If homosexuality is not inherently unwholesome to humans, please explain to me why it is that people avoid participating in the behavior? If people are neutral toward it, then why would they nor participate in it in approximately the same frequency as masturbating?
People have not been shown to change their orientation? We have just discussed cultures where homosexual behaviors were accepted and seemed to be more common. There is also this.
"In many cases among men, the partner who penetrates another sexually is not regarded as homosexual among fellow inmates, and the receptive partner (who may or may not be consenting) is called a "woman", a "bitch", a "punk", or a "prag","
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_sexualityAnd yet, does not the penetrative partner have to get an erection first, and maintain it while having intercourse with someone of the same gender, assuming of course they are male? This is obviously a choice in opposition to previous so called "orientation". This exactly reflects attitudes we know existed in Greece and among the Norse. Celts, while lacking much in the way of their own literature to back this up, were said to be even more openly gay and less concerned with the dominance aspect. I am not sure what to make of this, as it seems to violate most of the cultures around the world, except to say that if it is true it utterly flies in the face of the idea that people cannot control their orientation.
The assertion that people cannot change it comes mostly from studies about people who were strongly oriented to be purely homosexual and claim not to have been able to change. However, other statistics also refute this evidence by pointing out that this sort of homosexuality is the exception and not the rule.
"Most surveys have reported that the great majority (80-90%)
of those with homosexual experience, both men and women, have also had full
sexual relations with the opposite sex, and most of those who call themselves
"gay" or "lesbian" have also had full sexual relations with the opposite sex. Not
that infrequently, these heterosexual contacts occur in so-called gay ghettoes,
with other gays and lesbians (Cameron 2000, Lemp et al. 1995)."
http://www.anthroserbia.org/Content/PDF/Articles/cvorovic_nonhuman_primates_sexual_behaviour.pdfAnd yet, all around the world, for the vast majority of people, homosexual relations simply are not acceptable TO THEM PERSONALLY. And while all of you are loathe to admit to it, me and everyone else who are not sold out to the idea that homosexuality is the best thing ever, and a civil right, and that there just must be something intrinsically wrong with anyone who disagrees with that attitude, know in our own experience that even to see the behavior is to be at least mildly sickened.
Is this "homophobia"? Have you just decided to relegate the vast majority of men to the status of being mentally ill for having a natural revulsion towards the idea of having sex with other men?
I do not feel you are being honest. I also feel most of you are deeply motivated by anger and hatred. I feel that because of the way I am repeatedly treated when having this discussion with people deeply committed to the cause of gay rights. I also see in history, and have made mention of aspects of it to you without any real response from any of you to the contrary, that there is an anti-religious undercurrent in recent western society that has no good basis in fact, has been repeatedly debunked in terms of people, even if they abandon Christianity, typically going back to some neo-pagan or "new age" religious views rather than becoming good atheists as Enlightenment era philosophers thought would happen.
In other words, people experience life spiritually (I think most likely due to the experience of being conscious and of perceiving themselves as making choices) and therefore reject the exclusively materialistic model of reality.
So to sum up, it seems clear to me that there is a lot of choice in homosexual behavior. It seems clear that the reason it tends to be frowned upon, not just by Christianity but by most cultures through most of history, is that there is an intrinsic revulsion there for most people. I find that people who deny these facts tend to use sensationalistic arguments and threats and name calling rather than addressing these issues head on, and finally I see it mostly from people with an emphatically anti-Christian mindset.
I was raised to be gay friendly and tolerant. Until the last what... four or five years, I would have qualified as a liberal on these issues. It is you who have decided to take it to the next level, liken a specific sexual behavior to things like gender, race, or religion, and then push the issue to the point where people have quite literally been arrested for saying rather innocuous things like, "homosexuality is a sin," in the Christian context.
If you do not see the danger to freedom of conscience or religion in this development, I can only say that is even more dangerous than all the rest.
