spits out drink
Reparative therapy? Are you serious? Are you an idiot, or just a liar? How about some reparative therapy to turn you gay? No amount of it would have any effect, would it?
(1) Gays want the right to get married.
(2) Definition of marriage is changed to allow this.
(3) Benefits of being married to a member of the opposite sex only, vanish.
(4) Value of marriage vanishes.
The point is that if everyone has something, the value vanishes. Imagine if everyone had a college degree. Being a college grad then gives you no advantage over others. You have to get a Masters.
The Dems cried, “Everyone deserves to live in their own home!!” We got the disaster we have today.
The Romans gave everyone citizenship in 212 AD. Yay, right? Nope. No incentive to join the legions to become a citizen. The legions became rife with scum who couldn’t do anything else.
Everyone in America can now vote. Yay, right? Nope. We get politicians who appeal to illiterates and people who live on park benches. Power is gained by those who promise to rob the hardworking decent taxpayers. “Change!!” Yeah, baby.
Destroying marriage might look good on the surface, like all of the above, but IT IS EVIL.
[quote]forlife wrote:
What else would cause homosexuality if it wasn’t “nature”? Do you think people just randomly choose to be attracted to someone of the same gender? [/quote]
that is an very interesting point. And honestly: I don`t know. If the evolutiontheory is right, homosexuals should allready have died out, because they cannot produce offspring, so they cannot pass on their genes. but it is a fact that they still exist in every society. So I understand your point.
I asked this question a biologist I know and he argued very non pc like: From an evolutionary standpoint homosexuality is a random accident like being handicapped.
And as far as “value” for society: It is true that a homosexual couple could raise children, but they cannot produce them. But I would find it rather irritating having two daddys. Nature intended us to have a mother and a father.
[quote]Mishima wrote:
I asked this question a biologist I know and he argued very non pc like: From an evolutionary standpoint homosexuality is a random accident like being handicapped.
And as far as “value” for society: It is true that a homosexual couple could raise children, but they cannot produce them. But I would find it rather irritating having two daddys. Nature intended us to have a mother and a father.[/quote]
I asked a biologist the same question. He told me that it’s entirely possible that nature provided for orphans/abandoned children.
[quote]Mishima wrote:
And as far as “value” for society: It is true that a homosexual couple could raise children, but they cannot produce them. But I would find it rather irritating having two daddys. Nature intended us to have a mother and a father. [/quote]
Well, if you find it “irritating” then I guess we shouldn’t do it, right? I mean, it’s not like there’s children waiting to be adopted or anything, right? It’s not like it’s difficult to find foster parents for some kids, right?
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
ZEB wrote:Oh please don’t get all uppity on me forlife. We’ve had this conversations several pages back. You got all upset because the APA DOES NOT condemn reparative therapy. They feel that reparative therapy can DO NO HARM, in fact it may be quite helpful.
spits out drink
Reparative therapy? Are you serious? Are you an idiot, or just a liar? How about some reparative therapy to turn you gay? No amount of it would have any effect, would it?
[/quote]
Your assumption is that one is born gay and anyone who dare question this fallacy must be, well they must be thinking for themselves. Much to the chagrin of the modern politically correct establishment it has never been proven that anyone has ever been born gay. Since this is the case that makes your statement “how about some reparative therapy to turn you gay” pretty silly. Now get a towel and clean up the mess that you’ve made and understand that most people, correction most thinking adults, need proof before they accept your nonsensical fantasies as reality.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
(1) Gays want the right to get married.
(2) Definition of marriage is changed to allow this.
(3) Benefits of being married to a member of the opposite sex only, vanish.
(4) Value of marriage vanishes.
[/quote]
(1) Gays want the right to get married.
(2) The Illuminati moves a step closer to taking over the world
(3) ???
(4) Profit!!!
[quote]ZEB wrote:
Oh but it doesn’t. There has certainly not been enough time to see if this is true in the US. As far as the Netherlands gays still have incredible high rates of disease and mental illness.[/quote]
That’s pretty funny stuff…showing a decrease in STDs for gay married couples doesn’t matter, because they “still have incredible high rates of disease and mental illness”. So unless gay marriage completely eliminates STDs, the fact that it reduces STDs doesn’t matter?
I don’t know WTF you’re smoking, but I just gave you a quote directly from the APA stating just the opposite, which you completely ignored. Here it is again:
[b]The most important fact about “reparative therapy,” also sometimes known as “conversion” therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental health professions. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers, together representing more than 477,000 health and mental health professionals, have all taken the position that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and thus there is no need for a “cure.”
…health and mental health professional organizations do not support efforts to change young people’s sexual orientation through “reparative therapy” and have raised serious concerns about its potential to do harm.[/quote]
[quote]ZEB wrote:
I think I’ll repost these facts and if you can actually rebut them please do, otherwise just ignore the post as you are not helping your cause[/quote]
Oh, I dunno…for starters how about we address the fact that you completely misrepresented the data by drawing sweeping conclusions about homosexuality, solely based on studies of gay men, which ignore the entire population of lesbian women?
There’s plenty more to discuss if you’re up for it, but that seems as good a starting point as any.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
This - this - is why I don’t take you seriously.[/quote]
I guess I’ll view you in the same light. Cya.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
The point is that if everyone has something, the value vanishes. [/quote]
You sound like my daughter on my son’s last birthday. She was upset because he got an Ipod Nano for his birthday, which no longer made her Ipod Nano “special”. She could still enjoy the same music, and wasn’t affected in the slightest by him having his own Nano, but she threw a tantrum.
Which is fine because she is a child; what I don’t understand is why adults would choose to act the same way.
[quote]Mishima wrote:
forlife wrote:
that is an very interesting point. And honestly: I don`t know. If the evolutiontheory is right, homosexuals should allready have died out, because they cannot produce offspring, so they cannot pass on their genes. but it is a fact that they still exist in every society. So I understand your point.
I asked this question a biologist I know and he argued very non pc like: From an evolutionary standpoint homosexuality is a random accident like being handicapped.
[/quote]
There are some interesting theories on the role of homosexuality in evolution, showing that gays do serve an evolutionary purpose.
Regardless, the point is that we don’t choose to be gay. As the Surgeon General puts it, “homosexuality is not a reversible lifestyle choice”.
You might find it irritating, but children raised in a loving home by same sex parents are actually better off than when they are raised with no parents in a public facility. These children aren’t going to be raised by a mother and father anyway, so aren’t gays providing a useful public service by giving them a home?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
Now get a towel and clean up the mess that you’ve made and understand that most people, correction most thinking adults, need proof before they accept your nonsensical fantasies as reality.[/quote]
You mean, proof like the conclusions of every major medical and mental health organization, based on 40 years of research on homosexuality?
[quote]The most important fact about ‘reparative therapy,’ also sometimes known as ‘conversion’ therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental health professions. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of Social Workers, together representing more than 477,000 health and mental health professionals, have all taken the position that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and thus there is no need for a ‘cure.’
…health and mental health professional organizations do not support efforts to change young people’s sexual orientation through ‘reparative therapy’ and have raised serious concerns about its potential to do harm.[/quote]
In 2001, Dr. Ariel Shidlo and Dr. Michael Schroeder found that 88% of participants in reparative therapy failed to achieve a sustained change in their sexual behavior and 3% reported changing their orientation to heterosexual. The remainder reported either losing all sexual drive or struggling to remain celibate. Schroeder said many of the participants who failed felt a sense of shame. Many had gone through reparative therapy programs over the course of many years. Of the 8 respondents (out of a sample of 202) who reported a change in sexual orientation, 7 were employed in paid or unpaid roles as ‘ex-gay’ counselors or group leaders, something which has led many to question whether even this small ‘success’ rate is in fact reliable.
Schroeder and Shidlo found that the large majority of respondents reported being left in a poor mental and emotional state after the therapy, and that rates of depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse and suicidal feelings were roughly doubled in those who underwent reparative therapy.
According to the American Medical Association:
The American Academy of Pediatrics in its policy statement on Homosexuality and Adolescence states:
The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior (2001) asserts that homosexuality is not “a reversible lifestyle choice.”
American Psychiatric Association:
American Psychiatric Association President, Rodrigo Munoz:
National Association of Social Workers:
[quote]The increase in media campaigns, often coupled with coercive messages from family and community members, has created an environment in which lesbians and gay men often are pressured to seek reparative or conversion therapies, which cannot and will not change sexual orientation.
No data demonstrate that reparative or conversion therapies are effective, and in fact they may be harmful. [/quote]
American Psychological Association:
[quote]Is Sexual Orientation a Choice?
No, human beings cannot choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.
Can Therapy Change Sexual Orientation?
No. Even though most homosexuals live successful, happy lives, some homosexual or bisexual people may seek to change their sexual orientation through therapy, sometimes pressured by the influence of family members or religious groups to try and do so. The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.[/quote]
[quote]forlife wrote:
-
There are some interesting theories on the role of homosexuality in evolution, showing that gays do serve an evolutionary purpose.
-
You might find it irritating, but children raised in a loving home by same sex parents are actually better off than when they are raised with no parents in a public facility. These children aren’t going to be raised by a mother and father anyway, so aren’t gays providing a useful public service by giving them a home?[/quote]
Could you elaborate on the evolutionary prupose, that is interesting.
Arguing about where a kid is better of does not make that much sense to me, because there ia always something better or worse. But lets say: You have a gay couple and a heterosexual couple, both want to adopt the same child. Would you say, that the most loving couple (set by some standard) should get the child or should the gay couple only get the child if there is no heterosexual couple available?
I think there are so many children being raised without parents by public institutions, that gay and straight couples aren’t fighting over who gets to adopt whom. Unfortunately, there is plenty to go around.
Wiki on homosexuality and evolution:
[quote]Sexual practices that significantly reduce the frequency of heterosexual intercourse also significantly decrease the chances of successful reproduction, and for this reason, they would appear to be maladaptive in an evolutionary context following a simple Darwinian model of Natural Selectionâ??on the assumption that homosexuality would reduce this frequency.
Those who believe that homosexuality is purely genetic argue that maladaptive traits will only be removed from a population if the trait is under simple, direct selection, if it derives from a heritable component of a genotype and if the intensity of selection is greater than other evolutionary forces like genetic drift, or inclusive fitness.
Some scholars have suggested that homosexuality is adaptive in a non-obvious way. By way of analogy, the allele (a particular version of a gene) which causes sickle-cell anemia when two copies are present may also confer resistance to malaria with a lesser form of anemia when one copy is present (this is called heterozygous advantage).
The so-called “gay uncle” theory posits that people who themselves do not have children may nonetheless increase the prevalence of their family’s genes in future generations by providing resources (food, supervision, defense, shelter, etc.) to the offspring of their closest relatives. This hypothesis is an extension of the theory of kin selection. Kin selection was originally developed to explain apparent altruistic acts which seemed to be maladaptive. The initial concept was suggested by J.B.S. Haldane in 1932 and later elaborated by many others including John Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton and Mary Jane West-Eberhard. This concept was also used to explain the patterns of certain social insects where most of the members are non-reproductive.
The primary criticism of this theory has to do with the fact that children share on average 25% of their genes with their uncles and aunts, but on average 50% with their parents. This means that to be adaptive, a “gay uncle” would need to somehow assist an extra two nieces or nephews, on average, to reach adulthood for every one of their own offspring they give up. Critics of the theory find this trade-off to be unlikely to produce a net reproductive gain.
Brendan Zietsch of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research proposes the alternative theory that men exhibiting female traits become more attractive to females and are thus more likely to mate, provided the genes involved do not drive them to complete rejection of heterosexuality.
In a 2008 study, its authors stated that “There is considerable evidence that human sexual orientation is genetically influenced, so it is not known how homosexuality, which tends to lower reproductive success, is maintained in the population at a relatively high frequency.” They hypothesized that “while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals’ reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them.” and their results suggested that “genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.” [/quote]
According to Roughgarden (professor of biology at Stanford University), homosexuality in higher animals makes sense from an evolutionary perspective:
[quote]Given the pervasive presence of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, same-sex partnering must be an adaptive trait that’s been carefully preserved by natural selectionâ?¦
So how might homosexuality be good for us? Any concept of sexual selection that emphasizes the selfish propagation of genes and sperm won’t be able to account for the abundance of non-heterosexual sex. All those gay penguins and persons will remain inexplicable. However, if one looks at homosexuality from the perspective of a community, one can begin to see why nature might foster a variety of sexual interactions.
According to Roughgarden, gayness is a necessary side effect of getting along. Homosexuality evolved in tandem with vertebrate societies, in which a motley group of individuals has to either live together or die alone. In fact, Roughgarden even argues that homosexuality is a defining feature of advanced animal communities, which require communal bonds in order to function. “The more complex and sophisticated a social system is,” she writes, “the more likely it is to have homosexuality intermixed with heterosexuality.”
Japanese macaques, an old world primate, illustrate this principle perfectly. Macaque society revolves around females, who form intricate dominance hierarchies within a given group. Males are transient. To help maintain the necessary social networks, female macaques engage in rampant lesbianism. These friendly copulations, which can last up to four days, form the bedrock of macaque society, preventing unnecessary violence and aggression. Females that sleep together will even defend each other from the unwanted advances of male macaques. In fact, behavioral scientist Paul Vasey has found that females will choose to mate with another female, as opposed to a horny male, 92.5% of the time. While this lesbianism probably decreases reproductive success for macaques in the short term, in the long run it is clearly beneficial for the species, since it fosters social stability.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php?page=all&p=y[/quote]
[quote]forlife wrote:
I think there are so many children being raised without parents by public institutions, that gay and straight couples aren’t fighting over who gets to adopt whom. Unfortunately, there is plenty to go around[/quote]
That is not an answer. You dont know if in some years the whole situation has changed - but accepting homosexual couples as parents changes our whole family structure for good. One day government will tell us what a family is and what not - and anybodoy who says otherwise is homophobic. I agree that a child is better of being raised bye a loving gay couple instead of beeing in a foster home (where the abuse rates are monsterous), but it should be the exception of the rule.
Thank you for wikipart. It makes sense, but I have to go through it once more.
“Why would a ‘gay gene’ survive?” is actually an interesting question – on the face of it, a gene for homosexuality would seem to hurt an organism’s chances of passing on its genes. How do any genes survive if they don’t help the bearer reproduce better?
As a matter of fact, you can ask that question about other things that make it harder to pass on your genes – genetic diseases for instance. Why would a gene for sickle-cell anemia survive? Or a gene for Tay-Sachs disease, or for cystic fibrosis? Well, frequently, even though having two copies of the gene gives you the disease, carrying one copy of the gene has a beneficial side effect. Carrying sickle-cell anemia protects against malaria, Tay-Sachs protects against tuberculosis, and cystic fibrosis protects against cholera. There’s even speculation that something similar worked for mental illnesses: a mild carrier version of OCD may have helped the bearer to remember to clean food properly and prevent spreading disease.
Homosexuality isn’t a disease, but it is a trait that makes the bearer less likely to pass on his genes. It would make sense to look for a similar pattern in “carriers” – some reproductive advantage if you only have one copy. (Note that you don’t have to know where the gene is to do an analysis of heredity.) Well, it turns out that a gay man’s female relatives tend to be more fertile than average. It’s as though there’s a “man-loving” genetic trait carried on the X chromosome. It confers no Darwinian advantage if it winds up in a man, but in a woman it increases reproduction. I don’t think this is quite conclusive yet, but it’s intriguing and it makes sense.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
Well, it turns out that a gay man’s female relatives tend to be more fertile than average. It’s as though there’s a “man-loving” genetic trait carried on the X chromosome. It confers no Darwinian advantage if it winds up in a man, but in a woman it increases reproduction. I don’t think this is quite conclusive yet, but it’s intriguing and it makes sense.[/quote]
stunning!
[quote]forlife wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
The point is that if everyone has something, the value vanishes.
You sound like my daughter on my son’s last birthday. She was upset because he got an Ipod Nano for his birthday, which no longer made her Ipod Nano “special”. She could still enjoy the same music, and wasn’t affected in the slightest by him having his own Nano, but she threw a tantrum.
Which is fine because she is a child; what I don’t understand is why adults would choose to act the same way.[/quote]
Humans place value on things both for themselves and in terms of others. There’s no denying that we love to live in a big home, for ex, both because of the home itself AND that we earned it while others did not. If marriage becomes something anyone can do with anyone else, it cheapens it. Marriage sinks to the lowest common denominator.
That’s the main reason many oppose marriage between gays. Broadening the definition until it is meaningless makes marriage meaningless. We become animals in the forest.
Is THAT what you want for humanity?
I think its fine if you can designate someone to receive your SS benefits, or who can visit you in hospital. Propose laws to that effect and I’d happily vote for them. But cheapening marriage to get those things is unacceptable.
[quote]Mishima wrote:
That is not an answer. You dont know if in some years the whole situation has changed - but accepting homosexual couples as parents changes our whole family structure for good. One day government will tell us what a family is and what not - and anybodoy who says otherwise is homophobic. I agree that a child is better of being raised bye a loving gay couple instead of beeing in a foster home (where the abuse rates are monsterous), but it should be the exception of the rule.
[/quote]
By virtue of only 5% of the population being gay, it will clearly be the exception rather than the rule. I’m glad we agree that children are better off being raised by a loving gay couple than in a foster home.