Quote from peilthetraveler:
So let me get this straight (no pun intended)...if its a small percentage of people that have a weird sexual desire, its because they are damaged in the brain....but if its a large group, then its nature?
How come we accept one groups immoral desires as normal, but not the other? Why is one considered brain damaged and the other not.
It is against the law for someone to have sex with a brain damaged or mentally impared person, so if homosexuality is brain damage or a mental imparment, then it should be against the law for them to have sex with each other, right? [/B]
No, not right, people with downs syndrome are allowed to have sex with each other. No problems with that, in fact a lot of them gets married. If you think it's somehow your business to stop them from doing that, I don't think this discussion will get anywhere.
And yes, if scientists are right and homosexuality does have some basis in genetics and in stuff that happens while they're in their mothers wombs, one might indeed consider them mentally impaired or even very lightly brain damaged. However, since it doesn't seem to impair the affected ones in any other way than they're sexual preference, and since they don't hurt any one else, they should simply make the best out of their situation and you and I should butt out. Forcing them to a life with partners of the opposite sex would be like forcing heterosexuals to marry partners of the same sex. I know that would suck. You must understand that we're not all blessed with your opportunity to just pick and choose which urges to entertain.
Quote from peilthetraveler:
Nice try,but thats not it. Its entertaining the thoughts. Just like rapists, pedophiles are the same breed.
I believe you're right that people will usually entertain the thoughts of rape and pedophilia before they develop such sexual preferences, but you're completely overlooking the urges that comes before and drives the thoughts. First come the urges, then comes the thoughts, and then comes the realization of those thoughts. In the case of pedophilia I'd bet it's never the other way around, nobody starts thinking about having sex with children without having a strong urge to.
In america rapists are bred by watching alot of pornography(it not always this way, but its how the majority of rapists in america start out and many testify to this). When they are not watching porn, they are looking at every pretty girl and playing sex scenes in their head with her. This goes on for a long time usually until watching porn and using his imagination no longer quenches his desire.
I believe this is an attempt to justify religiously motivated criminalization of pornography. In Europe (and probably also in America), nearly all men watch porn on a regular basis. More than 90% of the male population. Yet, the rapists around here are mostly immigrants who come from cultures where sexuality is strictly prohibited outside marriage and pornography and masturbation is a grave sin. That makes them extremely sexually frustrated, on top of being in a foreign country where they lack a common sense of responsibility and accountability towards fellow citizens. Their urges take completely over and they rape someone. People who do watch porn (and masturbate) or have an active sex life however, almost never become rapists.
The point is not that pornography is great, I don't even have an opinion about that. My point is that your point is hollow. You might be right about certain types of rapists (those who develop a fetish for rape), but those people are like professionals, they know what they want and they can get it with a hooker or by connecting with other people who have a fetish for being raped (there are frighteningly many of those too). People who rape girls on the street are mostly overtaken by sexual urges and they usually regret what they've done deeply.
This is what happens with pedophiles and homosexuals too (not with porn, but the thinking about it. It might start off with just thinking about it once in a while and it feeds on itself.
Again, this is right only in the case of bisexuals, because they have urges for both sexes. Most of us find no sexual interest in people of our own sex at all. We don't put any effort into blocking such thoughts, there's just nothing there. If I try to think about male nudity or about having a romantic relationship with a good looking male friend, it's just utterly senseless and boring, and my mind wanders off to other thoughts as soon as I lose focus. And even if I was disciplined enough to force myself into thinking about these things for several hours a day for years, I'd still have uncontrollable feelings about woman. This is how heterosexuals as well as homosexuals works; none of us can pick and choose, we just have feelings for one sex or the other very early on.
Those poor bastards who try sexual reorientation has to endure an almost inhumane amount of mental stress to get wherever they get, not only do they have to discipline themselves into thinking and fantasizing about something they have no interest in what so ever, they also have to suppress their natural feelings and urges at the same time. Those who succeed, has to endure this constant fight through their entire lives, while those who fall off the waggon, leaving their opposite sex for good and gets back to their own sex, do it with ease. What does that tell you?
It works the same way as one gets addicted to drugs. He might not get addicted the first time he tries it, but he thinks about how good a time he had when he did drugs...then he does it again and again and the only way to stop doing drugs is to stop thinking about them. Same with food. People who think about food all the time are usually really overweight. People who think about men all the time will end up being homosexual.
Again, you're using analogies that are only applicable to bisexual people. Anybody can enjoy a good high or unhealthy food, and anybody who tries it, likes it and thinks very much about it (drugs or junk food) might be in danger of getting addicted to it. Not everybody can enjoy both sexes, most of us are restricted to one.
More evidence that homosexuality is a choice is that science has never found the part of the brain that would make someone homosexual by biology. With all the science and the mapping of the human genome they have not found it. Why? Because it doesnt exist.
You're wrong, scientists did find physical difference in the brains of homosexuals, compared to the brains of heterosexuals.
"In a sample of brains of homosexual men we did find that an area of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) contains twice as many cells as the SCN of a heterosexual group...
It appears very unlikely that homosexual behavior as such would increase the neuronal number in any brain structure. Yet the development of SCN cell numbers suggest that the explanation for the large SCN in homosexual men most likely may be found in early brain development.
At birth, the SCN contains only 13-20% of the adult number of cells, but in the postnatal period development is rapid. Cell counts reach a peak around 13-16 months after birth. The SCN cell numbers found in adult homosexual men were in the same order of magnitude as found around 13-16 months after birth. The normal pattern is that the cell numbers decline to the adult value of about 35% of the peak values.
In homosexual men, therefore, this postnatal cell death in the SCN seems to have been curtailed."
1995 - Dick Swabb, PhD, MD
Here's another one:
"A growing body of empirical literature suggests that the brains of gay males are less masculinized than those of heterosexual males, reflected in visual-spatial task performance -- a measure of cerebral masculinazation and one in which heterosexual males usually surpass females.
Several studies report that the cognitive performance of gay males is more typical of heterosexual females than heterosexual males.
Furthermore, the brain waves of gay males while performing verbal and spatial tasks are more similar to heterosexual females than males or significantly different from both."
2002 - Kenneth M. Cohen, PhD
And another one:
"The anterior commissure, a fiber tract that is larger in its midsagittal area [the vertical plane that divides the brain into two halves] in women than in men, was examined in 90 postmortem brains from homosexual men, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women. The midsagittal plane of the anterior commissure in homosexual men was 18% larger than in heterosexual women and 34% larger than in heterosexual men."
1992 - Laura S. Allen, PhD
Roger Gorski, PhD
Obviously a creationist like yourself will simply argue that these differences might have appeared later on in life. And although the notion that the structure of your brain would change according to what sex you fantasize about is doubtful, at best, you're right that it might explain some of the differences. Not all though, some physical differences are from the time we're in our mothers wombs. Which makes it no choice of ours whether it's genetically or environmentally induced. Well, in the case of bisexuals, it obviously is a matter of choice.
I hope with my final comment i answered "why God said so" with logic that is acceptable to you.