Why Homosexuality is NOT Unnatural

[jordan179]

I have long heard the argument that homosexuality is "unnatural" and hence inherently inferior to heterosexuality.  And it is certainly true that, were all or even a great minority of humans homosexual, the ability of the human race to replace its numbers without extreme technological intervention would be at serious risk.  The argument then goes

Comments

[jordan179]

Most noticeably when you talk about animals and prison gays, random behaviors brought on by the environment versus the discrete lifestyle argued by the LGBT population that doesn't change at all.

If there was no homosexual desire as a common capability of human beings, then why would prisoners not instead take up masturbation, or even macrame. As for animals, in many species homosexual behavior is normal, as in most of the animals do it, save when actually mating with members of the opposite sex.

I'll be honest your entire evolutionary argument is so profoundly twisted and strange I can not understand how you came to this conclusion given how obtuse it is. Evolution is about passing on your DNA to the next generation. How does guaranteeing that certain offspring will never reproduce increase that likelihood. You are implicitly conceding the point to your opponents.

Evolution is about your genes successfully arranging that copies of the same genes exist in future generations. This may be through you successfully breeding, or through you ensuring that your relatives successfully breed. Evolution operates on the statistics, not on you as an individual.

Your talk about homosexual mammalian behavior is too anthropocentric. It's not about affection, it's about domination. It's violence that creates group cohesion by using rape as an attempt to assert power over other males. Comparing it to human sexuality is just really ignorant of basic animal behavior.

Depends on the species, the situation and the individuals. In pinnipeds, in particular, there is a lot of homosexual bonding which is affectionate in nature. You're assuming that what one animal species does in regard to sexuality and emotion, all do. This is not the case.

[benschachar_77]

"]If there was no homosexual desire as a common capability of human beings, then why would prisoners not instead take up masturbation, or even macrame. As for animals, in many species homosexual behavior is normal, as in most of the animals do it, save when actually mating with members of the opposite sex."

Again, it's about domination and asserting power over others. Anyone who says otherwise is anthropomorphizing.

"This may be through you successfully breeding, or through you ensuring that your relatives successfully breed. Evolution operates on the statistics, not on you as an individual."

Since when? Survival of the fittest, remember. And there you go implicitly condemning your own points by acknowledging two basic facts: that homosexuals don't breed leaving no way for their behavior to be passed down naturally, ergo unnatural and acknowledging that when heat comes around even the most homosexual species will suddenly find the opposite sex very interesting thereby utterly disproving the notion according to the modern understanding of homosexuality as a discrete lifestyle that never changes. You need to realize that there is a difference between homosexuality that people refer to in our culture (homosexual lifestyle) and homosexuality as you describe it (homosexual acts).

Also, how on earth are you doing italics?

[cutelildrow]

re: italics

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_formatting.asp

[gothelittle]

Is alcoholism a common capability of human beings? What about sociopathy? Are either of them "normal", desirable, and/or advantageous to human society?

I really do need more convincing than "it occurs in human behavior" to accept something as "normal", seeing as I do hold to the belief that human behavior is flawed and, at times, goes directly against preservation of self and/or society. We are not merely animals.

[benschachar_77]

An interesting thought. Homosexuality is far from desirable nowadays due to things like monogamy.

[gothelittle]

Indeed, the same can be said in reverse. In the society and subculture of homosexuality, monogamy is far from desirable, to the point where many gay publications and speakers have outright offered the 'open marriage' as the contribution that the homosexual community intends to perform its stated intent to 'benefit' and 'stabilize' marriage.

While there are some gay couples who attempt sexual monogamy and a few who more or less succeed, the subculture in general tends to redefine 'monogamy' as emotional.

[kitten_goddess]

Alcoholics and sociopaths harm others in ways too numerous to list here. Homosexuality between consenting adults harms no one, just like heterosexuality between consenting adults.

[gothelittle]

Alcoholics don't harm people if they don't drink too much alcohol at once, or if they restrict their binges to some weekend night at home.

Sociopaths don't harm people if they, well, don't harm people. Roughly 4% of the population (estimated) are sociopaths, and the majority of them aren't serial killers. They are simply people who have to live with lacking a certain part of their psyche that is considered normal, or, at least, normative, in the general population.

Homosexuals likewise cause no harm to others as long as they only have sex with each other. However, they only cause no harm to *each other* as long as they are 100% monogamous and do not engage in oral or anal intercourse.

Perhaps.

Studies done on the effects of vasopressin in males and oxytocin in females makes me wonder if there is a chemical aspect to the disturbingly high levels of physical abuse in male homosexual relationships and emotional abuse in female homosexual relationship.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for a ban on homosexual behavior. I don't believe in doing that. However, this isn't about whether I hate it, want to ban it, think it's evil, etc.

It's about whether it's *normal*.

The estimated percentage of genetic alcoholics in the U.S. and the estimated percentage of sociopaths in the general population are similar to the estimated population of homosexuals.

Is the word "normal" now determined by how harmful something is?