I received an email from someone called Kevin accusing me of having refused to state my position on gay marriage. I have never been asked, but am in fact entirely in favour. I think human relationships are essential to human happiness, and I am not in the least concerned about the gender combinations or sexual practices in which people find happiness. Nor am I obsessed with the number two. I have no objection to polyandry or polygamy (or the gay equivalent) either. The key thing is that people enter and leave relationships entirely consensually, once of an age to consent. I do not believe in matters of tax, immigration or any other governmental sphere, any combination of family life should be favored over any other.
My own family life is “conventional” and very happy, but I do not make the mistake of believing one model fits all.
” Technology will give people options, and people will follow their true, natural, preferences.”
Or will follow the group-think of popular Media………Counter-intuitives will be persona-non-grata.
Notice how the Gay mafia at the BBC are not letting on about male child abuse allegations.
Jon at 14 Oct, 4:22 pm: Yes, that summarises the possible contradiction. This could be the origin of those clichés: “I’m not racist / anti-Gay, but…”
Jemand – it depends on whether we think ‘gayness’ is entirely genetic, and tbh I’ve generally thought of it as such. However WP quotes that “[c]urrent knowledge suggests that sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood”, but that “there continues to be controversy and uncertainty as to the genesis of the variety of human sexual orientations” (source).
My recent reading of WP on this topic suggests that the medical community as a group are “pro-gay” in the sense that they see this characteristic as a scientific trait, and I can’t find one of any repute who see it as a “disease”. With that in mind, genetic eradication of the gay gene will be seen in the same negative light as human cloning, and that’s even if it exists. You’re right, it would be eugenic to do so, and people’s “true, natural, preferences” – straight and gay and everything between – will continue.
Why am I now a Mandelbrot blot?
Jemand: “Why am I now a Mandelbrot blot?”
You’re not; that’s me. It looks all right on my system. The avatar is above the respective name.
Jemand niemand, would that be by Government decree? our little Jonnny gets a single injection of ‘anti gay serum’.
having genes screened out before birth?
Joseph Mengele eat your heart out, we have finally got to where you wanted mankind to be.
We know Sweden has done it deliberately by means of abortion, deliberately interfering with people’s reproductive organs and castration of those with severe mental inabilities.
This is just another form of it, another attempt to create blue eyed boys and genetically supreme beings. I bet some sort of insurance industries would be very interested in such regime’s.
Maybe there is such a thing as a money making gene, to be eradicated from the lower classes and injected in extra doses to the privileged, the shitteraty and puss bag hangers on, the whole god damn establishment, hail, for their indifference to others must be perpetuated until everyone truly had enough of it. Bring on the Gin riots.
Jemand, that’s the wrong question. You need to determine if you’re a male or a female Mandelbrot blot, and whether your blot is straight or gay. Then your blot might be recognised as a connected set with another similar blot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connected_set
Clark asked a question of people holding anti-gay views, and I’ve one too. If you had a child who came out as gay, would you accept their choice (and meet their partner/attend their civil partnership, etc)?
I’ve seen solid the working class family of a friend accept their son’s bisexuality – quite a struggle for his taciturn, traditionalist, father, but love won through. I suppose this could be tinged with some sadness, as their son is currently dating a man, and so may not give them grandchildren. But, that could happen with straight offspring who choose not to, or who are unable to, have children – so is not a sexuality issue per se.
@Jon
I’m unmovable on heterosexuality being genetic. Given that our animal survival depends on it, it would be exceedingly unlikely that heterosexuality is merely arbitrary or happily accidental. In addition to the fact that we inherited sexual reproduction from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Homosexuality is, at this stage, apparently more complex. Reading the below link (is “Wikipedia” a dirty word?), studies on identical twins are interesting (50+% concordance) but arguably inconclusive. It might be that genetic predisposition gives a nudge leading to environmental reinforcements.
But you can see where I’m going with this thought experiment. Even if gene therapy does not eradicate homosexuality, there would be a major social and political shift resulting from a significant decline in gay population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation
Jemand, I don’t think homosexuality is much of a disadvantage in human reproduction. Probably human-level intelligence increases the evolutionary viability of homosexual inclination, by enabling the responsibility for reproduction to migrate from instinct to conscious decision-making.
@Clark
I’ve definitely been Mandelbrotted – just like yours. Is it a badge of prestige and power? Where’s my delete button and mod password? And it seems that something, or SOMEONE, irregularly changes the “avatar” for us. I don’t want to be a connected set, or empty set, or other abstraction of mathematical interpretation of reality. I just want a chimpanzee to be my icon.
Jemand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
@Clark re homosexual viability
That might be true of humans, but I don’t think stupid animals could depend on contemplation for reproductive certainty. Something must have stirred them into wanting to party with the opposite sex, almost exclusively. We see this for all things that supports survival and the survival instinct is highly discriminating, eg we prefer meat to turnips. Then again, ideas have turned people off eating meat.
Jemand: “I’ve definitely been Mandelbrotted”…
Curious. Can you send me a screen-shot? I assume it is my avatar that is getting attached to your comments. It sounds like a browser bug. If it was a bug at Gravatar.com it should be happening to others, too.
You could try clearing your browser’s cache, in case it’s caching my avatar where it should be caching yours. If you want a chimp avatar, you need to (1) register with Word Press and (2) create a Gravatar account.
Jon, any ideas?
Jemand at 14 Oct, 5:47 pm: “And it seems that something, or SOMEONE, irregularly changes the “avatar” for us.”
Well, my avatar was a slug until recently. Then I deleted that image from gravatar.com, so for a while I was the only contributor showing no avatar at all, not even one of the default “grey head and shoulders” ones, which is what I’m seeing on your comments. Then I uploaded my little Mandelbrot excerpt. Does this account for the changes you’ve seen?
@Clark
I could send you a screenshot but all that would prove is that i am not going insane! Take my word for it. Now your avatar is a barn in a field and Jon is a white silhouette on a grey background. I don’t want to register with anyone, all I want is a damn chimp.
I’ll see how it looks in another browser.
Jemand, lots of male animals seek to mate with a female when she smells fertile. What sexual activity those animals engage in the rest of the time won’t directly affect their reproductive viability.
@Clark
Yep. It’s Safari. Stupid Apple. First Siri, then maps, now avatars. If Steve Jobs was still alive, there’d be none of this nonsense and I’d have my goddamn chimp.
Jemand, chimps can be found, but damn chimps need to be retrieved from Hell, and I’m not mounting an expedition.
We can guess what they were sent to Hell for!
Some interesting snippets from my link above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
Aah, sex. Sex, sex, sex… So long as we have strong laws against nasal sex in marriage, or at least ensure it is only reported in ancient Greek, society’s morality will be safe.
Clark, I’m not sure what we are discussing re animal homosexuality. Two important things stand out though. One is that heterosexual behaviour is not haphazard like homosexual occurance and second is there must be enough heterosexual activity to ensure survival of the species. Humans, unfortunately, in their arrogance assume that we are not beholden to the same cruel laws of nature as other animals and that we can just carelessly alter our animal being without consequences (eg GE). My point here is that culture and ideology will manifest itself such that we are increasingly dependent on technology for survival of our species. Homosexuality is not threatening that, at least not directly. But homosexuality is not contributing to it either, again not directly.
Jemand, there are some seven billion humans. Our population has roughly quadrupled in one or two centuries, I think. That probably makes us one of the fastest growing species in the history of life on Earth; I doubt that even the rats are keeping up with us, despite all the waste food we give them.
But most of the population increase is occurring in populations too poor to afford that sort of technological assistance.
Clark, you forgot to mention that George Murray Levick also observed necrophelia in Penguins. Jimmygiro might take that up with you at a later date. Except for that bit about Swans providing greater survivability in some circumstances, although still dependent on sexual reproduction, most of the observations of homosexual behaviour in animals simply looks anomalous – ie serving no purpose.
What can we take from the fact that animals, including humans, do things that ultimately do nothing for our individual or collective well being. You can point to lots of things, like alcoholic behaviour, irrational violence etc. There’s a treasure trove of useless shit that people do and it seems to be getting larger – reality tv? This doesn’t mean we should attack homosexuality as if it were a disease. But should we protect or even cultivate it?
We’re losing our way. We’re forgetting that we are complex animals symbiotically connected with other complex systems. Ideology and an aggressively feel-good culture is taking over debate and action on more important issues. So while the planet is being trashed, people are agonising over the lifestyle arrangements of gay people.
Some good flow there from you Clark. Our comments are leap frogging over each other – ie not following directly.
Last post was good. 7 billion ppl, don’t get me started. Maybe homosexuality is the solution.
Have to get some zeds, otherwise would stay. Damned ape will have to wait.
G’night.
Jemand:
It isn’t about protecting homosexuality, it’s about freedom and equality for everyone, including homosexuals.
Ah, but wouldn’t Jimmy have to show that it was the homosexual penguins that were into necrophilia?
Goodnight, Jemand. Thanks for the chat.
No idea on wonky avatars – recommend Jemand should sign up for a Gravatar, and make himself an ape. I should too, so I can be a boy lemur with a preference for boy lemurs (it’s a role, so I can play who I want).
I am struck by how utilitarian some of the anti-gay arguments are here. We (each of us individually, or all of us collectively?) apparently have a responsibility to consider worldly reproduction. But do we? Perhaps mother nature in her Infinite Wisdom can be proud to be 6% gay, on the basis that we’re (or She is) reproducing perfectly well anyway. Does this tie in with the (rather alarmist) theories that The Powers That Be want to eradicate humanity down to a billion anyway?
No, hang on, it opposes that theory, since the utilitarians want us to reproduce at a rate of 100% heterosexuality, so supporting gay rights must in some way be sympathetic to Bill Gates and his allegedly wanting to kill off an excess population. No, that can’t be right, since supporters of eugenicist theories would be pro-gay, since that would be a humane way to achieve population reduction without deliberately killing people. Ah, no, that can’t be right…. [mind explodes].
I wonder if the Thou Shalt Reproduce is not really to do with sexuality anyway, and as such seems like a case of reverse-engineering an opinion to oppose homosexuality on unstated grounds. Me, I am pretty sure I don’t want children, and so I might as well cast my lot with the gays, even though I’m don’t feel gay. Did something go wrong with my genetics?
In the meantime – and in the real world – malicious, sometimes religious, anti-gay bulling causes depression, suicide, sexual repression and all manner of genuine suffering, but this is dismissed as “ideology” and the result of “an aggressively feel-good culture”. I think we should stand up for oppressed minorities, but perhaps I should realise that They are just making it up? Meanies!
So we are now down to 6% from the earlier 10%, the proof of the devil is in the spin !
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/23/gay-bisexual-population-uk
” since the utilitarians want us to reproduce at a rate of 100% heterosexuality”
Further, they want to proscribe contraception. But I suspect the need they want to fill is cannon fodder, because those prolific breeders do so with a mission in mind, and they auger well into the military when God and Country are juxtaposed.
Jon 3:47pm
The transgender bisexual Tory you mention, Tara Hewitt, would appear to be a transvestite rather than a transgender from my research but I may be wrong. Not that it matters. She seems to have strange beliefs from what I can find about her. Thank God she is a member of the Tory Party!!
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As if this isn’t weird enough she loves Mrs Thatcher which exposes the reality of Blairism.
The following is from her website. I have highlighted grammar and spelling mistakes pedantically because this person makes much of her university education; although I have not yet discovered the subject of her degree (if she achieved one) but it was not in English.
“I think its [should be it’s] only fair that I set out exactly what Baroness Thatcher did for us whilst she was Prime Minister:
1. Changed the economy from one focusing on mines and dangerous industry that lead [should be led] to thousands dying and generations destined for the same career as their parents to the high end technology, financial and service sectors we have today.
2. Defended the Falklands saving British territory and the lives of all the residents on the Islands
3. Through transforming the British economy she kept us as a world leader in terms of both political and economic influence and kept us from becoming a bankrupt nation like Greece and Spain.
4. Supported Transparency in Government and ensuring local government meetings were held in public
5. Allowed people to get a step on the housing ladder and independence from state handouts [should be hand-outs] thorough[should be through] her introduction of the right to buy scheme
6. She supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality
7. She helped legalise abortion in the UK
8. She Supported [should be lower case s] academic excellence in education
9. Credited as one of the main figures that helped lead to the end of the cold war
10. She was the first leader to seriously discuss immigration caps and looking at the impact of immigration on communities
11. She lowered excessive income taxes leading to growth and a more progressive tax system [I think she means regressive] one we would recognise today
12. Ended the grip trade unions had on the UK that had lead [should be led] to rubbish piling up on street corners and power cuts throughout the week.
13. She increased the UKs income during her time in office by over 23%
14. She strongly supported the health service with increases in health funding of over 31% during her time in office
15. Personal wealth in the UK increased by over 80%
16. More people than ever before began to own shares and businesses under Thatchers [should be Thatcher’s] Government
17. Majority of UK residents believe she is the most competent Prime Minister of the Last 30 years according to recent polls.
18. She was of course the first women Prime Minister and Leader of a Major Political party as well as being the first western female leading politician. This has lead [should be led] to her being an inspiration to many on how hard work and aspiration will help you get anywhere you want to go.”