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I am an atheist and i'm not 'anti gay' per se........but....
I know gay people and i really don't have any issues with them. (except if they french kiss in public....then, i'm just grossed out quite honestly.....but i would simply look the other day......similar to a situation where two completely unattractive straight couple were to french kiss in public)
I do however believe that being gay is a genetic defect.....something off in the make up of their genes which 1. isn't a fault of their own and 2. that's simply (in my opinion) a defect similar to thousands and thousands of other defects our genes could have, that would result in birth defects, etc.)
NOTE: the above is not based on ANY scientific research i've done or any proof that i have for this. It is simply what makes sense to me when i 'try' to think about this logically. i could be wrong and i welcome evidence against my argument.
I am an atheist and i'm not 'anti gay' per se........but....
I know gay people and i really don't have any issues with them. (except if they french kiss in public....then, i'm just grossed out quite honestly.....but i would simply look the other day......similar to a situation where two completely unattractive straight couple were to french kiss in public)
I do however believe that being gay is a genetic defect.....something off in the make up of their genes which 1. isn't a fault of their own and 2. that's simply (in my opinion) a defect similar to thousands and thousands of other defects our genes could have, that would result in birth defects, etc.)
NOTE: the above is not based on ANY scientific research i've done or any proof that i have for this. It is simply what makes sense to me when i 'try' to think about this logically. i could be wrong and i welcome evidence against my argument.
yes. why is that hard to believe?
missing or underdeveloped limbs also appears in almost all other species...
just sayin'...
Never said whether or not it's hard to believe. I'm just noting that's it not specific to humans... much like culture, and self-awareness, and altruism, and mourning for the dead, and language, and tool use, and just about everything else we once thought was human-only.
I tend to think that it provides an evolutionary advantage like, for example, natural population control. If everyone in the population reproduced, we might have ended up with 7 billion people on this planet many thousands of years ago... of course, we're heading dangerously close to over-population now, if we aren't there already, but still... but this is only one of many hypotheses.
Here's a link to a search for scholarly articles on the issue.
Also, to be fair, we human beings owe our existence to an accumulation of genetic defects in a sense, because, after all, what is a mutation if not a genetic defect? The human genome really is a large chain of genetic defects that led to the split of hominids and chimpanzees about, I think, 8 million yeas ago or something like that. Not too mention all the different species of humans that have existed throughout time (Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenesis, Ardepithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus sediba, Australopithecus aethiopithecus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo georgicus, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis, and Homo sapiens sapiens [us]).
Last edited by NateHevens; 04-06-2012 at 10:47 AM..
I am an atheist and i'm not 'anti gay' per se........but....
I know gay people and i really don't have any issues with them. (except if they french kiss in public....then, i'm just grossed out quite honestly.....but i would simply look the other day......similar to a situation where two completely unattractive straight couple were to french kiss in public)
I do however believe that being gay is a genetic defect.....something off in the make up of their genes which 1. isn't a fault of their own and 2. that's simply (in my opinion) a defect similar to thousands and thousands of other defects our genes could have, that would result in birth defects, etc.)
NOTE: the above is not based on ANY scientific research i've done or any proof that i have for this. It is simply what makes sense to me when i 'try' to think about this logically. i could be wrong and i welcome evidence against my argument.
thanks.
It is no more a "defect" than being left-handed is. It is just a difference.
Never said whether or not it's hard to believe. I'm just noting that's it not specific to humans... much like culture, and self-awareness, and altruism, and mourning for the dead, and language, and tool use, and just about everything else we once thought was human-only.
I tend to think that it provides an evolutionary advantage like, for example, natural population control. If everyone in the population reproduced, we might have ended up with 7 billion people on this planet many thousands of years ago... of course, we're heading dangerously close to over-population now, if we aren't there already, but still... but this is only one of many hypotheses.
Here's a link to a search for scholarly articles on the issue.
Also, to be fair, we human beings owe our existence to an accumulation of genetic defects in a sense, because, after all, what is a mutation if not a genetic defect? The human genome really is a large chain of genetic defects that led to the split of hominids and chimpanzees about, I think, 8 million yeas ago or something like that. Not too mention all the different species of humans that have existed throughout time (Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenesis, Ardepithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus sediba, Australopithecus aethiopithecus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo georgicus, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis, and Homo sapiens sapiens [us]).
It is no more a "defect" than being left-handed is. It is just a difference.
i agree in that it is a 'variation from the norm' and that in a sense, can be labeled as a "defect".
remember, i'm not talking about whether being gay is right or wrong...because that would sound as crazy as saying having underdeveloped limbs, or being born with autism is wrong.
i agree in that it is a 'variation from the norm' and that in a sense, can be labeled as a "defect".
remember, i'm not talking about whether being gay is right or wrong...because that would sound as crazy as saying having underdeveloped limbs, or being born with autism is wrong.
Or being left-handed, or being a redhead, or having green eyes, or having abnormally pale skin, or having freckles...
For emotion's sake, I'd recommend using less emotionally-charged examples to make your point. Not because you're wrong (I wouldn't know, personally... it's not a matter I'm very interested in, to be honest), but because people are likely to become defensive because even though you aren't, it looks like you're saying that homosexuality is a mental disorder like autism (might be). Again, I know that's not what you're saying, but that is how some people will take it.
I am an atheist and i'm not 'anti gay' per se........but....
I know gay people and i really don't have any issues with them. (except if they french kiss in public....then, i'm just grossed out quite honestly.....but i would simply look the other day......similar to a situation where two completely unattractive straight couple were to french kiss in public)
I do however believe that being gay is a genetic defect.....something off in the make up of their genes which 1. isn't a fault of their own and 2. that's simply (in my opinion) a defect similar to thousands and thousands of other defects our genes could have, that would result in birth defects, etc.)
NOTE: the above is not based on ANY scientific research i've done or any proof that i have for this. It is simply what makes sense to me when i 'try' to think about this logically. i could be wrong and i welcome evidence against my argument.
thanks.
We know from recent brain scan studies that gay men and lesbians have differences in brain structure and functioning to heterosexual men and women. I would think that it would be a distinct advantage to have a percentage of the population able to think and perceive a little differently from the majority.
Brain scans have provided the most compelling evidence yet that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait.
The scans reveal that in gay people, key structures of the brain governing emotion, mood, anxiety and aggressiveness resemble those in straight people of the opposite sex.
The differences are likely to have been forged in the womb or in early infancy, says Ivanka Savic, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
"This is the most robust measure so far of cerebral differences between homosexual and heterosexual subjects," she says.
Previous studies have also shown differences in brain architecture and activity between gay and straight people, but most relied on people's responses to sexuality driven cues that could have been learned, such as rating the attractiveness of male or female faces.
Brain symmetry
To get round this, Savic and her colleague, Per Lindström, chose to measure brain parameters likely to have been fixed at birth.
"That was the whole point of the study, to show parameters that differ, but which couldn't be altered by learning or cognitive processes," says Savic.
"This study demonstrates that homosexuals of both sexes show strong cross-sex shifts in brain symmetry," says Qazi Rahman, a leading researcher on sexual orientation at Queen Mary college, University of London, UK.
"The connectivity differences reported in the amygdala are striking."
"Paradoxically, it's more informative to look at things that have no direct connection with sexual orientation, and that's where this study scores," says Simon LeVay, a prominent US author who in 1991 reported finding differences(pdf) in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus between straight and gay men.
Several studies report that the cognitive performance of gay males is more typical of heterosexual females than heterosexual males.
Furthermore, the brain waves of gay males while performing verbal and spatial tasks are more similar to heterosexual females than males or significantly different from both."
Relationships among childhood sex-atypical behavior, spatial ability, handedness, and sexual orientation in men. Cohen KM. Arch Sex Behav. (2002)
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