One of the ideas going through this thread is that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore bad.
Two points I would raise about this. Firstly what exactly is natural? Human beings are products of the univserse, and therefore from that perspective anything we do is natural. Using tools is our speciality, but by no means are we the only animals to do so. If a bird uses a stone to smash a snail shell open is that unnatural? Natural is a very very subjective definition.
The second point I would raise is why is natural automatically better than unnatural? Using the oven is pretty unnatural compared to cooking food over a fire. But I consider the oven in general to be a far superior method of cooking than having to start a fire (not to say I dont like a good BBQ once in a while however!).
Ultimately I wish society were a lot more tolerant. My opinion is that other people are entitled to live their lives pretty much however they want provided it doesn't adversely impact the ability of other people to do the same. I don't support sex/nudity in public because other people have no choice but to see it, and that's the case for either homo or hetero relationships. But what people get up to in private is really none of my business.
@Dee, LOL, I did it in 1990. We didn't even have access to word processing at my small-town University back then. I wrote it on a typewriter. It's long lost now. The paper it was written on probably wound up in a landfill somewhere by now - I've moved four times since then. So, it only exists currently in my memory.
The research I did should be pretty easy to reconstruct, though. All I did was to go to the library (no internet back then) and look up "homosexuality evolution biology anthropology environment population". I had to sort through a few dozen books that didn't really have anything I could use, but I did find three or four books that talked about the studies on rats, the comparative research of human populations, and the anthropological theory I mentioned.
The research I did should be pretty easy to reconstruct, though. All I did was to go to the library (no internet back then) and look up "homosexuality evolution biology anthropology environment population". I had to sort through a few dozen books that didn't really have anything I could use, but I did find three or four books that talked about the studies on rats, the comparative research of human populations, and the anthropological theory I mentioned.
As a university instructor, students shudder in horror when I tell them of the days of yore when one had to actually go to the library and physically locate books and bound periodicals using the card catalog system...with no Starbucks inside.
The research I did should be pretty easy to reconstruct, though. All I did was to go to the library (no internet back then) and look up "homosexuality evolution biology anthropology environment population". I had to sort through a few dozen books that didn't really have anything I could use, but I did find three or four books that talked about the studies on rats, the comparative research of human populations, and the anthropological theory I mentioned.
As a university instructor, students shudder in horror when I tell them of the days of yore when one had to actually go to the library and physically locate books and bound periodicals using the card catalog system...with no Starbucks inside.
Taking out books (and viewing periodicals on microfiche/film) are still a big part in studying history anyways (though not most subjects I imagine). At least when I was doing my undergrad a few years back. Granted we have modern systems we can use to track them down. So physically hunting down books is uncommon for most disciplines but not unheard of in others
One of the ideas going through this thread is that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore bad.
This is a fallacy, neither i nor anyone in this thread said anything like this.
I saind homossexualism isn't natural, but normal. I justified my statement most with good sense and rationalization of the affirmative and one medicine article.
Kitty, stated that homossexualism isn't natural, neither normal and brougth his own justifies for his statement.
I certainly NEVER said that homosexualism is bad and for what i read here, no one (that i'm aware at least) stated this. To avoid skip the in-topic issue, anal sex isn't natural either and a lot of straight ppl pray for their girlfriends to like this kind of stuff.
So let's avoid fallacious comments.
Now about other issues:
I can't say by other ppl, Kitty really put natural as better than unnatural with his statements, but i never said that unnatural is wrost than natural. I would be a sad person without my eventual coke to drink ! This is something, in my view, impossible to be evaluate from outside.
@kamuizin: for the record, I'm a girl. And yeah, I also think anal sex is unnatural, because yet again from a biological point of view, the rectum wasn't meant to have the male genitals inserted into it. Unlike the vagina, the rectum does not lubricate, so insertion without artificial lube would be very painful. On top of that, the rectum only has thin 'veils' of protection, so transportation of (harmful) bacteria, viruses and disease is much higher, and so is the risk of contracting a sexual disease this way. Only the mental image disturbs me already enough, and I would never accept this way of intercourse, neither do I understand why people would like to penetrate the place meant for, well, letting feces exit the body. Sorry, just couldn't word it better. To link this with homosexualism, makes this even more unnatural. Granted, it has been mentioned male gay people actually don't seem to participate in anal sex, yet, it is pretty much the only way for penetration when it comes to a homosexual couple. Of course I know there are more ways to sexually please each other, but still.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud There are plenty of gay men and straight women who really, really enjoy anal sex. But, if you have found it to be gross or unnatural, then so be it. Each to her own.
Her primary point is that men and women are not simply "plugs" and "sockets." Both men and women have internal and external sexual organs that may be stimulated without the need for a partner of the opposite sex. Both sexes have G-spots (or "P-spots" for men). I'm sure you'll read the article if you're curious to learn more.
As @karnor00 said in his post, what does "natural" mean? What do you mean by "natural?" I find the term useless for evaluating the soundness of human behavior. My conception of the word is pretty simple: "natural" refers something that is of the physical universe; "unnatural" is something outside of it (that is, if such a thing can even be possible, such as divine entities). So, in my world, fisting, cannibalism, and Twinkies are natural, even though I don't partake in any of those things.
@Mortianna: I think I am rather linking the concept 'natural' to personal moral values. As in what is 'decent' in my eyes and what not. Of course that makes my concept of 'natural' very subjective. As such, I do not consider cannibalism to be natural, because humans aren't meant to eat each other, I do not consider homosexualism to be natural because people of the opposite gender weren't made for each other, and same with anal sex, which I already explained (I heard it can be very very painful, especially afterwards, but I don't know for certain, as I've never experienced it). So yeah, I link what is 'natural' to a personal set of moral and ethical values. I hope this makes my stance on things more clear.
@Dee Please, close this topic, until people are still civil here. Or at least rename it to "homosexuality" or something like that. There is no point in hiding the fact, that "human rights" aren't important in this discussion.
If @Kitteh_On_A_Cloud is using the mobile version of the site and her phone is touchscreen all she has to do is tap beside her name and the wheel with the edit function will appear.
For more beautiful that is to say no one can define what natural is, natural isn't a subjective point. Sorry but i have to state, as i said, homosexualism, anal sex and coke are unatural stuff, neither of them have a function in nature or derivate directly from nature existance (but coke is sweet!).
From a biologic point of view, we can define what is natural and what isn't natural for this discipline and to try state that what's natural is subjective is to live in a lie (the article i brought above is nice by the way and worth a read).
Normal by another standard is defined by a person's moral or/and by society padronized ethics, it's a social concept, thus a subjective matter.
@Kitteh_on_a_Cloud, sry for them "he's" and the "him" them , lack of perception of my part, should have guessed by the avatar you're using.
@Dee: I'd like to, but my dad is still hesistant on the subject, despite my bro having a brand new Apple PC and two monitors. -_- As for mine, a hand-me-down which barely functions, it's currently at home. I'm on vacation in Italy. @mlnevese: I detest touchscreens. Also, I got a Nokia C3-00, which doesn't have a touchscreen anyway. I'll not mention the fact about everyone in my family has got a better and nicer phone than I have. But oh well, seems my siblings are being favoured over me in this matter also. -_- @ZelgadisGW: I actually agree. But we've been pretty civil thus far, despite the obviously repressed frustrations and borderline rude langue expressed in the OP's posts. @kamuizin: No problem.
@Dee Please, close this topic, until people are still civil here. Or at least rename it to "homosexuality" or something like that. There is no point in hiding the fact, that "human rights" aren't important in this discussion.
I agree that the topic has shifted to homosexuality, but it has been anything but uncivil. Homosexuality very much falls under the broader topic of human rights, so I think this line of discussion is entirely appropriate. It's categorized as off-topic, so it's obvious that it has nothing to do with BGEE. What more do you want?
It's pretty audacious to butt in and request that the thread be closed because YOU don't find it relevant anymore. If you don't like the content or topic of discussion, there are plenty of other threads for you to spend your time on. Leave it to the moderators to police the forums.
There is much more to human laws than homosexuality, and the fact that homosexuality is still sensitive topic indicates that discussion might go wrong way. What I was saying before was more like a warning than anything else. I've seen discussion like these on few forums before, and I know exactly what can go wrong here.
I believe the topic here focused on homosexuality, because that's what the OP did in the second half of his or her only partially coherent rant. The OP titled the thread one thing, and then made it about homosexuality in the initial post. So, I think we can safely blame any confusion about the thread topic here to the person who posted it.
Whew these topics will never end nor will they ever "fix" the views of people who think homosexuality is just a random phenomena, desease or curse. But i think that the human rights as such has a more sinister and deeper problem as the sexual orientation of a now waking up minority... millions of children have nothing to eat, peoples are being tortured to this day and we think about oil prices or the next ipod... So i honestly think i could live with being the insulted gay ( i´m straight btw! ) rather than the little black kid in uganda who has to starve to death..
So why should we tolerate gays but not the million real victims every year. Because if we tolerate these victims there is no more excuse to ignore it and we must admit our ignorance or selfishness and that we love our little bubble we live in.
@NWN_babaYaga: You know what? You're totally right. Most gay people (note: most) are still better off today than the people you mentioned in your post. Yet they dominate the media. It's the fault of both parties. The media have long since gotten bored of portraying little black children starving in the streets. Homosexualism is the next 'new' thing. And a lot of money's involved of course, especially when it comes to politics and the gathering of votes. Gay people should also realise that they're still luckier than a black family starving to death, or having to walk miles all day to get some water. What I mean to say is: it can always get worse. On the other hand, black lesbian women in Africa are being raped by men in an attempt to 'convert' them to heterosexualism, something which I also detest. I guess I'm a bit on the fence here when it comes to these kinds of topics.
@NWN_babaYaga: You know what? You're totally right. Most gay people (note: most) are still better off today than the people you mentioned in your post. Yet they dominate the media. It's the fault of both parties. The media have long since gotten bored of portraying little black children starving in the streets. Homosexualism is the next 'new' thing. And a lot of money's involved of course, especially when it comes to politics and the gathering of votes. Gay people should also realise that they're still luckier than a black family starving to death, or having to walk miles all day to get some water. What I mean to say is: it can always get worse. On the other hand, black lesbian women in Africa are being raped by men in an attempt to 'convert' them to heterosexualism, something which I also detest. I guess I'm a bit on the fence here when it comes to these kinds of topics.
Please provide some examples of how how gay people/gay issues "dominate" the media and how the media has "long since" (as if it was ever a priority) gotten bored of portraying little black children starving in the streets.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud pretty disturbing that the media and the politicians (I say that because we pay taxes for development aid too) are bored of it or just dont want to find a way out for these lands. Our faceless dude of the ministry of development or anyone else in the past is just enjoying his free trips, comes back giving an interview how he will now focus on helping the governments or is supporting the next deadend project... Whatever... they do this for a few decades now!!!
We the citicens never know in which pocket the development aid ends, never. They just do what they want!
But i´m sure that it is not easy for homos I just think they have the illusion they are way over important. Imagine you have HIV and the most uneducated idiots which are the majority think you can get it by just breathing the air from the person or shacking the hand. These people have my condolence really! There are so many people that suffer so much but have no voice, lobby or foundation.
Why need these people to let everyone else know what they are? I never needed to express who i am that i really got a dark side. Or lets say i wouldnt talk about it in detail you know...
Guys, I don't think you should go down the route of "it could be worse" to dismiss problems with society. And until we all live in the united federation of planets or whatever, countries are always going to prioritise their own problems before those of their neighbours.
"it could be worse" is a sense you should pay attention too if you are little bit enlighted about history and society but if your little problem is eqaul to any other you havent entered 2013!
@elminster: Just follow the newspapers. Or articles on the internet. It's been quite long since I saw poverty issues in Third World countries featuring on the cover page instead of how yet another country has allowed same-sex marriages and/or child adoptions by same-sex couples. It's the new 'hot' thing out there right now in social circles.
Those have been the headlines for the past month, maybe two months. It's also about something the gay community has been fighting for *decades*. It's not moneygrubbery or going with the latest trend. It's reporting how a large group of people in our society are finally getting equal rights.
Considering your proposed alternative is a report with the headline "Africa; still poor, still hungry", I don't see what the problem is with actual news in the newspapers.
"Things could always be worse." "Look what YOU have! See how better off you are then they?"
Not to be pedantic, but this is a classic example of the red herring fallacy, where one attempts to draw attention away from an argument or complaint that involves an undesirable condition by claiming that one should be happy with the way things are because "things could always be worse."
The fact that others have it worse is not the issue. Things could always be worse; pointing out such a notion is simply a way to draw attention away from the topic at hand and therefore avoid the responsibility in addressing it.
Comments
Two points I would raise about this. Firstly what exactly is natural? Human beings are products of the univserse, and therefore from that perspective anything we do is natural. Using tools is our speciality, but by no means are we the only animals to do so. If a bird uses a stone to smash a snail shell open is that unnatural? Natural is a very very subjective definition.
The second point I would raise is why is natural automatically better than unnatural? Using the oven is pretty unnatural compared to cooking food over a fire. But I consider the oven in general to be a far superior method of cooking than having to start a fire (not to say I dont like a good BBQ once in a while however!).
Ultimately I wish society were a lot more tolerant. My opinion is that other people are entitled to live their lives pretty much however they want provided it doesn't adversely impact the ability of other people to do the same. I don't support sex/nudity in public because other people have no choice but to see it, and that's the case for either homo or hetero relationships. But what people get up to in private is really none of my business.
I think I'd like to read that paper.
The research I did should be pretty easy to reconstruct, though. All I did was to go to the library (no internet back then) and look up "homosexuality evolution biology anthropology environment population". I had to sort through a few dozen books that didn't really have anything I could use, but I did find three or four books that talked about the studies on rats, the comparative research of human populations, and the anthropological theory I mentioned.
I saind homossexualism isn't natural, but normal. I justified my statement most with good sense and rationalization of the affirmative and one medicine article.
Kitty, stated that homossexualism isn't natural, neither normal and brougth his own justifies for his statement.
I certainly NEVER said that homosexualism is bad and for what i read here, no one (that i'm aware at least) stated this. To avoid skip the in-topic issue, anal sex isn't natural either and a lot of straight ppl pray for their girlfriends to like this kind of stuff.
So let's avoid fallacious comments.
Now about other issues:
I can't say by other ppl, Kitty really put natural as better than unnatural with his statements, but i never said that unnatural is wrost than natural. I would be a sad person without my eventual coke to drink
Here's a great article by a Christian Lesbian that challenges conventional views on what is considered "natural" sexuality: http://moanti.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/biological-evidence-that-proves-gay-and-lesbian-sex-is-not-unnatural/
Her primary point is that men and women are not simply "plugs" and "sockets." Both men and women have internal and external sexual organs that may be stimulated without the need for a partner of the opposite sex. Both sexes have G-spots (or "P-spots" for men). I'm sure you'll read the article if you're curious to learn more.
As @karnor00 said in his post, what does "natural" mean? What do you mean by "natural?" I find the term useless for evaluating the soundness of human behavior. My conception of the word is pretty simple: "natural" refers something that is of the physical universe; "unnatural" is something outside of it (that is, if such a thing can even be possible, such as divine entities). So, in my world, fisting, cannibalism, and Twinkies are natural, even though I don't partake in any of those things.
Please, close this topic, until people are still civil here.
Or at least rename it to "homosexuality" or something like that. There is no point in hiding the fact, that "human rights" aren't important in this discussion.
From a biologic point of view, we can define what is natural and what isn't natural for this discipline and to try state that what's natural is subjective is to live in a lie (the article i brought above is nice by the way and worth a read).
Normal by another standard is defined by a person's moral or/and by society padronized ethics, it's a social concept, thus a subjective matter.
@Kitteh_on_a_Cloud, sry for them "he's" and the "him" them
Before the patch is released?
How many kensage builds must noobs ask about
before they develop Baldur's three.
How many times must balance be discussed
despite this being, an RPG
the answer my friend etc etc.
@mlnevese: I detest touchscreens. Also, I got a Nokia C3-00, which doesn't have a touchscreen anyway. I'll not mention the fact about everyone in my family has got a better and nicer phone than I have. But oh well, seems my siblings are being favoured over me in this matter also. -_-
@ZelgadisGW: I actually agree. But we've been pretty civil thus far, despite the obviously repressed frustrations and borderline rude langue expressed in the OP's posts.
@kamuizin: No problem.
It's pretty audacious to butt in and request that the thread be closed because YOU don't find it relevant anymore. If you don't like the content or topic of discussion, there are plenty of other threads for you to spend your time on. Leave it to the moderators to police the forums.
There is much more to human laws than homosexuality, and the fact that homosexuality is still sensitive topic indicates that discussion might go wrong way. What I was saying before was more like a warning than anything else. I've seen discussion like these on few forums before, and I know exactly what can go wrong here.
Female-Female romance
Gay Romance
Gay/Lesbian romances in "BG:2 EE"
Sexuality in the Realms Answer from Ed Greenwood
Bissexual romance
New Romances in BGEE
I'm pretty sure the community can stand some rounds in this Human Rights thread
So why should we tolerate gays but not the million real victims every year. Because if we tolerate these victims there is no more excuse to ignore it and we must admit our ignorance or selfishness and that we love our little bubble we live in.
We the citicens never know in which pocket the development aid ends, never. They just do what they want!
But i´m sure that it is not easy for homos I just think they have the illusion they are way over important. Imagine you have HIV and the most uneducated idiots which are the majority think you can get it by just breathing the air from the person or shacking the hand. These people have my condolence really!
There are so many people that suffer so much but have no voice, lobby or foundation.
Why need these people to let everyone else know what they are? I never needed to express who i am that i really got a dark side. Or lets say i wouldnt talk about it in detail you know...
It's not moneygrubbery or going with the latest trend. It's reporting how a large group of people in our society are finally getting equal rights.
Considering your proposed alternative is a report with the headline "Africa; still poor, still hungry", I don't see what the problem is with actual news in the newspapers.
"Things could always be worse." "Look what YOU have! See how better off you are then they?"
Not to be pedantic, but this is a classic example of the red herring fallacy, where one attempts to draw attention away from an argument or complaint that involves an undesirable condition by claiming that one should be happy with the way things are because "things could always be worse."
The fact that others have it worse is not the issue. Things could always be worse; pointing out such a notion is simply a way to draw attention away from the topic at hand and therefore avoid the responsibility in addressing it.