[Dystopian Darkness]

Argument in favour - Sexual orientation and homosexuality are not a choice and therefore can be considered biologically natural, not to mention it is easily observed in nature among other non-human species

Argument against - Homosexuality is incompatible with procreation and is therefore biologically unnatural; even if people don't have a choice (the same way someone would argue that being transgender is unnatural)


I'm always confused at this - I can see both sides have a point, but I don't even understand what natural means here - Does it mean merely passing our genes to the next generation? Or does it mean behaviour that is inherent to us and not artificially or socially constructed?

I think biologically homosexuality is natural, but obviously it constitutes exceptional uncommon behaviour that doesn't allow for procreation, so I don't know.

Opinions?


This is not a discussion about gay marriage

[One Degree]

I am not sure it matters.
I am heterosexual and don’t like to look at my own naked body and I certainly have no interest in looking at another mans.
Therefore, I feel totally incapable of trying to understand what is going on in a homosexuals mind.
He knows. I don’t. The choice is his or hers.

Social acceptance is a separate issue.
Since the concept is so foreign to me, it seems unreasonable to expect me to wholeheartedly endorse something I have no understanding of.

Edit: I don't believe I have gone off topic because discussing whether it is natural or not is basically a discussion as to whether it should be accepted or not. If I have missed the point, I apologize for distracting from the topic.

[Lexington]

it is easily observed in nature among other non-human species

And easily observed in human species, too. Lest we model nature on what penguins do.

Homosexuality is incompatible with procreation and is therefore biologically unnatural; even if people don't have a choice (the same way someone would argue that being transgender is unnatural)

Right, but why is it about procreation? Tons of straight people die childless. Tons of straight people don't even want children; sometimes they have them anyway and send them off to foster families and adoption and sometimes end up with gay parents who want kids.

Is that natural? The short answer is absolutely no: humanity itself is "unnatural". Everything from lighting fire to building skyscrapers and going to the Moon is unnatural. If you're looking to apes, penguins, and ants for what is "natural" I think you're looking in the wrong direction.

If some members of our species enjoy sex that is not procreative (and, to be clear, that is not exclusive to homosexuals) this is very much the least of the unnatural behaviors modern man engages in.

[mikema63]

It also needs some level of explaining why it being natural matters at all, natural isn't in and of itself good or bad.

[SolarCross]

Whether a behaviour is natural or not is quite by the by, as already noted there is not much about human behaviour now that can be called natural and anyway there are certain behaviours that are very "natural" that we tend to think of as wrong: going about naked, cannibalism, infanticide, killing those who insult one etc.

The more interesting question is should homosexuality be tolerated in law and in social mores and why. From what I know about it, it seems to be a very weird and disgusting thing to do but that isn't enough for me to want to go about banning it. There might be a case for banning it on public health grounds but that would also go for promiscuity in general.

[kobe]

Anyone making a religious argument should prove God said anything about it without referring to a translation. It's a laugh that Christians make fundamentalist arguments using fundamentally unsound translations.

If procreation between a man and a woman is the only natural sex act then it follows that every straight person has done something unnatural in their life (masturbation, oral sex, maybe a foot fetish if you're into that). Therefore there seems to be an all or nothing there, because now we have to target everyone who doesn't like vanilla sex.

Moreover, rape certainly seems to be "natural" in that definition, since it can possibly result in procreation. Obviously either not the right definition or natural is not a value you should aspire to. If you want to say that natural is based on consent, then natural is a better value to aspire to.

[Dagoth Ur]

Nobody can define unnatural in a way that makes sense, ergo homosexuality cannot be classifed as such.

[fuser]

Are condoms natural? It doesn't matter at all whether its natural or not or :

Hereby I decree that anyone who uses condom is a minion of Satan send here to destroy humanity and everything that is good and holy.

Also lol @ Annatar's christian god, I like Drlee's christian god more, although I do prefer no god.

[redcarpet]

I find heterosexuality very difficult to accept, but I don't call for their suppression by law. That'd be mean.

[Drlee]

Obviously it is perfectly natural. We know of no time when it was not rampant even in times when it was death to be found out.

Mikema63 makes the best point in asking why it is important for something to be natural? Or even what that means in the first place. If homosexuality is a human invention and it was invented today, it would make millions of people happy. What could be wrong with that?

[Rei Murasame]

Well, it has to be broken down into four parts:

• 1. How it happens:
  

  Epigenetics -- how gene expression is regulated by temporary switches, called epi-marks -- appears to be a critical and overlooked factor contributing to the long-standing puzzle of why homosexuality occurs.
  
  According to the study, published online today in The Quarterly Review of Biology, sex-specific epi-marks, which normally do not pass between generations and are thus "erased," can lead to homosexuality when they escape erasure and are transmitted from father to daughter or mother to son.
  
  [...]
  
  In the current study, researchers from the Working Group on Intragenomic Conflict at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) integrated evolutionary theory with recent advances in the molecular regulation of gene expression and androgen-dependent sexual development to produce a biological and mathematical model that delineates the role of epigenetics in homosexuality.
  
  Epi-marks constitute an extra layer of information attached to our genes' backbones that regulates their expression. While genes hold the instructions, epi-marks direct how those instructions are carried out -- when, where and how much a gene is expressed during development. Epi-marks are usually produced anew each generation, but recent evidence demonstrates that they sometimes carry over between generations and thus can contribute to similarity among relatives, resembling the effect of shared genes.
  
  [...]
  
  The mathematical modeling demonstrates that genes coding for these epi-marks can easily spread in the population because they always increase the fitness of the parent but only rarely escape erasure and reduce fitness in offspring.
  
  "Transmission of sexually antagonistic epi-marks between generations is the most plausible evolutionary mechanism of the phenomenon of human homosexuality," said the study's co-author Sergey Gavrilets, NIMBioS' associate director for scientific activities and a professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
  
  The paper's other authors are William Rice, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Urban Friberg, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden.

  
  
  
• 2. On the issue of reproduction. It doesn't matter, because people don't have children simply push their behaviour into collaborating with other people in their family who share signifiant portions of their genes, and this is done with more free time and more money:
  

  In 1964, evolutionary biologist William Hamilton finally provided a generally accepted solution to the problem of altruism based on the concept of inclusive fitness, not just individual fitness. It is the genes that survive and are passed on. Some of the individual’s most distinctive genes will be found in siblings, nephews, cousins and grandchildren as well as in offspring. Siblings share fifty per cent, nephews and nieces twenty-five per cent, and cousins about twelve and a half per cent of their distinctive genes. So when an altruist sacrifices its life for its kin, it ensures the survival of these common genes. The vehicle has been sacrificed to preserve copies of its precious cargo.
  
  [...]
  
  ‘Hamilton’s Rule’ states that across all species, altruism (or, conversely, reduced aggression) is favoured when rb - c > 0, where r is the genetic relatedness between two individuals, b is the (genetic) fitness benefit to the beneficiary, and c is the fitness cost to the altruist. Evolutionary biologists have used Hamilton’s ‘gene’s eye’ point of view to carry out research on a wide range of social interactions including altruism, aggression, selfishness and spite. The formulation was dubbed ‘kin selection theory’ by John Maynard Smith (1964) and became widely known through influential books such as The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976) and Sociobiology: the New Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson (1975).
  
  In 1971, Hamilton extended his formulation and hypothesised that altruism would result from any degree of genetic relatedness, not just that based on immediate kin.

  
  Gay and lesbian people are sisters, daughters, aunts, and co-ethnics, etc, who behave as you might expect - they defend their own. This may come as a surprise to anti-gay people. It's also why gays and lesbians are overrepresented in the military.
  
  

  They earn more, save more, have less debt and are better prepared for retirement, according to a Prudential survey of more than 1,000 LGBT respondents.
  
  Respondents not only reported significantly higher annual incomes -- $61,500 compared with the national median of $50,054 -- but they also carried about $4,000 less in debt than the average American and had $6,000 more in household savings. They were even slightly more likely to have jobs in the first place, with an unemployment rate of 7% versus the national rate of 7.9%, Prudential found.
  
  A combination of factors play into this, said Michele Meyer-Shipp, chief diversity officer at Prudential. To start, LGBT individuals are generally well-educated, with more than half of respondents receiving at least a bachelor's degree, and tend to live in higher-income areas, she said.
  
  "It flows down -- you have a higher level of education, access to higher paying jobs in areas where there are good salaries, and more disposable income to allocate to things like saving and retirement," Meyer-Shipp said. [...]

  
  Heh.
  
  
• 3. On the issue of political alignment, the previous points lead to obvious conclusion:
  

  Liberal freedom thus supposes that individuals can be abstracted from their origins, their environment, the context in which they live and where they exercise their choices, from everything, that is., that makes them who they are, and not someone else. It supposes, in other words, as John Rawls says, that the individual is always prior to his ends. Nothing, however, proves that the individual can apprehend himself as a subject free of any allegiance, free of any determinism. Moreover, nothing proves that in all circumstances he will prefer freedom over every other good. Such a conception by definition ignores commitments and attachment that owe nothing to rational calculation. It is a purely formal conception, that makes it impossible to understand what a real person is.

  
  A lot of the criticisms against homosexuality stem - ironically - from an individualistic liberal standpoint, where anti-gay people believe that gays and lesbians have nothing else to do other than fucking, because that is what they the straight people would do all day if something was offering orgasms at a crazy ratio like '19 is to 78'. (Diversion: On a humorous note, the official orgasm ratio for straight vs. lesbian sex really is 19:78. Clearly it's easier to get an orgasm with a female partner than with a male partner, but it shouldn't even require a study on women to prove that. I say to any woman reading this thread who feels like they could try it, go and try it, it's true.)
  
  Basically you cannot abstract a person from everything else that makes them a real person. A homosexual person is not homosexual first and foremost. A person is also a lot of other things on any given day. To assume that homosexuals exist outside of society is ridiculous.
  
  

  Pearson does not use the exact phrase 'group selection', but does use the terms 'intra-group selection' and 'extra-group selection'. Intra-group selection is selection within a group resulting from competition between its members. Extra-group selection (meaning literally outside-group selection) could mean selection between individual members of different groups, but it is clear from the context that Pearson intended it to mean primarily selection between groups as a whole. Pearson regarded himself as a socialist as well as a good Darwinian, and was keen to rebut claims that socialism was incompatible with natural selection. Pearson argued that as human society becomes more advanced, competition and selection within groups becomes less important, as it gives way to co-operation and collective action, whereas competition and selection between groups (tribes, nations or races) becomes even stronger.
  
  These early writers on group selection seldom gave much attention to the problem raised, but not solved, by Charles Darwin in the Descent of Man: if the qualities promoting group success, such as co-operation and self-sacrifice, conflict with individual success within the group, how is the conflict resolved? Bernard Bosanquet's essay does however at least address the problem. His answer is essentially that there is no conflict. As society evolves, it creates a new selective environment for individuals, and this favours co-operation: 'the struggle for existence has, in short, become a struggle for a place in the community; and these places are reserved for those individuals which in the highest degree possess the co-operative qualities demanded by circumstances' (p.294).

  
  And for anyone who doubts this, I encourage you to look at history.
  
  Whether you have a child personally yourself, is not as important as whether someone is able to kill 15 of your family members, or say 500,000 of your co-ethnics without you being able to prevent it, for example.
  
  
• 4. There's supposed to be a fourth point, right? Okay, I guess this will do, I'm covering all the bases in this post, clearly:
  
  [Soundtrack]
  
  

  [...]
  
  The “Indian culture in danger” is nothing but a cry of the entrenched old guard, determined to hold on to their time-honoured privileges.
  
  This clash was inevitable. The old order is changing, yielding place to the new.
  
  Homosexuals have just become a convenient tool in this battle between status quo and change.
  
  No wonder both sides need them as an essential weapon of war.
  
  Sappho, god bless her Lesbian (resident of Lesbos) soul, must be smiling at the irony.

  
  
  

  [...] Both in the magazines and in real life, girls formed passionate (and perhaps occasionally sexual) relationships with other girls, called S kankei. In the pages of girls’ magazines, novelist Yoshiya Nobuko (who maintained an S kankei relationship throughout her adult life) and illustrators such as Takabatake Kashô and Nakahara Jun’ichi created the look and feel of the ideal shôjo: upper class and cultured, pure and innocent, meaning she had no experience with boys. Times have changed, of course–now many Japanese, particularly older people, will say, with a disapproving glare at those vulgar kogals, that there are no more shôjo today. On the other hand, young women who refuse to marry and have children, or even those who do but who want to remain part of this innocent and idealized world, will refer to themselves as eien no shôjo, forever shôjo.
  
  While S kankei have become less common in postwar Japan where co-ed schooling is the norm and dating is no longer forbidden, girls’ preference for homogender romance remains. [...]

  
  There is this thing. The purest form of love.

So I think that covers everything.

[Decky]

It also needs some level of explaining why it being natural matters at all, natural isn't in and of itself good or bad.

Indeed. I have never got the big fuss about weather it is natural or a choice. It hurts no one and it pisses off right wing people, it's good by definition no matter what the origin.

[Cromwell]

Yes.

...

The question of morality is, actually, irrelevant; there is no reasonable argument which can be levied at homosexual behaviour, which cannot also be levied at popular forms of heterosexual behaviour. If we are going to say that recreational sex is an acceptable form of behaviour, then we cannot criminalise homosexuality and maintain a consistent sense of morality.

If you want to criminalise both, then, go ahead a try...

[Rei Murasame]

No need for further sleuthing, Shirley, we know who the culprits are and what their crime is, instantly.

Speaking of consistency, I should also add that the western left and western liberals are literally ripping the heart out of the gay and lesbian communities - to what extent such communities even exist in particular nations - and are just murdering it in cold blood.

Has anyone seen the length of the acronym that is being used now? First they started out with "LGBT", and this already contained the seeds of a problem, but okay, as long as they don't expand it any further, maybe everyone could live with that.

You know what they've expanded it to now? "LGBTQIA+". When I saw this acronym, I immediately knew three things: That first of all [1]Left-liberal university students in North America will be behind this nonsense somehow, and [2]There will be a redundancy, and [3]There will be Muslim outreach, incomprehensibly. It's like how the British historical figure Sherlock Holmes spoke of an ability to skip some steps and arrive intuitively at the correct conclusion because of experience.

Breaking down these points:

• 1. Left-liberal college students: Of course, of course. The American left-liberal college students are absolutely the worst. They really are. There must be something in air in North America that makes them stupid. Everything they do is just this mewling lovey-dovey whining Judeo-spongecake victimhood. Where is the cunning? Where is the wistfulness? Where is the discretion? Where is the yearning for death?
  
  They have nothing that I can even recognise, they are like from some other planet.
  
  Also, why does everything have to be a special thing? Why does some North American have to try to make a group for everything? It's ridiculous, it's like some kind of fractal thing, infinite levels of fragmentation. No one can ever keep up with what they are doing.
  
  
• 2. There will be a redundancy: Only someone on cannabis or something could have come up with the amazingly stupid idea to add "Q" behind "LGBT" to form "LGBTQ". That is like adding 'back' to 'reverse', to get 'reverse-back'. "Q" is a catch-all umbrella that means "LGBT". Adding Q to the acronym was the first step toward idiocy. It's either one or the other.
  
  Also, "IA+"? Really? What the fuck. I can't even address that. "IA+" is outside the scope of this post because I can't even comprehend it.
  
  
• 3. There will be Muslim outreach, incomprehensibly: 'Damned Muslims', right? I present to you one of the single worst feminist sites on the whole internet, "Everyday Feminism", which is more like "Everyday Left-liberal Fuckups" than anything else. I will not quote the full article, click through the incomprehensible title to read it:
  

  [...] There is a pervading myth — amongst some Muslims and non-Muslims alike — that Islam promotes intolerance against women and LGBTQIA+ individuals. [...]

  
  Oh wow, where could that 'myth' have come from, Mister Hernann?!
  
  Read that fucking article. Read the absolute trash which he attempts to pass off as an analysis and a recommendation. There is no hope until people like Hernann are subjected to a massive political purge.

So there is all of that.

[One Degree]

I think the 'Q' was added to allow liberal heterosexuals to become dues paying members.
They felt left out.
So now, if you have every questioned your sexuality, you have a right to something. (We will figure that out later, just pay your dues)

Edit:

All organizations grow to a point where financial success becomes their number one priority. They usually discard their original purpose as they pursue financial success and therefore political power. The power always becomes the real goal. The reasons are just tools to achieve the power.

[Dystopian Darkness]

Indeed. I have never got the big fuss about weather it is natural or a choice. It hurts no one and it pisses off right wing people, it's good by definition no matter what the origin.

If it was a choice it could be problematic because promotion of homosexuality could lead to an increase in the number of homosexuals and endanger the survival of our species. But since it's not, it's irrelevant.

[The fact it hurts no one is actually not important because if I don't like something it pisses me off by the mere fact it exists.]


After reading more replies, it makes perfect sense to consider homosexuality (and bisexuality) as natural

[Ummon]

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014 ... rough-life

Not exactly on topic, but...

[SD92]

Yes perfectly natural. Humans are just different, some have black hair, some ginger, some are tall some short, some like brussel sprouts, some don't. It's not a shock that sexuality is the same, it would be more weird if everyone was straight with no humans on earth being attracted to their own gender.

[Ganeshas Rat]

Argument against - Homosexuality is incompatible with procreation and is therefore biologically unnatural; even if people don't have a choice (the same way someone would argue that being transgender is unnatural)

There is your mistake. False premises give false conclusions and therefore there is confusion. You assume that procreation is biologically natural. It isn't true. Or true not in the sense you take it. Yes, the purpose of life is to replicate. However, there is no some high judge to count the score and determine the winner: those who replicate poorly die without enough spring and because of that are wiped out by natural selection.

Though, unstoppable replication without any borders isn't the best strategy of replication at all. Nature gives us one beautiful example of this scenario: a cancer. Carcinomas are produced exactly by cells that have a broken "kill-switch" and as the result choke their own brothers and sisters - cells that have the same genes, effectively wiping out genes of cancer from the common gene pool. If a cell, on the other side, has a gene that determines its death with some small probability, let's say, about 1-2% per cycle of cell division, it's enough to stop the chain reaction and prevent a tumor that will kill the whole body.

[AFAIK]

I'd argue that there's no such thing as natural or unnatural only possible and impossible. Is there some higher power monitoring every creatures' behaviour to make sure they only use their organs and appendages for their intended purpose? What is the response when someone uses their penis in an 'unnatural' way? How is it determined that the activity was 'unnatural'?

Given that evolution is believed to be a gradual process that transforms a flipper into a leg via a series of discrete mutations at what point is it 'natural' to swim or 'natural' to crawl, walk or climb?