Can We Be Open?

[Cress]

So as we were talking about in the world changing topic, I think that one of the best things about our world right now is the fact that we can have open discussions about touchy topics...
So here we go. I don't know if some of you will think this topic is innapropriate, but I think that if something makes people uncomfortable then it's something that needs to be discussed, addressed and people need to be educated about it.
Homosexuality. Thoughts. Feelings. Rant at me. Tell me it's a sin, but tell me why (and DON'T just tell me cause the Bible said so, cause I'm not buying it). Tell me why it's perfectly ok. Again, tell me why.


I'm fine with homosexuality. I'll get into my reasons later, I'm sure, I just want to let other people let their steam off first.
The one thing that REALLY bugs me is when people use gay as an insult. I can't stand it. For example when Ann Coulter called John Edwards a word that I really can't use here that means gay. I thought it was the most idiotic thing in the world. Because someone is gay does that mean there's something fundamentally wrong with them? If you're calling someone gay, does that mean they can't function, they're not as smart as you, or there are in some other way impaired? WHERE IS THE INSULT??!?!?!?!?!

Ok chillins...tell me about it.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

And be respectful, people. I don't want to have to use my mod powers on the first week I have them...

[Elder Math]

Homosexuality is just what it is. I feel it's kind of sad that we have to put labels up like that, even the label homosexuality causes a divide over things that are no more than physical likes.

First off, someone who cares more for their own sex than the opposite one is probably not going to think that differently from someone who is the other way. It's a view on one thing, and a view that is probably more decided in the subconcious of desires.

I know when I see a girl I consider "hot" walking down the street, the interaction in my mind is not a thought process. Thus it is only logical to assume then that it would be the same for people who are "gay". The see someone they find attractive, and the reaction happens.

In fact, I have read many things on the subject, and one theory seems to shine out to me the most. Anyone has the potential to at some point be "homosexual" due to the attractions that would cause such a connection being physical looks. In other words, guys probably get turned on all the time by guys, and the same is true for girls. It would be the body type that would cause such a reaction, and thus it might be an easier thing to happen than people assume.

[William]

I know I personally have never felt attracted to a guy in that way, and can't really imagine it at all, no matter how attractive the guy was.

Genetically speaking, guys have a Y chromosome, which girls don't. That probably means that their sexual orientation is more strongly fixed. It also makes us colour-blind a lot. I can't speak from personal experience, being male, but I've heard that girls are more likely to be attracted to both sexes to some extent. Again, probably because guys have the sex-determining chromosome. SCIENCE!

Speaking on a grand social scale, homosexuality is probably a good thing. It has potential to cut down on population growth before we really run out of room and resources. Unfortunately, we are mostly running into it in places where the growth is under control, in first world countries.

[Elder Math]

To make a more accurate description of what i'm talking about, lets go to japan. We won't stay there but it's a nice place to visit and see my point.

Asian cultures in general have a more ambiguous culture. In China, where your career was often decided at birth, many boys were forced into trans-gendered roles in the theater. They were of course made to look as feminine as possible with specific diets to lower their body fat, make-up, and clothing.

This was not a chosen role, but being placed in that role showed a very steady attraction to more masculine figures. They were astoundingly homosexual in number. Two theories exist for them, on one hand it's possible this is the absence of females coming into play(which is more likely an explanation of why their love was often recieved well.), or it's possible that their environment changed their perspective.

Now this is an extreme example of what i'm talking about. However, the psychiatrist did take transexuals into account in the study I read. He showed heterosexual males pictures of women and men, and documented if their was attraction. The men didn't realize they were looking at guys 80% of the time, and were attracted to "men" due to this. These men largely agreed that they would never be attracted to another man...again a society based reaction, as a good 70% of the men who could see being attracted to another man were not american.

Considering the low number of foreigners in his test allowed another percentage. The number of straight foreign men who agreed they could be attracted to another man. This was a very large number, 83%. Not all of them did, but were open to the possibility of it happen. Many who did say this even said they'd have to know him on a very personal level, and would then have to find him attractive in some way. It was highly unlikely in their minds but possible.

Finally, we can talk about Japan. Japan does have some very rare, very old, situations where some noble families would raise a family member as the opposite sex due to wanting the oppoesite sex as a child. These children again, were either bisexual in orientation, or homosexual. That isn't even the biggest point here though, alhtough a good point due to the fact that those who were raised this way did have a choice of either gender(It's mentioned they didn't in the example from China) and chose their own. The other thing that makes japan interesting is the general ambiguity present in both their physical looks and culture. The line on which women wear this, and men wear that has always been fuzzy, and their physical looks are harder to dismiss as one way. Their culture has a long history of very physical training in schools, they live off fish, and they eat alot of rice. All things that keep them very skinny. Women in japan have noticeably smaller breast a large amount of the time compared to women elsewhere, while men are skinny, lithe, and have smooth features. Facial hair is less prominent. Their society is incredibly accepting of homosexuals at this point, despite being one of the few cultures with a history disliking homosexuality.

Finally, it's the point of culture in the past. Some cultures in history were much more open, and not against homosexuality at all. Some of these cultures had long reigns of power and were very successful. Some people say christian's influenced by the aggresiveness of rome was what caused anti-homosexual writing to appear in the bible.

So in the end, I stand by my words. I too have never experienced physical attraction in a man, but I will not say it isn't possible just because it hasn't happened.

[mysss]

To William:

I do not understand your logic very well; you do not seem to have actual evidence. Doesn't your idea mean that men are likely to be attracted to men because they have an X chromosome?

I think I agree with Elder Math in that it is subconscious, though I do not have any experience with "gay" people. I agree with both Elder Math and Cress in that it is a relatively insignificant facet of someone's personality that shouldn't really affect how they are treated or how people feel about them.

[Dragon Writer]

i don't have any problemw ith homosexuality personally (i have a very close friend who turne dout to be be bi) Though i might be a bit repulsed if a guy started hitting on me, i have no problem whatsoever with those who are bi, homosexual, or streight....Truthfully, i don't know why everyone goes to such great lenghts to attach definitions, and reasons, to this...i mean, it's just physical attraction in this case...if people had no hormones, everyone would fall in love with everyone from EITHER gender, bassed on personality alone. (and in truth, most girls would most likely just date OTHER girls, rather then dealing with the infurities of trying to find a good guy) i'd like to think i'd manage to find a girl, anyways, but the basic point is that the whole thing is only as a big a deal as we turn it into.

[mythbusterfan]

my friend david is gay. *pokes yr* it's acutally not that bad to be hit on by a gay person, i just have to remind david to keep his hands to himself occasionally. =P but he's a fairly amazing person. he's a god at ddr, he was part of our juggling club. he's a cool kid. me and a few people joined him in a day of silence earlier this year at school.

[William]

I must've expressed that poorly. Rather, I mean that the Y is the gender determinative chromosome, and the presence of Y has a more profound effect than it's absence, therefore gender-specific traits are likely more deeply ingrained in males than females. The X chromosome on the other hand, is not gender determining(A certain disorder results in XXY males, and the Y makes the person male despite the double X), so though a male has an X chromosome the female trait genes are completely suppressed by the gender-determinative Y chromosome.

...Wow. Did I just write that? I barely understood it. It boils down to that girls are more likely to act like boys than boys are to act like girls, but it sounds more sexist when I write it like that. Soundly based in biology though (I think).

As to the Japan thing: I would suggest that if I can't tell that the guy I'm looking at is a girl, I'm not acting gay. Being attracted to a guy who looks like a girl is still a straight behavior. Also, while I'll admit that environment influences sexual orientation, I think genetic factors also play a part; particularly in situations less extreme than being raised as one of the opposite gender (shudder). On an off tangent, how did these gender-confused children have a choice?

On another note, while I have no problem with gays in general (one of my good friends is gay), some of them annoy me. Actually just one kid I knew in Jr. High. He acted really, really girly and intentionally spoke in a really bad falsetto. Really annoying. So yeah, I'd say it goes both ways; homosexuality shouldn't be a determining factor in how others treat you or in your self image, for the sake of my ears. (Really bad falsetto. Terrible.)

[Elder Math]

A really bad falsetto is annoying, and your thoughts are rather indepth...I really enjoy this conversation.

The gender-confused children had a choice in that they were not forced to like boys or girls. It is to say that society didn't even enforce them one way or the other....the example of the chinese actors even forced them away from same sex relations, because although they were forced to dress as women they were treated as men in all other respects and off stage....

The problem lies in their position in society...this is also revealed more in Japanese schools where some practices even have the guys dressing up as girls for a single day(Kind of a joke holiday).

The point is that looking and being physically attracted to someone isn't a gay OR straight behavior...your attracted to what you see physically. A smart person wouldn't even push that further until they met the person.

The big point here is that whereas you can be attracted to feminine features in a person, you are not actually attracted to females....it suggests that being "straight" is not a black and white issue, and neither is being "gay".

Yes, to be attracted to someone who is very feminine, whether they are a girl or not, can be determined a "straight" response, but that isn't the point of the study.

As for the chromosome thing, I do have to do more research, but it is very interesting...it also however paints a picture of these issues not being fully black and white...however it sounds like you could call homosexuality a chemical imbalance through this, and I'd never do that.

Anyway, I hope more will get involved in this conversation.

[Dragon Writer]

i understood what you wrote, though it seems to me that it's not so much that the y chromosone determines gender, and the x doesn't, as that the y chromosone is dominent....or it could simply be that it only requires the testosterone provided by one y gene in the womb, to create a male. either way, i'm not entirely sure about that theory...if you're trying to say guys are more likely not to be gay, i think the reason for that might be more of the fact that if a guy goes gay, there's no return...there's a good chance some homophobic creep will kill them, and they're social life will be ruined for all eternity...there's no coming back from it, so some guys are going to hide it even from themselves. if a girl is homosexual, it's still a big deal...but if they becomes streight again, all the guys are just going to be obsessed about how hot she was before. People are a bit sexist on the matter, i think...or i could be completely wrong. *doesn't know* i still have no problem with those who are gay, or bi though...while i only have one bi friend, there are various friends of the family who are gay as well.

[Elder Math]

Exactly YR...part of my point, although my point is twofold.

When Psychiatrist make the argument that technically everyone is "Bi" they are talking from the perspective of potential...there is nothing unhealthy about making a decision to be 'straight' or 'gay'.

It's that the mind has the potential to do either. Being attracted to a hot cross-dresser is cool in an open perspective, but to alot of people it's 'gay'. Although she(and I use that because it's probable what they want, and I respect those feelings)is probably thinking of herself as a woman, and that is all you are doing by looking, our society does not accept that.

It is not the black and white issue society wants to make it. Society likes black and white as it's simple, but a lot of things just aren't.

That is the second point. They go quite well together, and I think show the bias of our country on so many fronts.

[Kathy Li]

Originally posted by William:
I must've expressed that poorly. Rather, I mean that the Y is the gender determinative chromosome, and the presence of Y has a more profound effect than it's absence, therefore gender-specific traits are likely more deeply ingrained in males than females. The X chromosome on the other hand, is not gender determining (A certain disorder results in XXY males, and the Y makes the person male despite the double X), so though a male has an X chromosome the female trait genes are completely suppressed by the gender-determinative Y chromosome.

Errr.... no. Kinda the opposite. The Y chromosome is the smallest of the chromosomes. It has no banding. It shines like a little lightbulb on a karyotype, and for years it was thought to be clean of genetic information. It certainly carries less DNA and has far fewer markers than the X chromosome, which is a lot bigger. Ys have 58 million base pairs vs. an X's 153 million base pairs.

I always think that the Y is kind of like that little plastic keep-the-dust-out card they give you in electronic devices instead of a memory card.

Males are actually more susceptible to the genetic information carried on the X chromosome than women are--because they've only got the one [and if you stop and give it some logical thought, it means your mom had one vote more than your dad on who you are if you're male]. If we're talking simple Mendelian genetics, whatever is expressed on that single X chromosome is going to be in the phenotype, unlike in a female, where an X-chromosome gene can be recessive, because there's the possibility of a dominant "partner" overriding it (e.g., your classic "sex-linked" traits like colorblindness, hemophilia, etc).

It's also probably why the XYY link to violent tendencies was completely debunked ages ago.

[edited to update the "genetic info" proportions with numbers from Wikipedia. --kli]

[Frivs]

I have no problem whatsoever with homosexual people, and find it completely and totally horrible that some people in the world are trying to turn love into a bad thing. In a time where violence and war is abundant, why in the world are we glorifying battle and rallying against love? Doesn't make sense to me, and it never will.

[Sean L.]

Religion may be the blame for some of this.

At least 2 billion people are Christian, and the Bible is quoted as being against homosexuality.

In many of the Muslim countries, the act of homosexuality can be and is punished with the death penalty.

Ironically, a recent opinion poll poll revealed that people were more likely to vote for a homosexual than an atheist. However, this apparently doesn't translate to law, where same-sex marriage has been defeated in state legislatures quite a few times.