Defending the Truth

Yup. That, and the pony thing.

Between the Pope and the pony, the only way out for me was a life of lesbianism.

To rebel, you have to first know what the authority's established standards of opinion and behavior are. Then you have to choose to react or diverge from them for some reason. This happens for most adolescents to some degree against their parents; it is normal and even healthy. In adolescence, we begin to move away from our parents as part of the natural maturation process because we need to form our own identity in order to make it as an independent adult. Often, however, the adolescent reacts much more than is needed, which is thought of as rebellion. Long term studies in the social sciences, though, have told us that individuals often realign with their parents' views and even behavior during young adulthood.

The only problem?

Most gay people know that they are attracted to the same sex (1) long before they have reached adolescence, and (2) before they have heard the words "gay, lesbian, homosexual" etc. or even know what they mean. If you don't believe this, just ask some gay folks (unless you think they're all liars too).

So how exactly is it supposed to be rebellion?

Also, if it was rebellion in adolescence, you would see a lot more people returning to heterosexuality in young adulthood and giving up their rebellious ways. Does this happen? No. Not only do they stay gay, they almost never return to strictly heterosexual behavior at any point in their lives. It almost sounds as if they ARE homosexual rather than CHOOSING to be homosexual.

Have you ever thought about this simple fact? We know a lot about human beings simply by observing their behaviors on a large scale. We know that many, if not most, people in the world ascribe to a religion. People leave their religion and people find their religion. People are converted every day. Yet people's sexual orientation are not tied to their religion for some reason. People who are Christian and straight don't turn gay just because they decide to be Buddhist or Atheist. People who are gay don't turn straight when they are converted to Christianity (I'm using Christianity because that's what I am).

Oh, and also, your reasoning has several flaws. It is highly unlikely that homosexuality is rebellion again parents, or church, or society. This is because the simplest way to rebel is to leave. If I don't like what my parents believe, I simply stop believing what they believe. Same for church, and same for society. If rebellious acts were a continuum, I suppose that killing people who don't think like you is on one extreme and that trying to change their minds is somewhere in the middle, but the simplest way to rebel is just to stop doing, thinking, or believing what the authority is doing, thinking, or believing. If my parents think that being gay is wrong, I can simply say I don't agree, I can tell them that they're stupid or that I hate them. I can try to change their minds, I can even say I'm gay to see if they'll change their minds. But would I truly change from being heterosexual to being homosexual simply to irk them? Could you? Could you choose to be gay, change your whole lifestyle, your sexual behavior, and your attractions simply because someone told you something was wrong? Even as a teenager, could you do that?

Anyway, I'm sorry for being so long-winded. I'm a sociologist and I've had a lot of conversations with individuals who are lgbt, so I have a lot to say. Thanks for listening.

deekers - welcome to the forum - and thanks for your well-written post.

Just FYI, these points have been brought up many times over the past 5/6 years since I first experienced garysher's sophomoric armchair psychology and circular arguing and rhetoric. (He is the type who thinks that if he can play some kind of word-switch game or make some supposedly clever remark, that he's "won" the debate.

So, have at him, by all means. But don't expect much serious discussion or anything beyond simplistic semantics games from him.

And, again, welcome to the forum.

They aren't points, they are excuses. Any person with a deviant sexual urge could use them.

He could have saved a lot of typing by just reading a little more background before he posted.

My apologies, fxashun. I came upon this string while searching for something else on Google, and I didn't realize it was part of a much longer debate. I suppose the only purpose of the post now is that some rebellious teenager might happen upon it and decide he's not so rebellious after all.

Also, I'd forgotten that all hard science is seen as an "excuse" by a lot of traditionalists. I suppose the laws of gravity are just excuses used by people who won't accept that God keeps us secured to the planet himself, because he loves us. Or better yet, space exploration is an abomination because God included gravity as part of his original creation. And anything man does that defies God's intention on Earth is sinful.

Unfortunately, I also believe that God created our brains and gave us reason and the ability to learn. I also believe that he expects us to use that reason and ability to learn, not just take everything we've been told on faith.

And thank you, tristan, for the welcome. I've had similar long-winded debates on other sites. I'll agree that it gets difficult to make any argument against the statements: "Things are the way they are because that's the way they are, and things should stay the way they are just because that's how they've always been."

So much damage has been and is being caused by those ideas.

"The social sciences are not hard sciences. They don't follow the traditional cause/effect paradigm and are notoriously gray and ambiguous."

This is true. I revise my original statement as follows: I'd forgotten that all scientific explanations are seen as "excuses" by a lot of traditionalists. Do you want to address my point now?


-----------
"So let's get this straight - God gives us brains so we can oppose His guidance to us provided in the scriptures???"

Well, I do believe that human reason came before the scriptures. Incidentally, what is a higher authority: God-given reason, or man-written text?


-----------
"I agree. 'Things are the way they are' is a line of defence often used by homosexuals to justify their dysfunctional behaviour patterns."

This is true. So what you must look at is the reason for change. Homosexual behavior, in and of itself, is not dysfunctional. (To call it so as you did is to poison the well, another logical error.) It's when you add all the oppression (in the form of invalidation) that has been placed on homosexuals that you start to see dysfunctional behavior in them. What I was talking about (and which you failed to address) is the fact that traditionalists don't have any real reasons for not legalizing same-sex marriage except that marriage in most of the world has always been a man and a woman.

You're talking about an individual saying "this is how I've been ever since I can remember," and therefore his or her argument is based solely on personal experiences. What I'm talking about is people who base their arguments on other people's opinions and behaviors: tradition.

And before you go off on another tangent, I'm not saying all tradition is bad, I'm saying it can be misguiding and doesn't take into account the personal experiences of the people it oppresses.