<p>Calling it a "case of homosexuality" makes it sound like being gay is a disease.</p>
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But at the end of the day who really cares? You?
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<p>Thank you for saying that. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter- what we do know is that we can't change one's sexual orientation.</p>
<p>i think that one's environment helps determine one's homosexuality. its not like they wake up one day and decide they're gay, i think it more of a process over time.</p>
<p>Homosexuality is just like all the other sins. Yes, gay people are "born that way", however, that doesn't make it right. We are all born into sin (Liars, murderers, etc). Why do you think as children we don't have to be taught to tell a lie?...because it's automatic...it's within our sinful nature. So homosexuality is the basically the same thing; it's just another natural sin that some people acquire. Some people are thieves, others are murderers, and some are gay. </p>
<p>To make a long post short, Yes, they are technically "born that way", but that doesn't give them the right to declare it "okay". </p>
<p>okay...flame me now...</p>
<p>wow that's confusing. if people are really born that way, could they change themselves? isn't homosexuality about feelings rather than something more black and white such lies, murders, etc? you can stop yourself from those things but you can't stop yourself from loving one of the same gender. ..can you?</p>
<p>i've always wanted to believe that being gay was a choice so it'd be easy to be against all that stuff. but now i'm having doubts.</p>
<p>Look. There can't be a "gay gene," because otherwise you wouldn't get sets of identical twins where one was gay and one was straight (and they have). Throw that theory out.</p>
<p>Also, to you'llsee..., you can't compare homosexuality to "sins." Liars, thieves, and murderers harm others through their actions. Homosexuals don't, unless offending bigots qualifies as "harm."</p>
<p>i dont think homosexuality is genetic. as MelancholyDane said, there isnt a "gay gene". and sometimes people who are homosexuals decide they dont want to be one anymore and change their sexual orientation. my friend is a lesbian and she told me she chose to be one, even though her parents didnt approve it. she knew the consequences of being a lesbian yet she still decided to be one.
choosing to be a homosexual isnt a one day thing. its decided through experiences. obviously nobody is going to decide to be gay out of the blue. but i still do think being a homosexual is a choice, not genetic</p>
<p>I didn't say it was a choice, though. It's impossible to consciously choose to be attracted to one gender (or both, or neither, or something completely different) over another. I'm saying that contemporary scientific research suggests that biological and environmental factors which cannot currently be researched effectively are the primary determinants of sexual orientation.</p>
<p>Not genetics. Not personal choice.</p>
<p>Now, choosing to "come out," like your lesbian friend, is different. That was a personal choice. However, she didn't choose to be attracted to other females. She simply made the decision to go public about it.</p>
<p>i think you're born with it...i personally think it's a hormonal imbalance...but who am i to say/judge?</p>
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Homosexuality is just like all the other sins. Yes, gay people are "born that way", however, that doesn't make it right. We are all born into sin (Liars, murderers, etc). Why do you think as children we don't have to be taught to tell a lie?...because it's automatic...it's within our sinful nature. So homosexuality is the basically the same thing; it's just another natural sin that some people acquire. Some people are thieves, others are murderers, and some are gay.
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<p>Why don't you read that statement and reconsider. According to you people born with disabilities are guilty of a sin as well? Is my nephew a sinner due to autism? </p>
<p>Yes, according to many religions homosexuality is a sin but it is irresponsible to call homosexuals sinners if indeed they were born that way. I don't have a problem with homosexuals, I do have a problem with homosexuals who act feminine, I think thats the sin.</p>
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i dont think homosexuality is genetic. as MelancholyDane said, there isnt a "gay gene". and sometimes people who are homosexuals decide they dont want to be one anymore and change their sexual orientation. my friend is a lesbian and she told me she chose to be one, even though her parents didnt approve it. she knew the consequences of being a lesbian yet she still decided to be one.
choosing to be a homosexual isnt a one day thing. its decided through experiences. obviously nobody is going to decide to be gay out of the blue. but i still do think being a homosexual is a choice, not genetic
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<p>Very good point. There is no gay gene. Homosexuals become that way due to certain surroundings and a lifestyle they associate themselves with, it's a choice, just not one thats made out of the blue one day.</p>
<p>What we are never changes, who we are never stops changing.</p>
<p>i haven't read thru this thread but, OMG!!!!!! no one chooses homosexuality! look up the research! it has every thing ( or at least what is thought, to this point)to do with hormonal surges within the pregnant woman during her gestation. estrogen vs testosterone surges. in some cases # of pregnancies and birth order of same-sexed children is also being studied. i've had ALL my homosexual patients support this, with some knowing they were a different sexual orientation by 7 or 8 years old.</p>
<p>There was an ad about strong gay men when I just read this thread.
Coincidence? I don't think so.</p>
<p>what are you saying? you mean spamming of this thread? if so, report it immediately to CC moderator.</p>
<p>Like any other trait, there's a variety of factors that go into it, both genetic, hormonal, and environmental. I think that it's largely based on genes and hormones received in the prenatal stage (my theory is just based on research presented to me at a workshop, though, so take it as you will). I do think, however, that environment is going to affect how your sexual orientation is expressed. Someone in an accepting environment, whose parents wouldn't mind if he or she was gay, is probably more likely to act on feelings for someone of the same sex. On the other hand, someone who was taught that being gay is wrong would probably at least try to suppress those feelings.</p>
<p>As an Actual Gay Person, though, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I didn't wake up one morning last year and say "You know what? Narrowing my dating pool from 92% of guys to 8% of women and angering my father's entire conservative Roman Catholic family sounds AWESOME!"</p>
<p>"just because another chick makes out with another chick or whatever doesn't make them lesbian. That's just a call for attention or being sexy or whatever you want to call it."</p>
<p>I disagree. I know many people who consider themselves straight who would be willing to engage in some sort of sexual activity with someone of their sex either because they want to "check" that they are straight or because they just like sex.</p>
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what are you saying? you mean spamming of this thread? if so, report it immediately to CC moderator.
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<p>No, CC uses Google Ads, which hunts for words in the website you're looking at to figure out what kinds of ads you'd be interested in. It saw "gay" a dozen times and, you know...</p>
<p>Homosexuality is obviously biological in nature for many reasons. And I said this in the other thread, but even it it was completely a choice, it wouldn't matter: people have the right to live their lives however they want (without hurting others).</p>
<p>homosexuality is a choice and a sin. as a Christian i believe God created man and women to live together. then we come along and start sinning.. ever since the first sin in the Garden we have been sinning. </p>
<p>however, as a strong Christian and firm believer in God this is where we struggle. Us "Christians" all too often hate on homo-sexuals and treat them as if they are the scum of the earth, while in reality they are sinners just like every one of us.
homosexuality is a lifestyle of sin. but how is that any different than us "good people" who lust or are gluttonous or commit adultry.</p>
<p>if a man in the everyday church were to confess to an addiction to pornography, the church would gather around him and try to help him out of his addiction, </p>
<p>yet all too often in our churches we shun or curse the homosexual instead of taking them in as we would do with the porn-addict.</p>
<p>homosexuality is a choice to live in sin.</p>
<p>but so is lust, greed, theft (cheating on taxes ect...)</p>
<p>its all sin.</p>
<p>we are all sinners... but for some reason we just curse the homosexuals instead of taking them in and trying to understand and to help them with their hurts and pain.</p>
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lol, this reminds me of obese people who blame their extra weight on genetics.
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<p>That's EXACTLY what I thought when I saw this thread. I mean come on, the obese sometimes say that it's because of genetics they turned fat, others say it was environmental factors on how much they ate as a young child while others say it was hormonal/chemical imbalances that changed their body fat ratio when they were born. Like the person who wrote earlier about how people knew they were homo by the time they were seven or eight, this really reminds me of the case of where the majority of the obese believe that they notices their overwhelming obesity at around the same age. I'm really glad that obesity is not a "sin" though some say it is because of glutton that there are obese people, I personally believe that the Obese are just hungry and due to their chemical make up cannot survive with a certain amount of food in their body daily. I mean like what has been referred to earlier, not that many people make an active choice to be homo, the same goes for obese people, maybe even more so. I mean no-one just chooses to be obese. You can say it's a combination of genetics/environment/good food that makes the obese become obese, and come out to society. People say their parents alienate them when they come out and say they are homo, have you ever seen an obese girl with skinny *****y parents? That's what I call a living hell. They scream at the little gir, talk about how ugly and fat she is her entire life. This just makes the little girl want to eat more which ends up in an even worse case of obesity. I think the obese, if they really really wanted to go and try, they could become "not obese" with the right amount of help and exercise. Yea, thank you all for listening.</p>
<p>It seems likely that real homosexuality (as in actual sexual attraction to members of one's own biological gender) is biologically determined. Though it may be that some "homosexual" individuals are not truly homosexual, the list</a> of animals displaying homosexual behavior provides powerful evidence that true homosexuality is a real and immutable characteristic of nature.</p>
<p>Also, here's the estimable Steven Pinker (Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University) on homosexuality in his book *The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature<a href="page%2094">/i</a>:</p>
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Take a case very different from vision, sexual orientation. Most gay men feel stirrings of attraction to other males around the time of the first hormonal changes that presage puberty. No one knows why some boys become gay - genes, prenatal hormones, other biological causes, and chance may all play a role - but my point is not so much about becoming gay as about becoming straight. In the less tolerant past, unhappy gay men sometimes approached psychiatrists (and sometimes were coerced into approaching them) for help in changing their sexual orientation. Even today, some religious groups pressure their gay members to "choose" heterosexuality. Many techniques have been foisted on them: psychoanalysis, guilt mongering, and conditioning techniques that use impeccable fire-together-wire-together logic (for example, having them look at Playboy centerfolds while sexually aroused). The techniques are all failures. With a few dubious exceptions (which are probably instances of conscious self-control rather than a change in desire), the sexual orientation of most gay men cannot be reversed by experience. Some parts of the mind just aren't plastic, and no discoveries about how sensory cortex gets wired will change that fact.
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<p>The only reason why this debate is so touchy is, of course, the fact that homosexuality is considered sinful by the Bible. From Leviticus</a> 18:22:</p>
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Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
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<p>Certainly sounds condemnatory! But what about the numerous other things condemned in the Bible, also called detestable, and yet practiced daily by Christians? From here:</a></p>
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"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)</p>
<p>"If a man lies with a woman during her sickness and uncovers her nakedness, he has discovered her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from her people." (Leviticus 20:18)</p>
<p>"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)</p>
<p>"Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." (Leviticus 19:27)</p>
<p>"...and the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you." (Leviticus 11:7)</p>
<p>"...do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear material woven of two kinds of material." (Leviticus 19:19)</p>
<p>An "abomination?"</p>
<p>Fundamentalists also like to use Leviticus 18:22 to justify their anti-gay prejudice. That verse says, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." Perhaps you have heard some people refer to gay people as an "abomination." They get the idea directly from Leviticus 18:22. But did you know...</p>
<p>*The Bible says that eating shrimp and lobster is an abomination: </p>
<p>"But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:10)</p>
<p>"They (shellfish) shall be an abomination to you; you shall not eat their flesh, but you shall regard their carcasses as an abomination." (Leviticus 11:11)</p>
<p>"Whatever in the water does not have fins or scales; that shall be an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:12)
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<p>Abomination is a pretty harsh term. Death, exile, lashes for eating pork? Consistency killed the cat, I suppose.</p>
<p>The hypocrisy is wonderfully illustrated by this [url=<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=rHaVUjjH3EI%5Dclip%5B/url">http://youtube.com/watch?v=rHaVUjjH3EI]clip[/url</a>] from the West Wing.</p>