The Gay Megathread (see mod note on post #2212)

Meantime, in the U.S., it seems that Ivanka Trump and her hubby, Jared Kushner, plus Gary D Cohn (chair of Don's Nat Economic Council) helped kill a proposed executive order that would have scrapped Obama-Era LGBT protections... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/lgbt-rights-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner.html

lazybones32

aloyisious wrote: »

Meantime, in the U.S., it seems that Ivanka Trump and her hubby, Jared Kushner, plus Gary D Cohn (chair of Don's Nat Economic Council) helped kill a proposed executive order that would have scrapped Obama-Era LGBT protections... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/lgbt-rights-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner.html

And my gay friend has a horse. What's the relation to Christianity?

lazybones32 wrote: »

And my gay friend has a horse. What's the relation to Christianity?

Well, we could start with the saving of gays from prosecution by people of bias or would that be something you object to? It's nice to know you have a gay friend who has a horse.

How is the saving of gays from prosecution by people of bias related to Christianity?

Cabaal

lazybones32 wrote: »

And my gay friend has a horse. What's the relation to Christianity?

Vast majority against these protections for LGBT are Christian and in many cases oppose equality based on religious beliefs.

lazybones32

aloyisious wrote: »

Well, we could start with the saving of gays from prosecution by people of bias or would that be something you object to? It's nice to know you have a gay friend who has a horse.

Law is powerless to protect you; it can only punish the one who breaks it. Having laws against (insert any crime) doesn't prevent them.

I think your posts should be posted in the LGBT forum, rather than in Christianity because there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the two. Unless you can highlight how the daughter of an atheist (don't know about her) supposedly stopping a legal rollback is a Christian issue.

lazybones32 wrote: »

. . . Unless you can highlight how the daughter of an atheist (don't know about her) supposedly stopping a legal rollback is a Christian issue.

(For the record, she's Jewish.)

Nick Park

Peregrinus wrote: »

(For the record, she's Jewish.)

Maybe "a person of bias related to Christianity" is a more politically correct code-word for 'Jew'?

Ooh, I don't know! Defining Jews in terms of their relationship to Christianity?

Thin ice, Nick! Thin ice!

Cabaal wrote: »

Vast majority against these protections for LGBT are Christian and in many cases oppose equality based on religious beliefs.

It's the States... aren't the vast majority Christian? So the vast majority of pretty much every group that isn't defined by religion is going to be Christian... including those who are pro these protections for LGBT and in many cases may well support equality based on religious beliefs. On that basis it seems a dubious thing to be dragging in to be honest.

lazybones32 wrote: »

Law is powerless to protect you; it can only punish the one who breaks it. Having laws against (insert any crime) doesn't prevent them.

I think your posts should be posted in the LGBT forum, rather than in Christianity because there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the two. Unless you can highlight how the daughter of an atheist (don't know about her) supposedly stopping a legal rollback is a Christian issue.

Well, re my posting on matters affecting LGBT folk in the Gay Megathread, if you think the thread is wrongly located, you could always raise your feelings that it, despite - or maybe because 0f - it's title, shouldn't be in the Christianity forum with Boards.ie Admin. It's a little bit saddening that you link being gay with being non-christian.

Re laws, I won't debate the point of having them with you. Ditto on your opinion of the woman you referred to above.

Peregrinus wrote: »

(For the record, she's Jewish.)

Ta for that. I was wondering about her marriage to Jared. Seem's she was raised Presbyterian and converted to the Hebrew religion (orthodox branch) prior to 2009 and it's been given the blessing of the religious authority in Israel.

aloyisious wrote: »

Well, re my posting on matters affecting LGBT folk in the Gay Megathread, if you think the thread is wrongly located, you could always raise your feelings that it, despite - or maybe because 0f - it's title, shouldn't be in the Christianity forum with Boards.ie Admin. It's a little bit saddening that you link being gay with being non-christian.

I think it's probably fair to say the thread is correctly located for the discussion of issues where homosexuality and Christianity intersect. If you just want to discuss issues regarding homosexuality generally then the LGBT forum is probably more apt, just as the Christianity forum is most apt for discussing issues regarding Christianity. Hence the questions on how your post relates to Christianity... I'm not saying it couldn't, but your post offers no reason to think it does. Does it?

hinault

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Given that God created us in his image, and that through science we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature

Explain how science has discovered that homosexuality is by nature?

nozzferrahhtoo

hinault wrote: »

Explain how science has discovered that homosexuality is by nature?

It depends what you are asking really, which is not entirely clear.

But, for example, we see homosexuality and/or homosexual behaviors manifest itself in nature often enough. So we do know it is naturally occurring.

Of course that should not be morally or ethically informative, given bestiality / cross species sex, incest, pedophilia, infanticide and much more also occur often in nature.

So while it is indeed INTERESTING to observe these things in nature, the presence or absence of homosexuality in other species tends to be something of a red herring in human discourse.

But what is interesting is the human DNA is not gendered. That is to say, the traits males and females have are not unique to their genome, but are present in the "OPPOSITE" genome too. If you are a man you have ALL the requisite DNA for breasts, vaginas, wombs, milk production and everything else you might associate with females.

While you HAVE these genes however they are not "turned on" (what we call "expressed" in biology) but are dormant. If sexuality has a genetic element then for homosexuality to be "natural" you do not require a "gay gene" as many people think. ALL it would requires is genes we already know you have to become expressed for one reason or another.

So if "sexuality" is "natural" at all then so too would be homosexuality merely by definition. A naturally occurring phenomenon for naturally occurring reasons based solely on naturally occurring pre-requisites.

But again it really depends on what you are (or think you are) asking as to whether that was the answer fitting the question.

Well, in fairness to hinault, he is actually responding to Samuel T. Cogley's assertion that "we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature". So it seems to me the pertinent question is not, what is hinault really asking?, so much as, what was STC really saying?

And, if you go back and look at his post, STC does say a little bit more than "homosexuality is by nature". He says "through science we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature rather than nurture or freewill" and - I'm open to correction here - I think he's going a little bit further with the bolded words than the science would justify.

The truth is we don't know why some people are homosexual. There appears to be a genetic factor, but we don't know that it's all down to genetics. And, even to the extent that it is the result of a genetic inheritance, we don't know why that particular gene is expressed in some people and not in others; we can't rule out the possiblity that "nurture" (experience) and "freewill" (choices made) have some influence here.

I'm not sure that this gets us very far, though. As nozz point out, homosexual behaviour occurs in nature and, as nozz also points out, the fact that homosexual behaviour occurs in nature casts little or no light on the question of whether homosexual behaviour is ethically problematic or not. I'm not sure if we can say that homosexual orientation occurs in nature - sexual orientation may be partly or largely (or wholly?) a cultural construct - but, even if it did, I don't see that that would be terribly helpful in validating or invalidating ethical perspectives on homosexual orientation.

nozzferrahhtoo

Well, in fairness, it should be pointed out that there are few things that are "all down to genetics". The majority of them are based in the context that those genetics find themselves. For example the hormones present in the womb during gestation can have an effect on which genes will be expressed, how and why. So if we are looking for an explanation of homosexuality that is "ALL" about genetics then I sincerely doubt we will ever find one.

But what is important to note is that the moment anyone admits of a genetic element to sexuality AT ALL, then one may have conceded more on the point of the genetic pre-cursors of homosexuality than they might have expected they were. Because, in my own experience at least in homosexuality related debates, usually with theists as I have found anti homosexual atheists to be thin on the ground, many lay people to science do not actually realize that our Genome is not gendered. They genuinely appear to think that men have one genome, women another, and that a genetic explanation for homosexuality would require a "gay gene" of some sort.

The idea that if sexuality is genetic AT ALL, that every human ALREADY therefore contains the genetics for the sexuality opposite to their own, is one that appears simply never to have occurred to many of them.

As for not knowing why one genetic pathway is expressed while another is not...... I guess we do not know this. But there are many interesting correlates that are giving us clues to follow in this regard. For example it was statistically noted that the MORE sons a woman has the MORE likely it would be that each successive son be homosexual. It was noted for example that "Each older brother raises the odds of homosexuality by a third, potentially going from a 3 percent chance with the first son to a 6 percent chance with the fourth."

So we made a scientific prediction that there would be a correlation in pregnancy. And sure enough we found differences in the levels of hormones in women in each subsequent pregnancy, and the higher level of Androgen each subsequent fetus is exposed to. This then further correlates in brain scans later in life which are described often as brain structures in homosexual males correlating closer to certain structures in heterosexual females.

So it is BY FAR one of those "more research needed" kind of areas, but I think anyone erring towards the Nature side of the NatureVNurture debate is strongly on firmer ground. As with all thing genetic however I strongly expect it to be a case of "It is a bit more complex than that" and it will be "a lot of column A and a bit from Column B and also a pinch from a column C no one even considered".

But as we noted this is generally red herring stuff in relation to the ethical arguments about homosexuality. But it tends, again in my experience at least, to be a red herring buffet thrown out by those who are against homosexuality but have (internally at least) realized that there are no moral or ethical arguments against homosexuality, it's expression, or it's union in marriage.

I broadly agree, Nozz (in so far as I'm qualified to have an opinion about genetics, which is not very far at all). But, as an aside, I'm interested in, um, the tension between:

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

. . . Because, in my own experience at least in homosexuality related debates, usually with theists as I have found anti homosexual atheists to be thin on the ground . . .

. . . and . . .

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

But as we noted this is generally red herring stuff in relation to the ethical arguments about homosexuality. But it tends, again in my experience at least, to be a red herring buffet thrown out by those who are against homosexuality but have (internally at least) realized that there are no moral or ethical arguments against homosexuality, it's expression, or it's union in marriage.

What strikes me is this: You'd think, wouldn't you, that theists expressing moral objections to homosexuality wouldn't have to adopt the naturalistic red herring? I'ts hard to mount an ethical argument against homosexuality on utilitarian grounds or on classical liberal grounds, but you can certainly do so on deontological grounds or on teleological grounds, and theists are generally happy to endorse deontological or telelogical ethical reasoning. Which leads to two possible conclusions:

1. Theists who advance the "naturalistic red herring" may be doing so not because it's the only argument they find appealing, but because it's the only argument they expect, or hope, that will find any traction with you, as an atheist.

2. There are more non-theists opposed to homosexuality than you suppose.

nozzferrahhtoo

Oh I am perfectly willing to concede the possibility more non-theists are against homosexuality than I have experienced. I contrived to make it very clear when I wrote the above to add the qualifier "in my experience" for that very reason. I can certainly tell you however that of all the forums I post on the net, or talk in in real life (both of which are several) I can count the number of atheists I have met against homosexuality on one hand and STILL have fingers left over to break off and enjoy a finger off a kit-kat bar.

If a theists position is of the form "My god hates homosexuality, therefore it is bad" then there is little I can do to respond to that other than comments which I suspect are a breach of the rules of this forum such as calling into question the level of substantiation being offered said god even exists.

The best I can do in such conversations is point out that those self same theists tell me their god is a rational god. So it would be interesting if they can even BEGIN to adumbrate or discern the rational arguments and explanations for their god's opinion on the matter. If their god is rational, and if their god is anti-homosexual, then surely there must be (whether we can discern them or not) a rationally grounded explanation for it's position.

Alas, as I said, rational and coherent arguments thus far appear to be non-existent for any moral or ethical stance against homosexuality, it's expression, or it's union in marriage. And all to often "god says so" arguments tends to be a move made by a person with no arguments to rubber stamp their own biases with an alleged authority greater than their own.

oldrnwisr

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, in fairness to hinault, he is actually responding to Samuel T. Cogley's assertion that "we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature". So it seems to me the pertinent question is not, what is hinault really asking?, so much as, what was STC really saying?

And, if you go back and look at his post, STC does say a little bit more than "homosexuality is by nature". He says "through science we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature rather than nurture or freewill" and - I'm open to correction here - I think he's going a little bit further with the bolded words than the science would justify.

The truth is we don't know why some people are homosexual. There appears to be a genetic factor, but we don't know that it's all down to genetics. And, even to the extent that it is the result of a genetic inheritance, we don't know why that particular gene is expressed in some people and not in others; we can't rule out the possiblity that "nurture" (experience) and "freewill" (choices made) have some influence here.

I'm not sure that this gets us very far, though. As nozz point out, homosexual behaviour occurs in nature and, as nozz also points out, the fact that homosexual behaviour occurs in nature casts little or no light on the question of whether homosexual behaviour is ethically problematic or not. I'm not sure if we can say that homosexual orientation occurs in nature - sexual orientation may be partly or largely (or wholly?) a cultural construct - but, even if it did, I don't see that that would be terribly helpful in validating or invalidating ethical perspectives on homosexual orientation.

Well, here's the thing. As far as exploring the causes of homosexuality goes, there are varying degrees of certainty surrounding the various proposed causes.

As far as freewill or choice goes, there is a solid consensus that choice is not a factor in sexual orientation. As the American Academy of Paediatrics puts it:

" the current literature and most scholars in the field state that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice; that is, individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual."

Similarly in Gay, Straight and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation Simon LeVay devotes an entire chapter to traditional beliefs about the causes of homosexuality and notes in his conclusions that they are not substantiated:

"The biological perspective on sexual orientation stands in marked contrast to traditional beliefs, which have remained largely silent on the origin of heterosexuality while ascribing homosexuality to family dynamics, learning, early sexual experiences, or free choice. As I discussed in Chapter 2, there is no actual evidence to support any of those ideas"

Now while there is a solid consensus on freewill or choice, the debate on nature vs nurture is less settled. There are a multitude of theories on both sides, but only one side, nature has anything in the way of solid science to present. The nurture theories are most prominently promulgated by two social science theorists, David Halperin and Jean Foucault.
Halperin advocated for planophysical theory which states that homosexuality is a freak of nature, an error. Halperin is a Freudian psychologist, and places stock in Freud’s idea that homosexuality is derived from a failure to resolve Oedipal issues. The theory is largely disregarded by psychologists, as it provides only a result, not a cause. He or any of his supporters have failed to produce any scientific evidence that supports the theory. The only thing that Halperin has is examples of hypothetical situations such as a weak father and strong mother, with an unresolved Oedipus complex will lead to a weak, and then homosexual, son, because the mother has too strong of an image, compared to the weak state of the father.
Similarly Jean Foucault's idea (I think it's perhaps unfair to consider it a theory) is that
"... homosexuality became because we made it so”
“after it was transposed from the practice of sodomy into a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul”
Supporters of Foucault's view believe that the homosexual had been an aberration, and had then become a species, justifying itself with a new word.
Studies on nurture alone have been flawed for the most part. There is, at least with some of the theorists advocating for nurture, a false assumption that nurture must be the cause and so they go looking for one, gathering their data using subject interviews on their early childhoods. By automatically excluding the possibility of a non-nurture explanation, their conclusions are fatally undermined. Some researchers, however, have attempted to study both sides of the coin at once. For example, in 2010 a study of all adult twins in Sweden found that:

"Biometric modeling revealed that, in men, genetic effects explained .34–.39 of the variance [of sexual orientation], the shared environment .00, and the individual-specific environment .61–.66 of the variance. Corresponding estimates among women were .18–.19 for genetic factors, .16–.17 for shared environmental, and .64–.66 for unique environmental factors. Although wide confidence intervals suggest cautious interpretation, the results are consistent with moderate, primarily genetic, familial effects, and moderate to large effects of the nonshared environment (social and biological) on same-sex sexual behavior."

As far as nature is concerned, we have the opposite problem. We have lots of solid scientific studies showing links between biological factors and sexual orientation:

Evidence for maternally inherited factors favouring male homosexuality and promoting female fecundity

New Evidence of Genetic Factors Influencing Sexual Orientation in Men: Female Fecundity Increase in the Maternal Line

Homosexuality via canalized sexual development: A testing protocol for a new epigenetic model

A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation

A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Female Sexual Orientation, Childhood Gender Typicality and Adult Gender Identity

Sex steroid hormones-related structural plasticity in the human hypothalamus

What we don't have however is any kind of solid agreement between researchers as to which factors are dominant, whether different factors can or will interact with each other and the effect of combinations of factors on an individual's sexual orientation. Added to that you have the possibility that any genetic factors may not necessarily tied to any single gene or gene expression but epigenetic factors.

In summary, what we can say about the relationship between biology and sexual orientation is that we have identified a number of biological factors which influence sexual orientation but we're not sure how the different factors influence each other, we have theories as to how nurture can influence sexual orientation but scientific research backing up these theories is thin on the ground and finally, we are certain (in that we have solid consensus among researchers and in the literature) that freewill or choice is not a factor in sexual orientation.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Which leads to two possible conclusions:

1. Theists who advance the "naturalistic red herring" may be doing so not because it's the only argument they find appealing, but because it's the only argument they expect, or hope, that will find any traction with you, as an atheist.

2. There are more non-theists opposed to homosexuality than you suppose.

While I would generally agree with both of your conclusions I feel that there is a third conclusion missing here in that some Christians advance the "naturalistic red herring" argument because they feel compelled by their beliefs to do so. You see, as I've pointed out to Tatranska previously on this thread there is a certain subset of Christians who believe that if homosexuality were an acquired trait it must have been something that God either allowed to happen or caused to happen since God takes a hand in shaping every individual before birth as outlined in Jeremiah 1:5. So, the idea that God could have allowed or caused someone to be born gay creates a dichotomy with his apparent disapproval of it in Leviticus 18 and Paul's writings. So the only way for those Christians to reconcile the dissonance is to claim that homosexuality is a choice or not explainable by nature.

Nick Park

oldrnwisr wrote: »

While I would generally agree with both of your conclusions I feel that there is a third conclusion missing here in that some Christians advance the "naturalistic red herring" argument because they feel compelled by their beliefs to do so. You see, as I've pointed out to Tatranska previously on this thread there is a certain subset of Christians who believe that if homosexuality were an acquired trait it must have been something that God either allowed to happen or caused to happen since God takes a hand in shaping every individual before birth as outlined in Jeremiah 1:5. So, the idea that God could have allowed or caused someone to be born gay creates a dichotomy with his apparent disapproval of it in Leviticus 18 and Paul's writings. So the only way for those Christians to reconcile the dissonance is to claim that homosexuality is a choice or not explainable by nature.

Either such Christians don't understand their own belief system, or else you are misportraying them pretty woefully. Those same Christians, almost without exception, believe that every human is born with an inbuilt attraction to sin. It is entirely consistent with the doctrines of original sin and the Fall that people are born with a propensity for behaviour that Christianity considers to be sinful.

oldrnwisr

Nick Park wrote: »

Either such Christians don't understand their own belief system, or else you are misportraying them pretty woefully. Those same Christians, almost without exception, believe that every human is born with an inbuilt attraction to sin. It is entirely consistent with the doctrines of original sin and the Fall that people are born with a propensity for behaviour that Christianity considers to be sinful.

In my experience it has been the former rather than the latter. Most of these people have been American and either Evangelical or mainline Protestants but all of them had very little knowledge of what their own religion actually says, leading them to come up with arguments like that.

ScumLord

hinault wrote: »

Explain how science has discovered that homosexuality is by nature?

Anything that happens in nature is natural. Plus, humans have a long recorded history of homosexual behaviour. It's not like it's a recent development.

hinault

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, in fairness to hinault, he is actually responding to Samuel T. Cogley's assertion that "we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature". So it seems to me the pertinent question is not, what is hinault really asking?, so much as, what was STC really saying?

I'm interested in the basis for STC's assertion.

I'm wondering what branch of science STC was referring to in his post; actual scientific medical work by doctors or this.... Science - Wikipedia. Science :58 is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

As far as freewill or choice goes, there is a solid consensus that choice is not a factor in sexual orientation. As the American Academy of Paediatrics puts it . . .

I agree with this and, if I was unclear earlier, I apologise.

I didn’t intend to suggest that people choose to be gay (or to be straight, for that matter). I merely wanted to leave open the possibility that, if homosexuality has a genetic component/, and if and to the extent that a homosexual orientation is the outcome of the expression of a gene that is shared with (but unexpressed in) people who are not gay, then, given that we do not know what causes the gene to express or not express, we can’t rule out the possibility that it is expressed or not expressed as a consequence of some choice made either by the person concerned or by somebody else. But that wouldn’t be a choice to be gay; it could be a choice about anything at all.

This is a very silly example and I do not imagine it is remotely realistic, but it will illustrate the point. Suppose that homosexual orientation can be the result of the expression of a particular gene, and that gene is more likely to be expressed if at a particular stage the developing foetus is exposed to a particular hormone, and at that stage of development the mother is prescribed a therapy for some medical condition which happens to include that hormone. The doctor has chosen to prescribe that therapy (rather than another) and the mother has chosen to take it (rather than not take it) and the consequence of those choices is that the person may, fifteen or twenty years later, identify as gay when this would not otherwise have been the case. That would be an example of sexual orientation being the outcome of a choice, albeit not a choice to be gay, and not even a choice of the person concerned.

In the “inheritance versus experience ” dichotomy, gay-resulting-from-choice would be a subset of “experience”; specifically, an experience that someone had only because of a choice made by that person or by someone else.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

While I would generally agree with both of your conclusions I feel that there is a third conclusion missing here in that some Christians advance the "naturalistic red herring" argument because they feel compelled by their beliefs to do so. You see, as I've pointed out to Tatranska previously on this thread there is a certain subset of Christians who believe that if homosexuality were an acquired trait it must have been something that God either allowed to happen or caused to happen since God takes a hand in shaping every individual before birth as outlined in Jeremiah 1:5. So, the idea that God could have allowed or caused someone to be born gay creates a dichotomy with his apparent disapproval of it in Leviticus 18 and Paul's writings. So the only way for those Christians to reconcile the dissonance is to claim that homosexuality is a choice or not explainable by nature.

Yes, I agree. That is a valid third conclusion.

hinault wrote: »

I'm interested in the basis for STC's assertion.

Which assertion?

Absolam wrote: »

Which assertion?

The highlighted one, I think:

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Given that God created us in his image, and that through science we have discovered that homosexuality is by nature rather than nurture or freewill, although I concede that a spectrum of sexual experience can come about by freewill, why did God create some Gay and then deny them marriage and indeed go further and suggest that they should be put to death?

Was the basis for that not set out in the video in his following post? That was my impression, but perhaps I was wrong.