Freedomain Radio

Charlie:

I think I understand, but the choices you seem to be talking about deal with the types of women or men you are attracted to, and not whether you are attracted to one sex or another in general.

Just trying to show that "attraction" is not a simple biological yes/no.

Having listened to podcast 883 today, I have this to say to Stefan: I feel as though I have been diminished and dismissed in this thread.

In podcast 596, you offer behavioral advice to your listeners based on some science presented in a book. My original post in this thread was a criticism of the premises of this podcast, and the science presented.

Your first response was to shift the burden of proof to me, which I foolishly bought into. Then I was accused of irrationally repeating assertions, as I tried to explain an alternative idea. Then you intimated that you will not respond further until I give up some personal information for psychoanalysis, which I also willingly went along with. Then the conversation was simply dropped. For the rest of the day I kept it in the radar by continuing a side  conversation with Charlie, but no more responses came. At no point were any of my original criticisms addressed.

I was going to just let this thread slip into the memory hole, because I got the distinct impression that I was just annoying people, and was really quite afraid that I would be banned from the boards if I pushed it too hard. Then came 883.

So I think it only fair to ask, "What goes on for you, when I say that gays are not necessarily born that way?"
 

Well I had no problem with your opinion - I agree that people can have homosexual experiences as a result of trauma.

I did believe that you need to provide evidence for your criticisms of the science, and still do.

You're clearly not gay, so your personal experiences don't bear on the science.

I did feel that you had an emotional block to objective thinking in this area, and still do. Your above post confirms this, for me - for instance:

• You still don't think that you need to provide scientific evidence to counter scientific evidence, and portray my request for such evidence as some sort of manipulative trick.
• You did not reveal your personal stake in the issue until asked, which was not exactly forthcoming.
• You now seem upset that no one wanted to get into a discussion with you - wherein you provided no evidence and had a hidden agenda at the beginning.

No one owes you a response here, or anywhere else for that matter, just as no one owes me a response. If people don't want to debate with you, blaming them is immature.

I truly appreciate that this is a very difficult subject for you - we can either talk honestly and openly about your emotional discomfort with homosexuality, or you can get mad because people don't seem to want to get sucked into some tangential and emotionally-charged discussion about largely irrelevant topics.

It's your choice of course...

I appreciate that nobody owes me a response, which is why I was willing to back off - until I heard the podcast.

I am willing to agree that my personal experiences, and yours, don't bear on the science, so lets just look at the science. 

My main point is and always has been that you have made a claim on this topic based on a scientific report which I think is logically flawed, and I have given the reasons why I think this. There are also political agendas associated with this research. Is it not your burden to support your claims more than it is mine to offer counter claims?

To reiterate,  the scientific report consists of 2 main points:

1. A correlation between anomalously gendered brain structures and homosexual behavior.  How it is that this type of brain structure is detected in adults is not explained, nor are any statistical data, such as sample size, provided. All that aside, the fact is that correlation does not prove causality, so nothing is really proven here.

2. Animal tests show that the sexual behavior of rats can be altered by manipulating hormone levels. This kind of research, of course, is a rather extreme form of "Begging the Question" and is thus logically invalid to my mind. What do you think?

A sympathetic board member sent me a PM with a link to an online book, one chapter of which deals with an objectivist view of homosexuality. Of course, as in all objectivist writings, there is a logical leap in the area around the is/ought dilemma, which causes the author to make the absurd claim that homosexuality is both immoral and a non-issue. But aside from that, I think he makes some pretty solid arguments, and if you would like to accept this as my counter-evidence, please give it a read.

By the way, I'm a little surprised that you now consider this to be an "irrelevant topic", since you clearly didn't think so a few months ago when you made the podcast. 

reddeerrick:

Well, my general understanding of free will is that behavior is choice. But more specifically, if it is possible to choose against your basic values, such as living straight when you would prefer to be gay, then to do otherwise must also be a choice. It's not necessarily a conscious choice, but a choice all the same. Kinda like how you say that all parents chose to be parents.

 There is a very simple test for your theory. Every time you feel the need for sexual release over the next month, go have sex with a man. If it is a simple choice for you, like 'chocolate vs vanilla', then this should be effortless and just as pleasant as heterosexual sex.

Then, I suggest that you repeat the experiment with other types of people who you are simply not sexually attracted to. Very old people, perhaps. Someone with extremely bad facial and bodily proportions. Someone very overweight. A very skinny person who is just skin and bones. Someone who looks like a walking tumor.

To save you this unpleasantness, i am going to suggest that this is not a simple choice like 'chocolate vs vanilla'. There is evidence that people can steer their sexual desires to different areas. For example, light fetishes that become more extreme over time, or people with narrowing or slowly changing definitions of what turns them on. However, something as fundamental as gender is far too big a jump for most people to get around. So while a guy may start off liking cheerleaders and end up liking a dominatrix, both will be female. The only people who would see a choice between genders being equivalent to chocolate vs vanilla are bisexuals.

reddeerrick:

OK, I've found a way to clarify.

*A gay* is a person who takes part in gay behavior. To *be gay* is to have desires and values that align with a gay lifestyle.

We know a gay by his behavior. Without the behavior, it's just self-reporting. Someone may be *a gay* without actually *being gay*.

I do not dispute that some people *are gay*, but I do dispute that all *gays* *are gay* 

A gay/homosexual person is someone who gets more turned on by their own gender than the other gender. How a gay guy acts has nothing to do with his sexuality. There is a phenomenon called "gay for pay" where straight guys get paid to be in gay porn. These men are probably not gay at all. At the same time, there are lots of homosexuals who act straight by being in heterosexual marriages. The most you can say about a man who sleeps with another man is that at one point, he slept with another man. Nothing more can be derived from that act.

reddeerrick:

She had 9 kids of which I am 8th 

Have you heard of the studies involving male births?  There's a theory that the androgenic hormones in the womb can cause tendencies towards homosexuality (or that the mother simply "runs out" after some time).  The younger the brother, the better his chance of being homosexual.  Interestingly, the birth order of sisters seems to make no difference.

Which might help explain why you chose to try out homosexual behavior when you were younger.  Behavior can change biology-- for instance, if you switch to a diet of donuts and cocaine, you're going to have a hard time switching back to the healthy diet you had beforehand-- in fact, where before, you might not have even really wanted donuts, and not known what cocaine was like, you're body is now accustomed to your new diet and your desires shift accordingly.

Similarly, a homosexual could become a heterosexual if he were to try it out and prefer it.  Even if he didn't prefer it at first, yet for whatever reason continued to make the same choices regarding sex, he might eventually come to appreciate it, and after a longer period of time, change his biological urges.  And vice versa.  Obviously, a man with an extreme genetic, prenatal, developmental, parental, or otherwise environmental disposition for homosexuality will probably never be heterosexual, the same way that someone who really despises monster truck rallies isn't going to spend the time to tortuously endure years of them simply to gain an appreciation.

Also, what about bisexuality?  The presence of this phenomena is further evidence that could point towards the classic "spectrum" perspective of sexuality.  Obviously, many more people fall onto the heterosexual end, because of evolutionary necessity, but it is interesting to see that some people are "more gay" than others.