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vincentML -> RE: What do the atheists get right? (5/18/2014 2:16:48 PM)
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That sounds more like a debate tactic than a scientific question. To me, it makes far more sense to evaluate evidence for/against a genetic link to homosexuality on its own merits, rather than by analogy to other sexual identities.
Biological models are commonly used for comparison in research. Not a debate tactic at all.
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With a definition that broad, is there any sexual activity that isn't a fetish?
For the sake of argument let's suppose not, okay? Should we not then consider homosexual activity on a par with transvestitism? And give cross-dressers the same political equality that gays seek?
btw: Psychologists and medical practitioners regard fetishism as normal variations of human sexuality[citation needed]. Even those orientations that are potential forms of fetishism are usually considered unobjectionable as long as all people involved feel comfortable. Only if the diagnostic criteria presented in detail below are met is the medical diagnosis of fetishism justified. The leading criterion is that a fetishist is ill only if he or she suffers from the condition, not simply because of the condition itself.
SOURCE
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That seems a bit too calculated to me. Admittedly, I haven't been hugely active in LGBT politics, but I've never participated in or read about a strategy meeting where folks said, "Yeah, let's tell them we were born this way. That's the ticket!"
A committee meeting is unnecessary for the formation of a political viewpoint:
The search for ‘gay genes’ goes back to 1993, when a US team led by Dr Dean Hamer described a region of DNA located on the X chromosome called Xq28. The region also goes by another name: GAY-1, a genetic marker linked to male homosexuality.
The discovery caused Hamer to be attacked from all sides. “Conservative, right-wing people hated it because they felt that it was saying that being gay is like being black, that it was in-born, that it would somehow ‘excuse’ gay people or give them more rights,” says Hamer. “On the other hand, gay people hated it too because, at that time, there were fears that the discovery would be misused to abort gay babies and wipe gay people off the face of the Earth.”
Although these fears remain, in recent years the search for ‘gay genes’ has become more accepted by the gay community, in no small part because a biological explanation would undermine arguments that being gay is a social or lifestyle choice. Conservative attitudes remain unchanged, however. “They continue to be vehemently opposed to any notion that homosexuality is something natural,” says Hamer.
SOURCE
You will find some research that supports biological factors in the article cited above.
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My hypothesis, rooted in my experience and that of queer folks I know, is that people were struck by the involuntary nature of their erotic focus and the absence of any experience of choosing that orientation.
Don't you suppose dominants, submissives, panty sniffers and shoe lickers have had similar experience? But no one is posing a basis for the origin of their orientations. Which brings me to pedophiles and other topics forbidden here. I do not suggest a comparison to gays. I only suggest that maybe they cannot help being who they are either.
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We are probably all of us bouncing about on a spectrum of sexual preferences and identities.
By "we," do you mean individuals or the species? I'd agree with the latter.
I mean variation within the species.
I hope my reply has come across in the friendly and uncritical manner I intended.[:)]
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