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| DaddysTouch |
on Sat 20 Feb 10, 3:27 AM to DaddysTouch's blog.
Watching the coverage of CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in the States. Ryan Sorba addresses the conference to condemn the invitation of Republican gay rights group GOPride to the event. Says that gay sex is not natural.* Is boo-ed and heckled. Smugly retorts: "I love it!" Perhaps not the best choice of words.
*Not that I think he's necessarily wrong, don't really have an opinion since I'm not a biologist but it seems plausible that it's not. What's wrong is his policy positions and moral views, which do not follow from either conclusion.
Edited Sat 20 Feb 10, 3:36 AM by DaddysTouch
| 20 Feb 10, 8:28 AM Mabesque UK(LS), 3 yrs |
Well, if you're interested to know, animals have gay sex too so I'm pretty sure it counts as natural  You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails. | |||
| 20 Feb 10, 11:32 AM DaddysTouch UK(RG), 3 yrs |
Occurrence in other species does not make it natural in humans, and occurrence (as in humans) does not imply naturalness (or else the term would be pretty meaningless!). I suppose it depends what we mean by nature. If we simply mean independent of civilization then it becomes a question of whether humans were fucking humans of the same sex before the emergence of civilization and, if not, has its subsequent emergence been a result of civilization or merely coincidental? But I don't think that's what most people mean. When Ryan says gay sex is unnatural I suspect he means it is an abnormal, dysfunctional condition, not that it is a result of civilization rather than pure genetics (drinking Diet Coke is unnatural in this sense, presumably he does not object to that). Dysfunctional seems right, since reproduction is inhibited. Abnormal I'm not so sure. Only a narrow proportion of the population are gay, but it's not an especially small proportion (4-10%). So I think it's ambiguous, and perhaps a question of degree rather than discrete classification in any case, but ultimately unimportant either way. If it's unnatural, then we don't restrict or morally object to autistic behaviour or people, for example (which is pretty squarely in the unnatural camp). And if it's not, then there's no issue. What men in all the world have shown such daring? Edited 20 Feb 10, 11:36 AM by DaddysTouch | |||
| 20 Feb 10, 12:34 PM Mabesque UK(LS), 3 yrs |
Reproduction: A false argument which assumes an all-or-nothing approach. Firstly it assumes that someone who has sex with someone of the same gender will never have sex with someone of a different gender. Secondly it assumes that the most important aspect of reproduction is to create lots of embryos rather than to ensure individual embryos reach successful adulthood. Imagine, for example, if primitive humans lived in poly tribes where bonding between people of the same gender was part of ensuring extra people around to bring up the babies produced from the heterosexual pairings. We have no clue what pre-civilised society looked like. Also, you seem to conflate nature with intelligent design. Many things happen for a reason in evolution but lots of things are just by-products of another thing - for example, if we assume our sexual organs have evolved to give us pleasure because this promotes more reproduction (and perhaps general well-being) a natural by-product of that would be that we would use those sexual organs with whatever gender was convenient at the time. I think when Ryan says gay sex is unnatural he means he hates the idea of it and it makes him queasy. You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails. | |||
| 20 Feb 10, 1:04 PM DaddysTouch UK(RG), 3 yrs |
No, we're talking about homosexuality. A homosexual has as much of an issue with reproduction as an autistic person might have with social interaction or an anorexic person with eating healthily i.e. it's possible, but they are inhibited. Of course, you could say that many homosexuals are perfectly happy without an equal ability to reproduce, but then many autistic people are happy with their cognitive style as well.
We famously, have no idea if there is a teapot orbiting the sun. To say that something is this or that based on the possibility that a teapot is orbiting the sun, with no evidence is ridiculous. If that is the basis of homosexuality being natural then it is entirely speculative and remains to be proven. But it is nonsensical in any case because we no longer have such a society so, even if that were the case, homosexuality would have become dysfunctional through exogenous changes, losing its relationship to reproduction.
I didn't say anything about evolution. Homosexuality doesn't have to have evolved to be natural, and coming about indirectly through evolution or mutation does not necessarily make it natural. It's irrelevant. What men in all the world have shown such daring? |
