Homosexuality Will Cease to Exist Someday

[MrFun]

What is so funny? I think there was a Gallup poll not too long ago that indicates that 50 or 51 percent of Americans support gay marriage.

[MrFun]

If there was a pill to change me into becoming heterosexual, I would not want to take the pill. I'm happy the way I am.

[Kidlicious]

Who says I don't see homosexuals as equals? My argument is simply that if they could be straight, the majority of them would probably choose to do so. I expect fat people and communists to take this route. Please, continue.

Go away

[Elok]

What is so funny? I think there was a Gallup poll not too long ago that indicates that 50 or 51 percent of Americans support gay marriage.

Without wanting to sound like a downer, I bet the vast majority of Americans have nothing against Down's Syndrome either. Yet there's a lot less of that around than there used to be.

[C0ckney]

If it's overwhelming than surely you can quantify the effect

This just doesn't follow.

Guys, ignore Aeson. He's doing his usual retreat into absurdities and non sequiters. He does this every time he is conclusively refuted.

he has completely beaten you and you are running away.

although i suspected that you were just trolling at first, your craven display in the second half of the thread has made me doubt that...

[ricketyclik]

We don't know of any especially effective way to make straight people stop being homophobic. In the OP's hypothetical we do know a way to make gay people stop being gay (or more precisely, to prevent them from being being gay in the first place). So, yes, in that case it would be the solution.

This may have already been addressed, I'm only up to this post, but it's quite clear that the level of homophobia has dropped substantially in the last 40 years, at least in the Western world. So obviously there is an effective way to make straight people stop being homophobic.

I'm not sure what it is, but clearly there is one. A continual striving to achieve acceptance of one another as a society perhaps? Greater levels of education? A diversion of phobia onto Communists and then Muslims? And smokers?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Homosexuality causes harm to the rectum. And enough damage may force an adult to wear diapers.

Lesbians take note.

[ricketyclik]

Straight people are already getting less and less homophobic year after year.

Ah, already addressed I see.

[ricketyclik]

You have an incoherent notion of causation.

Wow. Just... Wow.

[ricketyclik]

Imagine the irony: we finally make everyone straight, and then everyone starts acting all prison-gay.

Re: OP, I suspect it would have a gradual effect--how gradual would depend on how much the test/procedure was promoted. But I imagine a larger number of people would make gay kids straight than the reverse. Result: next generation contains fewer gays, homosexuality is less familiar, larger number of people "straighten" their kids. Next generation is even straighter, gay culture struggles to be heard, and eventually it's whittled down to an all-straight population or something very similar.

Or at least half of people (the proportion who support gay marriage) don't even bother to check, let alone intervene.

[ricketyclik]

Yeah, easier was not the right choice of word. In any case, we have become increasingly more tolerant, as a whole.

(Except when it comes to Muslims and smokers).

[ricketyclik]

OK, I'm caught up now.

As a number of posters have alluded to, there's a theory that having a proportion of the population being gay is how we've evolved as a species

1. To moderate growth rate and the proportion of adults to children (as humans have an exceptionally long maturation period, as a proportion of their lifetimes) and

2. Civilizations, cities and specialisation seem to be inherent to humanity (built in, our form of optimising for our environment). Within that spectrum there are certain characteristics (and I know I'm generalising here) of gay men and women that are beneficial to our society as a whole.

How else would you explain the relatively high prevalence, both in humans and other mammals?

But hey, if it's that threatening to you go ahead and try to find a way to "wipe 'em out". Just realise that well over half of your contemporaries will hold you in contempt, and may in fact try to find ways to eliminate the "fearful, small-minded bigot" gene.

[Elok]

Or at least half of people (the proportion who support gay marriage) don't even bother to check, let alone intervene.

As I said, it depends on how it's promoted. If it's part of a standard battery of tests, including such things as eye color, hair color, and other irrelevancies, it could easily be done "just for our information." Even if it weren't, you'd see some folks taking an active part to find out in the child's ostensible best interests, so they can prepare the kid to accept him/herself, etc. Then, hey, what do you know? We can make the whole issue go away very cheaply and discreetly! As something of a freak myself (albeit in a very different way), I know there's a big difference between tolerance and actual acceptance. There's nothing wrong with being a weirdo, no. But if you can spare your child the pain and difficulty of being a weirdo, the argument goes...don't assume people will be enlightened when it's just them and the doctor and the walls of the clinic.

[ricketyclik]

Fair point Elok.

[Kidlicious]

God makes people how he wants them. What people see as an evil is not an evil. We are born to have to deal with things. I've always been different and I now know that that's a good thing. I thank God everyday that I'm different.