Is homosexuality genetic?

[Krikkiter]

When I was in medical school, there was this young man who had sustained a major head injury in a MVA. Details aside, the young man wound up having a sizable portion of a frontal lobe resected as part of his treatment.

As I recall, he was about 25 years old or so. He had been in jail several times, always drinking, always cursing, beating his girlfriend, petty theft artist, blah blah blah. Well you can see where this is going. After the head injury and subsequent surgery, he never smacked a gal again, didn't curse, didn't drink. True story. The guy's mother thought he even was MORE INTELLIGENT after the injury and surgery.

Our staff neurosurgeons would laugh and laugh and laugh telling this story to their captive audiences. Most of the time, medical students hate this kind of thing, but in this case, one just had to laugh along, and in earnest. It was that funny. These guy's, the surgeons, would do these imitations of the frontal lobe altered young man's mother and it would really crack us up. She was so thankful. Those insanely talented big shot university neurosurgeons, dad gum!, they had fixed Bobby by removing a piece of his brain!

Sure we should use our tools to understand things, but what is it that you do not understand/know about loving somebody? Seems you do understand it, know it, already to begin with, right out of the blocks there. I do anyway. There SHE! sits, before my eyes. I would do anything for her. Seems that I understand it, know it, perfectly well already.

Fantastic story.

Now, about your writings for the United Nations....

 

[sol invictus]

A fair percentage of those who have posted here seem to be more of the opinion that bisexuality is the case for a large percentage of people, with varying genetically and/or early developmentally determined baselines for where on the spread of bisexuality they are. Various cultural, psychological, etc. factors can certainly affect one's choice of partners and admitted desires, within those bounds.

OK, that's a more reasonable position. But it still implies that there's a one-dimensional continuum from "homo" to "hetero", and I doubt even that is true. I suspect it's just entirely the wrong way of looking at it. As I mentioned before, these categories didn't even exist until very recently.

Would you look for a genetic explanation of which German Christians are Protestant and which are Catholic, and which are somewhere in between but influenced by "cultural, psychological, etc. factors"?

 

[Patrick1000]

For what it is worth sol invictus, I agree with you

OK, that's a more reasonable position. But it still implies that there's a one-dimensional continuum from "homo" to "hetero", and I doubt even that is true. I suspect it's just entirely the wrong way of looking at it. As I mentioned before, these categories didn't even exist until very recently.

Would you look for a genetic explanation of which German Christians are Protestant and which are Catholic, and which are somewhere in between but influenced by "cultural, psychological, etc. factors"?

For what it is worth sol invictus, I agree with you. It seems sexual preference does cover a spectrum, and is not THIS OR THAT, straight or gay. It's probably true for every one of us to some greater or lesser degree, though we may not like to admit such is the case.

We CHOOSE those we love, or in some cases, we come to love those we have chosen to be with. And their sex, the fact of their being a woman or a man is but one consideration.

I am a swimmer, swim every day, these days for 2 or 2 and a half hours. Swimmers bond in a very real sense, spending so much time in the water together. In the shower, after a swim, hot water blasting down on our heads, we sometimes stand quietly, other times chatting a bit. I know the gay guys, some my friends, "check me out". It is no big deal. I see beauty in their bodies as well.

 

[Nonpareil]

Just out of curiosity, Pat: are you ever going to answer any of the more substantial questions put to you, or are you just going to continue posting fluff and anecdotes? I'd rather not waste my time continuing to check this thread if all it's going to be is the latter.

 

[Aridas]

When I was in medical school, there was this young man who had sustained a major head injury in a MVA. Details aside, the young man wound up having a sizable portion of a frontal lobe resected as part of his treatment.

As I recall, he was about 25 years old or so. He had been in jail several times, always drinking, always cursing, beating his girlfriend, petty theft artist, blah blah blah. Well you can see where this is going. After the head injury and subsequent surgery, he never smacked a gal again, didn't curse, didn't drink. True story. The guy's mother thought he even was MORE INTELLIGENT after the injury and surgery.

Our staff neurosurgeons would laugh and laugh and laugh telling this story to their captive audiences. Most of the time, medical students hate this kind of thing, but in this case, one just had to laugh along, and in earnest. It was that funny. These guy's, the surgeons, would do these imitations of the frontal lobe altered young man's mother and it would really crack us up. She was so thankful. Those insanely talented big shot university neurosurgeons, dad gum!, they had fixed Bobby by removing a piece of his brain!

Sure we should use our tools to understand things, but what is it that you do not understand/know about loving somebody? Seems you do understand it, know it, already to begin with, right out of the blocks there. I do anyway. There SHE! sits, before my eyes. I would do anything for her. Seems that I understand it, know it, perfectly well already.

You realize, of course, that you've simply confirmed that "chemistry," or, more properly, "neurology" has something to do with emotion, which invalidates your earlier assertion?

You also realize that you're making some interesting assumptions, as well as a weak argument for ignorance? Frankly, there's a remarkable amount that I, personally, don't know or understand about love, on many levels. That, alone, is enough to head off that line of reasoning.

OK, that's a more reasonable position. But it still implies that there's a one-dimensional continuum from "homo" to "hetero", and I doubt even that is true. I suspect it's just entirely the wrong way of looking at it. As I mentioned before, these categories didn't even exist until very recently.

When you're talking about a very singular thing with two ends and an easily defined middle, a simple continuum is to be expected. If you want to add other things into the mix, that usually does change the shape of things. You could even easily argue that there are several different, though closely related, matters present in the topic at hand, certainly.

Would you look for a genetic explanation of which German Christians are Protestant and which are Catholic, and which are somewhere in between but influenced by "cultural, psychological, etc. factors"?

Your question is fundamentally flawed, in the point that you're trying to make. First, Christianity doesn't have "ends" in Catholic and Protestant thought. Trying to represent it as such is... silly, really. Second, Christianity, in general, doesn't "spontaneously" occur without people teaching it, throughout humanity, homosexuality does. Certainly, you can try to argue that the difference in the level of complexity between the two is significant, though that does just highlight that your point here isn't well made.

 

[Patrick1000]

You are missing my point

You realize, of course, that you've simply confirmed that "chemistry," or, more properly, "neurology" has something to do with emotion, which invalidates your earlier assertion?

You also realize that you're making some interesting assumptions, as well as a weak argument for ignorance? Frankly, there's a remarkable amount that I, personally, don't know or understand about love, on many levels. That, alone, is enough to head off that line of reasoning.



When you're talking about a very singular thing with two ends and an easily defined middle, a simple continuum is to be expected. If you want to add other things into the mix, that usually does change the shape of things. You could even easily argue that there are several different, though closely related, matters present in the topic at hand, certainly.



Your question is fundamentally flawed, in the point that you're trying to make. First, Christianity doesn't have "ends" in Catholic and Protestant thought. Trying to represent it as such is... silly, really. Second, Christianity, in general, doesn't "spontaneously" occur without people teaching it, throughout humanity, homosexuality does. Certainly, you can try to argue that the difference in the level of complexity between the two is significant, though that does just highlight that your point here isn't well made.

You are missing my point.

I recounted the wonderfully funny, crazy, great and ever so true story about the neurosurgeons and their frontal lobe resection remedy for the antisocial, as a more or less "so what?"

My claim here is that you are making a "category" error. Sexual preference is not about the corporeal, at least the CHOICE part is not. Getting it on may be about bodies. But we all know we can be in love with the guy or gal who could not care less how we feel, and so we never get that first kiss anyway.

My point was, is, and forever shall be Aridas, that this is something not in need of explanation. Love simply is, including sexual love, whether acted on or not, whether imagined or "real".

Aridas, it is as though you wanted to know not a physical law for gravity, but were rather asking why there was gravity to begin with. You are asking science to do something she cannot do. Your question Aridas, is not a question for science. It lies outside of her ken. Philosophers may legitimately ask the question, "why there is gravity". As such, as a philosophical question, it is indeed legitimate, though their answer, whatever it may be, will not be an answer that will satisfy you. You my friend, will, to your credit, never be satisfied.

Objects fall to the ground, though they understand not why they fall. They simply do. They simply fall, when they find themselves in the influence of a gravitational field. We can describe the field, its dimensions, how it works in terms of "numbers", gravity's figure, ∇νGμν =0, Gμν ≡Rμν −1gμνR=Gνμ. Even this though, the famous "Einstein Tensor", is most appropriately termed a mathematical identity and not a "law of physics" per se.

You are beautiful Aridas, so wanting, ACHING no less, aching to not only understand the Einstein Tensor, but also, what it is about the world to begin with that makes it so. You want to know who gravity's mommy and daddy were. How, why , when where and for what reason it was born. What it thinks!!!!! You want access to realm that is and shall remain forever closed to your queries Aridas. Bang on that door all you like, no one will open that door. Oh MY! Aridas, you are splendid.

I say to myself sometimes that it is as though we listen to the words of Gods as those words leak through the cracks in a wall.

But the long and short of it all, the ever loving free fall of it all, shall find you Aridas, wandering through space-time from now until.........kingdom ain't ever gonna' come. You may come to terms with the numbers, but from whence the numbers come.........???????

I play the piano, the banjo, and you want to know what music is to begin with. We are different.

Bertrand Russell became so very excited when as a young man he thought he had indeed discovered from whence the numbers, the numbers themselves, quite literally had come. He thought he had discovered their mommy and daddy. The HOW, WHY, WHERE, WHEN, FUNDAMENTALS OF NUMBERS. Then he stumbled upon a paradox that upset his apple cart. He also learned someone had beaten him to the punch, not to the paradox part. Russell would surprise that person with some very very very bad news, the news that nobody knew who number one's mommy was after all. Russell learned Gottlob Frege was up to the same "where oh whereing" that Russell himself and you Aridas were and are up to. Russell wrote to the ol' boy, Frege, and told him that his book and theories about the "Foundations of Arithmetic" was about to take a massively damaging and perhaps fatal hit.

It turned out, no one did know what "numbers were" after all. Russell wrote a long long book with Whitehead taking the troubling paradox into consideration, but even then, Godel came up with an "incompleteness theorem" that ended Russell's however brief flirtation with understanding numbers at their most fundamental level. Alan Turing's work similarly showed Russell "wrong", if such a great man could ever really be "wrong". It is off topic, but Russell was ever so ever so ever so massively humongously fabulous, was he not???

So Aridas, you know my good friend, love is ever so much more complex than say, "gravity" , or 1, 2, 3.........., and if we do not understand those trivial things, how ever do you suppose we can come to be intimate with intimacy? It is so beyond the feeble reach of boys and girls. It seems hardly worth struggling with, though you my friend I see will continue to struggle. To your credit I must say, and I do say that with absolute sincerity.

So while you seek to understand why there is water, it is my day off today and I shall go to the pool right now and simply swim in it.

 

[Pup]

My point was, is, and forever shall be Aridas, that this is something not in need of explanation.

In your opinion.

Trying to convince others that it's an absolute truth, whether you attempt it with ridicule, presumption, or any other rhetorical tricks, means you're going against the deep-seated urge that humans have, to seek explanations. Not to mention you'd be trying to take away from them the joy that they experience in approaching life a different way than you do.

Good luck with that.

 

[Patrick1000]

And you are missiong the point I was trying to make to Aridas Pup.

In your opinion.

Trying to convince others that it's an absolute truth, whether you attempt it with ridicule, presumption, or any other rhetorical tricks, means you're going against the deep-seated urge that humans have, to seek explanations. Not to mention you'd be trying to take away from them the joy that they experience in approaching life a different way than you do.

Good luck with that.

And you are missing the point I was trying to make to Aridas Pup.

Our differences, mine and Aridas', being a "category error", is of course itself subjective. That is very much my opinion. Of course Aridas is welcome to view this question of the "genetics of homosexuality/heterosexuality" as "scientific", and I of course respect his views. That is why I respond to him. In a sense, we are foils to/for one another, Aridas and me.

I am who I am, and Aridas is Aridas. In a sense, responding to you now is self referetial with respect to the issue, as my point is very much that sexual preferences have to do with one's world views, point of view, one's making CHOICES. It is about something that is "first person" grounded for me. Aridas sees sexual preference from a "third person" point of view. Not entirely, but to some significant degree at least, for Aridas, this is at least relative to my views, outside the purview of choice.

I appreciate your excellent points as well Pup.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

Would you look for a genetic explanation of which German Christians are Protestant and which are Catholic, and which are somewhere in between but influenced by "cultural, psychological, etc. factors"?

No, but I wouldn't look for a genetic explanation for which hetero men are attracted to skinny blondes and which were attracted to Rubenesque brunettes, either. That wouldn't change the nature of their basic attraction to women as opposed to men.

OTOH, I might be inclined to look to genetics for an explanation of the apparent numeric disparity between the larger group of people who seem to feel a need to believe in something of a superstitious nature, and the rather small group that doesn't. The 'believer' group doesn't seem to be particularly dependent on any creed or cosmology, they are just happy as long as they've got one. The 'non-believer' sub-set doesn't seem to be attracted to any at all. They do just fine without reliance on mythical super-beings.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that there was a genetic or biological component accounting (at least in part) for this.

 

[sol invictus]

When you're talking about a very singular thing with two ends and an easily defined middle, a simple continuum is to be expected. If you want to add other things into the mix, that usually does change the shape of things. You could even easily argue that there are several different, though closely related, matters present in the topic at hand, certainly.

It's not at all easily defined - that's the point.

Your question is fundamentally flawed, in the point that you're trying to make. First, Christianity doesn't have "ends" in Catholic and Protestant thought. Trying to represent it as such is... silly, really.

That, again, is precisely the point.

Second, Christianity, in general, doesn't "spontaneously" occur without people teaching it, throughout humanity, homosexuality does.

How do you know? And if that is true, why is it that the category "homosexual" didn't even exist as a concept until quite recently?

 

[sol invictus]

No, but I wouldn't look for a genetic explanation for which hetero men are attracted to skinny blondes and which were attracted to Rubenesque brunettes, either. That wouldn't change the nature of their basic attraction to women as opposed to men.

That again assumes precisely what isn't evident - that there is such a thing as "hetero men", and that their attraction to different physical types of women is on some very different level than the fact that they are attracted more to women than to men.

 

[Aridas]

You are missing my point.

Am I? Are you sure that it's not that I simply disagree with you?

I recounted the wonderfully funny, crazy, great and ever so true story about the neurosurgeons and their frontal lobe resection remedy for the antisocial, as a more or less "so what?"

It's not a bad story at all. It's also of only limited relevance to the issues at hand. To keep things on topic, I only dealt with the part of it that dealt directly with the discussion at hand.

My claim here is that you are making a "category" error. Sexual preference is not about the corporeal, at least the CHOICE part is not. Getting it on may be about bodies. But we all know we can be in love with the guy or gal who could not care less how we feel, and so we never get that first kiss anyway.

It's actually fine with me if you believe that there are non-physical aspects to things, so long as you aren't trying to claim that the physical components are either meaningless or insufficient to explain the observed, or in this case, felt, result. And yes, it's more than just neurons, when dealing with emotions. One should not forget the influence of hormones, for example. How we feel and understand the effects, though, requires them.

That said, your use of the word "CHOICE" suggests an old dispute. One that I may as well address momentarily. The only choice that I've ever consciously felt that I had was whether to accept my feelings or refuse to accept them. Given the associated psychological issues with refusal, I chose to accept them. I didn't choose who I liked, just what to do with it.

My point was, is, and forever shall be Aridas, that this is something not in need of explanation. Love simply is, including sexual love, whether acted on or not, whether imagined or "real".

I don't think much of arguments for ignorance.

Aridas, it is as though you wanted to know not a physical law for gravity, but were rather asking why there was gravity to begin with. You are asking science to do something she cannot do.

Your question Aridas, is not a question for science. It lies outside of her ken. Philosophers may legitimately ask the question, "why there is gravity". As such, as a philosophical question, it is indeed legitimate, though their answer, whatever it may be, will not be an answer that will satisfy you. You my friend, will, to your credit, never be satisfied.

I disagree. Science has its limits, certainly. This is highly unlikely to be beyond them. That said, it is highly unlikely to be as simple an answer as "a single gay gene," much as many would hope otherwise.

Objects fall to the ground, though they understand not why they fall. They simply do.

I fail to see much point in pointing out that capacity for understanding in inanimate objects is, to all observable evidence, nonexistent, occasional decisions to talk to them as if they were notwithstanding.

They simply fall, when they find themselves in the influence of a gravitational field. We can describe the field, its dimensions, how it works in terms of "numbers", gravity's figure, ∇νGμν =0, Gμν ≡Rμν −1gμνR=Gνμ. Even this though, the famous "Einstein Tensor", is most appropriately termed a mathematical identity and not a "law of physics" per se.

So... you're arguing that things can be understood, while trying to say that we can't understand why things happen? Of course, in gravity's case, I could simply direct you to this, as an example of an explanation for the direct why, mixed in with a number of other related things. I'd suggest starting at about 4:20 for the specifics.

You are beautiful Aridas,

Thank you. I don't see how that's all that relevant to this, though.

so wanting, ACHING no less, aching to not only understand the Einstein Tensor, but also, what it is about the world to begin with that makes it so.

See linked video. Also, no. Your guess is incorrect. "ACHING" and the rhetoric makes it sound like you're trying to please a crowd of those who want to be reaffirmed in their faith, rather than actually addressing the issues at hand.

You want to know who gravity's mommy and daddy were.

When there's no solid logical or evidential reason to believe that gravity had a mommy and daddy, no, it's not something that I concern myself with.

How, why , when where and for what reason it was born.

To make this short, I'll just mimic another poster. "Assumes facts not in evidence."

What it thinks!!!!!

Assumes facts not in evidence.

You want access to realm that is and shall remain forever closed to your queries Aridas. Bang on that door all you like, no one will open that door.

Factually, your attempts to tell me what I want are distinctly left wanting. I'll mildly applaud you for your attempt at eloquence, though.

Oh MY! Aridas, you are splendid.

I'll just say thank you, again, and choose to take the "high road."

I say to myself sometimes that it is as though we listen to the words of Gods as those words leak through the cracks in a wall.

Always a funny quote coming from someone who thought that proclaiming one self an atheist, repeatedly, mattered, with regards to the points that they were being a proponent for. That said, good for you for being able to formulate that. Conceptually, however, it feels like nonsense, to me.

But the long and short of it all, the ever loving free fall of it all, shall find you Aridas, wandering through space-time from now until.........kingdom ain't ever gonna' come. You may come to terms with the numbers, but from whence the numbers come.........???????

I'm afraid that whatever the point of your first sentence was, I'm forced to classify it as rhetorical gibberish. As for the second... the numbers would be meaningless, in the first place, if they didn't have application. "From whence the numbers come," frankly, is a bit meaningless, too, once one understands that the numbers that you seem to be referring to are simply a way to express verifiable and predictable observations.

I play the piano, the banjo, and you want to know what music is to begin with. We are different.

We are different, yes. Somehow, I don't think that your comparison is any more correct than your previous attempts to tell me what I want, though.

Bertrand Russell became so very excited when as a young man he thought he had indeed discovered from whence the numbers, the numbers themselves, quite literally had come. He thought he had discovered their mommy and daddy. The HOW, WHY, WHERE, WHEN, FUNDAMENTALS OF NUMBERS. Then he stumbled upon a paradox that upset his apple cart. He also learned someone had beaten him to the punch, not to the paradox part. Russell would surprise that person with some very very very bad news, the news that nobody knew who number one's mommy was after all. Russell learned Gottlob Frege was up to the same "where oh whereing" that Russell himself and you Aridas were and are up to. Russell wrote to the ol' boy, Frege, and told him that his book and theories about the "Foundations of Arithmetic" was about to take a massively damaging and perhaps fatal hit.

Nice start to your story. Your assumptions are past the point of amusing, though, and to the point of an eyeroll.

It turned out, no one did know what "numbers were" after all.

Other than a group of various and related concepts that are remarkably useful in many ways?

Russell wrote a long long book with Whitehead taking the troubling paradox into consideration, but even then, Godel came up with an "incompleteness theorem" that ended Russell's however brief flirtation with understanding numbers at their most fundamental level. Alan Turing's work similarly showed Russell "wrong", if such a great man could ever really be "wrong".

The "greatness" of a man has absolutely no bearing on whether they can be wrong. Hence one of the reasons why 'argument from authority' is considered a fallacy.

It is off topic, but Russell was ever so ever so ever so massively humongously fabulous, was he not???

I have never called anyone or anything "massively humongously fabulous," and don't feel like starting now.

So Aridas, you know my good friend, love is ever so much more complex than say, "gravity" , or 1, 2, 3.........., and if we do not understand those trivial things, how ever do you suppose we can come to be intimate with intimacy? It is so beyond the feeble reach of boys and girls. It seems hardly worth struggling with, though you my friend I see will continue to struggle. To your credit I must say, and I do say that with absolute sincerity.

Again, arguments for ignorance are not particularly persuasive. Especially when your argument is based on false analogy. That gravity's effects can be expressed in mathematics and used to reliably predict a result, by your own admission, alone, shatters your argument.

So while you seek to understand why there is water,

*eyeroll*

it is my day off today and I shall go to the pool right now and simply swim in it.

If you actually did go swimming, I hope you enjoyed yourself, greatly.

It's not at all easily defined - that's the point.

Either sexual attraction to males, females, or both, whether acted on/admitted or not, or non-forced sexual actions with males, females, or both.

The former is the more useful for most uses. The latter, more useful for uses specifically involving behavior. Yes, I am aware that I'm excluding hermaphrodites.

That said, I'd say that that's a pretty easy definition of the specific matter in question.

That, again, is precisely the point.

To be half-deliberately obtuse, your point is that your point fails, badly?

How do you know?

Which? Christianity? That it's only arisen once seems like a pretty good indication. Homosexuality? Heh. I'm going to have to ask if you're serious, now.

And if that is true, why is it that the category "homosexual" didn't even exist as a concept until quite recently?

I'm just going to facepalm, a little, at this, and toss the onus back at you. Which version of the 'category "homosexual"' are you talking about? And are you claiming that same gender attractions didn't occur until quite recently?

 

[Patrick1000]

Stroke syndromes typically don't hit the hypothalmus Alan

If you work with people who have had strokes, you should be aware of just how important a person's central nervous system is to who they are. Emotions and sexual lives included.

What types of things might you see in a patient who has had a stroke affecting their hypothalamus?

Perhaps you could read this: http://www.brain-injury-online.com/sexual-dysfunction-and-sexual-performance.html

Stroke syndromes typically don't hit the hypothalmus Alan, not in any specific sense anyway. We do deal with hypothalamic problems of various sorts on our stroke service, but our attentions are by and large elsewhere.

By this I mean, with big cortical infarcts from blood thrombi in major vessels or emboli, one sees cortical clinical problems with motor function issues/weakness, sensory deficits, speech disturbances. Lacunar(from lacune, like a little "lake") infarcts, another common stroke syndrome, are tiny deep lesions associated with clumsy arms, dysarthria, a weak leg. People usually get better pretty quick after having one of those. Intracerebral bleeds often times are deep hemispheric/subcortical or often times involve the basal ganglia and/or thalamus(motor and sensory systems respectively). These are bad. Subarachnoid bleeds from aneurysms are variable in effect/outcome.

Those are the main syndromes, and the hypothalmus of course, could be affected by a stroke, but typically we do not see hypothalamic problems per se. They do crop up, and when they do, it is more often as a complication of the stroke, or a treatment/intervention, not as an up front and typical component of one of the major stroke syndromes.

Alan, here is a good question that I like to ask the very highest level students I work with, my best interns and residents(so these are doctors, one to three years out of med school, some extremely capable). QUESTION;

"Parkinson's disease is a disease of the basal ganglia, a motor system. Why do people with Parkinson's disease eventually become demented? That doesn't make sense does it? Cognition is a cortical activity. What does a motor system(basal ganglia) have to do with reasoning/cognition. Why should Michael J. Fox be afraid of becoming demented if this Parkinson affliction is primarily messing with his basal ganglia?"

There is no right or wrong answer to this question Alan, though it is a very good question. It is MY question. I invented it. I even ask neurologists to answer the question in front of my medical student and resident charges to make some points about what neurologists do and do not know, limits of science, that sort of stuff.

The question DOES have much to do with this thread believe it or not. I do not know if you are a medical person, but even if you are not, it is instructive to think about this rather "puzzling" aspect of Parkinson's disease.

Again, there is no correct response, and it is a VERY high level question. I ask it only of my very best students. Play around with it a little if you like, or don't, no big.


I'll read your thing.

 

[sol invictus]

Either sexual attraction to males, females, or both, whether acted on/admitted or not, or non-forced sexual actions with males, females, or both.

Sexual attraction when? All the time one's whole life under all circumstances? To all people of that gender? Or only sometimes to some people? If it's not admitted or acted on, how do you know what it is?

As I hope you can see, your "definition" is nothing close to a definition, either logically or functionally.

The former is the more useful for most uses. The latter, more useful for uses specifically involving behavior. Yes, I am aware that I'm excluding hermaphrodites.

You haven't included or excluded anyone, because you haven't given a usable definition.

To be half-deliberately obtuse, your point is that your point fails, badly?

My point is that the categorization you (and many others) in this thread are assuming exists is very probably does not. What illustrates my point perfectly is how easily you recognize the problem in another context, while remaining completely unaware of it in the context of sexual orientation.

I'm just going to facepalm, a little, at this, and toss the onus back at you. Which version of the 'category "homosexual"' are you talking about? And are you claiming that same gender attractions didn't occur until quite recently?

Of course not. Did you read what I wrote in this thread? I'm talking about the fact (according to Foucault and a few other historians, at least) that people didn't categorize people as "hetero" or "homo" until modern times. It's a modern invention. So if it's something so basic to human nature and so easy to define as you seem to believe, why was it not even recognized as a concept until recently?

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I am somewhat literary by nature. That is not necessarily to say my writing is "good"... <snip>

I think we can come to an agreement here.

 

[Aridas]

Sexual attraction when? All the time one's whole life under all circumstances?

Depends on the more specific purpose of the usage, I was giving a baseline that is, in fact, the continuum in question. Certainly, more factors can be added to that and it can be adapted rhetorically to answer different specific questions, but that doesn't change the validity of calling the variable in question what it is. That said, frankly, it seems like you're trying to change the subject and say that your new subject is the same thing.

To all people of that gender?

Seriously? I'm going to ask you make a case for that being, in any way, valid, or just label you as a troll.

Or only sometimes to some people?

Given that any arguments that try to say otherwise, for populations at large, tend not to be based in reality, yes.

If it's not admitted or acted on, how do you know what it is?

And... again, irrelevant. What's being discussed here is, in fact, not the identification of where on a continuum one is, by others or oneself.

As I hope you can see, your "definition" is nothing close to a definition, either logically or functionally.

As I hope you can see, you've done an incredibly poor job of making your case.

You haven't included or excluded anyone, because you haven't given a usable definition.

And this is where the "you're trying to use what I said to answer a different question than what was addressed" comes into play.

My point is that the categorization you (and many others) in this thread are assuming exists is very probably does not.

Perhaps, you could elaborate on exactly what categorization we are making? Maybe, of course, the issue that you're seeing is a suspected conflation of different concepts? Maybe it's a case of thinking that cause and label are being used interchangeably?

What illustrates my point perfectly is how easily you recognize the problem in another context, while remaining completely unaware of it in the context of sexual orientation.

Either that, or your comparison was done exceedingly poorly. Which it was. Feel free to try again, of course, but trying to say that your previous attempt actually illustrated anything other than your ability to make a bad argument is, frankly, not going to fly.

Of course not. Did you read what I wrote in this thread?

Thank you for making that clear. I was feeling a bit ornery when I wrote that bit, which may be understandable, given the time and what I had been doing shortly before.

I'm talking about the fact (according to Foucault and a few other historians, at least) that people didn't categorize people as "hetero" or "homo" until modern times. It's a modern invention.

Tendencies in one direction or another don't particularly seem to be a modern invention, I think. Even strong tendencies. Which is what we're dealing with, last I checked.

So if it's something so basic to human nature and so easy to define as you seem to believe, why was it not even recognized as a concept until recently?

[sarcasm]And that's certainly not a question loaded with assumptions, really. Not at all. It certainly couldn't be pointed out that recognizing concepts and that official uses of categories or labels aren't the same.[/sarcasm]

I'd be tempted to go on, but... I have the chance to sleep for a bit longer before work, now, after being prevented from sleeping for far too much of the time that I usually do for the second day in a row.

 

[sol invictus]

Depends on the more specific purpose of the usage

The specific purpose of the usage is this thread; namely, a discussion as to whether or not "homosexuality" is genetic. I didn't realize that could be so confusing.

[sarcasm]And that's certainly not a question loaded with assumptions, really. Not at all. It certainly couldn't be pointed out that recognizing concepts and that official uses of categories or labels aren't the same.[/sarcasm]

"Official uses"? What in the world are you talking about?

What I'm trying to explain to you is that the concept of homosexuality as distinct from heterosexuality did not exist, at least not in anything like its modern form. People simply didn't think of sexual preference that way. "Are you homo or hetero" wasn't a sensible or even comprehensible question - if there was an analogue, it was closer to "do you give or receive", or "are you active or passive", or "how powerful are you".

It seems to me you can see this pretty clearly reading ancient or pre-modern sources, and you can read what historians and sociologists have written about this issue (Foucault being the prime example).

Of course that older point of view might have been mistaken - maybe "hetero versus homo" really is a sensible way to categorize sexual preference, and maybe it really could have an unambiguous genetic basis. But if so that remains to be established, and it should not be implicitly assumed as a basis for discussion.

 

[Patrick1000]

My sense, as mentioned previously is this was all driven by a defensive dynamic

The specific purpose of the usage is this thread; namely, a discussion as to whether or not "homosexuality" is genetic. I didn't realize that could be so confusing.



"Official uses"? What in the world are you talking about?

What I'm trying to explain to you is that the concept of homosexuality as distinct from heterosexuality did not exist, at least not in anything like its modern form. People simply didn't think of sexual preference that way. "Are you homo or hetero" wasn't a sensible or even comprehensible question - if there was an analogue, it was closer to "do you give or receive", or "are you active or passive", or "how powerful are you".

It seems to me you can see this pretty clearly reading ancient or pre-modern sources, and you can read what historians and sociologists have written about this issue (Foucault being the prime example).

Of course that older point of view might have been mistaken - maybe "hetero versus homo" really is a sensible way to categorize sexual preference, and maybe it really could have an unambiguous genetic basis. But if so that remains to be established, and it should not be implicitly assumed as a basis for discussion.

My sense sol invictus, as I mentioned previously, is that this "homosexuality/heterosexuality is genetically determined in part business", was all driven by a defensive dynamic. People were "blamed" and viewed as at fault for being gay. Our best and brightest and most beautiful, Alan Turing, charged with crimes and then given estrogen to straighten that gay genius out.

I am not saying the gay community first floated the idea. But once out, the notion of sexual preference/orientation being "out of one's control" had and has great appeal to those being discriminated against and those sympathetic towards them.

It is this consideration, sexual preference being genetic as a gay defense, that maintains the notion as a strongly viable one in our community today.

 

[ponderingturtle]

OK, that's a more reasonable position. But it still implies that there's a one-dimensional continuum from "homo" to "hetero", and I doubt even that is true. I suspect it's just entirely the wrong way of looking at it. As I mentioned before, these categories didn't even exist until very recently.

Would you look for a genetic explanation of which German Christians are Protestant and which are Catholic, and which are somewhere in between but influenced by "cultural, psychological, etc. factors"?

Are there really protestants born to catholics though? And how stigmatized are they?

And of course no one I know would claim that which sect one is isn't a choice.

But the earlier part is right to some extent. I am sure my attraction to breasts is partially cultural but there is not much cultural impulse toward a foot fetish and it is common as well. I don't think anyone ever decided what turns them on and culture does seem to impact this.

That does not mean a straight to gay spectrum is not useful, people like labels even when those labels are not the best fit of reality. That is a large part of physics for example.

 

[Cheetah]

Sexual preference most definitely has a 'nature' as well as a 'nurture' component (as has almost everything about us). It also spans the whole gamut from homosexual to heterosexual and often shoots off into other odd directions as well (no pun intended).
Just the fact that most men like women and most women like men should be enough to prove this genetic component of preference. Some people towards the middle of the spectrum might well be able to choose which way to 'hang', but plenty honestly have no choice, I certainly didn't and still don't.
I also don't think that any specific gene or combination of genes are responsible for homosexuality, its likely more of a developmental thing in the timing of when certain genes get switched on and off during development (which of course is also influenced by more than pure genetics).

So there you have my opinion!