Threading the needle on LGBT issues

[Edward_H]

I think the terms that God decided to use to talk about His children are perfectly sufficient.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Do you oppose the use of the term “autistic” to describe a person?

 

[Edward_H]

Is autism a form of self-selected expression of one’s sexuality that can change if a person chooses a different form of expression later? I didn’t know that.

Does an autistic person get to say tomorrow that they’re really diabetic instead?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Is autism a form of self-selected expression of one’s sexuality that can change if a person chooses a different form of expression later? I didn’t know that.

Nope, it isn’t. Neither is bisexuality.

 

[Edward_H]

Yes it is. Bruce Jenner was hetero…then he changed.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Yes it is. Bruce Jenner was hetero…then he changed.

That’s like saying that, because a person can choose to say they hallucinate, all hallucinations are freely chosen.

 

[Edward_H]

Your responses no longer are substantial enough for me. They’ve turned downright ridiculous.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Awwww, you’re sweet.

 

[guanophore]

But saying that therefore bisexuals aren’t real is just a non-sequitir. We’re not talking about the moral nature of same sex acts. We’re talking about whether people can feel attraction to both genders.

I think he is reworking the term “bisexual” to refer only to sexual activity, not attractions. From that point of view, his posts make sense.

It is the reworked definition that makes no sense. It is like saying a person is not heterosexual unless they have had sex with a person of the opposite sex. This reveals a gross lack of comprehension about human sexuality, the vast majority of which is in the brain.

there can’t be any bisexual activity at all.

Your points are being lost because you are acquainting activity with attraction. Perhaps you need to do this for your own personal reasons, but it detracts from the discussion.

No one is saying that same sex sexual activity is licit.

True, but I think there may be a personal agenda for this attitude. If one equates activity with attraction, then one denies oneself the activity, one can also deny the attraction!

Chastity isn’t continence.

It certainly is a very good start, don’t you think?

So I guess it boils down to fine grain questions about how do you know you’re bisexual and whether there is (or was there ever) any nursing of attractions interiorly.

This is an illogical argument. One can easily see this when it is asked otherwise.

How do you know you are heterosexual? Was there ever any nursing of attractions interiorly? You see, attraction can be present whether one “nurses” it, or not. The difference is that heterosexual people never have to answer these kinds of questions, because they are in the majority, and certain assumptions are made.

Their attractions occur whether they “reinforce” them, or not, because it is natural for them to have them. The same situation is not afforded to persons that have different attractions just because they are considered “abnormal”.

What become attractions often begin with our nursing of upstream attractions.

Of course, but that is not what was stated, was it? You are interposing your “nursing” perspective as a way of invalidating that some people experience same sex attractions. You don’t seem to want to accept the Church’s teaching that this is not considered, in and of itself, a sin.

It’s also kind of weird that you are delving into OP’s sexuality a little too much.

That is the default setting for practicing psychologists, is it not?

the only winnners are the daft psychological counselors and the greedy pharmas.

At least you have had some benefit through it all!

 

[Dan123]

I love this idea that non heterosexual attractions have only existed for 5 years.

 

[Lea101]

One of the problems I’m seeing here is that people think it’s so awful to have any sort of labels to describe themselves.

If you identify as a child of God primarily, these labels aren’t so awful. I’m a woman, I’m of a certain race, I am straight and so on. These things affect my daily life and having these labels are not demonic or anything because I know what’s my primary identity. There’s really no need to freak out over ‘gay’ ‘bisexual’ etc as labels because it doesn’t necessarily mean you live your whole life completely and utterly fixated on that one label. So I don’t get why we freak out over LGBT catholics for using these terms when they made it clear that their hearts are set on God and chastity.

It is like saying a person is not heterosexual unless they have had sex with a person of the opposite sex. This reveals a gross lack of comprehension about human sexuality, the vast majority of which is in the brain.

Exactly. Not every behavior/attraction is conditioned. Straight people, for example, are such because of the biological need to procreate. As for those who are attracted to the same sex, it’s still unknown. Most psychologists would agree that it’s a mixture of nature and nurture. There’s no general explanation and we should not try to analyze someone’s sexuality when they didn’t ask for it (in this case, one is trying to analyze OP)

If one equates activity with attraction, then one denies oneself the activity, one can also deny the attraction!

This is an interesting point. I know a lot of Catholics mean well when they use ‘ssa’ but there’s definitely some that just don’t want to associate with the general LGBT community. Personally I don’t get it. I think it creates unnecessary division when we try to redefine words like that? It’s a losing battle. But if one would rather be referred to as one with ssa then obviously I’m not going to argue with it.

 

[guanophore]

There’s really no need to freak out over ‘gay’ ‘bisexual’ etc as labels because it doesn’t necessarily mean you live your whole life completely and utterly fixated on that one label.

This is certainly true for some people, but there is no denying that there is significant cultural pressure to do otherwise.

I am not convinced any of these “labels” are glorifying to God. But I don’t see anyone on this thread “freaking out”, either.

 

[Lea101]

Sure, but one doesn’t need to ask so many questions about one’s choice of word to describe themselves.

I am not convinced any of these “labels” are glorifying to God

But I wouldn’t say these labels are doing the opposite of glorifying unless you let them take over your primary identity (ie God’s kiddo). In a crowded room of men, I’m very aware that I’m a woman. Similarly, if I’m surrounded by white people, I’m very aware of my race. Basically we are very aware about our differences in such situations.

I imagine it’s pretty much the same (perhaps more intense) for the LGBT because the difference between them and the larger society (in this case, Catholicism) is salient enough. A bunch of them would be reminded of their sexuality when they meet someone attractive, when conversations about vocations are brought up, when they see couples and so on. So rebuking labels just seem like lip service to me because I’m sure there are people who would still be very aware about their differences in their heart.

 

[Thorolfr]

I don’t believe homosexuality is ordered toward human flourishing, in much the same way as blindness or autism isn’t ordered toward human flourishing. Homosexuality is associated with things like hormone imbalances in the womb and mental illness.

All the stuff about a hormone imbalance in the mother’s womb causing or contributing to homosexuality is just a theory like many other theories that try to explain homosexuality. If you read the article on “Prenatal hormones and sexual orientation” in Wikipedia, it talks about various researchers “postulating” this theory, but in many cases, the studies have not been replicated.

It reminds me off all the theories about depression being caused by a “neurotransmitter imbalance”. Not all that long ago, everything I read about depression mentioned the neurotransmitter imbalance theory. But a recent article I was reading from Harvard Medical School says that it’s becoming clear that something like depression is much more complicated than having too much or too little of certain neurotransmitters. Anything that has to do with the brain in particular cannot be reduced to a simple explanation. As the Harvard Medical School article points out, our various moods and perceptions are produced within a dynamic system in our brains by billions of chemical reactions. Even where our emotions come from is not yet well understood.

And there is no clear evidence that without the social stress that most LGBT people experience, they would still experience higher rates of mental illness than straight people just because of their sexual orientation alone.

 

[Thorolfr]

I think the development and shift and fine tuning of porn habits are further evidence that SEXUAL attractions follow the reinforcing principles proposed and developed by Skinner and follow-on students.

So, how did people turn out gay in a time when porn, especially gay porn, was not widely available and almost non-existent outside of big cities? Where did a young person who turned out gay but grew up in an isolated rural community without any contact with or hardly any knowledge of other gay people get any sort of reinforcement for their sexual attractions?

 

[joseie]

Let me step in forcefully.I have a simple question to ask to those who say that being gay,ssa etc.is a normal thing for certain people,it is not their fault and they should be encouraged and supported instead of trying to move them away from such traits.
If you have such sexual traits,why don’t you keep it with yourself,just like millions of other people of natural sexual traits who willingly abstain from sex by self control? Why do you want that your sexual needs be allowed to be done freely and unhindered ?But for your greed to enjoy this unnatural and prohibited(by God) sexual pleasure,you are quite OK and so don’t need any special consideration or sympathy.What is required is proper guidance(if it is not too late) and prayers.

 

[Lea101]

Nobody here is really saying that OP should act on her sexual desires…

 

[Edward_H]

Easy: The mis-use of imagination. Porn has just made it easier.

 

[Edward_H]

equating activity with attraction.

And they do co-occur far more frequently than they don’t. Not a perfection correspondence, but the statisticians would use P <.05.

The game here of creating a chasm between attraction and activity is just political game; it’s not an act of science.

 

[Edward_H]

Who gave us this idea…give us the quoted assertion.

The imagination has been misued used for thousands of years.