Curing Homosexuality?

[sixtyandaquarter]

God I'm angry because I wasn't here earlier to tear some of these posts apart and I'd rather not quote each and everything... as other people did.

If homosexuality was a cause for society's crumblings Rome and Greece would never have gotten off the ground.  Hell California would have sunk into the ocean by now if it was such an atrocious sin, I mean God turned Lott's town into a hell on Earth, so why not San Fransisco?

If homosexuality destroyed families and made it so everyone's gay then half of my friends should be gay, because they stayed with their lesbian aunts, or gay uncles, and the other half who ARE gay should be straight because they were the first (at least openly) gay person in their family.
Crap.  100% crap.

And you can "cure" homosexuality, like you can "cure" any ability to be, think, or express.  People are being brainwashed with nonsense and told how disgusting they and their kind are on a daily basis.
If anything that kind of bigotry and blind eyed staring is what'll lead to society crumbling.  Not Adam and Dave feeling just as much in love as Wendy and Lucy who feel just as much in love as Dick and Jane.

 

[Dissonance]

I have another point that I can make too.  Bear with me.  It's long, and it requires you to shove your emotions aside for a minute and think about things from an unbiased point of view - things you would, in regular everyday life, dismiss outright in an emotional burst.

Allow me to share with you something quite awesome - Homosexuality was formed to be taboo in our society due to theories of 'kinship' - in a general sense, the idea of "one man, one woman" and various other rules designed to restrict acts of 'love' came to be solely to service reproduction, back during a time when the family was a tightly knit economic unit with all members generating income from as early as 5 years of age and kids died all the time during childbirth or before they hit their teen years.  Keep in mind I am talking about pre-renaissance Europe.  We no longer live in such a society and we most likely won't revert back to it within our lifetimes, so such rules are completely unnecessary.

In fact!  Our current cultural Taboo concerning incest was formulated for the EXACT same reason. 

(Yes, I am going to discuss incest from an unbiased point of view.  If all you can do is immaturely scream EWWWW then you have nothing to add to the topic - do keep in mind I don't condone incest personally if the two people want to make an incested-baby but I am approaching it as logically as possible, putting my emotions that are screaming EWWWWW themselves aside for the moment.)

I mean yes, genetics have proven that when a brother and a sister make a child, the baby pops out retarded.  But before we knew that, why did the taboo exist?  Because it is 'naturally gross' to lust after a family member?  That is obviously not true - if we were biologically programmed to not lust after a family member we would have to instinctively know we were related on some level.  What about the two related people that simply have feelings for each other and do not feel the disgust our society has ingrained into the rest of us concerning the topic?  What about the two family members that don't know they are related somehow and end up dating?  If there truly was a failsafe against incest that was biological (natural) and not cultural (imposed on us but seems natural) the logistics of the act would not work.  The male would unable to maintain an erection, the woman would not naturally self lubricate, etc.  But that is obviously NOT the case.

My point here?  Taboos are imposed on people by society and they are so well disguised that people who actively perpetuate the taboos are fooled into thinking they are natural.  More and more people have wised up to the homosexuality taboos.  Not so many have actually thought logically about the topic of incest.  Seeing as they are both taboos that served the same purpose in a previous culture that we inherited (continue reproduction of the family unit while at the same time making the family unit dependent on outside factors) you can see how their status as something that is constructed but passes itself off as natural law is shared.

Logically, I can't find a way to justify making incest illegal, unless the production of children is involved due to undeniable scientific proof concerning gene recession and so forth.  But if it involves consenting persons and birth control... I could not morally tell them they are wrong in what they do.

So I've gone off topic a bit, but the point still relates - Homosexuality as unnatural, or incest as unnatural, is a cultural construction from an era of history that's long since passed.  We've inherited it, but we don't need it any longer.

Edit: 'kinship' is a theory of human interaction that were largely discussed I think in the 70's, and there are multiple essays on the topic.  The essays usually frame their discussions of kinship with a particular taboo, how our culture inherited it, why it used to exist, and why we must logically discard it.  Look up 'theories of kinship' for more details.

 

[Ellie]

Silver Wind, I'm just curious. If you found out your best friend was Lesbian / Gay, how would you react?

Would you have the same sort of "all gay's must be cured" attitude?

--

Anyway. At school, they ("they" being the homophobic peeps) have a saying: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". If this God dude did make everything, then he too made the very idea of same-sex relationships. If he didn't, and it was just a glitch in his oh-so-perfect system, then why didn't he just purge them at sight, smite their sinning behinds off the face of the Earth?

--

Anyway again, on-topic.

If by "cure" you mean "make people like the opposite sex", it may be possible. For example, if you... lock someone in a room with a naked woman, hundreds of porno mags, and her complete consent, I'm sure after a while he'd give in. But this isn't necessarily a cure, it's more... pursuading him to change his mind. It depends of course how you view "homosexuality". Is it a desire for men, or is it the actions, that decide whether someone is homosexual? Like pedophilia (only because it was in another topic here), is it wanting to screw children that makes you a pedophile, or is it the actual action of screwing children?

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

I'm sorry but I hate that argument.
Why didn't God go after and smite homosexuals.  Same reason he doesn't go smite rapists.  Or lawyers.  Free will and all that jazz.
Me, not my belief, but one that any religious person in the Judeo-Christian tree could easily point out.

As for your second set of comments, err well the on-topic again comments, it's a good point.  Though I really wouldn't call that turning straight/gay.  That's more of a serious mental strain and mind fuck.

Like the reality that if your in prison, and your raped by Bobo and Chuck, your not gay.
Or if your really that mentally stressed and you end up sexually involved with your cell mate, you might not be gay.  Sure, it's a homosexual act, but actions and nature are separate entities.  You could be fantasizing about women, and totally unattracted to Chuck, but the physical sensations are just that important, you don't care, or care that much less to give in once in a while.  You leave, and your back to screwing women every night.

 

[Ellie]

I'm sorry but I hate that argument.
Why didn't God go after and smite homosexuals.  Same reason he doesn't go smite rapists.  Or lawyers.  Free will and all that jazz.
Me, not my belief, but one that any religious person in the Judeo-Christian tree could easily point out.

But on the same note then, why does he need to tell people (through a book or whatever) to shun them from society, if he believes in free will?

 

[PeteD2S]

several points the above poster should consider:
1. homosexual couple can't have kids. if everyone were gay, humanity would extinct.
   does that sound "normal"?

I have one word for that: Nature.
I think it is one of the nature's way to stop over population, like the natural catastrophes. Homossexual couples can adopt children and that will make them a 100% normal couple. Just because they can't couple doesn't mean gay is a wrong way of life.

2. what is "love"? do you believe in 'love at first sight'?
   I believe we can control who we love. meaning, people choose to be gay.
   No,it is not a disease - gay people claim they can't control it, cause they don't
   want to. they don't think it's a bad thing.
most of the time, people fall in love AFTER they know each other some time-  first they  'test' their partner- his looks, his beliefs, his character, his religion, prob. his sex too - and  if they like them all, they allow them self to fall in love. so what about gay people- this process doesn't exist for them? why do they let them self love their own sex? .. unless they want to.
yeah, sometimes 'love is blind', like with women loving the husband that beats them.
however, they have sub-conscious reason to love that kind of people, and it can be "cured". same goes for homosexuality.

You cannot control who you love.

Saying homossexuality is a disease is the same as saying that being small in a tall community is a disease. It's a natural thing and homossexual people are just the same as hetero or bi or a(sexual). It's a matter of likes, if you like strawberry and I don't that doesn't make us humanly different, just individualy different.

Stop hating gay people please, you [censored].

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

But on the same note then, why does he need to tell people (through a book or whatever) to shun them from society, if he believes in free will?

Better off in a religion topic or free will topic, etc.  But I've asked and wondered the same enough that perhaps I can give an answer.  And understand I'm not religious and don't consider myself of any faith, but my surroundings are.  So at most I can give an outsider's take from an insider's view.  It's one of the fun loopholes I've enjoyed reading up on.

God gave us free will, so that we would decide.  That way, he can lean back and more or less show us a path, and see if we follow the advice.  He's not a tour guide, but rather the guy you look to for directions.  He'll tell you where to go, but won't hold your hand.  Bad analogy, but that's the sum of it for many folks.

So in essence, he'd tell you to turn right, towards the happy man and woman relationship and 2.5 kids, small or medium sized dog, and white picket fence, but you could very well turn left and veer off the road.  Free will.  If it's real, the greatest thing given to us, and if it's not, the easiest cop out one could think of.

several points the above poster should consider:
1. homosexual couple can't have kids. if everyone were gay, humanity would extinct.
  does that sound "normal"?

I have one word for that: Nature.
I think it is one of the nature's way to stop over population, like the natural catastrophes. Homossexual couples can adopt children and that will make them a 100% normal couple. Just because they can't couple doesn't mean gay is a wrong way of life.

Okay I've let this slide, and it's not so much directed at you PeteD2S, but part of your comment, and the one you quoted, and the whole train of thought behind the idea that gay's can't have kids.

Gay's can have kids.  Nuns and priests can have kids.  I had a nun in one of the many schools I went to as a child that had two children.  She wasn't a nun when she was born, was her answer, and she wasn't a nun when she had her husband, who died.  Probably the reason for the sudden change to nunhood I'd think.

I've also had a friend whose father was gay.  Gay's can't have kids?
Your not homosexual until you realize it.  Your not straight, until you accept it.  Confusion can last forever, and sometimes by the time you find out, it's "too late" as some would say.  He took his son, my friend, and raised him with his lover.  The mother was fine with that, actually, and wanted it that way.  Not exactly fitting, since it's still adoption, I know.
But at least one gay person in the relationship can have children naturally.  Hell both could if they both left their former lovers of the opposite sex/had artificial insemination, etc.  Again, all loopholes, but that's what I'm here for.

 

[Venetia]

MAAAN, owwwhhhh I shouldn't even be posting here because this topic makes me so FURIOUS; >>>FUCK<<< people who look down on homosexuals. I can't even debate subjectively. I'm just too pissed off about this.

FUCK THEM.

Imagine that above statement, at 130pt font, flashing, with those retarded MySpace sparkles all over it. That's it. Right there.

They're bigot assholes who're just pissed off that they can't be racist anymore so they're looking to pick a fight with someone.

Fuck them, up and down, on the couch, over a table, with the sharpest object you can find.

Homosexuality is not a disease. I have read TOMES of literature cataloguing the differences between brains of hetero v. homosexual people. There are differences--differences in structure, differences in hormone levels. I even read something suggesting that it's a trait in your chromosomal makeup. That would make it no different from having blue eyes or the tendency of being more sporty.

Hell, Marcus brought this up--there are gay ANIMALS. Explain to me how THEY made a choice?

It's just sexuality, people. I know that sexuality is a big, evil no-no that Pastor Dave told you, but it's NOT. It's natural and should be perfectly acceptable. So what if a man likes penis? How is that any different from some dudes preferring elbow biting?

If I weren't with my husband, I'd be lesbian, three times over. "OH BUT WHY?!" To be perfectly honest, I don't really find men attractive, at all. I just found someone whose personality I like, and badda-bing, badda-boom. Would I be happier if he was a she? Maybe. There'd probably be more fire in the bedroom, anyway. (But women … Ugh, too moody.)

Fuck you if you think you're better than a gay person, and fuck you if you think it's 100% choice. And a big double-bird, plus a loogie in the face, if you think that homosexuality is wrong and those people deserve less rights than anyone else.

Seriously. Fuck you running.

 

[Ellie]

Why the hell aren't you Supreme Overlord of the World yet?

 

[Venetia]

I don't know :sad:

 

[Alpharoth]

1. homosexual couple can't have kids. if everyone were gay, humanity would extinct.
  does that sound "normal"?

Yeah, ever heard of a sperm clinic? This point failed.

Sorry but if you look down on gays, i'm going to look down on you

 

[psychochild]

Homosexuals CAN have children , sterile people can't.

And anyway everyone makes himself defender of Nature when  the topic is sexuality,but try to take a little look at your life and tell how many "natural" things you do and how many you do not.

1st you should make a child every time you have sex (and you should have sex just to make children )
2nd you should fight to survive
3rd you should kill to eat (nature doesn't provide cooked food )
4th you should live in a cave

I could go on for hours listing things that everyone does and are not natural.
Men for thousand years used their intelligence to go against nature,to defend themselves from it, to make themselves better than nature itself.

How could you ever thik to look down on homosexual people because they are not like "mother nature" says ?
Maybe is someone like that? I really don't think so.

I think that sexuality is just a limitation of mind and maybe normality is loving a man or a woman with no difference.
Anyway homosexuality is just a taste like others and saying that it is a disease is like saying that heterosexuality is a disease too.
People who claim they can cure homosexuality are just ignorant and megalomaniac people who think to be better than others.
They should be the only ones to be cured.
Let the people live in the way they prefere and stop trying to cure them when they're not like you.
There are so many REAL diseases that still have not a cure.
Let's focus on them.

P.S sorry for my awful english hope you understand everything :wink:

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

I'm just a prick in an an awful mood because it's like 3 am I think and I just got woken up by angry neighbors arguing...  I'm using your quotes psychochild, but they aren't aimed at you (except a few comments I'd call "corrections")

Homosexuals CAN have children , sterile people can't.

I wanted to make that comment after someone else posted.
Was even going to show how I have friends, brother and 2 sisters, whose father is gay.  Gay pride parade, gay activist, extremely open about being gay.

I also had a nun who had two children.  Shocking isn't it?!  Gays and nuns can't have kids?!!

Point is your not something until you realize it, until you accept it, and until you go threw with being it.  Until then, your just like everyone else who isn't what they want.  In that time frame, or before hand, one can be easily confused and do things because it felt right, or because they thought they had to.  Or, perceptions change.

Gays can have kids, if nuns who take a vow of celibacy can have kids - and teach them in the 7th grade as their teacher, which sucked ass the little bastards - why can't homosexuals?  I mean, the nun wasn't a nun when she was 18, wasn't a nun until she was in her 30's.  My friends father, admits he wasn't gay until he was 40.  Why?  He didn't know, he didn't accept, and he didn't go threw with it until then, denial of personal nature is a powerful weapon.

Wait?  Nature?  Yes.  We'll get on that in a moment.

1st you should make a child every time you have sex (and you should have sex just to make children )
2nd you should fight to survive
3rd you should kill to eat (nature doesn't provide cooked food )
4th you should live in a cave

Actually, that's the strictest description of our nature yet.  We are naturally sexually aggressive, which I don't mean to say we have aggressive sex or that we seek it out aggressively, that's still a case on case thing.  Rather I couldn't think of the proper word and this just came out.

Basically we have sex.  It's in our nature to have sex.  Everyone knows this - but it's our nature to want pleasure.  We aren't the only race of creatures that are believed to have sex for recreation, something that is believed to be done by our little race for as long as we developed imagination.  Logical thought + the ability to comprehend + the ability to think of things = recreations.  The first recreation I'm sure we had, like most mammals, is playing around fighting each other like kids.  But I'm sure after that we started humping and touching ourselves.

How could you ever thik to look down on homosexual people because they are not like "mother nature" says ?
Maybe is someone like that? I really don't think so.

And now we get to my point listed above.

Homosexuality can be explained in genetics.  I'm not saying it's proven, not yet.  Will it?  Who knows, maybe we're wrong.  But a current belief and one I can clearly see comes in the development of a child.

This is where nature is instilled.  The reptilian brain, the bodily quirks, the whole bang whatever, all of our prepositioned default natures and what allows us to have those natural patterns, such as parts of the brain.  Our body starts to grow.  We start off with neither a penis or a vagina, ovaries or testicles.  But somewhere along the lines, something splits, changes, and either the penis either exits or becomes a clitoris, and the testicles either drop or become ovaries.

At this point it is believed our very genetic structure for all our trait sets is put together.  I think that's saying a bit much, but at the very least our human survival patterns - including procreation, is established.  It's dormant and will come with the hormones and all that.  Now, it is believed currently that shortly after the sexing I just mentioned, your brain is designed for your new body.  But, sometimes things can go wrong.

Our brain develops as a male, or partly male, though our bodies never did.  Perhaps our bodies develop to be 100% male, but our mind, our brain, never got the memo and tried to catch up, maybe not, and that part of the brain matures as a female, which is the easier (and oddly more complex) for the body to produce. And our genetics fucked us.

Not because we are now "different", no.  I like redheads over blonds, others love blonds, but we're not different.  So Steve is attracted to Adam, big deal.  No that's not why, if it's true, that our genetics "fucked us".  It's because the rest of us didn't get a strand telling us that we're on the same damn level, happiness is not dictated by holy marriages, that it isn't dictated by the opposite sex, and it isn't dictated by out dated old school values.

Traditions of what I had hoped was a bygone era.
If a white woman and a black man have a baby, it'll be evil.  It'll be part monky, have a tail, and be anarchistic in nature.  It will be predisposed to drugs and violence, and will have the mental capacity as an adult of that of a fourth grader - and when I say fourth grader I'm really insulting kids because I don't like them.  If gays get their hand on a child they will molest them, and recruit them to their secret team, this pink capped baseball with the jockeys three sizes too small.  He'll sit in meat butchers fantasizing about mustaches, work in iron yards and go to the disco and have fun threw the hole in a bathroom stall, and is born with dormant HIV.

It's amazes me the more I look at the world the more I see things like the above in some people still alive and somehow still bleeding.

I swear, curing someone who happens to be gay is like trying to cure someone whose tall.  Curing someone whose black, white, Hispanic, it's like trying to cure someone for having a good rhythm or natural talent, or trying to cure someone whose straight.

It's like trying to cure someone whose brain is normal, no weird patterns or tumors or anything.  No horrible microbes in their blood, their urine and bowels check out fine, and their lungs are perfectly healthy.  They have the liver and kidneys of someone in true sense of the word: health.  And yet, your trying to cure them.  Make them sick enough, make them feel sick enough they might believe your cure and take your little pill that hampers their breath, leaves them soft, and keeps them in a state of paranoia.  Good idea........

 

[___]

Much as I despise bigoted people I'd rather live in a society where they can run around being stupid assholes and giving me something to laugh about than live in a society where you could be punished for not agreeing with common sentiment, so I don't know that I would want a person with Venetia's attitude running the world, despite her libertarian leanings - the temptation to use that power to rid the world of idiots would be way too strong.  I know I couldn't handle it, I'd be smiting couch potatoes and Bill O'Reilly's and televangelists left and right.

 

[Sic Semper Tyranosaurus]

Much as I despise bigoted people I'd rather live in a society where they can run around being stupid assholes and giving me something to laugh about than live in a society where you could be punished for not agreeing with common sentiment, so I don't know that I would want a person with Venetia's attitude running the world, despite her libertarian leanings - the temptation to use that power to rid the world of idiots would be way too strong.  I know I couldn't handle it, I'd be smiting couch potatoes and Bill O'Reilly's and televangelists left and right.

Something tells me that Alpharoth's post wasn't made in Utmost Seriousness.

 

[psychochild]

@ sixtyandaquarter  : i wanted to say almost the same things you did but due Italian/English translation difficulties i did not as good as you did :thumb:

Anyway i saw a tv show some weeks ago, here a man said it was cured from homosexuality and he was about to marry a woman and have children , he went to a stupid community that didn't give him some pills but just brainwashed him.
He said things like "if i got AIDS is not my fault , but it's homosexuality's fault" ( he also admited that years before he had sex with a lot of people he didn't even know ) , he said that stupid things he did before were not his fault but homosexuality's fault ... he said homosexual people are sick, and bullshit like this ... they didn't cure him , they just made him believe that gay people were monsters and he cuold be better than them.
And for this he spent a lot of money ... cool , huh?
I was also thinking i'd like have a lobotomy so i wouldn't be sad no more. :toot:

Anyway  i think it's no use force people to accept it , it would have the opposite effect maybe there should just be more information.

 

[___]

Much as I despise bigoted people I'd rather live in a society where they can run around being stupid assholes and giving me something to laugh about than live in a society where you could be punished for not agreeing with common sentiment, so I don't know that I would want a person with Venetia's attitude running the world, despite her libertarian leanings - the temptation to use that power to rid the world of idiots would be way too strong.  I know I couldn't handle it, I'd be smiting couch potatoes and Bill O'Reilly's and televangelists left and right.

Something tells me that Alpharoth's post wasn't made in Utmost Seriousness.

No kidding?   It was more of a commentary on whether being bigoted toward bigots is a great solution to reducing bigotry.

 

[Grathea]

My two cents?
NO, homosexuality is not a disease. Much like Ven said, this topic is just ... bleh. Sexuality is not some great sin, no matter what your imam/priest/pastor/whatever said. So what if gays and bisexuals are attracted to the same sex? Does this have anything to do with how you live your life? Didn't think so.

Sure, I'm a bisexual. I don't have any problems with it, and neither does anyone I've met and considered sane. (Not saying one is a requirement of the other, but instead that it's just the crazy ones who also think that homosexuality is bad).

Just shut up about it already, gaybashers.

 

[Olivia]

Now, I shouldn't really post on this topic if I don't feel I'll be in the mood later to respond, but I'll do it anyway.

Let's clear up a few things;

FIRST OF ALL

Just because people don't think homosexuality is normal doesn't mean they necessarily should dislike it.

And even though people think homosexuality is learnt doesn't mean they can't change it.

Kay? Just because I believe this doesn't mean I support gay bashers or discriminate. So don't get agitated at my opinion.

I have a few friends who are gay, four to be exact, and I think it could be an influenced trait.  For example, one of my friends was molested by another older female when she was young, this woman apparently tried to seduce her by saying she loved her. Obviously, the girl was 10, she is still developing her sexuality (Though before this incident happened, she said never felt an attraction to either gender.). When she was separated from this woman and the woman was put in jail, she never was asked about her feelings, and she admittedly said she felt a strong attraction for the same sex.

Though she's 19 and understands much more from that incident, she wouldn't want to, or thinks she can, because now her sexuality is a part of her.

As for those who say who were "Born that way", I think it's utter bull because even I believe I wasn't born straight, I didn't quite choose it either, I eventually became that way as I became older and...well how do I explain it? First love encounter?  :dead:

I don't know how to explain homosexuality or how it happens. But I have no problem with it.

 

[Sic Semper Tyranosaurus]

I have a few friends who are gay, four to be exact, and I think it could be an influenced trait.  For example, one of my friends was molested by another older female when she was young, this woman apparently tried to seduce her by saying she loved her. Obviously, the girl was 10, she is still developing her sexuality (Though before this incident happened, she said never felt an attraction to either gender.).

You have to then wonder if she would have reacted in exactly the same way if a man had doen this to her. Ten year olds really aren't attracted to anyone sexually unless they're maturing a little quickly. Furthermore, I don't know how fair it is to use an instance of sexual abuse as an example of someone being turned into The Gay. Many children are molested by older men (and women, but the male statistics are more thoroughly studied) and develop no such attraction later in life. On the contrary, they may grow up repulsed by the idea of a man, or even another PERSON touching them.

I, too, have several gay and bisexual friends. If we're going to bandy anecdotal evidence about, I really have very little that would play into the mindset that you can be turned gay or straight.

Let me put this out there: Maybe nobody's 100% gung-ho let us make babies now straight. Maybe we're all a little gay. Or a LOT gay. Maybe some of us are hardly gay at all. I've always liked the idea of sliding scales more than "If you are, you are. If you aren't, you aren't."

Sexuality, personality, and psychology are all too damned complicated for only two possibilities.