Homosexuality Will Cease to Exist Someday

[Kuciwalker]

You are clinging to an untenable action/inaction distinction.

[Aeson]

Hardly.

There are plenty of instances of straight people showing extreme consternation over the existence of gays. If they were gay, perhaps they would be happier. (mocking you, not my stance)

I have heard many gay people express wishes that the instances of unhappiness stop. I've heard very few who say they are glad for the instances of unhappiness. Moreover, if we really thought these instances of unhappiness lead (in the long run) to a happier life then we wouldn't want to end homophobia. Efforts to end homophobia would be bad because they would deny gay people the chance of earning a happy life through suffering!

I am not the one claiming that a specific instance increases or decreases overall suffering. That is so unknowable that I have taken the agnostic stance. You're the one reading a crystal ball to divine the unknowable to support your eugenics policy.

If the answer is unknowable then what's wrong with turning everyone straight? Do you think that the natural proportion of straight and gay people is likely to be more optimal than any other proportion?

The problem is that your whim or the whim of any given person (or even a government, democratic or not) should not be responsible for these choices in aggregate. The fact that you don't get this is actually rather scary. I hope you never have any real power to affect people's lives.

I would be ok with parents choosing if the technology existed, since their own happiness is certainly tied to the decision.

[Aeson]

You are clinging to an untenable action/inaction distinction.

No. In the absence of evidence to support a change from the norm, inaction is a perfectly reasonable response. One you are displaying here by not going out to prepare a manger full of gummy bears for the unicorn that would grant you 3 wishes if you were to do so.

[Kuciwalker]

The problem is that your whim or the whim of any given person (or even a government, democratic or not) should not be responsible for these choices in aggregate.

You are clinging to an untenable action/inaction distinction. To choose to leave the gay/straight proportion to its "natural" course is as much of a choice as any other gay/straight proportion, given the power to actually effect it. You cannot avoid having priors, so you cannot avoid having some estimate of the optimal proportion.

[Aeson]

These responses were, of course, entirely predictable. Post #10 sounds like various suggestions by homophobes that we ought to be mean to gay people because gayness is bad for them and it will convince them to convert. It sounds like those, but only an idiot would actually confuse it for one. Unfortunately, Apolyton has a lot of idiots and as I expected it brought them out of the woodwork.

You can't even understand the responses made to you. You thought I was responding to Drixnak's OP when I quoted your hypothetical. Pretending like you knew where this was going is just an absurd attempt by you to draw attention away from the fact that you are suggesting a eugenics program to eliminate homosexuality is a good thing.

[Aeson]

The problem is that your whim or the whim of any given person (or even a government, democratic or not) should not be responsible for these choices in aggregate.

You are clinging to an untenable action/inaction distinction. To choose to leave the gay/straight proportion to its "natural" course is as much of a choice as any other gay/straight proportion, given the power to actually effect it. You cannot avoid having priors, so you cannot avoid having some estimate of the optimal proportion.

No. I can leave things as they were. I have already stated my main concern with doing so, which was so "obvious" a response you have forgotten it already I guess, moron.

You are choosing inaction in regards to countless possibilities right now, and always will be so long as you're alive.

[Aeson]

Since you like hypotheticals, and seem convinced that homosexuality is a harm against the general welfare... how many people would you kill if by doing so you could rid the world of homosexuality? Quantify the harm done for us... you have your "evidence" to work with, so get that calculator out *****...

[Guynemer]

4/10

When did you become so generous?

[giblets]

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.

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

[giblets]

Also, if homosexuality is such a disadvantage, and if it is caused by genetics, why does it even exist?

[loinburger]

I was having this discussion with my brother a few days ago. Sickle-cell anemia is a major disadvantage, but if you only have a few of the genes for sickle-cell anemia then you're resistant to malaria, so sickle-cell anemia still exists because it's advantageous. So, if you're homosexual then odds are that you're not going to reproduce, but homosexuality still exists so there must be some advantage to being half-gay or whatever. Or as he put it, "maybe I'm half-gay and that's why I'm a good engineer."

[Al B. Sure!]

Nah I think the suspicion is gay uncles can assist in the child-rearing, giving families with 'gay' genes an advantage.

[Jon Miller]

There isn't real evidence that happens, and homosexuality exists in animals were such family structure does not exist at all.

I think evidence suggests that the genetic causes of homosexuality are a common mutation (since it has been seen in insects, birds, mammals, etc... and seems correlated in animal species with the level of pollution found in the environment).

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Also, if homosexuality is such a disadvantage, and if it is caused by genetics, why does it even exist?

There are so many things wrong with this logic it makes my head hurt. To start:

1) Unhappiness is only distantly related (if at all) to reproductive fitness.
2) Many things that are far worse disadvantages to reproductive fitness (e.g. Down's syndrome) continue to exist. The process of natural selection doesn't render every single creature physically ideal.

[Al B. Sure!]

Plus let's not act like gay guys can't and don't have biological children to pass on those genes.

What intrigues me is how prevalent was homosexuality in classical Greece? It seems to have been very prevalent, for more than you would expect in a given population, but why? In that case, many Greeks were probably gay for cultural reasons, not genetic.