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February 9, 2010 5:26 am PST

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	NIF fracas: Defending Israel or destorying democracy? ‘Savior’ of Tel Aviv, Goel Ratzon, accused of enslaving women Clinton: Iran, N. Korea pose gravest threats Report: Yishai moves to legalize Jewish ownership of East Jerusalem building Abbas reportedly agrees to indirect peace talks Costa Rica elects Jewish VP Israel’s high court frees pro-Palestinian activists on bail German Jewry’s top leader to step down Reassign Jerusalem reporter, N.Y. Times’ public editor says Britain logs record number of anti-Semitic incidents

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“If somebody is on the way to hell, you’ve got to love them to rescue them.“

hmm, say what?  is robertson promoting a works-based theology?  how many good things must i do to get into heaven?  how much bad stuff will send me to hell?  if i do a bunch of bad, can i make up for it with a bunch of good?

(ducks vid is hilarious, btw)

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/09/09 at 3:49 pm

Is he Ann Coulter’s husband? Amazing response video by the way!

Comment by Gabriel on 6/09/09 at 7:06 pm

Robertson is right in essence if not in particulars. Why is it bad psychology to comment on the glaringly obvious fact that same-sex attraction is overwhelmingly associated with coercion, abuse and imprinting at an impressionable and malleable age; and further that this imprinting is propagated to newer generations of vulnerable victims?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/09/09 at 7:49 pm

it’s not glaringly obvious until you do studies to find out what percent of homosexuals were abused/coerced and what percent were not.  we already know that there are some physiological signs like the ratio of finger lengths (2D:4D), and perhaps even penis length.

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/09/09 at 8:05 pm

Ben, the reason The Reverend Robertson is incorrect is because he’s not a psychiatrist, a doctor, a scientist, or even gay for that matter. Simply put, most gays have not suffered any kind of psychological or sexual abuse. Most gay people I have talked to have known they were different and attracted to the same sex from a very young age. Unfortunately the ultra-consevative, one-sided far right religious groups that like to dictate and dominate the lives of others have done a great job in manipulating the public to believe in those ‘particulars’ he spoke of. This isn’t about victimization, it’s about a natural occurrence. Many animals have been known to engage in homosexual behavior and even raise animals, together, left behind by their mothers. If that’s not natural, I don’t know what is.

Comment by Gabriel on 6/09/09 at 8:21 pm

Proton Soup
You tried the finger length thing on me once before and I responded at finger length there. I can’t find it this minute but what I would probably say is that as in so many junk-science contributions, the multiple fallacies occur at attributing cause-and-effect improperly, and confusing the scale or context of results to magnify subtle findings. On the bell curve of possibilities, finger length may well correlate faintly with such a vulnerability as I have described. But you would have to be saying not that gay people tend to have that ratio, but that people with that ratio tend to be gay which I find absurd. Studies on imprinting have been done, although you have to go beyond at least the Stonewall riots to before social and PC pressure to discourage them has been operative.

Gabriel
Being late and lazy I will follow your comment’s format. The day that a person of maturity and common sense and eclectic interests needs professional credentials and a degree to open his mouth will indeed be the Brave New World.

Simply put, abuse victims often become co-dependent and gay people who commit to the lifestyle don’t see it that way. I heard a panel discussion in which the point I made was brought up and a (celebrity) gay member of the panel immediately became defensive about his tender and loving introduction to gay life at the age of sixteen by an older mentor. True, it is not your typical sixteen year old who will get in that situation or stay in it, but without that experience his mind might have had a chance to jell differently. I mean, what the hell happened to Michael Jackson? Brilliant sensitive artist and all that, but did he have a typical lifestyle?

I almost understand what you say about attraction from a young age, since I have had opposite-sex attraction from a young age and it’s not something I ever had to work at. I can’t tell you what I would have done in ancient Greece under social encouragement and pressure to form gay relationships. All I can say is that for at least forty years there has been a relentless job in manipulating the public and especially educating the youngest kids to believe that any and all ‘alternative lifestyles’ are OK, whatever that means, and that the formative years are a time for sexual experimentation. They are trained to suspend judgment on what once would have (naturally) creeped them out.  I am just assuming that most of the gay people you speak to were adolescent or less within the past forty years.

The case with animals is similar. I don’t know where you get your ‘many animals’ information from (the finger-length’ guys?) but gay animal behavior in the natural wild is non-existent, and the parenting you mention is not mating. Aside from experiments in laboratories conditioning and imprinting pigeons or whatever to perform mating maneuvers with other pigeons of the same sex, same-sex mating behavior among animals occurs in only in unnatural situations such as farms and zoos. Other than that such moves always imply aggression and dominance rather than affectionate relationships, as in our prisons.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/10/09 at 2:57 am

ben, your thoughts and feelings are fascinating, but they are neither what can be classified as objective or science.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/t18t2213605303j7/
Paul L. Vasey1 Contact Information
(1)    Département d’anthropologie, Université de Montréal C. P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, H3C 3J7 Montréal, Québec, Canada

Received: 1 December 1993 Accepted: 5 January 1994
Abstract   Homosexual behavior is defined as genital contact, genital manipulation or both between same-sex individuals. Available data indicate that this behavior is phylogenetically widespread among the anthropoid primates, but totally absent among prosimians. The majority of the 33 species that demonstrate homosexual behavior do so rarefy, but for a substantial number (N =12) it appears to be a more common pattern under free-ranging conditions. I summarize data on homosexual behavior as it relates to form, living condition, age, sex, social organization, and ecological context, and discuss hormonal, demographic, and sociosexual theories for primate homosexual behavior. Among adult primates, the behavior is not the product of abnormal excesses or deficiencies in androgens. Prenatal excesses of androgens may have some effect on the expression of female homosexual behavior, but these effects might vary over the life span, and data are equivocal at present. Demographic processes that result in skewed sex ratios can favor the expression of homosexual behavior in a population, which causes intraspecific variation. I examine several sociosexual explanations, including (a) proceptivity enhancement, (b) receptivity reduction, (c) dominance assertion, (d) practice for heterosexual copulation, (e) tension regulation, (f) reconciliation, and (g) alliance formation. An evolutionary scenario highlights the transformations this behavior underwent during the evolution of the anthropoid primates. I suggest exaptation as a theoretical framework for interpreting homosexual behavior and conclude that future consideration of sexual selection among primates should address homosexual components of this process.

Key words homosexual behavior - sociosexual behavior - hormones - demography - exaptation

maybe you would prefer to think of the finger thing as a tendency towards masculinity or femininity.  i’ll see if i can dig up something more on it later.

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/10/09 at 3:23 am

Ben,

I will refrain from personal attacks and just get to the point.

While some members of the gay community may have been sexually abused by the same sex, so have some heterosexual people, yet they didn’t become attracted to the same sex. In fact, I would think that most people who are sexually abused would become anything but attracted to that particular sex.

Also, I think you are getting things mixed up. Just because there are more gay adolescents out of the closet now than before does not imply that they are simply gay because culturally people have become more accepting of the lifestyle. Instead, people are out because they are comfortable to be who they are. Being gay and experimenting sexually are different things. There are plenty of heterosexual adolescents who don’t have the least bit interest in experimenting with the same sex, no matter how open-minded.

The case with animals is not a fallacy and it’s not only observed in controlled settings. Many animals have been observed in the wild to mate with the opposite sex to reproduce but return to the same sex to engage in sexual activities, caressing, and even build a ‘home’ or nest together. Those observed in zoos can’t be compared with homosexuality in prisons. Simply because in many cases both sexes were present and a particular animal simply paired up with the same sex.

Jails on the other hand are segregated by gender and overtime create a sexually frustrating situation for prisoners in which they usually rape someone of the same sex simply because it’s an orifice they can find gratification from. Jails are better compared to the life of priests in the Catholic Church!

Comment by Gabriel on 6/10/09 at 9:03 am

here’s the Nature abstract on the finger length study:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6777/abs/404455a0.html
Nature 404, 455-456 (30 March 2000) | doi:10.1038/35006555

Finger-length ratios and sexual orientation

Terrance J. Williams1, Michelle E. Pepitone1, Scott E. Christensen1, Bradley M. Cooke1, Andrew D. Huberman1, Nicholas J. Breedlove1, Tessa J. Breedlove1, Cynthia L. Jordan1 & S. Marc Breedlove1
Top of page

Animal models have indicated that androgenic steroids acting before birth might influence the sexual orientation of adult humans. Here we examine the androgen-sensitive pattern of finger lengths1, and find evidence that homosexual women are exposed to more prenatal androgen than heterosexual women are; also, men with more than one older brother, who are more likely than first-born males to be homosexual in adulthood2, are exposed to more prenatal androgen than eldest sons. Prenatal androgens may therefore influence adult human sexual orientation in both sexes, and a mother’s body appears to ‘remember’ previously carried sons, altering the fetal development of subsequent sons and increasing the likelihood of homosexuality in adulthood.
Top of page

  1. Department of Psychology and Graduate Groups Neuroscience, Endocrinology, 3210 Tolman Hall, MC 1650, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720-1650, USA

Correspondence to: S. Marc Breedlove1 e-mail: Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

also, an interesting write up on it with some graphs:
http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/readings/homofinger/homo_finger.html

another interesting thing about this that i had forgotten about is the lower incidence of homosexuality in firstborn sons, and an increasing incidence of homosexuality in successive sons born to the same mother.  this may explain some of the importance placed on firstborn sons in chinese, jewish, and perhaps other cultures i’m not aware of.

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/10/09 at 8:35 pm

Gabriel
It is good that you refrain from personal attacks because none of us know each other except as a stream of electronic text. The only sad people who attack a stream of electrons in a personal way are those who can’t use the language to express themselves otherwise. If you ever see me doing so it is my amusement to trash such people on their own terms.

You are not disagreeing with me, as long as our terms of reference are clear. I did notsay ‘abuse’; I said “coercion, abuse and imprinting at an impressionable and malleable age”. Exploitation does not always involve pain. It most likely involves seduction, inflaming the victim with pornography and drugs and alchohol, offering intense and loving relationships to someone prone to self-doubt or naive, starved for regard and affection etc. These factors are no different from any exploitative relationship regardless of gender.

When you say that adolescents are simply confortable with who they are a la Adam Lambert, you are taking a short-cut to pre-empt the point. Adolescents don’t know who they are; that’s the point. They don’t have self-knowledge, they don’t have life experience, the judgment centers of their brain have not developed. That’s why they have so many mnore car accidents and even military screw-ups. Thoughtful observers have suggested raising the driving age. Alternatively, we can recognize that our society infantilizes adolescents. We should be utilizing the fact that we hit intellectual maturity before we hit physical, neurological and sexual maturity to instill values-based discipline and challenge before legal freedoms

I compare gay behavior to diabetes. there are a small number of primary Type 1 diabetics who just have something wrong with them. There are a larger number of Type 2 diabetics simply more vulnerable to metabolic stresses than most people. With all of that, most people are not diabetic even given the same stresses and challenges.

As far as your animal examples; again with the ‘many’. It is not many. The sexual activities as I have stated are in the nature of dominance/subordination. Caressing of itself and housekeeping does not imply a sexual realtiopnship. In my culture, men hug and kiss (women always do) not because of sexual attraction but because of the freedom they have to express affection in the absence of sexual attraction. It is not hard to tell the difference. However it is a big world. i will handle the exceptions in my reply to Proton Soup.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/10/09 at 11:37 pm

Proton Soup
I don’t know what you think you are proving by cutting and pasting scientific abstracts. If you knew how to read them you could tell they support my position. However since it is 3:43 AM where I live and I need to get to work by 8:00, let’s let you explain why you think they don’t, in your own words. What I think you are saying is that because there are so many sylllables and Latinate and Greek terms, these guys have it all figured out and have proven something I am not aware of. Not so, but what do YOU understand from the articles?

Just to follow up on what I promised Gabriel, it is this: If a specific exception of naturally occurring gay animal behavior is found and proven, then it would not be a clue or example for human nature or behavior. Animals do all kinds of stupid, brutish and bestial things. Animals commit what we would call theft, robbery, burglary, violent assault, rape, murder, cannibalism, bullying and intimidation, exploitation and subjugation; i.e counter-productive behavior and dysfunctional relationships. A lion mating with a new female will kill her cubs by other males. Need I go on? The list is endless.

Humans are undeniably physically animals. But we have the stuff to transcend that and exapt those traits in a positive manner. I often say that man is the crown of creation or the king of beasts. Our choice.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/10/09 at 11:58 pm

Ben, it is nice to see you type so many words, as i’m sure it impresses you.  but how about you actually back those words up with something substantive.  i could just as easily counter you by saying that with a substantial amount of cultural conditioning and perhaps thoughts of punitive measures, you could successfully repress the natural homosexual desires of these teenagers, or at least keep them from acting them.  i’m sure the iranians have had some success, but even they have to resort to the occasional public hangings to keep their official homosexual count to zero.

so what’s it going to be?  will you continue to pontificate and talk about how right you are?  or will you provide evidence to back up your claims?

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/11/09 at 12:21 am

Looking upon my words with the sole comment that there are many words is like a monkey commenting that Hamlet doesn’t taste as good as a banana. Everything I say is logical and consistent, although I can’t do all the work to connect the dots.

When I say that “Animals commit what we would call theft, robbery, burglary, violent assault, rape, murder, cannibalism, bullying and intimidation, exploitation and subjugation; i.e counter-productive behavior and dysfunctional relationships”, I am saying that from a purely technical standpoint those are all natural impulses and desires that I assume that you and Gabriel agree should not be indulged. In fact, the impulse to those things is a hundred times greater and more widespread than that to share sexual pleasure with one of the same sex.

But one needs a reason to suppress impulses, doesn’t one? From a religious standpoint (mine and Robertson’s) it implies that we as humans of animal physicality do not take what we call for good reason ‘lower creatures’ as examples; that the program of morality as defined the Bible is not only authoritative but as instructions from the Designer and Creator productive and more importantly achievable. Not on an external punitive basis (your Iran example) but on an internal basis. I am deliberately conducting the discussion without reference to ‘right-wing control-freaks’, unless you want to call God no more than a right-wing control freak which is an infantile argument. Someone like Robertson does not have that option, only to make sense of God’s instructions and God’s will.

Drat! Late again!

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/11/09 at 3:57 am

yes, Ben, as you again remind me, i am but a chimp/monkey.  but i am at peace with that, now, and have learned to accept it.

and yes, i believe that we need to suppress certain impulses.  some behaviours are simply self-destructive, and often extend to more than ones self.  but that’s not what i’m arguing for.  the argument is that some people are born with a higher tendency to certain impulses.  that is, they may be born or naturally develop to have a physical attraction to their own sex.  this is a separate issue from actually engaging in sexual acts with your own gender.  i’m not aware of anywhere in the Bible that God condemns or punishes people for having this temptation and not acting on it.

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/11/09 at 2:51 pm

But you are a genius at evading my core points and diverting the discussion to peripheral ones. You cut-and-pasted two scientific abstracts; I ask what do YOU think they said so I don’t have to waste my time chasing the ghost of your attention span.

This post is essentially about nature vs nurture. Even given both, Robertson and I are saying it is life experience that causes gay behavior (even among those very few animal groups advanced enough to have some kind of ‘culture’); the more so among those more physically vulnerable. And that this overwhelmingly more significant than such rare and subtle tendencies which can then rightly be considered near-random developmental (not genetic) defects; unfortunate but not anything to modify our definition of ‘functional’ about.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 6/12/09 at 2:48 am

we already know about nature vs. nurture.  a bunch of liberals a few decades back got this nifty idea that the only difference between boys and girls is the social conditioning placed on them from birth.  and so if you wanted to liberate women from the drudgery of housewifery and move them into the careers of men, it was sufficient only to have them play with trains instead of dolls, etc.  but it didn’t work.  girls still want to be girls, and boys still want to be boys, no matter how you raise them.  even if you take a boy that suffered a tragic circumcision accident and raise him as a girl, and dress him as a girl, tell him and everyone else he is a girl…  he will still figure out he his a boy and try to establish relationships with women when he gets older and actually end up committing suicide at a young age.

nuture is a part of it, and very important.  but basic instinctual desires are not something easily overcome without some serious brainwashing such as Scientology uses, and even there you get a seriously unbalance individual that goes on Oprah and completely freaks out in front of millions of people leaving no doubt that what he’s gone through to get to where he is has completely broken him as a human being.

Comment by Proton Soup on 6/12/09 at 11:37 am

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