is homosexuality unnatural and can be cured?

[Ten oz]

18 minutes ago, mistermack said:

All I can say is I'm glad it didn't happen to me, but if it did, I'd have no option other than to make the best of it.

If it had "happened" my guess is you'd be glad it did. People like and love what they like and love. 

[StringJunky]

21 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I'd say that homophobia is fairly normal in humans. I remember as a kid, having no idea whatsoever that there were men out there who were attracted to other men. When I was first told, (gleefully by my elder brother), I was so disgusted by the notion, that I put my fingers in my ears and did la la la la, so that I couldn't hear what he persisted in telling me. I thought he was making it up, and he was just talking about men kissing other men, not the hard sex details, which I had no real notion of at the time anyway.

That's not my reaction now, but it was back then, as someone who knew absolutely nothing about it. 

Saying that homophobia is a normal reaction doesn't make it right or desirable or fair. It's just instinctive. Or it was to me anyway. I don't think it was through conditioning or stereotyping as a kid. It was just a natural first reaction.

I've read accounts by gay men who said that they grew up with similar feelings to mine, and were shocked to begin experiencing attraction to other men. All I can say is I'm glad it didn't happen to me, but if it did, I'd have no option other than to make the best of it.

Naively, one initially tends to be instinctively defensive in the face of meeting someone different to our expectations.

[dimreepr]

13 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I'd say that homophobia is fairlyin humans. I remember as a kid, having no idea whatsoever that there were men out there who were attracted to other men. When I was first told, (gleefully by my elder brother), I was so disgusted by the notion, that I put my fingers in my ears and did la la la la, so that I couldn't hear what he persisted in telling me. I thought he was making it up, and he was just talking about men kissing other men, not the hard sex details, which I had no real notion of at the time anyway.

That's not my reaction now, but it was back then, as someone who knew absolutely nothing about it. 

Saying that homophobia is a normal reaction doesn't make it right or desirable or fair. It's just instinctive. Or it was to me anyway. I don't think it was through conditioning or stereotyping as a kid. It was just a natural first reaction.

I've read accounts by gay men who said that they grew up with similar feelings to mine, and were shocked to begin experiencing attraction to other men. All I can say is I'm glad it didn't happen to me, but if it did, I'd have no option other than to make the best of it.

1

It never ceases to confuse me, why do people care so much about what I do?

[Phi for All]

14 hours ago, Bucky Barnes said:

yes "normal" is better word, whether such things is normal or not

Right, so homosexuality is natural. We're also seeing that sexual orientation happens along a spectrum of possibilities, and while heterosexuality may be the most common, it doesn't make any other preference abnormal. Iirc, I think there are more people who identify as non-heterosexual than there are people who are left-handed. Lefties may be different, but most wouldn't call them abnormal. So maybe normal isn't the best word either.

[dimreepr]

17 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I don't think it was through conditioning or stereotyping as a kid.

I thought the same about eating sheep eyes; just a different culture...

Edited October 27, 2018 by dimreepr

[swansont]

18 hours ago, mistermack said:

Homosexuality is natural. Because reproduction is natural, and some people are born homosexual. Children turn out homosexual, in spite of all the different treatment of boys and girls as they grow up. People are gay IN SPITE of conditioning, so it's obvious that they are born gay.

If you're born gay, then it's obviously natural. 

Even if it were the result of external factors, it would still be natural, per Phi's definition.

18 hours ago, mistermack said:

It's natural that more people are born straight than gay. Otherwise the species would suffer. But it's not unnatural for SOME people to be born gay. Otherwise, it wouldn't happen. It occurs naturally. There's no mystery.

If you mean by this that having a large fraction of a population not engaging in sex for procreation, other taxa (some of which outnumber us e.g. ants and bees) would like to have a word with you. The term you are overlooking is "eusocial"

[mistermack]

22 minutes ago, swansont said:

If you mean by this that having a large fraction of a population not engaging in sex for procreation, other taxa (some of which outnumber us e.g. ants and bees) would like to have a word with you. The term you are overlooking is "eusocial"

We are the only organism that engages in sex for procreation. The rest don't even know that sex causes reproduction. They just instinctively want to do it. 

42 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I thought the same about eating sheep eyes; just a different culture...

It could just be that. I would have been pretty revolted if I saw my parents at it at that age. I'd have thought it yukky if I even saw them kissing.

[dimreepr]

26 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I would have been pretty revolted if I saw my parents at it at that age. I'd have thought it yukky if I even saw them kissing.

Only because you haven't seen it at an earlier age.

[swansont]

58 minutes ago, mistermack said:

We are the only organism that engages in sex for procreation. The rest don't even know that sex causes reproduction. They just instinctively want to do it. 

Whether or not we know, we are not the only organism that engages in sex for procreation. And there are humans that don't/didn't know that sex causes procreation and engage in it anyway. Doing it by instinct is still doing it for procreation.

But I fail to see the relevance to my previous comment, to which you were responding. There are lots of organisms in which a large fraction of their population do not engage in sex, therefore could not be procreating. Their species do not appear to be suffering as a result.

 

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Whether or not we know, we are not the only organism that engages in sex for procreation. And there are humans that don't/didn't know that sex causes procreation and engage in it anyway. Doing it by instinct is still doing it for procreation.

When you say sex for procreation, you are quoting is the illusion of purpose. What actually has the purpose of procreation? Not the animal that's having sex. Nor the genes in it's cells. It's simply having sex because it was made that way by a purposeless process called evolution. It's because of the past, not for the future. But it gives a very strong illusion of being for a purpose in the future. Animals don't have sex to have babies. They have sex because their parents did, and their parents did, and their parents did, and so on.

It's like a first year Pika building up a food store.  He has no idea of the coming winter. His genes have no idea of a coming winter. But he does it by instinct, purely because the genes that make him do it survived winters better in the past. It's the past that makes him do it, not the future.

[swansont]

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

When you say sex for procreation, you are quoting is the illusion of purpose. What actually has the purpose of procreation? Not the animal that's having sex. Nor the genes in it's cells. It's simply having sex because it was made that way by a purposeless process called evolution. It's because of the past, not for the future. But it gives a very strong illusion of being for a purpose in the future. Animals don't have sex to have babies. They have sex because their parents did, and their parents did, and their parents did, and so on.

It's like a first year Pika building up a food store.  He has no idea of the coming winter. His genes have no idea of a coming winter. But he does it by instinct, purely because the genes that make him do it survived winters better in the past. It's the past that makes him do it, not the future.

The semantics here are irrelevant to the point I was making. I wasn't referring to motivation, or lack thereof. I was talking about the result.

[Ken Fabian]

 My own view is it is a consequence of our evolutionary history - and entirely natural.

Humans don't have a clear fertile season, nor is a single sex act very effective for reproduction; humans need to have sex often, throughout the Oestrus cycle  to reliably reproduce. That means it's an evolutionary advantage to have a strong sex drive that is not closely linked to specific conditions or signals. It isn't focused narrowly on a single partner or a single kind of sex act or a clear signal of fertility; a whole range of triggers for arousal exist that have no direct connection to fertility, including some that have no physical basis at all and are purely thought and imagination based.

Socially however, that strong sex drive can be a source of serious conflict. I think having alternatives for those without mating ties (homosexuality as well as masturbation) for that unproductive (or unreproductive) sex drive, would have been a way to reduce conflict.

That variety of potential triggers for arousal also mean that people who might have a preference for their own sex can still be aroused by the opposite sex and still be capable of reproducing. Plenty of gay people still want - and succeed - at having children. So any genetic component can, will and has persisted within the population.

[Ten oz]

Any number of natural things can be bad, like natural disasters for example. It has always confused me that some people latch onto whether or not homosexuality is natural as a means of justifying how they feel about it. Smart phones don't naturally occur on its own is nature and we all love them. Meanwhile cancer does occur in nature and none of us would wish cancer on our worst enemies. Being natural is not directly equatable with being good for people. That said homosexuality is clearly natural as it does plainly naturally exist. That fact neither makes homosexuals good or bad. Just as being heterosexual doesn't make people good or bad. 

 

[Sensei]

22 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

 My own view is it is a consequence of our evolutionary history - and entirely natural.

 

Many years ago, there was performed "mouse utopia experiment". Search YouTube for this keyword to see movies about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Rats/mice were put in hermetic building, with abundance of food. They started breeding without limits.

At the nearly end of the experiment, before final extinction, scientists noticed that they started having sexual intercourse with the same gender mice..

Overpopulation causes aggression, conflicts and stress. High stress level means high testosterone level in pregnant females. Which resulted in higher than normal amount of newly born homosexual offspring..

 

 

[et pet]

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

 

Many years ago, there was performed "mouse utopia experiment". Search YouTube for this keyword to see movies about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Rats/mice were put in hermetic building, with abundance of food. They started breeding without limits.

At the nearly end of the experiment, before final extinction, scientists noticed that they started having sexual intercourse with the same gender mice..

Overpopulation causes aggression, conflicts and stress. High stress level means high testosterone level in pregnant females. Which resulted in higher than normal amount of newly born homosexual offspring..

 

 

    I have heard more than one Intelligent person opine that Homosexuality may just be Natures way of fighting the ignorant infection that is currently plaguing it!

[mistermack]

14 hours ago, swansont said:

The semantics here are irrelevant to the point I was making.

If you think it's semantics then you still haven't understood the difference. The illusion of purpose is just as fundamental and real as the illusion of design. 

I know everybody SAYS that animals do this or that for this or that purpose, but they don't. It's a matter of fact, not semantics. 

22 hours ago, swansont said:

If you mean by this that having a large fraction of a population not engaging in sex for procreation, other taxa (some of which outnumber us e.g. ants and bees) would like to have a word with you. The term you are overlooking is "eusocial"

Yes but we're talking about humans. Most of the animals that are successfully eusocial have females capable of bearing large litters. And the smaller the litter, the less well it works. Bees and ants have taken that to an extreme level.

Humans and other apes are on the other end of the spectrum. We have small litters of usually one, and the young take years of care before they are independent. 

On the subject of the effect on our species success of homosexuality, there are other factors rather than eusocial organisation that could mitigate the downside. Humans are fairly promiscuous, in spite of the tendency to form pairs. So in a "wild" setting, a gay male would not prevent females getting pregnant. Someone else (probably a close relative) will step in and do the job. And gay females will probably get forcibly mated, in a lawless wild setting. So again their genes will still probably get reproduced, in spite of their sexual orientation.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

If you think it's semantics then you still haven't understood the difference. The illusion of purpose is just as fundamental and real as the illusion of design. 

I know everybody SAYS that animals do this or that for this or that purpose, but they don't. It's a matter of fact, not semantics. 

It's a matter of semantics because it's irrelevant to the point I was making.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Yes but we're talking about humans. Most of the animals that are successfully eusocial have females capable of bearing large litters. And the smaller the litter, the less well it works. Bees and ants have taken that to an extreme level.

We? You don't get to tell me what I was talking about.

You made a claim, and I pointed out that you can't validly come to that conclusion, because there exist species for which it is not true. The very condition you described — a significant fraction of the population not procreating — is not necessarily a barrier to the success of the species. "the species would suffer" does not follow from your premise.

 

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Humans and other apes are on the other end of the spectrum. We have small litters of usually one, and the young take years of care before they are independent. 

But had the species developed with a smaller fraction of the population procreating, that would necessarily be the case. You are assuming that a change in the conditions would not have altered our evolutionary path, which is not a reasonable assumption.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

On the subject of the effect on our species success of homosexuality, there are other factors rather than eusocial organisation that could mitigate the downside. Humans are fairly promiscuous, in spite of the tendency to form pairs. So in a "wild" setting, a gay male would not prevent females getting pregnant.

Bingo.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Someone else (probably a close relative) will step in and do the job. And gay females will probably get forcibly mated, in a lawless wild setting. So again their genes will still probably get reproduced, in spite of their sexual orientation.

Which is probably not all that different from what has actually happened.

[Strange]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

I know everybody SAYS that animals do this or that for this or that purpose, but they don't. It's a matter of fact, not semantics. 

I see absolutely nothing wrong with using "purpose" to describe a function with no intention behind it. For example, saying "the purpose of breathing is to provide oxygen and remove CO2" or "the purpose of ribosomes is to translate RNA to proteins".

And, as you admit that it is what "everybody says" then that is the meaning of the word, like it or not.

 

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

It's a matter of semantics because it's irrelevant to the point I was making.

That's ok then. You obviously don't know the meaning of the word. Ironic really. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

We? You don't get to tell me what I was talking about.

It's you who responded to my post which was about the human species. So I presumed that "we" were talking about that post.

Look, you seem to be getting aggressive in your posts, so I'm not reading any further. 

1 hour ago, Strange said:

I see absolutely nothing wrong with using "purpose" to describe a function with no intention behind it. For example, saying "the purpose of breathing is to provide oxygen and remove CO2" or "the purpose of ribosomes is to translate RNA to proteins".

And, as you admit that it is what "everybody says" then that is the meaning of the word, like it or not.

But I was not telling people what to say. I was just pointing out that the "purpose" is an illusion. It's an apparent purpose, like the eye is an apparent design. I'm sure I say the same thing all the time. Most of the time there's no practical difference. 

Sometimes it does bug me though, when people like David Attenborough say things like "when male lions take over a pride, they kill the cubs to cause the females to come into season". No they don't, they kill them because they are full of aggression and will kill anything that moves, apart from a female lion. And that instinct paid off genetically in the past, so it's still there in the genes. 

[Strange]

39 minutes ago, mistermack said:

No they don't, they kill them because they are full of aggression and will kill anything that moves, apart from a female lion. And that instinct paid off genetically in the past, so it's still there in the genes. 

That seems to be an overly simple description; after all, they don’t kill their own cubs. 

They don’t kill other moving things such as butterflies and lizards. And if they have just eaten, they won’t even attack prey. 

Edited October 28, 2018 by Strange

[dimreepr]

32 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Sometimes it does bug me though, when people like David Attenborough say things like "when male lions take over a pride, they kill the cubs to cause the females to come into season". No they don't, they kill them because they are full of aggression and will kill anything that moves, apart from a female lion. And that instinct paid off genetically in the past, so it's still there in the genes.

2

It's not an opinion.

[mistermack]

3 minutes ago, Strange said:

That seems to be an overly simple description; after all, they don’t kill their own cubs. 

No, I was talking about a takeover of a pride. It's probably the most intense period in their lives, they normally have to fight the previous male or males. 

[Strange]

4 minutes ago, mistermack said:

No, I was talking about a takeover of a pride. It's probably the most intense period in their lives, they normally have to fight the previous male or males. 

I’m afraid I find the scientific explanation more plausible than your “they’re just really aggressive” hypothesis. 

[dimreepr]

45 minutes ago, mistermack said:

No they don't, they kill them because they are full of aggression and will kill anything that moves, apart from a female lion.

don't the females move? what about a female cub?

[quiet]

On viernes, 26 de octubre de 2018 at 10:30 AM, Bucky Barnes said:

unnatural act and mentality for homosexuality

We are at the time of the genome studied, manipulated, synthesized, etc.

Imagine that you decide to create a new animal species, synthesizing DNA from scratch, without copying sequences of existing animals.

How much power should you give to the sexual instinct if you want the species to be able to conserve itself, overcoming obstacles that may appear? Obviously a great power is necessary, superior to the power of the conscious functions.

Is there any risk derived from the great power assigned to sex? Yes. In case of staying a long time in a benevolent environment, overpopulation will be inevitable. The same thing that you have codified to guarantee the subsistence of the species, can extinguish it by overpopulation.

Can you do something to minimize that problem? You could code an auxiliary mechanism, activated when the population density reaches a critical value. A mechanism designed to moderate the birth rate.

We offer ideas.

- Idea # 1: The mechanism causes premature death. Advantage? Controls the birth rate. Defect? Attempt against acquisition of skills and knowledge. It also undermines the optimal way of parenting, as many offspring would lose a parent or both when they need it most, they would also lose teachers and irreplaceable people. The premature death threatens the performance of the species and, in a few generations, threatens conservation. Discarded idea.

- Idea # 2: Instead of premature death, the mechanism could provoke a compulsive tendency to emigrate towards remote regions. Basically it leads to the same result, because to die or to be far away are two forms of absence. Discarded idea.

- Idea # 3: Implement sexual appetite control, dependent on population density. The closer the density approaches the critical value, the weaker the sexual appetite. It has the same disadvantage as the two previous ideas. The population is degraded by statistical aging. The average age tends unchecked towards pure old age. Discarded idea.

These three examples show that we must discard all the mechanisms that cause absence. The need is to decrease the birth rate, not prematurely absent individuals. Any idea suitable to leave the crossroads?

- Idea # 4: Implement sexual tendency control, dependent on population density. The closer the density approaches the critical value, the more the attraction is reinforced between individuals of the same sex. Each individual is different from the rest. Then the same density of population produces different measures in the reinforcement of attraction by the same sex. Although the density reaches the critical value, there will always be a fraction of the population attracted by the opposite sex. This guarantees the conservation of the species, while the density gradually returns to the optimal value.

The fourth idea seems viable. And it has obvious consequences. For example, the offspring could not be raised, nor have the opportunity to absorb community knowledge, without the participation of the entire community. Individuals attracted to the same sex should collaborate in parenting and interaction with the offspring. The discriminatory reactions would threaten the future of the species, since the fraction of the population attracted by the opposite sex would be a minority and could not take care of everything.

When the subject discussed is homosexuality, the arguments based on uses, customs, dogmas, historical data, etc. predominate. And reasoning based on an evident reality is scarce. Humanity is one among the living species of the planet, regardless of the event that has made the appearance possible. In each case, nature seeks to solve a problem without causing other problems. I suppose that this detail should be considered in the discussions related to homosexuality.

Edited October 28, 2018 by quiet