[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
You just changed the word from “defect” to dysfunction. You can have psychological “defects” that don’t impact health, such as aspergers. In fact many times these defects can be advantageous. Being a crazy brutal maniac could have helped you in the past.
Edit: I’m not arguing that homosexuality is a defect just that it’s a moral and not a scientific judgment.[/quote]
Which would matter if the DSM was about defects, rather than dysfunctions, which it is not.
[quote]forlife wrote:
You need to differentiate between statements of fact about the objective universe, and the morality of actions based on those statements of fact.[/quote]
This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, you made the holistic assertion that ‘science progresses’. My point was that YOU need to differentiate rather than blindly following along, and/or making gross generalities.
Next;
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. Jules Poincare
The scientific method (with apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Tukey, Rev. Thomas Bayes, and a whole host of others); Formulate a problem or question->Hypothesize an answer or solution->GET THE FACTS->Analyze Them->Come to a conclusion->Repeat.
Third, as (not) indicated above, objectivity doesn’t exclude judgment, moral or otherwise. If the automobile was meant to allow people to travel 99% the speed of light, thus far, it has been a complete failure. If the TV was meant to enlighten people and promote the flow of useful information, its success is questionable. If we split the atom and refuse to generate power (or end wars) with it, splitting the atom can hardly be called progress.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Personally, I think the traditional argument is complete BS. Just because something has been done a long time doesn’t make it right or best. I see a huge inconsistency with assuming tradition = correctness, not with what tradition is.
I think you also have to weigh the implications of the alternative options for the child. No parents vs. gay parents. I’d be inclined to think even if you consider homosexuality immoral, it’s still best for the child to have gay parents in that case.
I think logically you’d have to start legally baring strippers and such from being mothers if you forbid homosexuals.[/quote]
I agree with you totally. It should come down to the simple fact of what is best for the kid. Can a homosexual couple provide a stable environment in which the child can grow up safely and happily when compared to the average hetro couple?
I am yet to see any research to the contrary. (admitedly I have not looked very hard because this is not something that effects me or concerns me too greatly.)
[quote]forlife wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
I actually think they have it right here in Mexico. You have a civil wedding that legally recognises you as married. Then if you so wish you can have a church wedding. The Church wedding confers no legal implications and the civil wedding confers no religious implications.
True separation of church and state on the marriage issue makes perfect sense to me. I think we should do the same here in the U.S.[/quote]
It’s not perfect here. I had a church wedding and my daughter is Christened. This is a purely practical decision on my part. I have no idea what she will want to do with her life or what her beliefs will be. I don’t want to limit her opportunities here in Mexico. If she wasn’t Christened, she would not have the option of a Church wedding when she was older. There would also be less schools that she could attend.
I have her enrolled in a secular school for her pre-school but that decision was based on it being the one that provides the best education possible.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
I hate Christians.
You are under the impression that if you ever held an incorrect belief about something you are forever invalidated on the subject. Apparently if people who came before you in your lineage did something currently viewed as wrong, any current thoughts on the subject are invalid.
So Mr. cockney, I’m surmising you’re from around London? Who are your ancestors? Celts? Welsh? Perhaps Danes? They used swords either way. So today you have to agree that everyone should be allowed to carry swords. Because that tradition is part of your past. I would argue this point about everyone carrying swords, but I have Danish ancestry, so I’m forbidden.
There are stonings in the Bible too. So if you’re a Christian you shouldn’t stop someone from stoning someone.
Hell, as an american I believe african americans are only 3/5ths of a person right? So now I can’t have any opinion on racism.
You’re argument isn’t logically coherent.
Not at all. I am pointing out that when a Christian says that Homosexual Marriage is wrong because it will break down the traditions of Marriage they are not being logically coherent.
As I have said repeatedly, if the Christian wants to go to a Christian Church that doesn’t recognise a Christian homosexual marriage then that is fine by me.
They should have no input however on the legality of a contract between two homosexuals that recognises their relationship legally for the purposes of tax, inheritence, ability to make medical decisions on their partners behalf etc.
In exactly the same way, I have no right to tell a Christian how their religion should treat their religious marriage. It is simply none of my business.
I actually think they have it right here in Mexico. You have a civil wedding that legally recognises you as married. Then if you so wish you can have a church wedding. The Church wedding confers no legal implications and the civil wedding confers no religious implications.
Certain states are now allowing Homosexual civil unions to be recognised and I haven’t seent he fabric of society tearing yet.
Not exactly, when you get into the argument of what “traditional” Christian marriage is, you are stepping into telling a religion what it’s beliefs are. I don’t want to get into the argument in detail, but reading the bible I read monogamous opposite sex marriage as the christian ideal. Started that way originally, fell into ruin along with man, worked it’s way back to the original plan in Christ. But again you are arguing religious interpretation at that point. You can’t, by admittion, tell a Christian what traditional Christian marriage is.
I agree with all the unfair implications of morally mandating marriage contracts between adults. The gray area in this thread comes by the admittance of an un-consenting child to that contract.
There are many laws preventing adoption by parents that have done or continue to do things considered immoral. Are those laws bad? Is there authority as a society to make moral judgments concerning the relationship between minors and adults?
I think you’d have to say yes. The only thing left would be what is the cultural consensus of the morality of homosexuality.[/quote]
Actually I am just pointing out what is written in the books of religions that people claim to follow. Modern Christianity seems to be going full circle. Back in the Middle ages, no-one read the bible because it was in a foreign language. They were told what they believed by their Priest.
Now, no-one reads the bible because they have no attention span. They are told what to believe by the media.
[quote]forlife wrote:
tom8658 wrote:
A NARTH doctor cites evidence published by the Institute for American Values, both non-profits dedicated to defining marriage as solely heterosexual, and it’s supposed to be convincing?
Exactly. The major medical and mental health organizations have done the research on children raised by same sex parents, and have unanimously concluded that these children are equal on measures of emotional and psychological health.
Of course, these organizations are all “biased”, and only NARTH is objective enough to give us the real scoop on the homo agenda.[/quote]
‘Unanimously’, huh? When did social scientists ever agree unanimously on anything?
Laughable, in toto.
[quote]forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Further, to the point you are talking about, you use that logic all the time against religion.
Dude, are you being deliberately dense or what?
I’m not using “that logic” against religion. I’m simply showing how “that logic” is flawed in the first place. The person using “that logic” was trying to make the point that science can’t be trusted, because it was initially wrong about homosexuality being a disorder. If “that logic” is flawed when applied to religion, then “that logic” is similarly flawed when applied to science.
I’m just asking people to use the same standard, whether evaluating scientific or religious progress. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.[/quote]
Anyone who denies that sex evolved for procreation is arguing against the facts. Why, for ex, don’t we simply clone or reproduce asexually? Because reality is chaotic. Asexuality is suited for a very stable environment. Our world is NOT like that.
Therefore, sex between disparate groups evolved to ensure the continuance of Life. It did NOT evolve simply for pleasure; that’s a consequent, not a cause.
So, homosexuality is an aberation, an error…and errors should NOT be in charge of raising children, teaching them to enter into non-reproductive relationships. Those relationships are a dead end, and thus unnatural.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
To maintain some inherent opposition between the Church & scientific progress is silly, unhistorical secularlist dogma.
Explain Copernicus. Or how about Galileo, who was brought before the Church as a heretic, forced to recant his heliocentric heathenism, and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life?
Then you explain how gay men have raped young boys. That’s right there are gay men who’ve done bad things. You come up with a way to excuse them from their actions and I’ll come up with a way to excuse distant Christians who’ve done bad things.[/quote]
Explain Catholic priests. Or better yet, explain heterosexual men who have raped young GIRLS. Scum exist everywhere, regardless of sexual preference.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
You can?t say that scientific evidence shows homosexuality isn?t a defect. It is a wholly unscientific statement. You are confusing a moral judgment with scientific evidence.
[/quote]
It doesn’t say it it IS a defect either.
These threads are pretty much pointless, but I’ll just say that while I’m reasonably sure that homosexuality is a sin, it’s heterosexuals and our Enlightened/progressive Sexual Revolution that has ruined family life, sent divorces and births out of wedlock skyrocketing, and caused the resulting massive societal dysfunction that has predictably followed.
Worrying unduly about gay marriage (which culturally is a lost battle anyway) and gay adoption is missing the forest for the trees.
That being said, the pace at which we are reinventing or discarding fundamental aspects of our culture and society on what amounts to whims is astonishing. If you’d told someone a hundred, or even fifty, years ago that we would be making babies in test tubes to implant into surrogate mothers so gay couples could have kids, they would be speechless.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
These threads are pretty much pointless, but I’ll just say that while I’m reasonably sure that homosexuality is a sin, it’s heterosexuals and our Enlightened/progressive Sexual Revolution that has ruined family life, sent divorces and births out of wedlock skyrocketing, and caused the resulting massive societal dysfunction that has predictably followed. [/quote]
I think this is broadly accurate particularly the pointless nature of threads of this type. I would go a little further and add that the legitimising of homosexuality is a product of the “massive societal dysfunction”.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
forlife wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
To maintain some inherent opposition between the Church & scientific progress is silly, unhistorical secularlist dogma.
Explain Copernicus. Or how about Galileo, who was brought before the Church as a heretic, forced to recant his heliocentric heathenism, and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life?
Then you explain how gay men have raped young boys. That’s right there are gay men who’ve done bad things. You come up with a way to excuse them from their actions and I’ll come up with a way to excuse distant Christians who’ve done bad things.
Explain Catholic priests. Or better yet, explain heterosexual men who have raped young GIRLS. Scum exist everywhere, regardless of sexual preference.[/quote]
Or religion (including atheist), which is exactly my point.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
You can?t say that scientific evidence shows homosexuality isn?t a defect. It is a wholly unscientific statement. You are confusing a moral judgment with scientific evidence.
It doesn’t say it it IS a defect either.[/quote]
Which once again is what I’m getting at. It has nothing to do with science. Forelife sets me off when he tries to masquerade his opinion and morals as scientifically verified.
I have no data on whether or not two homosexuals may or may not be more likely to abuse adopted children. However, I do know that a child raised in a more traditional environment would have a far better chance at a normal life.
As I’ve stated in many prior debates on this topic, no one knows how someone becomes gay as yet. Is it nature or nurture? As long as that question has not been answered I don’t think it would be wise to expose children to any sort of sight or sound that would lead them to believe that homosexuality is in fact normal. We all know (those of us who are parents) that children learn by watching.
I have posted many times a very lengthy list of problems both emotional and physical that homosexuals suffer. Therefore why would any sane society expose children to this?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
I have no data on whether or not two homosexuals may or may not be more likely to abuse adopted children. However, I do know that a child raised in a more traditional environment would have a far better chance at a normal life.
As I’ve stated in many prior debates on this topic, no one knows how someone becomes gay as yet. Is it nature or nurture? As long as that question has not been answered I don’t think it would be wise to expose children to any sort of sight or sound that would lead them to believe that homosexuality is in fact normal. We all know (those of us who are parents) that children learn by watching.
I have posted many times a very lengthy list of problems both emotional and physical that homosexuals suffer. Therefore why would any sane society expose children to this?
[/quote]
We could always monitor the children and put them down if they start to turn.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Forelife sets me off when he tries to masquerade his opinion and morals as scientifically verified.[/quote]
Guilty as charged, since providing direct quotes from the leading medical and mental health organizations is clearly “masquerading my opinions and morals”, despite these quotes being based on four decades of scientific research.
Lol.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
‘Unanimously’, huh? When did social scientists ever agree unanimously on anything?
[/quote]
The major medical and mental health organizations (American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, etc.) are unanimous in their conclusions.
There will always be oddballs that claim the professional organizations are wrong (witness present company), so obviously unanimity on an individual level is impossible.
I’m talking about the collective consensus of the scientific community, which is contrary to the lies you constantly push on these boards.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[…]
We could always monitor the children and put them down if they start to turn.[/quote]
I’ll work on the assumption that that was supposed to be a crude joke. If yes, it was sufficiently crude to warrant a wry smile. As crude jokes go, I’d say an 6 out of 10.
Should it not have been a joke, then you’d have lost all credibility in the debate - and outed yourself as quite a monster, as suggesting to kill children somehow doesn’t go with being … human.
Well, I’ll work on the assumption that it was a joke.
Makkun
Yes, it was a joke attempting to relate homosexuality to some horrible vampire-like disease that robs them of their soul, which is the way ZEB was talking about it.
I was making fun of ZEB who apparently thinks the sins of homosexuality are much worse than his own.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Yes, it was a joke attempting to relate homosexuality to some horrible vampire-like disease that robes them of their soul, which is the way ZEB was talking about it.
I was making fun of ZEB who apparently thinks the sins of homosexuality are much worse than his own.[/quote]
Oh, sorry, I’m so used to ZEB doing that, that I got you wrong. That actually makes your joke quite a bit funnier - I re-rate to 8/10. 
Makkun
PS: No offense ZEB, you know I love ya - in a totally non-gay sense obviously.