For those who did not bother clicking on the links...

I don’t know what others are doing but I read your articles in their entirety... which is why I was able to say the first two were activism rather than impartial science.

That, BTW, also proves that the enviroment a person is raised in can contribute to a person's sexuality, as he was suggesting . Enviroment, however, is hardly the biggest factor

Yes, it’s the biggest factor. Dr Harren's findings in that regard have been confirmed by Dr Francis Collins head of the Human Genome Project that heritable characteristics account for predispositions not predeterminations. As far as homosexuality is concerned the heritability estimates are substantially lower than 38 per cent and likely to be some 20 per cent. Environmental factors particularly childhood experiences and the exercise of free will are more profound and play an 80 per cent role in determining male homosexuality.

An entertainer makes a song about his personal experience with curing himself and two other people "from the dreaded disease of homosexuality?" That's a more reliable source than thousands of doctor's arguments?

Well, it endorses the preponderance of respected scientific opinion.

Before you go on and speak about how I am contradicting myself, let me remind you that I've specifically said - and am fully aware of it - that history is rife with mistakes of majorities being wrong.

Not on moral issues. A majority could be factually wrong thinking that the earth is flat but the species can't be wrong that murder is immoral because the feeling is innate. If you mean that slavery was supported by a majority of world opinion I don’t believe anyone can take that seriously because it’s no more than a wild improbable supposition, unless you're referring again to your pet “local morality” theme. I'm suggesting that true morality is concerned with universal truths not local practices that defy them.

I am of a personal opinion, therefore, that if you're going to claim something, you have a mountain of data to back that claim.

Not sure I get your drift.

The next part of that mountain was also mentioned in the article: The discovery found by neuroscientist Simon LeVay, PhD of the difference in Hypothalamus and Anterior Commissure between gay and straight men and women.

LeVay’s ‘discoveries’ stand discredited so there’s little point in citing them - even less point in repeating them. I suggest you go back, read my reply and click the link to the article by Paul Billings and Jonathan Beckwith. Some of my links are on full stops so you have to look closely!

I have proven that I am capable of losing large amounts of weight.

Good luck!

another famous singer died in 1991 after hiding his sexuality for many years under the public eye - Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen. Until he revealed his sexuality,

He didn't have to reveal it over here - everyone already knew. The one we didn't know about was Les Mckeown of the Bay City Rollers but he was raped when he was young so he kept it quiet.

Your "blueprint" is not foolproof, in spite that no one, myself included, has found that crack or flaw to prove it so. If it was, don't you think it'd be more widely accepted by people?

Not many people know about it!

I did notice something just now: You didn't pull anything from the other post I put up immediately after the one you pulled most of my quotes from. Am I missing that?

I believe I’ve answered all of ‘em now.

km

Lea, Let's look at nature for a second Every species on the planet Earth, so far as I have been taught and know, reproduces either asexually (doesn't need a partner) or heterosexually (needing a member of the opposite sex to reproduce.) On the physical side, human beings are heterosexual: You're either born a man or a woman physically. (Yes, there's freaks of nature, people born with multiple or both kinds of organs, but they are rare and physically do not describe our species as a whole. No offense meant, BTW.)

What separates Humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we can have and do desire sex without the need for reproduction, and that, even though we can do it with someone and have no connection with them ever again, most people seek a connection beyond the physical and sexual. Because of how we are developed, even though we're born one way, we can desire something else - someone from the same gender, something animal, or something inanimate.

However, the part that hasn't changed, and probably won't, is how we reproduce: A male can not reproduce with a male, and a female can not reproduce with a female. From a physical standpoint, if you want kids, although there are scientific ways around this, it still boils down to the same thing: What is inside a man has to get inside of a woman.

In terms of being borne the way that we are, I know that a lot of it boils down to how we develop both inside the womb of our mothers and out in the real world afterwords, and that it boils down to how DNA is connected and shared. That said, if we were in a perfect world, or if we were more like animals, we wouldn't be having this debate because what we felt and thought would match what we have on the outside - in other words, a man would only have feelings for a woman, and vice versa. Since the one common thread with most species that have more than one gender, in terms of sex, is reproduction, that's where I wonder where the gay thing fits in. My question purely stands as scientific alone.

Sorry if I offended you by my remarks.

The language of these things is always problematic. I don't think it's possible to say that animals have sex because they want to reproduce. Reproduction is a consequence of having sex, but it's an entirely different thing to say that animals can foresee the consequences of the sex and therefore have sex with the intention of reproducing. Along those same lines I'll make a not very strenuous leap and say that the language of nature just simply is not relevant to human behavior, i. e. to ethical questions, in any general or comprehensive sense. Humans do intend, do plan, to conceive of a future that comes as a consequence of present choices. Another way of putting it, that km will no doubt reject absolutely: humans are unnatural by nature.

Yoyo, congrats on the kid.

In terms of the purpose of life, I view it from two different perspectives. In terms of the most basic scientific reasoning, we're here for two reasons: To survive and to reproduce. (Both of these could be considered one and the same, in many ways.) Philosophically, however, it's a whole new ball of wax, largely in part because we can not define it beyond our own perspectives.

Lea mentioned that asking about sexuality is like asking about eye or hair color: It is what it is. However, I can understand eye and hair color, in terms of purpose, better than I understand sexuality, mainly because of the whole reproduction part: We are the way we are to attract other people. We see that common fact among animals: dogs and cats have different colored hair because they want to attract something similar, birds have different feather colorings for this, etc. (Note that I am talking at the most basic level, BTW - there's a lot more to it than just that.) Attraction to the same gender as yourself, however, doesn't fit in on that basic level.

I know some people simply aren't meant to reproduce - for whatever reason, God or Nature decided to throw a wrench or two into those plans. My acceptance of this fact, however, does not deter my curiosity or desire for reasoning.

Awww, man, you beat me to a response!

I can agree with what you said: There are similarities in physical, social, and psychological areas between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were species that do have sex for more than reproduction. However, as far as I know, humans are the only species that have homosexuals.

Well, most of what we do is natural but man is unique in its ability to perform the unnatural. Breast-feeding of infants for example is natural among all primates but delivering all that bovine powdered rubbish to babies like some humans have started doing recently just for convenience needs to stop straight away because it's unnatural and harmful.

km

You now know however that unlike sexuality eye and hair colour are predetermined.

km

No offense taken. But I don't wonder where the "gay thing" fits in. Again, I'm being simplistic, but it simply is what it is.

I take absolute delight in the knowledge that a good number of animal species, other than ours, take absolute delight in copulation purely for the joy of it. Reproduction's probably overrated anyway, but my husband and I don't have kids, so what do I know?

An aside: I look forward to getting to know you better in a thread that's not The Thread that Wouldn't Die.

Then you haven't seen a couple of our male cats. Two of them go at it now and then with each other, and sometimes hop on another male or two. They were neutered when they were old enough as kittens. They are 9 YO now. They don't go after any females.

He's also ignoring one of the many links in one of the many responses in this thread, which shows same-sex sexuality across a number of species, and which I put up specifically to point out that the word "unnatural" as a way of defining what is and isn't ethical is an empty set. I'm not going to bother relinking cause there's no point.

edit to clarify the point of the link