Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 28, 2006 22:58:06 GMT -4
Even if you are God's chosen representative? Or do you have a problem with the whole "God" idea to begin with?
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Jason
Pluto
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Post by Jason on Aug 28, 2006 23:42:25 GMT -4
And how do you know this for certain? Have you tried to make yourself gay and failed?
I am suggesting that what at first may appear good and pleasurable may turn out to have been a serious mistake in retrospect. I am not suggesting that either is actively dissembling, but I am suggesting that they may be decieved nevertheless.
And I made no suggestion that such was the case.
I suppose you have some sort of medical or psychological training to tell that this is the case, or tests that someone with such training performed to determine this was so?
The question is, is that a learned response or an inherant one? I believe it is a learned.
So how do you know they are not equally valid? Because you already believe that sexual orientation is inherant and it is therefore wrong to try to change it. You have formed your conclusion first and then chosen which evidence to believe to match, just as I have.
What techniques are you referring to?
I have heard stories of people who made the decision to give up homosexual behavior by themselves and, although they did have the support of their family and friends, they did so without any planned therapy or unnusual techniques. Are these stories equally invalid because they don't match your opinion?
I have seen some of his plays - I simply am not familiar with his biography.
What do you want me to do, pretend I do know what you're talking about and press on? Spend a couple days reading up before I respond? I'll look up Tennessee Williams and do some research on my own time, but it makes good sense to say "I don't know about it now" and move on with the discussion rather than put everything on hold.
Neither do I.
I agree. I don't find your typical creationist to be good company for long discussions either. They tend to have problems with many of the things my own church believes about the creation and the purpose of life because we keep bringing extra-biblical scripture into the picture. Wheras most creationists have one scriptural account of the creation we Mormons have four, and I think it's given us something of a wider perspective on the event.
And I maintain that the only life that will give lasting happiness is a moral one.
Surveys can prove nearly anything you can care to mention, especially if you write them with an agenda in mind, and the opinions of the masses don't determine facts. Cultures widely seperated in space and time have all independently developed spoken languages too, but spoken languages are most definitely learned. Cultures widely seperated in space and time have laws against murder, adultery (although the exact definition varies) and tehft, but they are certainly learned.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 28, 2006 23:56:17 GMT -4
[Even if you are God's chosen representative? Or do you have a problem with the whole "God" idea to begin with? Oh, I'm a deeply religious person, though you probably wouldn't consider me so--I'm a Pagan. I don't think the Goddess/your God (I consider them the same entity) chooses representatives, and I certainly don't believe She chooses people whose declarations deny the evidence. She wants us to use our minds, which means seeing that the evidence in front of you a) indicates that homosexuality is natural and b) is nearly irrefutable that evolution happens. To ignore either is hopeless, and apparently willful, ignorance.
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 10:47:43 GMT -4
What's the use in having a God that doesn't ever speak?
a) The evidence is inconclusive. b) Ditto.
Edit: Actually, let me ammend (b) to say "the evidence that very different individual species evolved from other species is inconclusive." Species do appear to adapt to their environment over time.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 29, 2006 13:05:19 GMT -4
Jason - thanks for a detailed response to my detailed response. That level of discussion is what I'm here for - not the stoopid responses to the "its all craps" hoax nonsense. I don't think I'll convince you of anything, and that's not my purpose. I just enjoy discussing points of view. Frankly, my agnostic "belief" system challenges me to accept your point of view as equally valid.
I'm not sure if I'll have time to do a detailed response right now, but I'll see what I can get out before the next interruption.
(twenty minutes later...) Nevermind. I'll try to get back to this in the afternoon. The good news is that the longer it takes me to do a post, the less emotional and reactionary it ends up.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 13:09:35 GMT -4
Nevermind. I'll try to get back to this in the afternoon. The good news is that the longer it takes me to do a post, the less emotional and reactionary it ends up. I find this is true for myself as well, especially with a sensitive issue like religion. Please take your time.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 29, 2006 14:00:19 GMT -4
Okay, got some needs taken care of, I think I can sneak this in before an appointment. Unless the phone rings again.
I haven't tried to "make myself gay," but during the semesters with Mike and Tim, I tried looking around my classes and seeing if there was any man I could be attracted to. No luck, but I eventually met the woman who is now my wife.
My first crush was in first grade - a girl named Elizabeth. I didn't know anything about sex or relationships, but I really liked looking at her, and wished she would talk to me. Over the years I had many crushes on pretty girls, never pretty boys.
Contrast: the gays and lesbians I met in college all reported having unfulfilled crushes on same-sex individuals, some starting in grade school. I talked to them qutie a bit about it - my primary degree was in anthopology, so studying people was what I was into, and I had never known openly gay people before. I grew up in the age when homosexual terms were a common insult. In retrospect I was probably the object of a gay crush in junior high, but I'll never know for sure, and I wasn't really aware of it at the time. I was too busy looking at pretty girls.
What I'm trying to say is that these people didn't come to a liberal college town and decide to flaut convention and defy society by "becoming gay," they had all known at an early age that they were different. Then they found themselves in an environment where asking deep personal questions was acceptable. Mike was the oldest when he decided to explore the possibilities, and had some difficulty with it. After he decided to come out to Tim and I he felt more free, and only then did he start going to gay bars, not the other way around. He had to feel accepted by his best friends first, and know that we were "okay with it" enough to relax.
I'm 39. May I ask your age?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 14:59:11 GMT -4
I turned 33 last month. I would agree with you that very few people (possibly none) make a conscious decision to become gay. However, the fact that you did not make a conscious decision to form a particular habbit does not mean that it was inherant in your nature to begin with, or that things couldn't have been otherwise.
I doubt any 5 year-old has the capacity to develop a real crush - not in the same way as an adolescent or adult would. I think instead that looking back on the situation you have retroactively decided that an attraction you felt towards a member of the opposite sex was a crush. I think the case is the same with gays/lesbians - now that they self-identify as gay they retroactively decide that the first signs of their current sexual orientation appeared during childhood, and they forget similar incidents that would provide contrary evidence to their current self-image.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 29, 2006 16:04:32 GMT -4
Those are all valid points, and came up during the discussions I mention.
Be aware, though, that only I am qualified to discuss my feelings and memories. You don't live in my head, I do. I'm gonna tell you, it was a crush, just like an adolescent.
I started noticing girls in 1st grade - I'm saying I'm inherently heterosexual. I left that school for a while and then came back in second grade and didn't find her that interesting anymore. I missed it, something was gone. Then in third grade I moved to another city altogether and had a series of crushes, then again in fourth grade at another school, bad crush on a friend's sister. I moved around a lot, so every new school was a new set of people. So fifth grade it was a series of crushes, sixth grade it was almost every girl in the class one after the other. Then some of them again in junior high. I have a continuity of emotional responses to females I'm callling a crush, going back all the way to 1st grade.
Likewise, you are telling me that all informants on this issue are confused and back-thinking their story, but you don't know them, you don't live in their heads, you only live in your own. I wouldn't presume to tell you how you feel about something, that would be silly.
Also, you say they "forget similar incidents..." but most of them (the lesbians I knew in the theater) talked about how awful it was to be in junior high and high school, surrounded by friends going boy crazy and not understanding it, but instead having thoughts about girls. I don't think you can forget being miserable. I was miserable in junior high. I joked with my gay/les friends that I was a "closet straight," since I had intense crushes on people that intimidated me and I never let anyone know how I felt about anything. I was horribly shy and self conscious about it. I didn't have a real girlfriend until highschool, when I finally moved from the white-bread town I used to live in to one where there were more poor kids, long-hairs and weirdos and I felt less out of place.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Aug 29, 2006 16:37:42 GMT -4
I've known straight couples with this problem. Sometimes they stay married to people they should have never even dated twice, just because they think they're supposed to for some reason or another. This particular lesbian couple has outlasted several marriages I've known over the years. I don't think your point has any validity - you're just supposing something about other people that you don't know, using squishy words like "decieved" that don't really mean any thing in specific. If DeadHoosiers used the word "decieved" I would suspect it to mean decieved in the demon/devil sense or something, but I don't know if you even know what you mean here. You presume to tell me that two people are in a "mistake" relationship, but it's lasted for 12 years now.
You made no such suggestion, but it's a common cultural perception. In fact, some of the women in the theater might have met that category themselves. Karly, on the other hand, could have been dating any man she wanted. Instead she fell in love with a pretty but not very effeminate woman. Why would she make that kind of choice if it's a choice?
No, not I, but her doctor.
Dude, the woman has to shave sideburns! You'd have to know her to understand. In some ways she was more macho than I am. I would go get her to lift heavy stuff like PA amps for me. She's built like a linebacker, and no, she doesn't lift weights and take steroids. She's just burly. But pretty, girly eyes.
Her doctor put her on birth control pills (which became one of those "screen-door-on-a-submarine" jokes) to help her hormonal imbalances.
But I think (voicing an opinion here, I know) that you are stating a belief from no knowledge, but I'm telling you what I learned when dealing with actual people. I've got the advantage of experience base, and you're only arguing from the standpoint of a belief structure.
I had another roommate, who's name was not Fletcher. The astronomer in the condo, creepy but straight, moved out, and the "Buddhist" woman with the name on the lease moves some friend of a friend in. My name wasn't on the condo, so I had no choice, but Fletcher was a nice guy, I got to know him a bit. He brought home a "gay cinema" film one night, and since I was taking film studies classes at the time I watched it with him. Really tacky, angsty, unhappy teenage boy finds love at last story. Fletcher cried, talked about his own teenage years, and how he had to leave his uptight midwest farmtown family to figure himself out.
This isn't "learned responses," it's people saying "why the hell am I so unhappy" and then figuring it out. Unlike, say, pot smoking, or musical tastes, it isn't something that people "grow up out of" and get away from.
Belief is a easy way of simplifying the difficulties of the universe. I would like to suggest that your belief system might work for you, but that it doesn't encompass all of the possibilities of a complex universe.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 29, 2006 16:51:47 GMT -4
What's the use in having a God that doesn't ever speak? She speaks. She does not choose human representatives, because all humans are equally valued to Her, so there's no point in choosing just one. Besides, if someone from a faith other than your own claimed they were chosen by God to speak, would you accord that the same respect you do someone in your own faith? How do you know? By your own admission, you haven't looked into it--and aren't, as you leave it to us to provide you with all your information. Seriously. Macaque monkey society is largely held together by lesbian sex; researchers have even described (I love technical terms) "orgasm face" in the macaques during these episodes. If you think that, you clearly haven't studied evolution, either.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 17:26:00 GMT -4
Be aware, though, that only I am qualified to discuss my feelings and memories. You don't live in my head, I do. I'm gonna tell you, it was a crush, just like an adolescent. Of course. I am in this case stating possibilities rather than certainties. Of course I cannot be certain how someone felt - you are correct - I am putting forth what I feel is a likely hypothesis to explain the situation you've presented. I don't know for certain that this is what they have done, but I think it likely. As you say - being miserable in high school/jr. high can have nothing to do with sexual orientation. The time period around high school can be an excellent time to develop bad habbits that can be very difficult to get rid of for the rest of your life because of the normal aleination and search for acceptance and self that all adolescents experience. Some pick up smoking, some get into drug abuse, some get into pre-marital sex and some, in my view, begin to identify themselves as homosexuals. The motivation for learning any of these behaviors can be the same, in my view. The only difference is that you seldom see smokers or drug addicts claiming they were that way to start with in order to rationalize their behavior.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 18:21:24 GMT -4
I hope this reply doesn't repeat itself - my first attempt to post it seems to have evaporated into the ether. I've known straight couples with this problem. Sometimes they stay married to people they should have never even dated twice, just because they think they're supposed to for some reason or another. I agree the problem is not confined to one particular segment of the population. By deceived I don't mean in a demonic or devil sense, no. I mean that people can have a remarkable capacity for self-deception where relationships with other people are involved. Not only that, but they can sometimes go to great lengths of rationalization before they will admit they've made a bad choice, if they ever do. Ah. I think I misunderstood what you were referring to. Point taken. I agree that you are speaking from a position of knowing the actual people, but the question of which standpoint is the most valid is the crux of our argument. The foundation of my position here is that people often have no clear understaning themselves of why they do the things they do or why they feel happy or unhappy. Surely you can agree that this is often the case? God, on the other hand, has a deeper understanding of human nature and an individual than the individual himself or herself has. My position is that God is a more reliable guide as to whether an action will bring happiness or unhappiness than mere human understanding. I believe that God has stated that homosexuality cannot bring lasting happiness, and so I accept that as a working hypothesis and look for evidence to affirm my belief, or explanations of apparent counter-examples. I begin with the religious belief on an issue I know little about - homosexuality - because I have tested the source of that belief on other issues and found it to be reliable. It is admittedly an opinion based on religious belief, and I don't expect everyone to immediately adopt it, but I feel it is helpful (to me at least) to discuss it. I agree that it simplifies things - in the same way that learning algebra or any other subject is simplified if you have a teacher who already knows the answers. I don't merely accept the answers my religion provides - I put them to the test when I can and I discover invariably afterwords that the suggested answer was in fact correct. And I would disagree of course. While I may not understand all the complexities or possibilities in the universe I rely on someone who does until I can understand them myself.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Aug 29, 2006 18:39:38 GMT -4
Doesn't that mean that those she speaks to are her representatives? Aren't you acting as a representative right now by claiming "She speaks"? In any case, I agree that God does value each human life, just as a parent loves each of his or her children. But certainly some children obey their parents more than others, and some children would make better spokesmen for their parent's wishes than others would. I would accord them respect, yes. I respect anyone who is stongly religious because I believe that, in general, every religion has value. They can't all be chosen, however, because they contradict each other. I don't know for certain. I am operating on a working hypothesis which I believe is the most likely explanation. I admit I'm no biologist, but I have studied evolutionary theory in a layman's fashion. It's a nice theory. It seems to do a generally adequate job of explaning diversity in life. And, short of developing time travel, there is no way to prove that it's correct. Even if we can force the evolution of rats, fruit flies or bacteria in the laboratory, that in no way guarantees that evolution was the process that created the diversity in life around us in the first place. It is at best an educated guess.
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Post by gillianren on Aug 29, 2006 18:56:56 GMT -4
What you have to understand is that what I say about the Goddess is my belief. The central tenet of my faith is "I could be wrong." However, what She says to me is that all love is valid, and all love between consenting adults is worthy of honour and respect in a marriage.
Allow me to quote Linda Hamilton--not a biologist, true, but worth noting all the same. When, on an episode of Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher claimed that "men are born gay; women are quitters," she said, "If that were true, I'd know a lot more lesbians."
Here's something I bet you didn't know. When pretty much every woman I've talked to has just had a bad relationship end--or even just a messy breakup--what she tells her friends is, "I wish I could just give up on men." I've thought about it, but I'm not really attracted to women. Oh, as the saying goes, I wouldn't kick Tori Amos out of bed for eating crackers, but I'm not particularly interested in women by and large. Certainly I find women easier to talk to and more accessible emotionally, and I've had quite a lot more warm, friendly relationships with women. However, I'm not sexually attracted to most of them.
Oh, and it might interest you to know that speciation has, in fact, been observed in the wild, which seems for reasons that pass understanding to be your standard of proof. Willful ignorance rears its ugly head some more.
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