animals.
• Animal behavior is determined by their instincts.
• Nature requires animals to follow their instincts.
• Therefore, homosexuality is in accordance with animal nature.
• Since man is also animal, homosexuality must also be in accordance with human nature.
This line of reasoning is unsustainable. If seemingly “homosexual” acts among animals are in accordance with animal nature, then parental killing of offspring and intra-species devouring are also in accordance with animal nature. Bringing man into the equation complicates things further. Are we to conclude that filicide and cannibalism are according to human nature?
In opposition to this line of reasoning, this article sustains that:
There Are No “Homosexual Instincts” in Animals
It is poor science to “read” human motivations and sentiments into animal behavior, and
Irrational animal behavior is not a yardstick to determine what is morally acceptable behavior for rational man.
There Are No “Homosexual Instincts” in Animals
Anyone engaged in the most elementary animal observation is forced to conclude that animal “homosexuality,” “filicide” and “cannibalism” are exceptions to normal animal behavior. Consequently, they cannot be called animal instincts. These observable exceptions to normal animal behavior result from factors beyond their instincts.
Clashing Stimuli and Confused Animal Instincts
To explain this abnormal behavior, the first observation must be the fact that animal instincts are not bound by the absolute determinism of the physical laws governing the mineral world. In varying degrees, all living beings can adapt to circumstances. They respond to internal or external stimuli.
Second, animal cognition is purely sensorial, limited to sound, odor, touch, taste and image. Thus, animals lack the precision and clarity of human intellectual perception. Therefore, animals frequently confuse one sensation with another or one object with another.
Third, an animal’s instincts direct it towards its end and are in accordance with its nature. However, the spontaneous thrust of the instinctive impulse can suffer modifications as it runs its course. Other sensorial images, perceptions or memories can act as new stimuli affecting the animal’s behavior. Moreover, the conflict between two or more instincts can sometimes modify the original impulse.
In man, when two instinctive reactions clash, the intellect determines the best course to follow, and the will then holds one instinct in check while encouraging the other. With animals that lack intellect and will, when two instinctive impulses clash, the one most favored by circumstances prevails.4 At times, these internal or external stimuli affecting an animal’s instinctive impulses result in cases of animal “filicide,” “cannibalism” and “homosexuality.”
Animal “Filicide” and “Cannibalism”
Sarah Hartwell explains that tomcats kill their kittens after receiving “mixed signals” from their instincts:
Most female cats can switch between “play mode” and “hunt mode” in order not to harm their offspring. In tomcats this switching off of “hunt mode” may be incomplete and, when they become highly aroused through play, the “hunting” instinct comes into force and they may kill the kittens. The hunting instinct is so strong, and so hard to switch off when prey is present, that dismemberment and even eating of the kitten may ensue…. Compare the size, sound and activity of kittens with the size, sound and activity of prey. They are both small, have high-pitched voices and move with fast, erratic movements. All of these trigger hunting behavior. In the tomcat, maternal behavior cannot always override hunting behavior and he treats the kittens in exactly the same way he would treat small prey. His instincts are confused.5
Lioness with cubsRegarding animal cannibalism, the Iran Nature and Wildlife Magazine notes: Cannibalism is most common among lower vertebrates and invertebrates, often due to a predatory animal mistaking one of its own kind for prey. But it also occurs among birds and mammals, especially when food is scarce.6
Animals Lack the Means to Express Their Affective States
To stimuli and clashing instincts, however, we must add another factor: In expressing its affective states, an animal is radically inferior to man.
Since animals lack reason, their means of expressing their affective states (fear, pleasure, pain, desire, etc.) are limited. Animals lack the rich resources at man’s disposal to express his sentiments. Man can adapt his way of talking, writing, gazing, gesturing in untold ways. Animals cannot. Consequently, animals often express their affective states ambiguously. They “borrow,” so to speak, the manifestations of the instinct of reproduction to manifest the instincts of dominance, aggressiveness, fear, gregariousness and so on.
Explaining Seemingly “Homosexual” Animal Behavior
Bonobos are a typical example of this “borrowing.” These primates from the chimpanzee family engage in seemingly sexual behavior to express acceptance and other affective states. Thus, Frans B. M. de Waal, who spent hundreds of hours observing and filming bonobos, says:
There are two reasons to believe sexual activity is the bonobo’s answer to avoiding conflict.
First, anything, not just food, that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact. If two bonobos approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box. Such situations lead to squabbles in most other species. But bonobos are quite tolerant, perhaps because they use sex to divert attention and to diffuse tension.
Second, bonobo sex often occurs in aggressive contexts totally unrelated to food. A jealous male might chase another away from a female, after which the two males reunite and engage in scrotal rubbing. Or after a female hits a juvenile, the latter’s mother may lunge at the aggressor, an action that is immediately followed by genital rubbing between the two adults.7 Like bonobos, other animals will mount another of the same sex and engage in seemingly “homosexual” behavior, although their motivation may differ. Dogs, for example, usually do so to express dominance. Cesar Ades, ethologist and professor of psychology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, explains, “When two males mate, what is present is a demonstration of power, not sex.”8
Jacque Lynn Schultz, ASPCA Animal Sciences Director of Special Projects, explains further:
Usually, an un-neutered male dog will mount another male dog as a display of social dominance-in other words, as a way of letting the other dog know who’s boss. While not as frequent, a female dog may mount for the same reason.9
Dogs will also mount one another because of the vehemence of their purely chemical reaction to the smell of an estrus female: Not surprisingly, the smell of a female dog in heat can instigate a frenzy of mounting behaviors. Even other females who are not in heat will mount those who are. Males will mount males who have just been with estrus females if they still bear their scent…. And males who catch wind of the estrus odor may mount the first thing (or an unlucky person) they come into contact with.10
Other animals engage in seemingly “homosexual” behavior because they fail to identify the other sex properly. The lower the species in the animal kingdom, the more tenuous and difficult to detect are the differences between sexes, leading to more frequent confusion.
“Homosexual” Animals Do Not Exist
In 1996, homosexual scientist Simon LeVay admitted that the evidence pointed to isolated acts, not to homosexuality:
Although homosexual behavior is very common in the animal world, it seems to be very uncommon that individual animals have a long-lasting predisposition to engage in such behavior to the exclusion of heterosexual activities. Thus, a homosexual orientation, if one can speak of such thing in animals, seems to be a rarity.11
Despite the “homosexual” appearances of some animal behavior, this behavior does not stem from a “homosexual” instinct that is part of animal nature. Dr. Antonio Pardo, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Navarre, Spain, explains:
Properly speaking, homosexuality does not exist among animals…. For reasons of survival, the reproductive instinct among animals is always directed towards an individual of the opposite sex. Therefore, an animal can never be homosexual as such. Nevertheless, the interaction of other instincts (particularly dominance) can result in behavior that appears to be homosexual. Such behavior cannot be equated with an “animal homosexuality”. All it means is that animal sexual behavior encompasses aspects beyond that of reproduction.12
It Is Unscientific to “Read” Human Motivation and Sentiment into Animal Behavior
Like many animal rights activists, homosexual activists often “read” human motivation and sentiment into animal behavior. While this anthropopathic approach enjoys full citizenship in the realms of art, literature, and mythology it makes for poor science. Dr. Charles Socarides of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) observes:
The term homosexuality should be limited to the human species, for in animals the investigator can ascertain only motor behavior. As soon as he interprets the animal’s motivation he is applying human psychodynamics–a risky, if not foolhardy scientific approach.13
Ethologist Cesar Ades explains the difference between human and animal sexual relations:
Human beings have sex one way, while animals have it another. Human sex is a question of preference where one chooses the most attractive person to have pleasure. This is not true with animals. For them, it is a question of mating and reproduction. There is no physical or psychological pleasure….The smell is decisive: when a female is in heat, she emits a scent, known as pheromone. This scent attracts the attention of the male, and makes him want to mate. This is sexual intercourse between animals. It is the law of nature.14
Even biologist Bruce Bagemihl, whose book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity was cited by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association in their amici curiae brief in Lawrence v. Texas and is touted as proof that homosexuality is natural among animals, is careful to include a caveat:
Any account of homosexuality and transgender animals is also necessarily an account of human interpretations of these phenomena.…We are in the dark about the internal experience of the animal participants: as a result, the biases and limitations of the human observer-in both the gathering and interpretation of data-come to the forefront in this situation.….With people we can often speak directly to individuals (or read written accounts)….With animals in contrast, we can often directly observe their sexual (and allied) behaviors, but can only infer or interpret their meanings and motivations.”15
Dr. Bagemihl’s interpretation, however, throughout his 750-page book unabashedly favors the “animal homosexuality” theory. Its pages are filled with descriptions of animal acts that would have a homosexual connotation in human beings. Dr. Bagemihl does not prove, however, that these acts have the same meaning for animals. He simply gives them a homosexual interpretation. Not surprisingly, his book was published by Stonewall Inn Editions, “an imprint of St. Martin’s Press devoted to gay and lesbian interest books.”
Irrational Animal Behavior Is No Blueprint for Rational Man
Some researchers studying animal “homosexual” behavior extrapolate from the realm of science into that of philosophy and morality. These scholars reason from the premise that if animals do it, it is according to their nature and thus is good for them. If it is natural and good for animals, they continue, it is also natural and morally good for man. However, the definition of man’s nature belongs not to the realm of zoology or biology, but philosophy, and the determination of what is morally good for man pertains to ethics.
Dr. Marlene Zuk, professor of biology at the University of California at Riverside, for example, states:
Sexuality is a lot broader term than people want to think. You have this idea that the animal kingdom is strict, old-fashioned Roman Catholic, that they have sex to procreate. … Sexual expression means more than making babies. Why are we surprised? People are animals.16
Simon LeVay entertains the hope that the understanding of animal “homosexuality” will help change societal mores and religious beliefs about homosexuality. He states: It seems possible that the study of sexual behavior in animals, especially in non-human primates, will contribute to the liberalization of religious attitudes toward homosexual activity and other forms of nonprocreative sex. Specifically, these studies challenge one particular sense of the dogma that homosexual behavior is “against nature”: the notion that it is unique to those creatures who, by tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge, have alone become morally culpable.17
Other researchers feel compelled to point out the impropriety of transposing animal behavior to man. Although very favorable to the homosexual interpretation of animal behavior, Paul L. Vasey, of the University of Lethbridge in Canada, nevertheless cautions: For some people, what animals do is a yardstick of what is and isn’t natural. They make a leap from saying if it’s natural, it’s morally and ethically desirable. Infanticide is widespread in the animal kingdom. To jump from that to say it is desirable makes no sense. We shouldn’t be using animals to craft moral and social policies for the kinds of human societies we want to live in. Animals don’t take care of the elderly. I don’t particularly think that should be a platform for closing down nursing homes.18
The animal kingdom is no place for man to seek a blueprint for human morality. That blueprint, as bioethicist Bruto Maria Bruti notes, must be sought in man himself: It is a frequent error for people to contrast human and animal behaviors, as if the two were homogenous. …. The laws ruling human behavior are of a different nature and they should be sought where God inscribed them, namely, in human nature.19
The fact that man has a body and sensitive life in common with animals does not mean he is strictly an animal. Nor does it mean that he is a half-animal. Man’s rationality pervades the wholeness of his nature so that his sensations, instincts and impulses are not purely animal but have that seal of rationality which characterizes them as human.
Thus, man is characterized not by what he has in common with animals, but by what differentiates him from them. This differentiation is fundamental, not accidental. Man is a rational animal. Man’s rationality is what makes human nature unique and fundamentally distinct from animal nature.20
To consider man strictly as an animal is to deny his rationality and, therefore, his free will. Likewise, to consider animals as if they were human is to attribute to them a non-existent rationality.
From Science to Mythology
Dr. Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance research displays his fundamental dissatisfaction with science and enthusiasm for aboriginal mythology: Western science has a lot to learn from aboriginal cultures about systems of gender and sexuality…21
To Western science, homosexuality (both animal and human) is an anomaly, an unexpected behavior that above all requires some sort of “explanation” or “cause” or “rationale.” In contrast, to many indigenous cultures around the world, homosexuality and transgender are a routine and expected occurrence in both the human and animal worlds…22
Most Native American tribes formally recognize-and honor-human homosexuality and transgender in the role of the ‘two-spirit’ person (sometimes formerly known as berdache). The ‘two-spirit’ is a sacred man or woman who mixes gender categories by wearing clothes of opposite or both sexes …. And often engaging in same -sex relations. … In many Native American cultures, certain animals are also symbolically associated with two-spiritedness, often in the form of creation myths and origin legends relating to the first or “supernatural” two-spirit(s)….A Zuni creation story relates how the first two spirits-creatures that were neither male nor female, yet both at the same time-were the twelve offspring of a mythical brother-sister pair. Some of these creatures were human, but one was a bat and another an old buck Deer.
Dr. Bagemihl applies this androgynous myth, so widespread in today’s homosexual movement, to the animal kingdom with the help of Indian and aboriginal mythology. He invites the West to embrace “a new paradigm:”
Ultimately, the synthesis of scientific views represented by Biological Exuberance brings us full circle-back to the way of looking at the world that is in accordance with some of the most ancient indigenous conceptions of animal (and human) sexual and gender variability. This perspective dissolves binary oppositions….Biological Exuberance is…a worldview that is at once primordial and futuristic, in which gender is kaleidoscopic, sexualities are multiple, and the categories of male and female are fluid and transmutable.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the homosexual movement’s attempt to establish that homosexuality is in accordance with human nature, by proving its “animal homosexuality” theory, is based more on mythological beliefs and erroneous philosophical tenets than on science.
----------
http://www.tfp.org/the-qanimal-homosexualityq-myth/
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 6,915 Given: 7,434 |
Some "born that way" propagandists say that gays were born that way based on twin studies saying that genetically identical twins are more likely to be gay than fraternal twins. However, genetically identical twins are more likely to have the same job than fraternal twins, even fraternal twins of the same sex. If gays are born that way, then doctors and engineers are also born that way.
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-g...of-job-choice/
Anyways, genes can contribute a small degree to your personality/behavior, so this would be the main explanation behind genetically identical twins being more likely to be doctors/engineers/gays/etc. rather than saying "there is a gene for being a doctor" or "there is a gene for being gay".
Last edited by Mingle; 12-11-2017 at 06:34 PM.
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 370 Given: 151 |
Scientists are able to change the homosexual behaviour of sheep.
“Whatever happens in 2007, we already have the most surreal headline of the year: "Sheep have right to be gay, says Martina Navratilova". But behind this headline and buried beneath the battery of baa-aad jokes it seems to beckon, there is a strange and serious story that will ripple out through the 21st century in ways we cannot predict.
For the past five years, a team of researchers at Orgeon State University has been investigating the sexuality of sheep. Early on, they proved what every sheep farmer knows: some 8 per cent of rams are gay. When it comes to sex, these woolly homosexuals shun ewes and engage exclusively in ram-on-ram action. They will swiftly pounce on any ram stuck in a fence - the sheep equivalent of the prison showers. The gay lovin' on Brokeback Mountain, it turns out, wasn't confined to Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.
And it gets more intriguing. When the team studied the brains of these gay sheep, they invariably discovered they have a substantially smaller hypothalamus than their straight male siblings. This is the first hard scientific evidence of biological differences between gay and straight mammals - and they found these brain differences are already in place in the third trimester of pregnancy. Sheep, at least, are born gay or straight.
So what's Martina's problem? It begins with the next stage of the research. It turns out this epidemic of gay sheep is a serious problem for the agricultural industry. This 8 per cent of rams are not breeding, and a further 8 per cent seem to be asexual. (Many of these might be lesbians who can't express their sexuality. Female sheep always express a desire for sex by just standing still. The world's fields may be littered with millions of lesbian sheep lying still, wondering why their dream-ewe never comes). If 16 per cent of your flock is cruising or day-dreaming, that's a lot of lost money.
That's why the experimenters began to try to something new: making the gay sheep straight. They altered the hormonal levels in their brains and monitored their behaviour. And the result? Many of the gay rams decided a bit of ewe wasn't so bad after all. They began to have heterosexual sex.
This experiment throws up difficulties for all sides of the millennia-long debate about homosexuality. It gives the forces of homophobia plenty to fume against by annihilating their most hoary argument: that gay sex is "unnatural". In reality, we live in - as the scientist Bruce Bagemihl puts it - "a polysexual, polygendered world", where species from beetles to shrews to chimpanzees have a consistent minority who prefer their own sex. It's everywhere: cow elephants often masturbate each other with their trunks (why has Sir David Attenborough never shown it to us?) and in the Bronx Zoo there is a famous pair of gay penguins called Wendell and Cass who sit on a little rock they believe is their egg. Human homosexuality is just another example of a universal phenomenon.
The homophobes know that when people realise this, homophobia becomes unsellable. The latest US poll found that 79 per cent of people who think human beings are born gay support full gay equality, while only 22 percent who believe homosexuality is a choice agree. The Family Research Council, an evangelical lobby group in the US, are in a panic. In their latest publication, they warn that discovering people are born gay "would advance the idea that disapproval of homosexuality should be as socially stigmatised as racism". Uh-huh. So they spend hundreds of pages trying to debunk the new evidence.
But the Oregon studies also pose a serious challenge for the supporters of gay rights, like Martina and myself.
At the very moment the world is being forced to admit homosexuality is not a choice, this experiment raises the distant prospect that it might become one after all. Martina sees it as a Mengele moment, raising the spectre of altering the brains of gay people to "cure" them of their "disease". The Oregon scientists can now detect gay sheep in the womb. She fears it is not a great leap to detecting gay foetuses in human wombs, and making possible mass homo-cidal abortions.
There is indeed a horrific history of attempts to "cure" gay people. Alan Turing was perhaps the greatest English genius of the 20th century, breaking the Nazis' codes at Bletchley Park and laying the groundwork for the invention of the personal computer. But when his consensual, loving relationship with another man was discovered, he was given an option: go to prison, or take "hormone therapy". He took the "therapy". He became impotent and grew breasts. After a year, he killed himself.
Today, there are Christian ministries across the world who claim they can "cure" gay people through prayer. A few years ago, I met up with the British branch, and found pitiful, broken men and women soaked in self-hate, invariably "relapsing" into homosexuality and hating themselves even more.
It's not hard to see how a range of violently homophobic rulers from Robert Mugabe to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would not be sheepish about misusing the idea that hormone injections into the brain can alter sexuality. Even though it's a huge leap from sheep to human sexuality, it could unleash another wave of hellish abuse of gay people.
But is the potential abuse of scientific knowledge a reason not to acquire it, as Navratilova suggests? I'm not so sure. Breakthroughs in ultrasound technology have been used across India and China to stage mass female foeticide, with a drastic fall in girl babies. Does that mean we should have stopped the experiments that led to the discovery of ultrasound?
Some gay people respond that no good can come of these experiments, because they seem designed only for an anti-gay purpose - but that neglects the way scientific breakthroughs occur. Charles Roselli, the Oregon project manager, argues his research could lead to cures for a range of medical conditions that stem from differences in sexual development.
Some black and Asian groups understandably objected to research into the genetic differences between ethnic groups, but they have led to breakthroughs in the investigation of diseases that afflict mainly them, such sickle cell anaemia. The path of scientific progress is jagged; this may well produce advances as well as dangers for gay people.
Yes, like Martina, I fear the consequences of moves to abort or "cure" gay people - but I cannot fear greater knowledge of the biology of human sexuality. We cannot ringfence whole areas from biological investigation because we might not like what we hear, or because lunatics might misuse it. These experiments - and our scientific understanding - must roll on. It's up to us to create the political circumstances in which they will not be abused.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...ep-430683.html
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 6,915 Given: 7,434 |
^Gay sheep don't exist. I already wrote a post debunking the existence of gay animals. Technically speaking, gay humans don't either exist.
The studies were the closest to proving homosexuality among animals, but it didn't even do that. There were two studies done. One was done based on mountain sheep and the other based on domestic sheep. They said that they used hormone levels to predict sheep sexuality, but the hormone levels would fluctuate based on what the sheep were doing. The sheep's so-called "homosexuality" was just situational homosexual behavior similar to the one that straight men do in prison when there are a lack of women.
Rocky Mountain rams
Let's take the Rocky Mountain Sheep first. Their usual social pattern is a flock of ewes dominated sexually and organisationally by a very limited number of males who have achieved their position through ferocious and bloody combats in which they use their large, curled horns. The losers in these fights form a fringe group together with other bachelor males who are not yet mature enough to challenge for the leadership. In this group there are frequent encounters which seem homosexual in which males show most of the usual sexual behaviours, but in the presence of other males, and will quite often mount them.
However all is not as it seems. During the breeding season these fringe groups disperse and disappear (Fisher and Mathews.2 They have all joined the annual competition for the dominant heterosexual positions. This means at most they are bisexual. Heterosexual sexual expression is dominant for the time being and homosexual expression is abandoned in its favour. In this species homosexual expression in rams is for the losers - rather reminiscent of "situational homosexuality" among men in prisons.
A very similar process was observed following one controlled culling experiment (Shackleton).3 In one group of Rocky Mountain Sheep it was necessary for conservation reasons to shoot most of the dominant males. Following that, the candidate fringe males matured very fast and filled the vacant spots, exercising their usually frustrated heterosexual instincts. Researchers noted that they did this successfully - they were not poorly performing heterosexuals. For a season there was a lack of homosexual activity, because there was practically no fringe group.
This shows (a) exclusive homosexual activity is quite rare (b) it is highly dependent on social environment (c) it is considered by researchers to be an expression of dominance, real or attempted (d) change is possible.
However, Rocky Mountain Sheep are a wild population, and investigation is harder to do than amongst domestic sheep. Domestic sheep have been investigated quite thoroughly, particularly in Montana.----------Domestic rams
Amongst these sheep, Resko et al. (1996),4 showed that levels of a number of male sex hormones circulating in the blood in heterosexual rams were about double those in homosexual rams.
However it is well known that these hormone levels change in response to experience and the case for saying they are innate has yet to be made. That is, it is very likely that the loss of battles for dominant position lowers the hormone levels.
Domestic "homosexual" rams were identified by putting them through a kind of "rape rack", 2 rams and 2 ewes being confined facing inwards in four separate sides of an octagonal rack with their hind-quarters exposed (Price et al).5 The test ram was allowed to choose one of these four animals for mounting, over a set time limit (often about 10 minutes, which seems too short). If an animal chose a male to mount each time in 5 tests he was classified as homosexual. Large numbers of males had to be tested to find these homosexual rams.
There are other explanations of the rams' homosexual mounting behaviour. Geist6 reported that rams took it as an insult if other rams mounted them. How would an unsuccessful male who had lost dominance encounters until now react to the presence of a trapped male? He could easily (a) retaliate (b) be simply and naturally treating dominance as first priority (c) if more intelligent than usual, realise that it would be more strategic to mount the male and establish dominance - once that was achieved he would have all the females!
A ram with a defective sense of smell would also have no clear sexual preference. This is not as unlilkely as it sounds: one animal in 32 could be affected this way (the same chances as tossing a coin 5 times and getting heads each time). He might by sheer chance choose the male rather than the female several times in succession.
So I have reservations whether the test for "homosexuality" is very good.
Even if it is, the percentage of homosexual rams is not 10% although it tended to be in earlier papers with less rigorous testing. In the paper by Resko et al, 4 they started with 400-500 rams and tested them for homosexuality. Finally after all the tests only 6 classified as homosexual. That is just over 1%.
There was an ejaculation only once in five trials (but in a second group of trials there were about twice as many). This seems like rather apathetic sexual behaviour. (In fact Alexander et al.7 report data on rams which statistically fail to differentiate low sexual activity from homosexuality.) Similar is a paper by Stellflug and Berardinelli (U.S. Department of Agriculture)8 in which they found only one homosexual ram in a test group of 84 rams. Why use rams to argue for a biological homosexuality? These homosexual rams were basically sex-deprived, apathetic, and on the losing fringe of the animal kingdom.
http://mygenes.co.nz/rams.html
Last edited by Mingle; 12-11-2017 at 05:15 PM.
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 15,959 Given: 11,670 |
Even if it's 100% nurture, which I doubt. I still think society should remain tolerant for homosexuality and not want to have it stamped out. It's after all still a fact you make their lives miserable like that and it's still near impossible to make them straight as their homosexuality is very deeply ingrained in them. It doesn't quite improve society to have the minority of people who developed a homosexual preference forcefully and awkwardly re-educated, on the contrary (historical cases were it was forced upon people often didn't end up well and people who are 'former homosexuals' don't truly convince me their sexuality isn't broken when they try to be straight).
I once did know an identical twin where one sister is straight and another lesbian, so I do believe it's part nurture even possible mainly nurture, but some people are more susceptible to it too I believe. She was the girlfriend of my cousin.
You seem very fixated on this too. Probably because you believe it should be criminalised. Pashtun aren't known for their tolerance.
Last edited by Dandelion; 12-13-2017 at 04:33 PM.
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 8,540 Given: 9,189 |
That is some phucked up stuff.
| Thumbs Up |
| Received: 370 Given: 151 |
Sounds like retarded excuses. A real straight man would never have sex with another man. Despite this dominance thing you’re trying to push, like this disgusting case of homosexual pedophilia: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...edophiles.html
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Islam
Alba | Scotland
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks