Theory of Homosexuality

[sensenbender (imported)]

theories result only from tested postulates. One derives data from testing a postulate. A theory is derived only from replicable data that are the result of replicated tests of postulates that sustain the conclusion.

Ok, let's agree to disagree, or maybe compromise. If you remove the words 'only' from the above, I'll agree with you.

[sensenbender (imported)]

I have an urge to drag this thread kicking and screaming back on topic. So lets see if this will do it:

I’ve been visiting this site for about three weeks now and I’ve learned that you should prostrate yourself before the masters if you’re tempted to post anything that smacks of gratuitous erudition or unwarranted assertions. So I’ll preface these remarks by acknowledging that I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m making it up as I go along. So….

I sense or detect two sides to sexuality: One I call ‘Affectional’, as in hugging and kissing, and the other I call ‘Sexual’ as in fucking and sucking. Why give a subclass the name of the class? Because the two subclasses are often conflated (or should I say ‘confused’?) under the heading of ‘Sexual’. I was brought to this notion by the following Site introduced recently by Bobover3 (I think it was him – apologies to whomever it was if it wasn’t): www.g0ys.org

That site draws the important distinction between being, ‘homosexual’ and being ‘gay’. In other words, not everyone who is homosexual (i.e. ‘queer’) is also gay. ‘Gay’ as applied to homosexuality is a term coined in the 1920’s when the only guys thought to be homosexual were obviously so, as in swishy and effeminate. G0ys.org points out that there are lots of guys, an unknown percentage in fact, who like other guys but are not outwardly detectable as such - unless they’re seen kissing and holding hands, one supposes. Let me hasten to add that a certain amount of ‘masculine demeanor’ is a conscious or subconscious façade for both queers and straights, so who knows how many g0ys are gay under the surface. I should also add that while I place myself in the g0y category, I hold no animus toward gays. I love gay guys; I’m just not one of them. Having said that, I think some gay bashing is motivated to some extent by the conflation of ‘homosexual’ with ‘gay’. In other words, some queers don’t like having people assume that their sexual desire makes them effeminate (i.e. weak), and become irrational and enraged when they think they are being regarded as such. But I digress.

I found it particularly notable that g0ys.org disdains sodomy (i.e. butt fucking) as a sexual outlet for guys. G0ys.org seems to regard sodomy as insulting and disrespectful – or perhaps just ‘gay’. Hard to tell how much this attitude is derived from the dominant morality, or the bible, or whatnot, but it’s certainly true that in other species it is the submissive male who is mounted by the dominant one after losing a fight. So perhaps g0y.org likes to think that guys who love guys should do so in equality not in submission. I, for one, am highly simpatico with this attitude, although it overlooks the fact that anal intercourse is highly pleasurable for the ‘bottom’ as well as the ‘top’. I don’t know how it is for women, but the prostate is a powerful erogenous zone for me and having it directly stimulated by another guy’s cock is blissful to say the least. I must admit though that I slip more or less into ‘gay mode’ when I’m being fucked by another guy. And let me also point out the theme in ‘gay’ porn in which the guy who ‘loses the bet’ has to be the ‘bottom’.

Which brings me back to ‘affectional’ vs ‘sexual’. I put hugging and kissing in the affectional category, but I would also add, breast feeding, tousling of hair, butt slapping, piggy backing, roughhousing, feet rubbing, and all other forms of physical, and in some cases verbal, contact motivated by the affection of one human being for another. If a person says, “I love you” to another, does he mean he wants to have sex with them or just that he cares a great deal for that person? We all know that it feels uncomfortable saying the ‘L’ word when one only wants sex, so if it’s said, it probably means both, or just ‘caring’.

So what do I put in the ‘sexual’ category besides sucking and fucking? Sodomy, frottage, cunnilingus, felatio, masturbation in all its forms, both mutual and solo. In other words, anything associated with direct stimulation of the genitalia. So why isn’t affectionate foreplay in the sexual category? Because it isn’t a necessary precursor, that’s why. Sometimes it leads to sex, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s often done for its own sake. I know a male couple who have lived together as lovers for more than six months now and are very close and loving of one another, but have never had sex, not because they never will, but because they just haven’t got around to it yet and don’t need to have sex that badly, not with each other anyway. Their relationship, in other words, is based on mutual love and affection, not sex.

But when g0s.org seems to suggest that guy on guy sex is predominantly affectional, as opposed to sexual, I go off the farm a bit. Perhaps they would like to think that way, or would like to promote the understanding that it is not strictly sexual – not just so much aimless rutting and ‘getting off’ – not ‘promiscuous’, in other words. But face it guys, it is promiscuous. I live in San Francisco, and our ‘gay’ Mecca here is ‘The Castro’, i.e. the neighborhood adjacent to the Castro Movie Theater on Castro Street. ‘The Castro’ is promiscuous, period. It’s just one huge hookup palace. If you don’t believe me, spend some time there on a Friday or Saturday night.

So why is guy on guy sex, both g0y and gay, so promiscuous? Because affection between guys is disparaged in our society, and g0y.org very righteously, even stridently, makes this important point - this crucial case for our freedom to be ‘queer’ if we want to be. It seems somehow ‘rational’, if perverse, for a guy to want sex with another guy once in awhile, or always, but love? Affection? Eeww! Gross!

How many guys in the ‘straight’ world experience a fleeting sense of ‘togetherness’ or even intimacy with another guy, a little frisson of sensuality in his presence, but shut it down cold before it can rise the level of consciousness? Danger, Mr. Robinson! Danger! Danger!

So what’s the point of all this? The point is that we are starved of affection in our current social climate. Affection is discouraged if not prohibited everywhere that it might be perceived to be a precursor to sex, or motivated by sexual desire. Why for god’s sake?! Sex is how we reproduce, why is it regarded as so shameful? It is largely a myth that the American dynasty was founded by anti-sexual Puritans, but the myth prevails, even pervades, our dominant cultural morality.

Yours truly was vilified on this Site for an early post for merely suggesting that the affections of Catholic Priests for little boys might not have been quite the crime against humanity that it is made out to be, and no doubt some will be ruffled once again by my saying even this. Why? Kids are sexual, goddammit! What’s the problem?

Look, I don’t advocate ‘sexual’ interaction between adults and children, not at all. One of the reasons for this post is to attempt to draw some distinctions between sex and affection that might, hopefully one day, free us of some of these idiotic inhibitions about ‘sex’ when it is mostly just ‘affection’. I know that sex can be, and often is, coercive, even violent. I know that there are power imbalances between people in sexual situations, between men and women, and particularly between adults and children. I don’t screw kids, never have and never will.

But let’s lighten up a bit, Ok? At least on the kids themselves, for chrissake! I recently watched a film on DVD called ‘Hard Candy’, Ellen Page’s first major film, in which she played a teenage girl exacting revenge on a child molester. While she was torturing the guy and seemingly preparing to castrate him, he fell into a distraught reverie in which he told of being ten years old and having been caught in a neighbor’s bathroom with the neighbor’s younger daughter wriggling around, both of them naked, with the girl in top of him yelling ‘prune attack, prune attack!’, as in the pruny affect on the fingers of prolonged immersion in bath water. The mother, having heard this disturbance, walks in on them. She picks the girl up and puts her back in the tub, and then picks up the boy and takes him to the kitchen where she turns on the burners of the stove and holds him over them to burn his genitals, all the while whispering in his ears, “If you ever touch my daughter again, I will kill you!” Ten years old!

Now, this scene is portrayed in the movie as a ploy for sympathy on the part of the molester, but true or not (and what’s ‘true’ in a movie?), it was striking to me as a demonstration of the dominant cultural morality, then as now. So what if he was ‘playing around’ which he probably wasn’t, having been more the ‘victim’ than the ‘perp’; he’s not going to get her pregnant is he? He’s ten years old for chrissake! Even if he could, which is doubtful, she couldn’t! What’s the problem? It’s sex, that’s the problem. It’s dirty, nasty, brutish, sinful, awful, sex. And children are pure – and innocent! They don’t do sex!

But they do do affection, and I totally agree with g0y.org that it’s high time we started to make that distinction. Not all sex is affectional, and not all affection is sexual. Well, actually it is to some degree, including breast feeding, but it isn’t ‘dirty’, and it doesn’t cause pregnancy or VD or AIDS, or cause anybody to be condemned to hell for eternity, like sex does if you do it with the wrong person or in the wrong way. Affection is pure. It is innocent. And if guys feel affection for one another and show it, even publicly, we should leave them alone. If they want to ‘get a room’, they will. If they don’t we should let them be.

And the same quite frankly goes, in my humble opinion, for children. If they’re just being affectionate, or affectional in my terminology, let them be. I know, this is dicey. There’s a power imbalance between adults and children, and affection can turn to lust followed by seduction. I know there are adult/child sexual fantasies even on this site, especially on this site, and I don’t have a good answer here. Maybe affection should remain taboo between adults and children, but for just the children!? Children have poor judgment, undeveloped judgment I should say. Maybe we should keep them from each other when they reach fertility. But it just seems totally wrong to me that we should deny each other, and our children, affection simply because of the hair trigger boundary between affection and lust. ‘Better safe than sorry’, I suppose. But better safe than fully alive?! I wonder.

Comments?

[A-1 (imported)]

No.K. Why then did Gallileo drop his balls from the Tower of Pizza? I get 'Postulate' followed by 'Theory' in that case, but the data gathering came third. Don't know who duplicated his results later or whether anybody postulated that it only works from the leaning tower, but don't matter because the point is that the sequence of steps in the scientific method is not fixed.

Maybe in principle what you say is true.

However, you DO NOT have a theory until you gather data to support it. Are you getting your information about Science from a non-scientist type, are you going on personal experience and feelings, or are you just makking this up as you go along?

Maybe the word "postulate" should be "problem". Or, if you prefer, two or more postulates may be formulated into a "problem" that must be solved via gathering data.

The PROBLEM with Science and Scientists is that they constantly ask questions. They have PROBLEMS accepting those things that they do not understand. They as LOTS and LOTS of questions. The best scientists are those whose natural curiosity has not been criticized during their formative years.

This type of person can be VERY disconcerting to somebody who has ALL of the answers, like a Theologian for example, who expects people who do not understand to take their word for it. This is the absolute WORST way to teach anyone anything.

So, no, science DOES NOT have fixed steps, but it DOES have logical steps, and logic relies on standardized definitions. WE, my friend, are not agreeing upon the meaning of the word, theory. O.K.? (You can disagree, but please, no caustic WISECRACKS meant to belittle or PISS me off.) O.K.?

Now, for the post at hand THAT YOU NEED TO READ.

From "Genome" by Matt Ridley page 116. ISBN #0-06-019497-9 PUBLISHED IN 2000

...Let's get back to sex. Probably one of the most sensational, controversial and hotly disputed genetic discoveries was the announcement by Dean Hamer in 1993 that he had found a gene on the X chromosome that had a powerful influence on sexual orientation, or, as the media quickly called it, 'as Gay gene'. Hamer's study was one of several published about the same time all pointing towards the conclusion that homosexuality was 'biological' -- as opposed to being the consequence of cultural pressure or conscious choice. Some of his work was done by gay men themselves, such as the neuroscientist Simon LeVay of the Salk Institute, keen to establish in the public mind what they were convinced about in their own minds: that homosexuals were 'born that way'. They believed, with some justice, that prejudice would be less against a lifestyle that was not a deliberate 'choice' but an innate propensity. A genetic cause would also make homosexuality seem less less threatening to parents by making it clear that gay role models could not turn youths gay unless they had the propensity already. Indeed, conservative intolerance of homosexuality has recently taken to attacking the evidence for its genetic nature. 'We should be careful about accepting the claim that some are "born to be Gay", not just because it is untrue, but because it provides leverage to homosexual rights organizations,' wrote the Conservative Lady Young in the Daily Telegraph on 29 July 1998.

But however much some of the researchers may have desired a particular outcome, the studies are objective and sound. There is no room for doubt that homosexuality is highly heritable. In one study, for example, among fifty-four gay men who were fraternal twins, there were twelve whose twin was also gay; and among fifty-six gay men who were identical twins, there were twenty-nine whose twin was also gay. Since twins share the same environment, whether they are fraternal or identical, such a result implies that that a gene or genes accounts for about half of the tendency for a man to be gay. A dozen other studies came to a similar conclusion.

Intrigued, Dean Hamer decided to seek the genes that were involved. He and his colleagues interviewed 110 families with gay male members and noticed something unusual. Homosexuality seemed to run in the female line. If a man was gay, the most likely other member of the previous generation to be gay was not his father but his mother's brother.

That immediately suggested to Hamer that the gene might be on the X chromosome, the only set of nuclear genes a man inherits exclusively from his mother. By comparing a set of genetic markers between gay men and straight men in the families in his sample, he quickly found a candidate region in Xq28, the tip of the long arm of the chromosome. Gay men shared the same version of this marker seventy-five percent of the time; straight men shared a different version of the marker seventy-five percent of the time. Statistically, that ruled out coincidence with a ninety-nine percent confidence. Subsequent results reinforced the effect, and ruled out and connection between the same region and lesbian orientation...

Of course the implication is also that there could be environmental "triggers" and much research needs to be done to even state an intelligent "THEORY".

Even though the human genome project has been completed, there is much that is unknown and as such will be the subject of research for years to come because we have barely scratched the surface of genetic research.

Nevertheless, industry and people keep finding ways to make money from what little is known.

For us to go on the message board and pretend that we have all of the answers is preposterous.

As a side note, the last time I posted this information it was not long until the EA was crashed. So, if any of you perps who did it last time are reading this bear in mind that you cannot hide the truth forever.

That being said, sensenbender, you are ABSOLUTELY right about what society does to children to stymie and WARP their sexuality. We DO need to lighten up on children and realize like Freud did that ALL humans are sexual beings from birth. Abusing them in the name of "PROTECTION" from things sexual is hardly helping anything.

Putting teenagers on sexual predator lists IS a bit beyond the pale, unless they have physically assaulted another minor against their will and made a habit of it, not just a he-said, she-said thing.

[A-1 (imported)]

I'm not trying to persuade anyone of anything except that both science and religion depend on faith, that's all.

I remain UNCONVINCED of this. It is a RELIGIOUS DOGMA. Science is based on IDEAS and EMPIRICAL justification, NOT Ideal justification. (i.e. 'faith'). Ideas are NOT a form of faith whatsoever.

My friend, your mind has been bent by your religious training and it sticks out and is as visible as the PENIS on Bobover's and Dave's Avatars.

If you ever want to get anywhere with science you had better lose some of this smugness or better yet get rid of this misconception about what science and faith are entirely.

[sensenbender (imported)]

I remain UNCONVINCED of this. It is a RELIGIOUS DOGMA. Science is based on IDEAS and EMPIRICAL justification, NOT Ideal justification. (i.e. 'faith'). Ideas are NOT a form of faith whatsoever.

All Ideas are a form of faith. Otherwise we'd call them 'facts', not 'ideas'. The 'idea' that there is intelligent

life elsewhere in the universe than

on Earth is pure faith, and in no way a 'fact'.

My friend, your mind has been bent by your religious training and it sticks out and

is as visible as the PENIS on Bobover's and Dave's Avatars. While it is true that I was raised in a Protestant Christian household, and both my father and mother were ordained ministers, I bent myself away from religion in my teen years and didn't return to it until rece

ntly. I would call myself a lapsed (not 'reformed') atheist.

If you ever want to get anywhere with science you had better lose some of this smugness or better yet get rid of t

his misconception about what science and faith are entirely. Now just a minute, A-1, just who is being smug, I ask you. Your certitude, and Bobover3's and Paolo's and maybe Kristoff's, and Christopher Hitchens' I might ad, is the very essence of smugness.

I can prove the existence of God, whereas you can't disprove it simply because you can't prove a negative.

[sensenbender (imported)]

I apologize for inserting my responses in your text, but there's no other way.

Maybe in principle what you say is true.

However, you DO NOT have a theory until you gather data to support it.

So what are you gathering the data for before you have the theory that suggest the need for some data?

Are you getting your information about Science from a non-scientist type

(from Albert Einstein, for example, whose General Theory of Relativity was formulated almost entirely without data to support it, and from the Theory of Phlogiston, for example, which was ultimately disproved once adequate data became available)

, are you going on personal experience and feelings, or are you just mak

ing this up as you go along? Yes, as I said, I am/was 'speculating', or 'making this up as I go along' if that's the locution you prefer.

Maybe the word "postulate" should be "problem". Or, if you prefer, two or more postulates may be formulated into a "problem" that must be solved via gathering data.

I don't think the 'notion' that homosexuality might be the result of evolutionary pressures, which is the 'theory' I launched this thread with, could be called a postulate or a problem to be solved. It is a 'theory' that might or might not be supported by a suitable gathering of data.

The PROBLEM with Science and Scientists is that they constantly ask questions. They have PROBLEMS accepting those things that they do not understand. They as LOTS and LOTS of questions. The best scientists are those whose natural curiosity has not been criticized during their formative years.

Whereas MY natural curiosity is being criticised in my declining years!

This type of person can be VERY disconcerting to somebody who has ALL of the answers, like a Theologian for example, who expects people who do not understand to take their word for it. This is the absolute WORST way to teach anyone anything.

Interesting, though, that 'Theologian' and 'Theory' have the same roots.

So, no, science DOES NOT have fixed steps, but it DOES have logical steps, and logic relies on standardized definitions. WE, my friend, are not agreeing upon the meaning of the word, theory. O.K.? (You can disagree, but please, no caustic WISECRACKS meant to belittle or PISS me off.) O.K.?

I included a definition of 'theory' in a previous post that I can agree on, and I didn't make it up.

Now, for the post at hand THAT YOU NEED TO READ.

From "Genome" by Matt Ridley page 116. ISBN #0-06-019497-9 PUBLISHED IN 2000

Also worth reading is "Twins and Homosexuality - A Casebook" 1990 edited by Geoff Puterbaugh. The concordance of monozygotic twins for sexual orientation could be accounted for by nearly identical double fetuses influencing the mother's hormonal effects on the fetusus themselves in identical ways, whereas dizygotic twins might influence her hormonal effects on them in different ways. In other words, genes may not have much to do with it. It is interesting in your quoted reference that something 'implied', lead to a 'conclusion'.

Of course the implication is also that there could be environmental "triggers" and much research needs to be done to even state an intelligent "THEORY".

Even though the human genome project has been completed, there is much that is unknown and as such will be the subject of research for years to come because we have barely scratched the surface of genetic research.

Nevertheless, industry and people keep finding ways to make money from what little is known.

For us to go on the message board and pretend that we have all of the answers is preposterous.

I, for one, never claimed to have all the answers. I only proposed a reasonably plausible 'speculation' (is that better?) for an evolutionary cause of homosexuality.

That being said, sensenbender, you are ABSOLUTELY right about what society does to children to stymie and WARP their sexuality. We DO need to lighten up on children and realize like Freud did that ALL humans are sexual beings from birth. Abusing them in the name of "PROTECTION" from things sexual is hardly helping anything.

Putting teenagers on sexual predator lists IS a bit beyond the pale, unless they have physically assaulted another minor against their will and made a habit of it, not just a he-said, she-said thing.

[A-1 (imported)]

Also worth reading is "Twins and Homosexuality - A Casebook" 1990 edited by Geoff Puterbaugh. The concordance of monozygotic twins for sexual orientation could be accounted for by nearly identical double fetuses influencing the mother's hormonal effects on the fetusus themselves in identical ways, whereas dizygotic twins might influence her hormonal effects on them in different ways. In other words, genes may not have much to do with it. It is interesting in your quoted reference that something 'implied', lead to a 'conclusion'.

Regarding the statement implications lead some to conclusions, the one who wrote this is a science writer, not a scientist. However, you did read what I said about it, didn't you? You know, the last part that about 'intelligent theories'. (Of course, I realize that you harbor a different definition of the word theory.)

I have read somewhere about the hormone secretions of the mother in-utero being looked to as a clue to homosexuality. This would explain why the oldest of brothers in a family with the same biological parents seem to have less occurrence of homosexual preferences. This would explain why the chances increase. Keep in mind that this is not any sort of defect, just an occurrence. It may be structurally like erythroblastosis fetalis (http://womens-health.health-cares.net/e ... etalis.php)in which the mother's blood build antibodies to the blood of the fetus. Antibodies can cross the placental membrane but blood cells cannot. These antibodies cause an anemia that increases the probability of fetal fatality with each subsequent pregnancies when the mother is Rh- and father Rh+.

In a similar process the mother with each successive pregnancy builds a chemical trigger that triggers the gene that was mentioned. Some, of course could have high levels of the chemical trigger even with the first pregnancy.

I think what our discussion is missing is the tremendous number of things that go on in a person's life that cause things to happen. We have barely scratched the surface in looking into these mechanisms.

Most likely there is not one cause but a chain of events that have to happen that in involve both genetic propensities and environmental triggers that cause certain things to happen, and environmental triggers may also be physical and could have to do with imprinting of initial sexual experiences. Straight, homosexual and bisexual involve a preference for sexual activity and you know that preferences can also change as one ages, although I can say that while mine has not I see evidence that others do frequently.

We just DO NOT KNOW what causes people to have a preference for relationships and it will likely be a long, long time before we can understand this, let alone attempt to manipulate it from a scientific perspective.

Also, an ethical question about manipulating any human tendency revisits the same questions about eugenics. The main statement being "...just because science CAN do something does not mean that it SHOULD do it."

There is an outside chance that just as we read in the E.A. stories about people subjecting their sons and daughters to surgeries intended to curb their sexual behaviors that significant increases in knowledge in this area we are discussing could in the future bring parents to demand manipulation of sexual preference in their offspring.

That, sensenbender, is the price we pay for scientific knowledge.

[Paolo]

OK, you want smugness?

Here's smugness - some people are just homosexual.

That's life.

Nobody can prove why.

End of story.