Are people born homosexual ?

[Monkey1976]

Not entirely true…I think the argument goes; one might think that people imagine they’re more invincible when they take precautions like helmets/seat belts etc, so they MAY have more minor accidents…Reasons/motives are complicated, but the fact is, for this example, DEATHS are down.
I’ve been following this thread with interest as I wanted to know why people want to deny marriage to some loving couples. Now I know, but I can’t agree with you. There’s too much hate in the world…and people will love each other - with or without the approval of some some churches/mosques, whatever.
I love a man, whomsoever my neighbour loves is not my business ( unless it’s my man…)

Deaths are down, yes. But the fact of increased risky behavior remains. People like to take things right to the edge. If they’re handed something that makes them feel as though that edge is further out, then they will push further out.

Contraceptives were pushed on us with the rhetoric that they would only be used by married couples for the specific purpose of “regulating” the number of children. What have we gotten? Nearly 50 years of ever-more-virulent STDs, degradation and objectification of women (and men), abortion on demand because a child is seen as an inconvenience, and divorce is now seen as a normal and reasonable end of a marriage. QED.

 

[Monkey1976]

I’ll just take a guess, and correct me if I am wrong. But I think that your physician will treat you if you contract cancer, respiratory problems, or any of the myriad of other problems associated with cigarette smoking. He or she will advise you to quit smoking, but will not condemn you for becoming ill because you smoke. Instead, your doctor will have enough compassion and charity to treat, try to cure your disease, and try to make you as comfortable as possible… even if you continue to smoke.

Exactly what I said. He will treat the secondary diseases, but he will still work to correct the underlying behavior. This is exactly what we don’t do with homosexuality. We treat the associated secondary problem as though they were the primary disease, and then send the patients off while saying that the underlying cause as a normal, healthy thing.

 

[TimeEntrance]

Correct me, if I am wrong, but it seems that while the Church would be opposed to condom use within a marriage, that it would not be opposed to condom use otherwise? I am not saying that the Church does not oppose sexual activity outside of marriage. But in my reading of Benedict’s now famous statement, in his book, that he admitted that there are times when condom use has a higher moral standing than failure to use a condom.

I don’t know, epan. I had my view about this before Pope Benedict expressed that view. Just like I don’t need a specific, official Church teaching on IV drug use, to deduce that if you’re going to shoot up drugs, then do the least harm you can and try your best to use clean needles.

But yeah… I suspect Pope Benedict XVI has the same or similar opinion as me on this. So, I think you may be right.

Of course individuals are born homosexuals, who would choose to be hated and disinherited by their own families?

Questions like this attempt to sound more logical and express more absolute truth than they do.

But I have an answer for you. Pedophiles, gay men that seduce 16 year old boys, and men and uncles that sexually molest their own sons and nephews.

That question makes as much sense as this statement and question, “Of course individuals are born as heterosexual rapists, who would choose to be hated and disinherited by their own family?”

For one, not everyone is hated or disinherited by their family for being gay. I have a non-biological nephew that is gay. Two aunts on my mother side that are lesbian. A deceased brother of her’s that was gay. And another brother of her’s after his wife left him, he has moved into a romantic relationship with a man (his wife left before that and for none of those reasons, and not because he was a bad husband). None of them were or are hated or disinherited.

I have an uncle on the other side of my family that maintains as a young boy he was sexually molested by one of his older sisters along with one of his older brothers.

 

[epan]

Exactly what I said. He will treat the secondary diseases, but he will still work to correct the underlying behavior. This is exactly what we don’t do with homosexuality. We treat the associated secondary problem as though they were the primary disease, and then send the patients off while saying that the underlying cause as a normal, healthy thing.

Yes, but heterosexuals acquire STD’s, too. So, would you say then that heterosexual behavior is identical to homosexual behavior, in this context? I bring this up because homosexual behavior has been singled out as being inherently more dangerous in this thread. Yet, in the case of actual disease transmission, there is no difference, insofar as there is a patient with an STD. Whether it was acquired via opposite sex interaction, or via same sex interaction, makes no difference to the clinician, except as a diagnostic aid.

One issue in a clinical practice, is one of trust. The establishment a confidential therapeutic relationship can be undermined if the patient feels that the clinician is judgmental. In such cases, then important details about behavior and transmission may be withheld. One wants to know, for example, how many partners may have been infected by this person, for public health reasons.

While I think that it is the responsibility of a physician to inform the patient of the risk factors, there is also a fine line, when it comes to making moral assessments of behavior, when the goal is to provide healthcare.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Probably not. I don’t believe they are, anyway. I don’t recall actually being attracted to anyone as a toddler. Having said that, I’m neither a biologist nor a psychologist.

I’m a little sceptical about the work of John R. Diggs, especially when he uses terms like ‘gay bowel disease’, a term which is now obsolete. It’s no longer considered to be a professional medical term. Now days it’s just used by folk trying to make homosexuality look like a bloodbath. At any rate, you don’t exactly need to have the most analytical mind to see that what he says is more than a little propagandistic.

 

[aprilfloyd]

Because it is not just an issue of physical health, but also of moral health. Vaccination against STDs (just like spreading condoms against STDs) doesn’t solve the underlying moral problem. In fact, it leads to further moral degradation by plastering over ‘the wages of sin’.

??? What is the underlying moral problem you refer to?

 

[epan]

True, but this reasoning would allow spreading condoms in Africa as a response to HIV/AIDS. The Church has condemned this, however.

I believe that the Church opposes the use of condoms for the contraceptive effect, not for the prophylactic effect against disease. There is a difference.

 

[Monkey1976]

Probably not. I don’t believe they are, anyway. I don’t recall actually being attracted to anyone as a toddler. Having said that, I’m neither a biologist nor a psychologist.

I’m a little sceptical about the work of John R. Diggs, especially when he uses terms like ‘gay bowel disease’, a term which is now obsolete. It’s no longer considered to be a professional medical term. Now days it’s just used by folk trying to make homosexuality look like a bloodbath. At any rate, you don’t exactly need to have the most analytical mind to see that what he says is more than a little propagandistic.

Did you read the paper? Dr. Diggs notes that it was described and quotes from one of the papers describing it.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Did you read the paper? Dr. Diggs notes that it was described and quotes from one of the papers describing it.

It used to be a medical term in the 1970s, and was coined before the discovery of HIV. It’s now considered obsolete by most. In fact, a lot of the sources used by Dr. Diggs are actually very outdated. Having said that, I’m unsure as to when this paper was actually published, though I’m assuming it was fairly recently. I’ll can try and do a more in-depth scrutiny of the paper if you like, but it’s hard to be sure that you’re being told the truth regarding this subject, and I don’t see why you’d take my word for it anyway.

 

[buffalo]

It used to be a medical term in the 1970s, and was coined before the discovery of HIV. It’s now considered obsolete by most. In fact, a lot of the sources used by Dr. Diggs are actually very outdated. Having said that, I’m unsure as to when this paper was actually published, though I’m assuming it was fairly recently. I’ll can try and do a more in-depth scrutiny of the paper if you like, but it’s hard to be sure that you’re being told the truth regarding this subject, and I don’t see why you’d take my word for it anyway.

Did you miss post #53?

 

[epan]

Did you miss post #53?

As the Manual for Colorectal Surgery points out, it is too vague to be very useful in diagnosis and treatment. Many of the symptoms are also not restricted to gay men.

The term “gay bowel syndrome” is considered obsolete and derogatory. The McGraw-Hill Manual of Colorectal Surgery says:

Coined in the pre-HIV era, the term "gay bowel syndrome" comprised a rather unselective potpourri of unusual anorectal and GI symptoms experienced by homosexual males... with better understanding of the underlying causes, this term is outdated: the derogatory terminology should be abandoned and more specific entities and terms recognized and used.[5]

A 1997 article in the Journal of Homosexuality concluded:

It is apparent that Gay Bowel Syndrome is an essentialized category of difference that is neither gay-specific, confined to the bowel, nor a syndrome. The use and diagnosis of Gay Bowel Syndrome must be abandoned.[6]

The term “gay bowel syndrome” was withdrawn as “outdated” by the Canadian Association of Gastroenterologists in 2004,[7] and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control described the term as informal and no longer in use in 2005.[8] The gay activist and author Michael Scarce criticized the concept of “gay bowel syndrome” in his book Smearing the Queer: Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men (1999), saying that “gay bowel syndrome has been, and remains today, a powerful tool for the specific surveillance, regulation, definition, medicalization, identification, and fragmentation of gay men’s bodies.”[9] Scarce’s work has been cited in the Journal of the American Medical Association with a positive review.[10] The term does however remain in use in the fifth edition of the Australian textbook “John Murtagh’s General Practice”, considered the “bible” of General Practice/Family Medicine in that country - page 459.

1. Kaiser, Andreas (2008). McGraw-Hill Manual of Colorectal Surgery. pp. 205. ISBN 0-07-159070-6.
2. Scarce M (1997). “Harbinger of plague: a bad case of gay bowel syndrome”. J Homosex. 34 (2): 1–35. PMID 9328857.
3. Garbo, Jon (December 21, 2004). ““Gay Bowel Syndrome” struck from textbook”. Gmax.co.za. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
4. Lee, Ryan (April 8, 2005). “Activist fights ‘outdated’ medical phrase: Effort to debunk ‘gay bowel syndrome’ may face new challenge”. Washington Blade. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
5. Scarce, Michael (1999). Smearing the Queer: Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men. Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 1-56023-926-3.
6. Journal of the American Medical Association (2000). pp. 284

 

[buffalo]

As the Manual for Colorectal Surgery points out, it is too vague to be very useful in diagnosis and treatment. Many of the symptoms are also not restricted to gay men.

The term “gay bowel syndrome” is considered obsolete and derogatory. The McGraw-Hill Manual of Colorectal Surgery says:

Coined in the pre-HIV era, the term "gay bowel syndrome" comprised a rather unselective potpourri of unusual anorectal and GI symptoms experienced by homosexual males... with better understanding of the underlying causes, this term is outdated: the derogatory terminology should be abandoned and more specific entities and terms recognized and used.[5]

A 1997 article in the Journal of Homosexuality concluded:

It is apparent that Gay Bowel Syndrome is an essentialized category of difference that is neither gay-specific, confined to the bowel, nor a syndrome. The use and diagnosis of Gay Bowel Syndrome must be abandoned.[6]

The term “gay bowel syndrome” was withdrawn as “outdated” by the Canadian Association of Gastroenterologists in 2004,[7] and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control described the term as informal and no longer in use in 2005.[8] The gay activist and author Michael Scarce criticized the concept of “gay bowel syndrome” in his book Smearing the Queer: Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men (1999), saying that “gay bowel syndrome has been, and remains today, a powerful tool for the specific surveillance, regulation, definition, medicalization, identification, and fragmentation of gay men’s bodies.”[9] Scarce’s work has been cited in the Journal of the American Medical Association with a positive review.[10] The term does however remain in use in the fifth edition of the Australian textbook “John Murtagh’s General Practice”, considered the “bible” of General Practice/Family Medicine in that country - page 459.

1. Kaiser, Andreas (2008). McGraw-Hill Manual of Colorectal Surgery. pp. 205. ISBN 0-07-159070-6.
2. Scarce M (1997). “Harbinger of plague: a bad case of gay bowel syndrome”. J Homosex. 34 (2): 1–35. PMID 9328857.
3. Garbo, Jon (December 21, 2004). ““Gay Bowel Syndrome” struck from textbook”. Gmax.co.za. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
4. Lee, Ryan (April 8, 2005). “Activist fights ‘outdated’ medical phrase: Effort to debunk ‘gay bowel syndrome’ may face new challenge”. Washington Blade. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
5. Scarce, Michael (1999). Smearing the Queer: Medical Bias in the Health Care of Gay Men. Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 1-56023-926-3.
6. Journal of the American Medical Association (2000). pp. 284

In the end it doesn’t really make a difference what we call it now. As shown in your references political correctness had it struck down.

None of this invalidates the health issues and associated costs.

 

[epan]

In the end it doesn’t really make a difference what we call it now. As shown in your references political correctness had it struck down.

None of this invalidates the health issues and associated costs.

Sexual promiscuity inheres health risks. Anal sexual contact is quite risky for infectious disease transmission. That is well known.

But, as I have said before, I believe that patients of all sorts should be treated with respect. I see no place for using derogatory terms about patients. Surprisingly, one place that one does hear derogatory language about patients is from colorectal surgeons. My opinion is that it is no mystery whom many of their patients will be. Why did they choose that specialty, if they don’t like their patients?

The bottom line is that sexual behavior outside of a monogamous relationship is risky. The moral line for the Church is that all sexual behavior should be in the framework of procreative intent.

 

[rsf3612]

There is no homosexual gene.

Watch this to see the causes - Dr Nicolosi

There is much more here.

Dr Nicolosi was a guest on Dr Phil’s show. You can ‘google’ Youtube to find it. I must say, I was not impressed with him.

 

[buffalo]

Sexual promiscuity inheres health risks. Anal sexual contact is quite risky for infectious disease transmission. That is well known.

But, as I have said before, I believe that patients of all sorts should be treated with respect. I see no place for using derogatory terms about patients. Surprisingly, one place that one does here derogatory language about patients is from colorectal surgeons. My opinion is that it is no mystery who many of their patients will be. Why did they choose that specialty, if they don’t like their patients?

The bottom line is that sexual behavior outside of a monogamous relationship is risky. The moral line for the Church is that all sexual behavior should be in the framework of procreative intent.

I was going to let this go and move on - but the word gay is ok when trying to talk gay up, but not allowed when dealing with medical negatives?

 

[buffalo]

Dr Nicolosi was a guest on Dr Phil’s show. You can ‘google’ Youtube to find it. I must say, I was not impressed with him.

I saw the episode. It is tough in that format. Watch the video and your impressions may change. In any case the content is most important not impressions.

 

[epan]

I was going to let this go and move on - but the word gay is ok when trying to talk gay up, but not allowed when dealing with medical negatives?

not sure what your point is. i didn’t use the word gay in that posting.

when i use the word gay, i mean homosexuals, in case you did not understand something.

 

[TimeEntrance]

I was going to let this go and move on - but the word gay is ok when trying to talk gay up, but not allowed when dealing with medical negatives?

I just watched some of that video interviewing Dr. Nicolosi after scrolling over post #94. It blew me away. It was like he was describing my (not anyone else) childhood life all into my late teens (and beyond). With a few exceptions.

While I was shorter and thinner than the majority of boys and girls, and consequently experienced some mild bullying from that, for some reasons I’ve always attracted some of the strongest males around me, and they’ve stood up for me. Grade school, high school, even in the Marine Corps. So, I never was tormented by bullies. Really, mostly just being friends with stronger males protected me from potential threats from other stronger males because they knew if they messed with me they would later have to deal with one of them.

I stopped watching in the video when he got to gender identity problems. But like I once (only once, it’s not something one discusses or divulges absent anonymity) told a woman in privacy, in her office, working at the VA Hospital. I’ve always had a problem figuring out my gender since almost as far as I can remember. In part due to as a very small child in stroller, I looked like a long, curly haired girl to most women and men.

The problems increased as I aged. For various reasons. But I still fought and searched internally. So, I’m at least pleased in myself that I struggled.

One of the things that used to irk me, and I’m not sure why mother treated my younger brothers differently in this regard, was her constantly walking in on me naked while I was a teenager. In my opinion fathers shouldn’t do that to their teenage daughters and mothers shouldn’t do that to their teenage sons. To this day I still have negative feelings whenever I think back on my mother asking me when I was a developing teenage boy if I’m gay and if I was having sex with one of my male relatives. Anything dealing with my masculinity she’s always been emotionally autistic too. I remember one of my male relatives asking me why my younger brothers can have girls in their rooms but I can’t?

Really it does not matter anyways. I had no girlfriend. No mother. No father. No American no no one to keep me fighting in my head or to figure out the travails of life. I did it on my own. I taught myself about life.

My father was too angry to teach me. And he came from a dysfunctional family anyways. I’m sure my mother had many of her own travails as well.

My mother has always been a feminist. So, that explains 99.99% of everything. As just about all of them subscribe to biological determinism and have little to no respect for the mind or emotions of a developing boy. Unless he is tall and strapping. They are the equivalent of everything they dislike in patriarchy.

Point being, they will not give much due to a male that internally struggles, or gets up off the figurative floor to fight, they think his genes make him, it’s arrogance that compels him in internal jihad, and that he should just lay down. He should be “who he was meant to be.”

 

[JillianRose]

I am a mother of two boys. I am close to them. I realize that little Boys need their Mommy’s. I also believe that ONLY a MAN can make a Man.

Hey, I nursed my boys, coddled them, let them sleep in our bed. I have kissed boo, boo’s, and hugged them when they cry. Thats what I am suppose to do.

At the end of the day, its my husband who tells them, soldier on.

I think mothers relationship, needs to be tailored as a child boy gets older.

My boys now 7 and 4 are weening, their mommy. They want to play guns with daddy, and batman, go to the arcade, pee on a tree, smell like cookies and dirt. They even like to shower with daddy and pretend to shave.

I have to learn to control my over emotional side, because honestly, boys are NOT wired that way.

I feel that people don’t choose to be gay. I feel it can be “conditioned”. With that “Theory” its hard to collect the data, because when you think about each child from the same family can have a different out take on their child hood.

As a mother I don’t want to accept there are things that only there father can do. Its part of life. THe minute the enter preschool it seemed to the first of the “leave and cleave” part of life. I do think moms need to get a grip and accept that MEN ARE VERY IMPORTANT. They are not the idiots that tv wants us to believe they are.

Ever since womens “lib” it seems we just have more angry women.

Love,
Jill

 

[Deo_Volente]

Grace & Peace!

Just as an interesting counter and gloss to JillianRose’s post, there’s a recent study which suggests that while there are certainly “nonarbitrary” differences between the sexes (which are largely biologically determined), when it comes to an examination of psychology, the differences between the sexes are minimal if not insignificant. The study provides substantial evidence against the sort of (commonplace) thinking which sees male and female as absolute categories with absolutely distinct psychological profiles, attributes and aptitudes. This is the study:

Carothers, B. J., & Reis, H. T. (2012, October 22). Men and Women Are From Earth: Examining the Latent Structure of Gender. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0030437

It can be found in PDF form here: psych.rochester.edu/people/reis_harry/assets/pdf/CarothersReis_2012.pdf

Here is the abstract:
Taxometric methods enable determination of whether the latent structure of a construct is dimensional or taxonic (nonarbitrary categories). Although sex as a biological category is taxonic, psychological gender differences have not been examined in this way. The taxometric methods of mean above minus below a cut, maximum eigenvalue, and latent mode were used to investigate whether gender is taxonic or dimensional. Behavioral measures of stereotyped hobbies and physiological characteristics (physical strength, anthropometric measurements) were examined for validation purposes, and were taxonic by sex. Psychological indicators included sexuality and mating (sexual attitudes and behaviors, mate selectivity, sociosexual orientation), interpersonal orientation (empathy, relational-interdependent self-construal), gender-related dispositions (masculinity, femininity, care orientation, unmitigated communion, fear of success, science inclination, Big Five personality), and intimacy (intimacy prototypes and stages, social provisions, intimacy with best friend). Constructs were with few exceptions dimensional, speaking to
Spence’s (1993) gender identity theory. Average differences between men and women are not under dispute, but the dimensionality of gender indicates that these differences are inappropriate for diagnosing gender-typical psychological variables on the basis of sex.

Here is the conclusion:
For some time, there has been a striking difference in the way that most scholars and the lay public conceptualize sex differences. Whereas most researchers, with a few noteworthy exceptions, have conceived of psychological sex differences as dimensional constructs, laypersons were more likely to view these differences as fundamentally taxonic. We conducted our analyses with the goal of making explicit the mathematical properties that follow from these distinctive positions and then testing their relevance for a diverse set of measures. In all instances the dimensional approach prevailed. At least with regard to the measures we examined, therefore, it can be concluded that they unambiguously represent exemplars of the same underlying attributes rather than qualitatively distinct categories of human characteristics.

The point, I suppose, is that there is no essential masculinity and no essential femininity. Views similar to Nicolosi’s which depend on the maintenance of an essential masculinity and femininity (and who develop therapies designed to recover these essentialist categories during the course of “reparation”) will more and more be found to be pseudo-scientific fraudsters at worst, superstitious witch doctors at best.

However, if masculinity and femininity are indeed dimensional and not taxonic as the paper suggests, that does seem to hint that sexual identity (much like the “self” in toto), is a socially constructed thing that is informed by biology, culture, etc. To what degree that identity (or the self more broadly) is a stable reflection of an underlying personhood, whether or not that identity can be intentionally deconstructed and whether or not such a deconstruction represents a positive good are perhaps related but more difficult questions to unravel than the thread topic will allow…

and does not simply

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!