Homosexuality

[Voltaire]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi 'employment discrimination' is jargon, and masks poor thinking. I am trying to get at the heart of the matter, as to what constitutes such 'discrimination' and why the situation is so urgent that we must first deal with the discrimination before we understand a term like 'orientation'.

Discrimination in a denying a person certain opportunity (in this specific case, career opportunities) based on arbitrary factors. Who a person ****s is irrelevant when handing out employment, unless that jobs happens to be for a prostitute. So I don’t see the relevance of your question regarding ‘orientation’, what is there to get to the bottom of?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


You try to be too reasonable and moderate. This keeps you from going for the kill.

yessssssss . . . . . . .



I shall go work on my blood-thirsty, killer side now

[Flip McWho]

That's fine. We have no problem leaving them alone. However, you asked why we cared about this sort of thing, and I have tried to show you why.

Aye you have and thank you for that. However I don't quite believe the line we have no problem leaving them alone (not that I'm necessarily including you in the we bit here, generally I'll assume you do leave them alone except for instance in many threads like this one but its always lovely to have the opposite side presented and is one of the good things about this place and its not like you start a thread going off at gays afterall anyways)

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


'employment discrimination' is jargon, and masks poor thinking. I am trying to get at the heart of the matter, as to what constitutes such 'discrimination' and why the situation is so urgent that we must first deal with the discrimination before we understand a term like 'orientation'.

Jargon masks peoples thinking, and as such, is a very effective tool.

No, you're really simply trying to say that anti-gay discrimination isn't that important. Which is interesting, because there are already laws on statute books dealing with unfair dismissal, or discrimination- you're really saying 'why apply those standards to gay men and lesbians ?'

Perhaps because they're citizens/ratepayers/taxpayers/parents too....


Oh, love the bit about jargon 'masking' thinking. Can't tell if it's meant as irony though....

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Why the rush?

Are gays being beaten in the streets?

Are they denied education and representation?

Are they segregated and spat upon?

What is the pressing urgency behind this change, Mr. Fun?

as a social moderate (conservative on some social issues) I at the same time A. Sympathize with your question - whats the rush B. Wonder how fast a pace of change is a rush for you? Even slow change needs to happen at SOME deliberate speed. Perhaps this is a difference in Canadian and US perspectives - you are being presented with gay unions on a nationwide basis, IIUC. Here in the US only a few states are legalizing any form of gay union, and it is those opposed to change who are pushing to nationalize the issue.

From my POV, the current US approach is not only in keeping with federalism, but is the best way to approach a difficult social issue. There are many unknowns, of which the origin of homosexuality is only one. Another is whether there are actually any society negatives to gay unions, what effect they have on heterosexual marriage, whether gay "unions" or gay marriage have different effects, etc. To me using states as laboratories is the ideal way to gather some information on these questions, and see how general society adapts to these changes.

[Mercator]

I just read this 2 days ago... I thought it was interesting:

"Sexy" Smells Different for Gay, Straight Men, Study Says

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

May 10, 2005

A new study shows that gay men respond differently from straight men when exposed to a suspected sexual stimulus found in male sweat.

When homosexual men smelled the odor of male sweat—more specifically, a chemical in the male hormone testosterone—their brains responded similarly to those of women.

The findings suggest that brain activity and sexual orientation are linked. It also supports an opinion held by most scientists, that people are born—not bred—gay.

"This is one more line of evidence that there's a biological substring for sexual orientation," said Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Hamer is the author of The Science of Desire: The Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior. He was not involved in the research, which was conducted by scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

The study was published today in the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(...)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0510_050510_gayscent.html

[Az]

I am not convinced - find the gene for 'gay', and we'll talk. This just proves that the human nose can detect gender according to the smell of sweat.

[Solly]

I think it they used techniques to prove it was actually gayness that was able to be smelt.

I think gayness is a combination of poor genetics and the wrong conditions in the womb.

[Bill3000]

I wouldn't say that they are necessarily poor genetics (Actually, there really isn't such a thing. Genetics is completely neutral technically) since there actually is an advantage to homosexuality in natural selection.


Why? Altruism. A minor homosexual population means that there are adults that don't have to care for their own children; thus, they can care for other children and thus help the population survive and go to the next generation. Thus, it is actually an advantage for the community as a whole.

One more thing: While that article doesn't prove that homosexuality is genetic, it does prove that there is some biological basis for homosexuality. ...then again, there are biological basises for any type of personality trait. (You know, the term "disorder" really is a misnomer, as it's meant to be more of a description of a pattern of behavior that may or may not have positive/negative attributes which are only positive or negative when looking at the society at a whole.)

[Solly]

"A minor homosexual population means that there are adults that don't have to care for their own children; thus, they can care for other children and thus help the population survive and go to the next generation. Thus, it is actually an advantage for the community as a whole."

So wouldn't it be easier for them to be born infertile instead?

[Ben Kenobi]

as a social moderate (conservative on some social issues) I at the same time A. Sympathize with your question - whats the rush B. Wonder how fast a pace of change is a rush for you?

Well, the reading of preferences into the charter under section 15 happened in 1988.

So that was only 17 years ago.

Since then, they have gotten civil unions, recognition of civil unions as the functional equivilant of marriage, recognition of gay marriage through the courts, and now a bill in parliament.

Svend's bill to add hate crimes against gays to the criminal code got rammed through from a private member's bill to law a couple years ago.

In fact, not too long ago, they had a vote in the commons that passed with an overwhelming majority saying that they recognised the traditional definition of marriage. Most of these Liberals who voted yea there to support marriage are voting nay to change marriage.

So I ask again, what is the rush?

[Ben Kenobi]

Another is whether there are actually any society negatives to gay unions,

If a business is working, do you adopt the product sold by a vendor when you are unsure of what the negatives are?

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


If a business is working, do you adopt the product sold by a vendor when you are unsure of what the negatives are?

If you were to make an analogy that has a tenuous link to the subject matter...


Oh, wait. You are!

Carry on then.

[Ben Kenobi]

The point is this, Jag.

You buy the product because of the merits of the product, and how they can improve how you do business. The same is true here. The merits of gay marriage are not debated, only their lack of negatives.

[Senethro]

Apolyton is such a sausage-fest.