The public sensitivity about both gender and sexual equality makes it all but impossible to distinguish between male and female gay cultures, which are like chalk and cheese in so many ways. Many of the fears people have about gay rights really pertain to male gays. I believe a lot of people are far more disturbed by the idea of a child being raised by two male gays than two lesbians. What few realize is that we have the same atavistic misgivings about hetero men, which is why women get custody in an overwhelming number of cases despite gender-neutral custody laws.

One of the fallacies in Andrew Sullivan's arguments is how he treats marriage as some kind of training course that will "teach" gays how to be faithful and abandon promiscuity. He seems to be under the impression that heteros learn fidelity through the institution of marriage. The fact is it is enforced by women.

Peter-

There you go, again. Is it really fair to rely on common sense?

Agree with Peter.

Steve Sailor wrote an article several years ago in National Review that summarized personality traits of male homosexuals and female homosexuals.
It was a great article.

OJ, is it choice or not? I have to disagree and that is what causes all the difficulties that the public has with the issue. Just in my small world I have known men, who obviously have had nothing approaching a choice, since as early as 6 or 7 years of age (in other words they were effeminate at that age).

No I'm not a scientist, but commonsense tells me that I never had to make a choice in that area of my life, and so I must assume the same holds true for others. Sin? I let you handle that question. Perversion? Yes, but a naturally occuring and common one.

h:

Certainly they may have been nurtured in such a way as to cause them sexual confusion, but theyu still have choices, else morality is a lie.

I was recently at a funeral for a woman who raised 5 children with a man who decided to act on his homosexuality after the children were grown. He made a choice. The ramifications of his choice were not pleasant. Of course, his short term desires were met while his family is still paying a high price years after his death.

Net,net, he made the wrong decision.

Engaging in "sex" with someone (same sex or not) is most certainly a choice.

Whether one is attracted to the same sex or not is debatable.

I hate to beat this issue to death, but saw the following on Steve Sailor's site:

"Homosexual recruitment on campus -- One thing that struck me was how institutionalized homosexual recruitment is on campus. Here was one poster on bulletin boards:

Queer? Questioning? An Ally? Male? Female? Transgender? Gay? Bi? Lesbian? Poly?

Want to get involved and help other kids figure it out too?

Be a QQAMP Mentor

The Queer, Questioning, and Allied Mentor Program of the Claremont Colleges.

Is this kind of thing common on other campuses? Does anybody ever worry about the university's liability if a "mentor" were to infect his freshman with HIV? This "ally" business seems particularly sinister, like an attempt to use political correctness to turn the naive into fresh meat."

H-man has it right. There was never a whiff of choice about it for me, so why the automatic assumption it is a choice for gays?

"but theyu still have choices, else morality is a lie."

Classic example of a category mistake. The morality is based on the act's context, not biological details.

Jeff:

Go to boarding school, join the old navy or go to prison and you'd be scrumping men in a heartbeat.

Acting on your impulse is a choice. Why is that so tough to understand? Gay bars still operate where men who are sexually attracted to other men have multiple partners and are not particularly concerned with even knowing who they are buggering. In short,a large percentage of men, if given the opportunity, will act like adolescents. Others will CHOOSE not to.

Orientation is not really the issue; according to orthodox theology, abstention is the order for all individuals, unless married (to the opposite gender). That is where morality enters in, because people don't like being told that their lives and choices are not 'authorized'. But the morality could not be plainer.

Orrin:

Speak for yourself. Some of we situational gays would definitely take vows of celibacy.

Peter:

But you don't define your being by sex and do believe in God and morality. Jeff and Harry are different.

The only way Orrin could be right is if we forget everything we know about developmental biology.

Anatole France got it down in one line: abstinence is the only true perversion.

Harry:

The only way you could be right is if we forget everything we know about civilization and survival.

I suspect the causes of lesbianism are far less inate, see the prevalence among lesbians of polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Harry:

Yes, abstinence does disprove biologism.

Biologism?

What would you call what he believes in? I guess Harryism will do.

Much, much better.

Abstinence proves that culture can overcome any and every innate drive humans are born with.

I cannot prove it but very much doubt that any other mammals except humans have problems with bulimia or anorexia.

And there are, so far as I know, no nonhuman convents.

OJ:

Due to the exigencies of war, I have been in strictly male environments for extended periods, certainly far longer than a heartbeat.

Sorry to report, no scrumping going on.

So, not only are you wrong, but offensively so.

I don't define my being by sex, nor, unlike you, do I define my marriage by it, either.

Jim:

So why aren't monogamous homosexual relations moral, then?

Tom:
"Acting on your impulse is a choice. Why is that so tough to understand?"

That isn't at all hard to understand. What beggars belief, though, is that when you act on your impulse, it is OK, but when a gay does it, under precisely the same outward circumstances, it isn't.

Tom:

"Acting on your impulse is a choice. Why is that so tough to understand?"

There is nothing at all hard to understand about that. What does beggar comprehension, though, is why whenever you act on that impulse within a monogamous relationship, it is OK, but when a gay does so, it isn't.

Peter:

Regarding male homosexuals, developmental biology and history are conclusive. No matter when or where, about 2% of the population is homosexual.

Perhaps you have to revise everything--or at least some things, you know about civilization and survival.

Jeff:

I took Harry's comment as being linked to his quote from France.

Jeff:

That's false. Many forms of sexual impulse are immoral even in a monogamous relationship. The difference is that all forms are in a homosexual one.

Many forms of sexual impulse are immoral within a marriage? Presuming consensuality, which ones?

Again you assert that all forms are in a homosexual relationship, yet your authority seems lacking. From what I have learned here, the passages in the Bible condemning homosexuality are words of men, not God. Suddenly you seem to be putting an awful lot of stock in what mere men have to say, simply because those words appear in the Bible. Written by men.

Given the substantial evidence that much, if not all, male homosexuality is innate, I'd think you might at least confront the possibility that God created them on purpose. And that purpose might not be to provide a group of people for you to tee off on.

Orrin misstated the position of the church. As St. Paul made perfectly clear, all forms of sexual impulse are immoral, though some have to be tolerated.

"Lie back and think of England!"

Jeff:

Christ said: Love one another. That's incompatible with sodomizing another man or being sodomized.

Harry:

"Be fruitful and multiply" was not an admonition to study mathematics.

That was the Old Dispensation.

Let's assume the Pope knows better than you what Catholicism teaches, eh?

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

"This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.

It is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself.

Married love is also faithful and exclusive of all other, and this until death. This is how husband and wife understood it on the day on which, fully aware of what they were doing, they freely vowed themselves to one another in marriage. Though this fidelity of husband and wife sometimes presents difficulties, no one has the right to assert that it is impossible; it is, on the contrary, always honorable and meritorious. The example of countless married couples proves not only that fidelity is in accord with the nature of marriage, but also that it is the source of profound and enduring happiness.

Finally, this love is fecund. It is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being. "Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the procreation and education of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute in the highest degree to their parents' welfare.""