Beyond the Vatican and Foucault

[superbbluewren]

My idea for a book arose from my experience as national spokesperson for the Christians4Equality campaign conducted by Australian Marriage Equality. I was disappointed with the level of support that we received from priests and ministers. There was too little time to make the contacts that needed to be made and too little time to build the

Comments

[leicesterstreet]

I'm not entirely convinced that your sexuality, in of itself somehow sets you a apart from heterosexuals. For instance, I don't think being gay for instance makes you a better dancer or something by default.

Well, I should say I haven't seen sufficient evidence to back such an assertion. If anything, homosexuals gravitate more towards the arts not necessarily because they are better at it, but because culturally they will be more accepted.

If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say being gay is like being left handed. It's an attribute that does not define you or shape your personality in any dramatic way.

But I could be wrong and I'd be open to seeing rigorous scientific that would demonstrate this.

[legolastn]

I agree to some extent if only because there couldn't be absolute differences given many people don't fit neatly into hetero/cis vs LGBT (that's part of the point, particularly of the B and the T). OTOH, well, if he's arguing that it's an interaction between nature and nurture then it wouldn't be "in and of itself" but rather there would be a range of possible outcomes (more or less different from the general population) given numerous interactive factors.

I'm also not sure your example of handedness is a good counterexample, since there is some evidence that at least some lefties are "wired differently" and that being a lefty does convey advantages in some situations. Even small advantages or differences can accumulate into differential outcomes, so I suppose it depends on your definition of "dramatic."

[superbbluewren]

Handedness is somewhat analogous. 'Sinister' derives from the Latin for left-handed, while the more positive 'dexterous' from the word for right-handed. I know left-handed people not much older than I am who were pressured, sometimes forced aggressively, to use their right hand.

There are two things here. There seems to be some evidence that our brains are, in general, wired differently but the same is probably true of left-handed people. I believe that there is some basis in the idea of 'two-spirit people' who are essentially different. However, the difference is not binary, gay vs straight (us and them). There are a range of outcomes based on possibly more than one gene as well as 'nurture' and wider cultural influences.

All of that remains to be substantiated.

I know men who are 'gayer' than I am in so many ways, and I also know straight men who are very similar to me. I think it is most likely multidimensional and complex.

[leicesterstreet]

At the end of the day what is the book setting out to prove, that LGBT are somehow unique or special in someway apart from their sexuality?

The thing with being gay is that as a rule, there is nothing binding you in a cultural sense to other gay people, in the same way as other minorities, say aborigines, african americans and so forth. These groups apart from sharing skin colour share many other traditions, language and other cultural things that bind them.

Gay people however are for all intensive purposes raised in isolation. There dominating culture is whatever they have been indoctrinated with by their parents, teachers and other authority figures.

This is why we are different as a minority. We are typically fragmented and really have nothing in common apart from the gender we like to have sex with/form relations with.

[superbbluewren]

At this point, I believe that there appear to be a collection of socially attributes associated with being gay. I am not setting out to 'prove' anything but my premise is that being gay is not the result of a genetic defect or a developmental disorder, but rather that there is an evolutionary in having same-sex attracted individuals in a population.

Our distinctive contribution to the world is also not entirely the result of insights due to being victims of discrimination or having the sense that we are different. My intuition is it not just who we are attracted to that makes us different.

I partly agree with you. Just because a person is gay does not mean that I want him as a friend or as a lover! In particular, we are not always nice to one another! There are myriad reasons for that.