But I'm not talking about "life span", I'm talking about the formative years, from birth thru about age 16. He says, in retrospect, he knew by the time he was 13 or 14 that he was different. He did not think "gay" until a few years later. But he knew he had a different emotional level and set of feelings towards men than women. Of course, we were all strict Catholics, so naturally he tried to suppress those feelings because he was taught that "gay is wrong". Like I said he even got married and had a child, all the while knowing that he was living a lie. It wasn't until his marriage failed, at the age of 37, that he realized he had to be true to himself. He has never looked back, and he has never been happier. I submit that the stimuli and experiences gained in those first 16 years of our lives were not that different, and certainly not different enough to enable him to "choose" to be gay. He already was gay, but just did not admit to it till later in life.
I don't believe anyone said "inherited". Rather, it is a condition of some set of biological circumstances that is different than the norm for the species. Inherited implies that you had parents or older generation family members that passed on the "gay" gene, much like hair color or skin complexion. I think it is more complicated than that.
Are you twins? If not I'd suspect he is a year older or younger So the Guys in the lockerroom with him were different. . so his lockerroom experience would be different The point is. . .you canot say THIS makes you gay. . . THIS DOES NOT Could be a combination and a different on for every person . You two have SIMILAR experiences. . . as much as SIMILAR DNA If your logic is .. .you had the same experiences with minor differences. . . so it must be DNA I'd say . .you have similar DNA with minor differences so it must be experiences Rocket River
I also would like to submit that perhaps a strict heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy is not the best way to look at sexuality. After all, some people are bi-. I wish I could elaborate this point further, but frankly, I haven't thought it through and looked into it enough. Some people argue that it's more of a spectrum with pure heterosexuality at one end, pure homosexuality at the other, with most people actually closer to the middle. That model used to appeal a lot to me, but I'm not as thrilled by it. There's also a lot more variation even in terms of sex (as in male/female) than people generally consider. I also think one shouldn't peg homosexuality or heterosexuality as purely biological or purely environmental. I think very little about us is due to one or the other. Take language for instance. How do you learn to speak if not raised in an environment where people talk? Yet "wild" children unexposed to language until after puberty actually never learned to talk. And you can raise a chimpanzee as a child, but it can't learn to speak like you and I do, although it can through sign language.
I have to ask this question: why do so many gay males have effeminate speech? Is this genetic or learned? Is it considered flirtacious? Is it a message? Don't beat me up. I know that neither is a universal pattern, but the effeminate gay male is a very widespread phenomenon. It is a stereotype but not a caricature. We've all met them. Do lebians have masculine speech? I'm just asking some obvious questions that have never been answered adequately.
That's actually an interesting question. I knew two guys growing up who were overly effeminate. They had all the classic characteristics of being gay yet they were too young to associate their behavior with that and they grew up in conservative Christian homes and schools that really avoided that topic. Yet, one grew up and came out of the closet while the other got married and had kids. I've got to believe that some kids are born with an overabundance of the opposite gender hormones. For some, that could mean they are homosexual or not. However, I would bet that the vast majority do it as a result of socialization. Southerners have a drawl (well, some do) and New Yorkers have a distinct accent yet they share the same facial apparatus as the rest of us. I have to believe that it comes from the company of others who speak like that. Have you ever hung out with guys that had affected voices and found yours slowly starting to drift in that direction? I can remember going fishing with my dad who has a straight up non-effected radio voice. He doesn't have any noticable drawl, yet his voice would drift that way when he was around guys at bait shops, etc. I find myself doing that too. I wonder if gay men and lesbians don't have those same sort of affectations whether it be speech patterns or mode of dress. Good question.
Relativist, I believe it was Kinsey who came up with that 1-7 sliding scale, with one end being complete homosexuality, one end being complete heterosexuality. He argued that most people fell between 2 and 6 (in other words, somewhere in the middle, with possible attraction to both sexes). Of course, Kinsey had a pretty vested interest in wanting everyone to be bisexual, since he shagged a lot of his research subjects! However, the interviews he did, which showed that a large proportion of people had both homosexual and heterosexual experiences during adolescence and young adulthood, tend to back up his assertions. Rocket River: I've done a little study on this; the general consensus among historians of sexuality is that there was always homosexual behaviour (Greeks!), but a distinctive gay subculture, in which people were defined (and defined themselves) almost exclusively by their sexual orientation, only began in the nineteenth century. Causes include urbanisation (when large groups congregate, people can find others with similar orientation), and the weird changes in social attitudes to sex in the past 150+ years. Now it's seen as essential to human happiness and of paramount importance to "the self" (thank you Freud); people didn't really have that attitude until fairly recently, so they wouldn't bother defining themselves by the way they had sex. I think the "affected voice" thing is cultural; I have gay friends both with and without the affected voice, and I know straight people with the voice too (although they hang out with a lot of gay people!). One of Elvis' cousins is the most flamboyantly gay man in Texas (and there's a lot of competition here - have any of you been to South Beach on a Saturday night? ), and he grew up in *Channelview*. Can you imagine the stigma? In other words, there's no way you would "choose" being gay as an "alternative lifestyle". It's biological or genetic or something. Must be. Especially for men (it's much easier for women to "experiment" - almost socially sanctioned, in fact). Isabel: the Bible tells you not to eat shellfish or pork, either. I suppose it depends on how "fundamentalist" in the technical sense a Christian is - someone who believes in the literal rather than the figurative truth of the Bible. If you're a "literal truth" person you could spend most of your life running around doing the wacky things the Old and New Testaments think are necessary; if you're a "symbolic truth" person you can take the lessons learned from the Bible and then assume that all the weird stuff is just because these things were written by a bunch of old guys who were products of their time, or whatever. It's easy to get around the anti-gay stuff if you really want to (most Christians eat shellfish and pork, for example); but most Christians don't seem to have "the want-to".
I can't believe no-one has said, "...not that there's anything wrong with it...." Seriously though, I think there are two major stances which can be taken on this issue: 1) Biological. Most biologists/scientists believe that the purpose of life is to pass your genes on to the next generation. Obviously this prevents extinction and keeps your genes 'strong'. So, if this theory is accepted, then homosexuals are considered 'Biologically Useless." And therefore, they should be casted out from a society where breeding is common. 2) Social. I accept homosexuals as a part of society, as do most people (I hope). Why should their sexual preference make me treat them differently than heterosexuals? No matter which society/culture is studied, there will always be homosexual references, so to speak. One could say that the Ancient Olympic Games were a kind of Gay Mardi Gras. Athletic men that were greased up partaking in sports such as wrestling and running. Take also the Roman Baths, the cream of society taking steaming hot baths together. Can you imagine if one of your friends asked you to join him in a steaming hot bath? The simple fact is that wherever there are people, there will always be homosexuals. Accept it. On a personal note, I think it is a shame that men who express their feelings openly are considered homosexual. In fact, when I first met my best friend, he though I was homosexual just because we talked about a movie we both liked and I went into detail about how it made me feel emotionally.
A very promiscuous girl I knew would always go on and on about how she believes that most guys have a bit of homosexuality in them.
I hope she was not hiding a Long White Sausage from you Rocket River trying to coaxing u into trying something
Let's delve into the realm . .. that i know will offend but i don't mean it. . . do you consider Birth Defects . . . natural? How many people must turn up with something genetic before it is considered natural? Rocket River
No answer yet? And here I was expecting BBS members to solve the age old nature vs. nurture argument. To keep discussion going, has anyone considered from an evolutionary biological perspective the propensity towards being homosexual would be selected against? Does this put more value into a nurture argument? Personally I feel based on the what we consider to be homosexual tendencies, it's mostly a environmental issue. As a society, we put labels on behavior, lump people into stereotypes, and generally encourage them to conform to these stereotypes. In order for a person either heterosexual or homosexual to fit into some sort of group, they must conform to a set of norms. So as this discussion is treating homosexuality, I'd say it's more a social issue.
<b>Rocket River</b>:When I use the word "natural" in this context, I mean "as intended." You've made a fair point; we should try to stay away from the word "natural" in these matters. Cause it sure as hell ain't "supernatural." <b>ellienator</b>: But what do you say to the those homosexuals who cannot point to a turning point in their lives because they have always felt homosexual?
Yes, I consider birth defects natural. To me, just because something seems "irregular" doesn't mean it isn't natural. Birth is natural, imo. Btw, let me also state that I don't consider homosexuality a birth defect.
Two thoughts on the subject: 1. Being a categorical sort of person, I've liked the idea of saying homosexuality was simply another of a vast collection of sexual interests. So, it would be filed alongside other forms of kinkiness -- some tame, some outlandish. Wanting to have sex with someone of the same gender is not unusual in this definition. However, what makes homosexuality different is the aversion to having sex with the opposite gender. A foot fetishist, for example, could still enjoy having sex with a woman without feet being at all involved (I imagine -- I'd love some feedback from foot fetishists). But homosexuals define themselves by their aversion to 'regular' sex. Why the aversion is what I'd really like to know; that's what makes the question of homosexuality really different. This is a slightly different question from what causes homosexuality in the first place. My personal opinion is that homosexuality, like many other things, is socially determined but different people may have different natural predispositions or capacities. 2. On the Bible: It does condemn homosexual activity. But, it condemns a million things we do on a daily basis. As far as one's sin quotient goes, the doctrine (for most mainstream churches) is that everyone is already over the limit. And that the redemption of sin is as efficacious for homosexuality as it is for any and every other sin. I know a Christian homosexual who had been struggling with the idea that God hated him. He eventually realized the loophole above. I recently found out by reading my Bible (though this should be a whole other thread) that God hated me too. In fact, God loves my homosexual friend because he's Christian; he hates me because I'm not a Christian (or 'therefore, I'm not a Christian,' depending on one's feelings on the Doctrine of the Elect). It is a funny thing about that religion, that it can turn convention on its head even when it is 2,000 years old.
I did think of the Bible. I can understand people's personal beliefs following their religious convictions. It's just that I don't believe the Bible is the inspired word of God...well, maybe some of it, but that automatically eliminates me as a Christian, you believe it or you don't...I think the (probably) men who wrote the sections calling homosexuality an abomination were noting their personal distaste of gays. And yet many people who go out of their way to hate homosexuals are themselves gay, and simply speaking out of a tacit and unknown self-loathing. But when I mention that something in the Bible is B.S., I automatically incur the wrath of Christians.
