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United States News Title: Being a faggot is a choice 1. Just because an argument is politically strategic, does not make it true: A couple of years ago, the Human Rights Campaign, arguably the country’s most powerful lesbian and gay organization, responded to politician Herman Cain’s assertion that being gay is a choice. They asked their members to “Tell Herman Cain to get with the times! Being gay is not a choice!” They reasoned that Cain’s remarks were “dangerous.” Why? “Because implying that homosexuality is a choice gives unwarranted credence to roundly disproven practices such as ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapy. The risks associated with attempts to consciously change one’s sexual orientation include depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior.” Image The problem with such statements is that they infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire as a choice or social construction is playing into the hands of the enemy. In 2012, the extent to which gay biology had become a moral and political imperative came into full view when actress Cynthia Nixon, after commenting to a New York Times Magazine reporter that she “chose” to pursue a lesbian relationship after many years as a content heterosexual, was met with outrage by lesbian and gay activists. As one horrified gay male writer proclaimed, “[Nixon] just fell into a right-wing trap, willingly. …Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.” Under considerable pressure from lesbian and gay advocacy groups, Nixon recanted her statement a few weeks later, stating instead that she must have been born with bisexual potential. Yes, it’s true that straight people are more tolerant when they believe that lesbian and gay people have no choice in the matter. If homosexual desire is hardwired, then we cannot change it; we must live with this condition, and it would be unfair to judge us for that which we cannot change. By implication, if we could choose, of course we would choose to be heterosexual. Any sane person would choose heterosexuality (not so. see here). And when homophobic people come to the opposite conclusion—that homosexual desire is something we can choose—then they want to help us make the right choice, the heterosexual choice. And they are willing to offer this help in the form of violent shock therapy and other “conversion” techniques. In light of all this, I can absolutely understand why it feels much safer to believe that we are born this way, and then to circulate this idea like our lives depend on it (because, for some people, this truly is a matter of life and death). Indeed, most progressive straight people and most gay and bi people–including Lady Gaga herself–hold the conviction that our sexual orientation is innate. They have taken their lead from the mainstream gay and lesbian movement, which has powerfully advocated for this view. But the fact that the “born this way” hypothesis has resulted in greater political returns for gay and lesbian people doesn’t have anything to do with whether it is true. Maybe, as gay people, we want to get together and pretend it is true because it is politically strategic. That would be interesting. But still, it wouldn’t make the idea true. The science is wrong: People like to cite “the overwhelming scientific evidence” that sexual orientation is biological in nature. But show me a study that claims to have proven this, and I will show you a flawed research design. Let’s take one example: In 2000, a team of researchers at UC Berkeley conducted a study in which they found that lesbians were more likely than heterosexual women to have a “masculine” hand structure. Presumably, most men have a longer ring finger than index finger, whereas most women have the opposite (or they have index and ring fingers of the same length). Lesbians, according to this study, are more likely than straight women to have what we might call “male-pattern hands.” The researchers concluded that this finding supports their theory that lesbianism might be caused by a “fetal androgyn wash” in the womb—that is, when female fetuses are exposed to greater levels of a masculinizing hormone, it shows up later in the form of female masculinity: male-pattern hands and… attraction to women. But this study makes the same error that countless others have made: it does not properly distinguish between gender (whether one is masculine or feminine) and sexual orientation (heterosexuality or homosexuality). Simply put, the fact that a woman is “masculine” (itself a social construction) or has been introduced to greater levels of a male hormone need not have anything to do with whether she is attracted to women. We would only assume this if we had already accepted the heteronormative premise that masculine people (or men) are naturally attracted to femaleness and that normal (i.e., feminine) women are naturally attracted to men. Herein lies the bias. Many “masculine” women who are heterosexual (have you been to the rural South?) would like us to know that their gender does not line up with their sexual desire in any predictable way. And many very feminine lesbians would like us to know this too. The bottom line is that ideas about sexual desire are so bound up with misconceptions about gender and with the presumption that heterosexuality is nature’s default, that science has yet to approach this subject in an objective way. For a comprehensive examination of the flaws in the most widely cited research on sexual orientation, see Rebecca Jordan-Young’s brilliant book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Harvard University Press, 2011). 3. The science is wrong: An even greater problem with the science of sexual orientation is that it seeks to find the genetic causes of gayness, as if we all agree about what gayness is. To say that “being gay” is genetic is to engage in science that hinges on a very historically recent and specifically European-American understanding of what being gay means. In Ancient Greece, sex between elite men and adolescent boys was a common and normative cultural practice. According to historians Michel Foucault and Jonathan Ned Katz, these relationships were considered the most praise-worthy, substantive and Godly forms of love (whereas sex between a man and a woman was, for all intents and purposes, sex between a man and his slave). If men having frequent and sincere sex with one another is what we mean by “gay,” then do we really believe that something so fundamentally different was happening in the Ancient Athenian gene pool? Did some evolutionary occurrence enable Plato’s ancestors to get rid of all of those heterosexual genes? And what about native cultures in which all boys engage in homosexual rites of passage? Do we imagine that we could identify some genetic evidence of propensity to ingest sperm as part of a cultural initiation into manhood? What about all of the cultures around the globe in which male homosexual sex does not signal gayness except for under certain specific circumstances (e.g., you are only gay if you are the receptive sexual partner, or if you are feminine)? And while I am on this subject, what about the fact the United States is precisely one of those cultures? When young college women lick each other’s boobs at frat parties, or when young college men stick their fingers in each other’s butts while being hazed by their frat brothers, we don’t call this gay—we call this “girls gone wild” or “hazing.” My point here is that a lot of people engage in homosexual behavior, but somehow we talk about the genetic origins of homosexuality as if we are clear about who is gay and who is not, and as if it’s also clear that “gay genes” are possessed only by people who are culturally and politically gay (you know, the people who are seriously gay). This is a bit arbitrary, don’t you think? Just 150 years ago, scientists went searching for the physiological evidence that women were hysterical. Hysteria, by Victorian medical definition, meant that a woman’s uterus had become dislodged from its proper location and was floating around her body causing all sorts of trouble—like feminism, and other matters of grave concern. And guess what, they found the evidence, and they published books and articles to prove it. They also looked for and found the evidence that all people of African and Asian ancestry were intellectually and morally inferior to people of European Ancestry. Many books were published dedicated to establishing these obviously absurd and violent beliefs as legitimate and indisputable scientific facts. Similarly, the science of sexual orientation has a long and disturbing history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was believed that homosexuals had beady eyes, particularly angular facial structures, and “bad blood.” Today, we apparently have gender variant fingers and gay brains. Is it possible that people who identify themselves as “gay” in the United States (again, keep in mind that “gay” is a culturally and historically specific concept), share some common physiology? Perhaps. But even if this is so, do we really know why? Indeed, we may find (as Simon LeVay did) that men who identify as gay share a certain trait—a larger VIP SCN nucleus of the hypothalamus, for instance. But how do we know that this “enlargement” is a symptom or cause of their homosexuality, and not, say, a symptom or cause of their general propensity for bravery, creativity, or rebellion? In a homophobic culture, you need some bravery (and other awesome traits) to be queer. Perhaps these personality traits are what are actually being observed under the microscope. And, of course, there is the time-eternal question: why aren’t scientists looking for the genetic causes of heterosexuality? Or masturbation? Or interest in oral sex? The reason is that none of these sex acts currently violate social norms, at least not strongly enough to be perceived as sexual aberrations. But this was not always true. In the 19th century, scientists were interested in the biological origins of the “masturbation perversion.” They were interested because they believed it was pathological, and because they wanted to know whether it could be repaired. At the end of the day, what we can count on is that the science of sexual orientation will produce data that simply mirror the most crass and sexist gender binarisms circulating in the popular imagination. This research will report that women are innately more sexually fluid than men, capable of being turned-on by almost anything and everything (hmmm…. other than in Lisa Diamond’s research, where have I seen that idea before? Ah yes, heterosexual pornography.) It will report that men are sexually rigid, their desires impermeable. It will tell us that straight men simply cannot be aroused by men and that gay men are virtually hardwired to be repulsed by the thought of sex with women. Regardless of what else we might say about the soundness of these studies, what is evident to me is that they have been used to authorize many a straight man’s homophobia, and many a gay man’s misogyny. 4. Just because you have had homosexual or heterosexual feelings for as long as you can remember, does not mean you were born a homosexual or heterosexual. There are many things I have felt or done for as long as I can remember. I have always liked to argue. I have always loved drawing feet and shoes. I have always craved cheddar cheese. I have always felt a strong connection with happy, trashy pop music. These have been aspects of myself for as long as I can remember, and each represents a very strong impulse in me. But was I born with a desire to eat cheddar cheese or make drawings of feet? Are these desires that can be identified somewhere in my body, like on one of my genes? It would be hard to make these claims, because I could have been born and raised in China, let’s say, where cheddar cheese is basically non-existent and would not have been part of my life. And while I may have been born with some general artistic potential, surely our genetic material is not so specific as to determine that I would love to draw platform shoes. The point here is that what we desire in childhood is far more complex and multifaceted than the biological sciences can account for, and this goes for our sexual desires as well. Some basic raw material is in place (like a general potential for creativity), but the details—well, those are ours to discover. 5. Secretly, you already know that people’s sexual desires are shaped by their social and cultural context. Lots of adults worry that if we allow little boys to wear princess dresses and paint their nails with polish, they might later be more inclined to be gay. Even some liberal parents (including gay and lesbian parents) worry that if they introduce their child to “too much” in the way of queer material, this could be a way of “pushing” homosexuality on them. Similarly, many people worry that if young women are introduced to feminism in college, and if they become too angry or independent, they may just decide to be lesbians. But if we all really believed that sexual orientation was congenital—or present at birth—then no one would ever worry that social influences could have an effect on our sexual orientation. But I think that in reality, we all know that sexual desire is deeply subject to social, cultural, and historical forces. We know that if the world today were a different place, a place where homosexuality was culturally normative (like, say, Ancient Greece), we would see far more people embracing their homosexual desires. And if this were the case, it would have nothing to do with genetics. The concept of “sexual orientation” is itself less than 150 years old, and almost equally recent is the notion that people should partner based on romantic attraction. Most of what feels so natural and unchangeable about our desires—including the bodies and personalities we are attracted to—is conditioned by our respective cultures. The majority of straight American men, for instance, will tell you that they have a strong, visceral aversion to women with bushy armpit hair. But this aversion, no matter how deep it may now run in men’s psyches and no matter how nonnegotiable it may feel, is hardly genetic. Up until the last century, the entire world’s female population had armpit hair, and somehow, heterosexual sex survived. People like to use the failure of “gay conversion” therapies as evidence that homosexuality is innate. First of all, these conversions do not always fail; if you make someone feel disgusted enough by their desires, you can change their desires. Call it a tragedy of repression, or call it a religious awakening—regardless, the point is that we can and do change. For instance, in high school and early in college, my sexual desires were deeply bound up with sexism. I wanted to be a hot girl, and I wanted powerful men to desire me. I was as authentically heterosexual as any woman I knew. But later, several years into my exploration of feminist politics, what I once found desirable (heterosexuality and sexism) became utterly unappealing. I became critical of homophobia and sexism in ways that allowed these forces far less power to determine the shape of my desires. If this had not happened, no doubt I’d be married to a man. And if he wasn’t a complete asshole, I’d probably be happy enough. But instead, I was drawn to queerness for various political and emotional reasons, and from my vantage point today, I believe it to be one of the best desires I ever cultivated. [Does this mean that your daughter may decide to be a lesbian if she takes some women’s studies courses? Yes. Whatcha gonna do now?!] Perhaps most importantly, the fact that we might cultivate or “choose” something doesn’t mean that it is a trivial, temporary, or less a vital part of who we are. For instance, is religion a choice? Certainly it is if we define “choice” as anything that isn’t an immutable part of our physiology. But many religious people would feel profoundly misunderstood and offended if I suggested that their religious beliefs were a phase, an experiment, or a less significant part of who they are then, say, their hair color. Choices are complex. Choices run deep. And yes, choices are both constrained and fluid–just like our bodies. Post script: Ultimately, the terms set forward in the public debate about this subject–biology versus “choice”–are quite limited, mainly because “choice” is not the most useful term for describing all of the possibilities that sit apart from biology. Several social, cultural, and structural factors can shape our embodied desires and erotic possibilities. The fact that these factors are not physiological in origin does not mean that they aren’t coercive or subjectifying, resulting in a real or perceived condition of fixity or “no choice.” We know that social factors also become embodied over time. And yet, I remain somewhat committed to the concept of “choice”–or something like it–to describe the possibility of a critical and reflexive relationship to our sexual desires. Personally, the idea that I don’t have control over who or what I desire is a big turn-off to me, so I am constantly pushing back on what feel like the limits of my own desires. For instance, I went through a period of pushing myself to date femmes because I had some good reasons for being suspicious about why I had ruled them out from my dating pool. When it felt like I could never be nonmonogamous, I made it a goal to at least try. Then when I realized I only really felt attracted to alcoholic rebels, I nipped that in the bud too. Just when I thought I’d never think hairy men were hot, I allowed myself to face my attraction to Javier Bardem. When my tastes and proclivities start to feel like they are solidifying, I get suspicious and disappointed. So, in the interests of full disclosure, I am writing from the perspective of someone who finds sexual fixity pretty uninteresting, and who believes that there are really good feminist and queer reasons to take regular, critical inventory of the parts of our sexuality that we believe we cannot or will not change. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 91.
#2. To: no gnu taxes, misterwhite (#0)
There has always been a problem with this argument. If a homosexual can choose to be straight, then the obverse must also be true: heterosexuals can also choose a sodomy lifestyle and stick with it for a lifetime. This is, after all, what is expected if homosexuals do choose to live straight lives. So you think you could just as easily choose to be a homosexual as a heterosexual? When exactly did you choose to be a heterosexual instead of choosing to be a homo? This argument only works with people who already believe it. Not so different from the arguments the libs make to defend Teh Gays. They're all fundamentally bad arguments.
Yes they could. That is their choice. What's your point? So you think you could just as easily choose to be a homosexual as a heterosexual? When exactly did you choose to be a heterosexual instead of choosing to be a homo? People have sex with animals. People have sex in all weird kinds of ways. First, I chose to be heterosexual by nature. I chose to be a normal person because I know the difference between right and perversion. Basic anatomy doesn't suggest faggot sex is normal.
I don't believe you. I think you sexually imprinted on heterosexual patterns (as the vast majority do) and that everything you're saying is just a justification for you find "natural". So do you actually practice only vaginal sex? Or do you freely commit sodomy with a female (oral and anal) and still consider that to be "normal"? [I'll probably regret letting hondo know about it but it seems we can post MP4 video clips from Imgur here at LF. ... Oopsie, it seems we can post them and see them in Previews but they get filtered out when we actually Post.]
psychobabble What I do or don't do with my female wife is none of your damned business.
I take that as an admission that you practice sodomy with your wife. And you have even less excuse than a homo does to practice oral or anal sodomy when you have that vaginal alternative. If God hates sodomy, won't He hate men who use their wives for sodomy even more than He hates same-sex sodomites? After all, a hetero-sodomite like yourself is choosing sodomy when he has a legitimate natural alternative with sanctioned vaginal sex with his wife.
No such thing. The specific sin of Genesis 19 was forcible anal rape of a man by another man. This passage does not concern marital relations. Anal sex between a husband and wife, within the confines of marriage, in the spirit of mutual consent, cannot be definitively categorized as a sin.
How do you know that angels have anuses that can be raped? Do you think that angels, a separate and more purely spiritual creation than mankind, have anuses and genitals and so on? Perhaps they are "ill-equipped" for sex. Please explain.
Please explain. Angels had children with human women, creating the Nephilim (and their descendants, the Basques) so apparently they have the equipment...at least some of them. At Sodom the angels were desired, for rape, by the townsmen. Whether they could have consummated the act or not is not known.
You like to believe that these were angels but the bible never calls them angels. The bible has no problem using the word "angels" in any other passages, yet you wish to believe that "sons of God" = "angels" and for no sound reason. Because you enjoy your little pet theory that you are one of the few survivors of angels interbreeding with mankind to create the Basque and blah-blah-blah, self-aggrandizing insecure claptrap. I see no descriptions that includes the word "angels". I see "sons of God" and "daughters of men". I don't know what those are but I do know that the bible clearly designates angels in many other passages but it does not do so here. But who else was there in this small ancient world following the murder of Abel by Cain and Cain's subsequent departure from Eden with his family? Genesis 4:25-26: According to ancient Arabic myths, Cain had never bore any resemblance to Adam but Seth was the spitting image of Adam. After leaving Eden, Cain's clan lived in a rich valley, just east of Eden, the same valley where Cain slew Abel. Seth's clan lived on the mountain above where they had buried Adam. Seth and succeeding patriarchs forbade contact with the Cainites who were lovers of pleasure and singing and dancing and perversions. But toward the end of the reign of Seth's clan on the mountain, some of the young men of Seth's clan ignored the prohibition against intermingling (and intermarriage) and went down to the valley for some fun. Lots of fun. The Arab writers, Semites as were the Jews, routinely called the descendents of Seth "sons of God" as the mountain they dwelt on was supposedly so close to heaven they could hear the angels sing and even join in on the choruses. And Eve herself had claimed Seth as "another seed" raised by God to replace Abel, not like her other children. In the Targums, we find these renderings: Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days; and also, after the sons of the Great had gone in with the daughters of men, they bare to them: and these are they who are called men who are of the world, men of names. At any rate, your notions of the Nephalim are just a corny Catholic myth in contradiction with facts and scripture but that just happens to flatter your ancestry. Which we all know is sooooo important to you. After all, the rest of us are just mindless cattle compared to refined ancient noble breeds like yourself. But there are other problems with your alleged noble heritage of angelic paternity. According to a few ancient sources like the Targum of Onkelos and the Targum of Jonathan, the only angels on earth at this time were Schanchazai and Uziel, both fallen angels but still incapable of having any children as all angels are. But if you wish to make the Nephalim the children of angels, then you and your Nephalim kin are the children of fallen angels. Not so flattering. But let's move beyond that. Here in Genesis 6 starting in verse 5, God is declaring his displeasure with the wickedness of man (including the disobedient "sons of God" (sons of Seth who were intermingling with the descendants of Cain) and leading God to His decision to destroy man and beast and birds. Except for Noah. And who was Noah? A "son of God" who had remained true to God and thereby found favor with him. Noah did not marry any of the Cainite women, neither did his sons. They built the ark as commanded and then all of mankind was drowned in the Flood. No survivors who turned into the Basque. And there were no Nephalim stowaways on the ark. The bible says all were destroyed except those on the ark. All means all. Period. And poof goes your inflated ideas about your alleged ancient heritage, albeit one that would, if followed logically, make you a descendant of the first of the ancient fallen angels if we take your version literally. But no one would because it would make no sense. But if you don't believe that all were destroyed other than the eight righteous and obedient members of Noah's family, you are calling Genesis, your claimed favorite book in the Bible, a baldfaced lie. Which means your claims of "Nephalim" ancestry have to be bogus as well. Kinda self-defeating when you're trying to spruce up the family tree with some sparkling bible garland.
our claimed favorite book in the Bible, a baldfaced lie. Which means your claims of "Nephalim" ancestry have to be bogus as well. Kinda self-defeating when you're trying to spruce up the family tree with some sparkling bible garland. Except of course that the Bible tells us that they also were begotten by the angels again AFTER the flood, that the Anakim were their descendants, etc. You Christians - you, VxH - you all talk alike: abusive, nasty, arrogant. I have learned to detest Christians by the way that Christians speak to me here and elsewhere.
Which aircraft, exactly, did you sucker the American tax-payers into paying for you to qualify on, Comrade?
Are you a Christian?
I don't feel any need to classify my spiritual life with any particular semantic label for your convenience, Comrade. It is what it is, between me and the Architect of the Universe. Which aircraft are you expecting us to believe the Navy qualified you on?
I see, too important to be a mere Christian. Got it. Too Conservative and A K A Stone are one thing, and you are a very different thing, believe in a different God, one whose name you will not deign to mention. Does Jesus embarrass you?
#93. To: Vicomte13 (#91)
(Edited)
Nope. Which aircraft are you expecting us to believe the Navy qualified you on, Comrade?
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