Please pay attention, South Dakotans--what your hearts tell you is true: homosexuality is part of our natural variation as humans, and laws like Amendment C are as wrong as restricting which races are allowed to marry. It's time to stop just putting up with this kind of thing from those that refuse to face reality. This law hurts people and families that you know; it's not an abstract theological or philosophical issue, it's about facing the truth of our real-life experience and illuminated by science like this Canadian study.
Please plan to vote no on C and and be (gently but firmly) vocal about it. Amendemnt C is not in anyone's interest except those that are using it to rabble-rouse among those of us that haven't had the opportunity to see the hurt this Constitutional amendment would cause. I'm ashamed of my friends in the Republican Party of South Dakota for endorsing this immoral amendment.
We are all precious in God's sight.
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Curtis, it's actually a pretty bad study, but more importantly, you're missing the point. It is just as okay to be gay because you choose to be gay as being born gay. You aren't going to convince conservatives to drop their homophobia on the basis of nebulous and unconvincing studies, so stop trying. This is not a majic bullet bullet that will force religious conservatives to rethink their views. It doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteThis is America, and more importantly, west river, where people are supposed to be allowed live free of government interference. A government ban of gay marriage is against every libertarian ethic of the west, and the western Republican of yesteryear would be appalled the party has foolishly allowed southerners, with their intolerant religious doctrines, to infiltrate and capture the party. Yes, it allowed Republicans to take control of the congress, but at what cost?
So, stop running around saying "ooh, ooh its not gay peoples' fault" and start telling people that if they want to start meddling in other people's business maybe they should move to communist Russia
You and the Leftist media (conveniently) forgot to mention that the study admits that the results indicate 95% of men with older brothers are heterosexual. But of course, when we're desperate for them to, then 5% is the trend and 95% is the anomaly. :-)
ReplyDeleteAlso, only liberals would have the gall to call the moral immoral and the immoral moral. Why is that? Couldn't have anything to do with that "Godless" thing, could it?
Bob, it's okay to be godless, isn't it? Or to have a belief in "god" different from someone elses? No, history proves Mr. E and others like him as the kind of folk who've been fighting for centuries over their beliefs. Murdering in the name of god. Nice, Mr. E, nice. Creating division and discord in the name of god. Demanding that people believe the same as you or else. Nice. Since Mr. E doesn't trust science or and individual's right to choose, the I guess the only thing left for them to do is to run screaming to the government, distrusted by religionists for centuries, to change the map of equality as envisioned by the founders and turn it in their favor.
ReplyDeleteStudy or no study, there isn't one study created by science that Mr. E will believe in, unless, of course, it supports his own bigotry and hatred of gays. Well, if I'm to be called liberal, then all I have to rally America is history, and it's more than obvious to a growing number of Americans that religion ought to stay out of government. My morality says that people ought to be equal under the law. Mr. E says that he, alone, in concert with his mythologies, has the right to decide who gets what government benefit. It's the new world, Mr. E. America was invented to get away from your middle eastern death cultists and other like it. Wake up and join the rest of us in the appreciation of equality under the law, something with which you and others like you don't seem to agree. Equality for believers only is a tired old concept that died centuries ago and which tired old philosophers like Mr. E simply won't let go. For Mr. E, no logical argument will convince him. No scientific study will suffice. He will claim he was born Christian, instead of what we all know to be true, he was indoctrinated to believe in division and hatred. And he expects the rest of us to join his cabal in the Sunday Morning Re-education Camps or else. Sounds like Communism to me. Mr. E and Stalin would have been best friends.
Flawed or not, the reasons for people being gay has varied from strong mothers and weak fathers to loud disco music as the cause. Who cares!?!?! Being gay is normal, just not as common as heterosexuality. Maybe that's it, Mr. E, doesn't like being common.
Not everybody can have style. It's a curse, I know. There, there, just remember, in your next life, you can play with the angels in a golden city or you can choose to be fabulous. I like fabulous.
Let me start with borrowing from someone else on the web
ReplyDeleteFrom the LA Times:
In an analysis of 905 men and their siblings, Canadian psychologist Anthony Bogaert found no evidence that social interactions among family members played a role in determining whether a man was gay or straight.
The only significant factor was the number of times a mother had previously given birth to boys, according to the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The so-called fraternal birth order effect is small: Each older brother increases the chances by 33%. Assuming the base rate of homosexuality among men is 2%, it would take 11 older brothers to give the next son about a 50-50 chance of being gay.
As the commentator points out:
"The Times inexplicably neglects to point out that the 13th, 14th and 15th sons will have 67%, 88% and 118% chances of being gay, respectively. On a related note, your 16th son will have a 75% chance of being Bruce Vilanch."
The comment points out one of the essential problems with this studyWhat then is the genetic mechanism that favors gay babies with later births?
For example, I know a 15th son, and his 16th, 17th and 18th brothers, none of whom are gay. Or Bruce Vilanch.
Seems to defy the logic of the study.
The study claims that social factors have been ruled out. Given that each baby is genetically distinct from its siblings, with genetic material coming only from the parents, then one wouldn't expect birth order to matter unless that unexplained genetic mechanism, one that operates contrary to otherwise established rules of genetics, is at work.
According to the study, in a family of twelve boys, the last is more likely to be gay than the first.
If being gay is genetic, we might expect that families with twelve boys are more likely to have one gay son than families with only one son, but absent the unknown genetic mechanism, we would expect to see the gay sons scattered throughout the family. Birth order shouldn't affect which of the sons inherit the "gay" gene. The fact that being gay, according to the study, is based on birth order is an argument for NON-GENETIC FACTORS , and not the reverse.
That alone ought to be enough for you to question the study.
Yes, the study has been cited, and may even have been peer reviewed. That doesn't make it a good study though. You have to read these things more critically.
I've seen worse studies get published--An award winning law review article that failed to realize that matrilineal (tracing descent only through the mother) is not the same as matriarchal; the article made a fine political point, but sadly, little sense.
I could go on in some detail about the birth order study, but if you want more data, you can do the research yourself. I'm not going to because it isn't a terribly important issue.
And why do I say that? It's not just that I am tired of my fellow liberals hoping to decide this issue by an appeal to God, but that You're dealing with people who think the world was created 6,000 and who think they already know everything God wants us to do. You think an appeal to science (especially an appeal to bad science) is going to carry the day?
The genetics argument is from my view a bad argument, but more importantly, an irrelevent argument. This is America and you have the right to be gay as far as I'm concerned. Gays ought to have the right to get married, and not because God made them that way but because it is none of your business to stop them from doing so. You don't need multiple messages. It is time to stand up and say that it is a simple issue of fairness.
but that You're dealing with people who think the world was created 6,000 and who think they already know everything God wants us to do.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what I've been telling God. (Note the capital Y above.) He told me to lighten up (IMHO Jesus's REAL core message).
My message is not meant for the young-earthers, they are beyond my power to do anything about once they've reached voting age. :-)
Last night I found that my good friend Rev. Bruce Baum recently in a letter to the RCJ editor summed up my Christian response to the "gay marriage" amendment and what it's really about in terms of spiritual values:
ReplyDeleteCompassion, mercy, openness, love and grace for all people is the way of God.
Again, please urge your friends to vote no on this one.