Baghdad (AP)–The world was shocked to learn that Saddam Hussein has been preemptively cloned and is currently in utero. A perfect clone of the recently hanged butcher–said to be eight weeks along–has been revealed to be “doing fine.” The identity of the Iraqi woman carrying the deceased dictator’s clone is being kept strictly secret.
Immediate cries for the abortion of the fetus were resisted by the Iraqi government at the behest of the Bush White House. In a short statement, President Bush stated, “As a civilized nation, we must fight for the sanctity of human life except in those instances where we decide it’s not sacred…and this is obviously not one of those times.”
Officials have declared that, shortly after the clone is born, it will be put on trial for slaughtering the Kurds, found guilty, and be executed. Upon announcement of that decision, there was much celebrating and shooting off of guns. Stray bullets were responsible for the accidental deaths of three children and two more US troops.
PAD
• 
Are those of you who are outraged about Bush’s use of signing statements to alter the law aware that Bill Clinton did the very same thing?
Well, nobody has accused the Bush administration of inventing them. That would take an original thought. But this administration has used them more often and more broadly than any previous one. Bush has used them to essentially say, “I’m going to do whatever I what, no matter what the law says.” And that’s the dangerous mentality of the Cheney doctrine of a “Unitary Executive”. This president believes that he is supremely above the law.
I guess that’s what happens when you believe you’ve been anointed by God.
Clinton did a lot of things I didn’t like, either, BTW. Signing statements are of dubious constitutionality and, unless Bush eventually gets more sycophants like Harriet Myers on the SCOTUS, would most likely be tossed out if ever brought before the Court.
Are those of you who are outraged about Bush’s use of signing statements to alter the law aware that Bill Clinton did the very same thing?
No one is saying that bush is the only one to do this. But his use of them is extra-ordinary, to say the least.
“Until the Reagan presidency, the executive branch had only ever issued a total of 75 signing statements. Reagan, Bush I, and Bill Clinton deployed them 247 times between them.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2134919/
bush II as of April of last year: 750+
http://www.slate.com/id/2134919/
bush II has used more than three times as many signing statments as the 42 Presidents before him combined
Correction to the last line of my previous post:
It should say “almost”, not “more than”.
I took it as both. While an evolved fish-diver is toast in the Himalayas, how many of us live off of only what we grow, gather, and/or hunt ourselves?
Well, if that’s the case–and since sex drive stems from the hardwired genetic need to perpetuate the species–then one wonders whether or not homosexuality…who’s gay and who isn’t…isn’t arbitrary at all, but instead nature’s way of controlling who reproduces and who doesn’t.
That’s a good question and there is evidence that homosexuality in animals may be induced by stress during pregnancy–as in overpopulation.
I haven’t seen any evidence that would indicate that there are higher percentages of homosexuality in Mexico City than in Pittsboro North Carolina, so this may not be much of a factor in humans. I tend to doubt that this is a genetic thing anyway; a woman likely to give birth to a gay child will do so regardless of outside conditions, if it’s genetic. Now if it’s hormonal or a combination gene/hormone thing then we could see some logic in this.
(though, given the length of time it takes for a human to reach sexual maturity, this seems inefficient. By the time the kid grows up the conditions that made it advantageous to limit population might be gone.)
After all, if someone is carrying some sort of undesirable genetic component, then isn’t the simplest means of weeding out that component to “flip a switch” in utero and ensure that the carrier will have no desire to perpetuate it? Yes, dampening the sex drive of the individual is also a possibility, but that’s so hardwired into humanity that it would be much easier simply to redirect it in a direction where creating progeny isn’t an issue.
That’s also interesting–but I disagree that it would be more difficult to turn off the sex drive than to redirect it. There are many diseases and situations that result in loss of sex drive–depression being an obvious example–but none that I know of that cause even a temporary tendency toward homosexuality. I’ve heard of situations where guys were dragged by their girlfriends to see THE NOTEBOOK one time too many with disastrous after effects but these are purely anecdotal.
I’m not saying that *is* the reason for some people being gay. What am I, a geneticist? I’m just saying it’d be interesting. Has anyone ever postulated that?
Not that I know of and yeah, it IS interesting…could be a very good plot point in one of the mutant books, if they’d let you explore it.
As an aside, some have argued that homosexuality can’t be genetic because natural selection, which weeds out over time anything that reduces the ability to pass on one’s genes, should have eliminated this by now. Even given the fact that yes, gay people CAN have children, it’s hard to deny that they are likely to have fewer than straights, on average, and that’s all natural selection needs. Even a 1% diminishment in reproductive potential over the alternative would likely result, in time, in loss of the gene.
Which would mean that homosexuality is either not purely genetic or that there are actually advantages that we may be missing in our calculations.
Lastly–since identical twins do not always end up both straight or both gay, that would seem to put the kibosh on a purely genetic cause.
(Note–even if genetics is not directly the cause of homosexuality, please don’t make the mistake of assuming that the only alternative is “they choose to be gay”. That’s nonsense. There is far more to nature than just genes. That’s why 20% of all identical twin pairs have one right handed twin and one left handed, even though they are genetically identical.)
Another area that is very touchy is the consideration of any racially-based differences within the human population. Although my first impulse is to say that humanity is really so homogeneous that notable differences wouldn’t occur between groupings, it is not an invalid field of study.
No, though fraught with peril and likely to be abused by those with a mind to do it. Even attempts to see how, for example, some African-Americans may be more likely to be harmed by cigarette smoking than some other ethnic groups has come under criticism for raising the specter of racism. Most scientists don’t need the grief (not to mention the difficulty getting grants).
My personal theory is that it’s nature’s way of doing a little population control.
It would be far easier to just make it harder for people to conceive. Not that evolution always takes the most logical approach.
Um, Bill’s statement of hypocrisy was on the part of pro-choicers who suddenly oppose abortion on specific grounds (such as aborting potential daughters). He was not accusing “India” of hypocrisy.
Wow. That Christmas gift is already yielding dividends. Not knowing what the broadcast from Planet Mike was I can only say–Thom, yep, you got it…not that it was a very confusing point. Or so I thought. Well, live and learn.
Restless Legs Syndrome.
Bill, what do you take for this and does it work? I’ve been having a bit of this the last few months, though it may be residual nerve damage from the time I stepped on a 4 inch x-acto knife blade (remind me to tell this story the next time we have dinner together–it’s much funnier when I act it out, complete with sound effects and simulated sprays of blood).
I was always at the bottom rung of the popularity ladder.
We would have welcomed you in the VTR Club (“Our Motto–Please Don’t Confuse Us With The AV Squad”)
For most of my life I have regarded myself as “fundamentally damaged.” I have often wondered to myself if I don’t belong on some genetic “scrap heap.” Now, what if doctors had been able to “fix” my genetic structure before I was born? What if they had been able to ensure that I’d have a normal brain chemistry and a healthier body?
That’s the thing of it. A good number of us have some defect or imperfection that would possibly have gotten us eliminated had our parents had that choice. A scary thought.
There’s also a big risk in eliminating genetic diversity for the species though, in reality, there will always be a bigger chunk of the population that can’t afford these procedures than can.
I’d better send this out before my internet punks out again.
His (or her) position was that this is a naturally occurring phenomena in mammals to deal with overpopulation and should therefore not be treated as a stigma or abnormality.
The only problem with that is that other normal ways animals deal with overpopulation include gerbils eating their babies and assorted similar activities that will probably remain stigmatized.
At any rate, logic is a weak weapon indeed to deal with something as illogical as bigotry. It’s like using antibiotics to treat stains.
She once told me that the woman I love wouldn’t have been here if this hadn’t happened to her. She’s the youngest of three girls. She’s the baby. She said that she was a bit spoiled growing up and that she would likely have grown up to be a right proper terror (her words) had this not hit her and forced her to deal with things in her life in a completely different way. Who she was and who she feels that she would have grown up to be are as different as night and day from who she is now.
She’s a very perceptive woman. It’s funny though, when you have kids you want to desperately protect them from making the mistakes you made or facing the challenges you did…but those mistakes and challenges may have been the most important things that made you what you are. It’s a conundrum.
As Bill Mulligan said, we’re probably going to soon have far more options than we’d ever imagined — and realize that that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Well, as I mull over this, it IS a good thing to have the option. Acting on it, maybe not. But as you said, who would even NOT wish the best for their kid? (And consider the social implications–when imperfections are preventable, any parent of a child with imperfections will be perceived as negligent, poor or a fanatic. Which will mean the rich will almost all have perfect kids. Which will make them even MORE likely to succeed than the poor. Which will be the end of any chance of people being able to rise above their origins. Ok, yikes.)
2. Peter’s “genetic control” theory, which I never thought about before, but which also kind of makes sense. It could certainly apply in my case, since I seem to have inherited a genetic bipolar disorder that almost everyone on my dad’s side of the family has, and which has been traced back for several generations. So far I’m the only gay person in my family, but we’ll see if any of my sister’s kids or my cousins’ kids turn out to be gay, and thus support this theory.
The problem is, I don’t think there is any evidence that the genes are linked and it isn’t like your DNA can think “Hey, this guy is screwed up thanks to gene #625. Better turn on gene #87, the Gay gene.” Though that COULD be the way things work in Comic Book Universes–“My host body just fell into a vat of liquid nitrogen–time to turn on gene #883, the one that turns him into Frostbite: the Living Popsicle”
(I submit that it would be a better world were that the case, although there would be a lot of stupid people throwing themselves into liquid nitrogen or pools of molten iron….hmm, make that a much better world.)
It’s just a biological mistake, like nipples on men.
Not a mistake, just the result of the fact that we are all initially female until and unless the Y chromosome gets turned on.
Signing statements are of dubious constitutionality and, unless Bush eventually gets more sycophants like Harriet Myers on the SCOTUS, would most likely be tossed out if ever brought before the Court.
Why haven’t any of them ever been taken to court? This should be easy to do. Reagan was president more than 20 years ago and we are still arguing about the constitutionality of signing statements???
BTW, looking at the Wikipedia definition of signing statement reveals a few clarifications– Reagan was not the first to issue one, James Monroe was (though Bill is correct that Reagan was the first to frequently use them as a way to alter the law). But how many Bush has actually signed is less than was stated– As of October 4, 2006, he had signed 134 signing statements
It’s the second part of that statement that accounts for the discrepancy–As of October 4, 2006, he had signed 134 signing statements challenging 810 federal laws As the entry states There is a controversy about how to count an executive’s use of signing statements.[4] A flat count of total signing statements would include the rhetorical and political statements as well as the constitutional. This may give a misleading number when the intent is to count the number of constitutional challenges issued.
Another common metric is to count the number of statutes that are disputed by signing statements. This addresses a count of the constitutional issues, but may be inherently inaccurate due to ambiguity in the signing statements themselves, as well as the method of determining which statutes are challenged.
Personally I wish Presidents would just go back to vetoing bills they have a problem with.
Pitiful.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if homosexuality was genetic but continued to survive because so many homosexuals were forced by society to conform and enter heterosexual relations, thus passing the gene on to the next generation.
I doubt this is the case. But it would have been poetuc justice if it was.
I’ll leave the speculation about how homosexuality occurs, and whether it has a biological purpose to our resident biology teacher.
Is homosexuality a disability, like blindness, clinical depression or diabetes? It could be claimed that it is, since for homosexuals the biological faculty of sexual attraction is not functioning the way it’s supposed to.
But, although homosexuals are not attracted to the opposite sex, they are not disabled in any way. They are capable of being attracted, having sexual and romantic relations, and everything else that heterosexuals can do, except having babies. They are just not doing it with members of the opposite sex. In fact, with the exception of pregnancy, it seems that all the disability, and thus all the unpleasantness involved in being homosexual is the result of the prejuidice of society.
Furthermore, even if we were to assume that homosexuality is a disability, our morality today does not view disability as a cause for shame or contempt. We accord to disabled people all the respect we do to non-disabled people, including respecting their choice to seek or not seek cure.
So in an ideal society without prejudice, a person’s decision to seek a ‘cure’ for homosexuality should not be because of the suffering involved in being homosexual. However, some may seek this hypothetical ‘cure’ because they belong to a religion which opposes homosexuality. I believe that many religions oppose homosexuality because they were developed by primitive people centuries ago. But if a homoseual person sincerely believes in a religion, he can either (a) seek a modern interpretation of the religion that will allow homosexuality; (b) accept homosexuality as an acceptable sin in the framework of the traditiona interpretation of the religion; (c) view himself as violating the rules of the religion and seek to correct it.
I don’t think there is a risk of homosexuals being forced by the state to seak ‘curé.’ I doubt even the more repressive governments will make the effort. But in our society there are segments that would socially pressure homosexuals in their community to seek ‘cure’ if they think one is available. How can people be convinced not to seek such a cure (for adults or during pregnancy) without legal or ethical sanctions?
Bill Myers, it is good that you are in a place where you are happy that you exist. Your alternative healthy self would probably have been happy that he exists too. Future people who may have access to medical solutions we do not have today will probably find new challenges to shape them. The two greatest risks are those mentioned by Bill Mulligan: that the difference between the rich and the poor will become biological and mental, and unexpected consequences of altering genetics.
A lot of tough questions.
But, although homosexuals are not attracted to the opposite sex, they are not disabled in any way. They are capable of being attracted, having sexual and romantic relations, and everything else that heterosexuals can do, except having babies. They are just not doing it with members of the opposite sex. In fact, with the exception of pregnancy, it seems that all the disability, and thus all the unpleasantness involved in being homosexual is the result of the prejuidice of society.
That’s true though from an evolutionary point of view anything that limits reproduction is the ultimate disability,
Of course gays are not actually “unable” to have children but they are less likely to in practice.
So in an ideal society without prejudice, a person’s decision to seek a ‘cure’ for homosexuality should not be because of the suffering involved in being homosexual. However, some may seek this hypothetical ‘cure’ because they belong to a religion which opposes homosexuality.
I suppose some might choose to be straight to improve their chances of finding a partner. Living in a small town would seriously limit your options. (Conversely, maybe guys going to prison could choose to become gay, make the hard time a bit easier.)
As an aside, some have argued that homosexuality can’t be genetic because natural selection, which weeds out over time anything that reduces the ability to pass on one’s genes, should have eliminated this by now. Even given the fact that yes, gay people CAN have children, it’s hard to deny that they are likely to have fewer than straights, on average, and that’s all natural selection needs. Even a 1% diminishment in reproductive potential over the alternative would likely result, in time, in loss of the gene.
Which would mean that homosexuality is either not purely genetic or that there are actually advantages that we may be missing in our calculations.
There are a few other factors, as well. (I did my senior thesis on this in college, so although I’m over a decade out of touch with the current research, it’s still an area of interest for me.)
One is that there are plenty of genes that inhibit reproductive success a lot more directly than homosexuality that are still in the human genome. Genetic conditions that can be fatal in childhood still exist, after all. A hypothetical genetic factor probably isn’t a single, dominant gene that’s always expressed, or it would indeed die out quickly; however, a group of genes, or a recessive one, could be passed on through siblings who reproduce even if the person expressing the gene doesn’t.
(In my evolutionary biology class in college, we did an exercise where we calculated how long it would take albinos to be eliminated from the population if they didn’t reproduce at all–it was something like 10,000 generations. Granted we weren’t using real-world numbers, but the point is that a simple recessive gene, even with 0% reproductive success, doesn’t die out easily.)
One possible theory I have is that there are different genetic factors that predispose toward homosexuality in different genders–so the hypothetical “gay male gene” wouldn’t affect the reproductive success of the female line at all, and vice versa.
Lastly–since identical twins do not always end up both straight or both gay, that would seem to put the kibosh on a purely genetic cause.
Yeah–that’s one of the complexities that tends to get left out of these discussions. Human sexuality is a lot more complex than a simple gay/not gay duality. A lot of things are–we may use brown/blue eyes as an example of dominant/recessive genes in science class, but humans have a lot more than two eye colors, and a lot of subtle gradations and tints as well.
As far as “advantages we may be missing in our calculations,” it’s been theorized (possibly tying into the population pressure theory) that a gay member of a family group can provide benefit to the group by helping care for their siblings’ offspring without contributing to population pressure themselves. (On average, two nieces or nephews have as much of your genetic material as one of your own children.) It’s not really testable, but it does demonstrate that there are more complexities than just one’s own personal reproduction. (To toss another possibility out there, lesbians are theoretically less likely to die in childbirth, thus providing another possibly example of “benefit to the community at the expense of one’s own personal reproduction.”)
“The only problem with that is that other normal ways animals deal with overpopulation include gerbils eating their babies and assorted similar activities that will probably remain stigmatized.”
Yeah, the theory put forward wasn’t 100% perfect and it had more then a couple of “I’d like this to mean” moments in it. But there were still enough interesting and plausible notions in it to get the brain moving and pass the time in the waiting room.
“(though, given the length of time it takes for a human to reach sexual maturity, this seems inefficient. By the time the kid grows up the conditions that made it advantageous to limit population might be gone.)”
For humans now, yes. But, going with the idea that this may actually exist in our makeup, how long was the life span of our ancestor, human or human-ish, who would have first gotten this theoretical code bred into them? I wouldn’t try and use this to add to or buttress an argument, but I did think it was an interesting notion and wouldn’t have minded seeing some further research on the idea to either back it or bust it.
“Reagan was president more than 20 years ago and we are still arguing about the constitutionality of signing statements???”
We’re not. Some of us are merely arguing the constitutionality of what’s in Bush’s statements and not the concept of the statements themselves. To me, these things are, in a way, no different then the laws that they’re being attached to. Some can be good, some can be useless and seemingly a waste of ink and some need to be punted by at least five people in big black robes. Some of Bush’s signing statements strike me as things that need to be challenged and tested.
“(Conversely, maybe guys going to prison could choose to become gay, make the hard time a bit easier.)”
Oddly, there’s already something doing that. It’s referred to as situational homosexuality. It adds even more confusion into discussions about what homosexual behavior’s actual cause (choice VS biology) is. You’ll find this in long timer prison populations a lot. It’s strange in one way as some of the straightest males, and some of the most homophobic males, on the streets will engage in this behavior if in prison long enough and will then leave prison and switch back to being, quite exclusively, rabid skirt chasers again.
“It’s the second part of that statement that accounts for the discrepancy–“
Yeah. The wildly different reports in the costs of the death penalty and in the number of signing statements are just two more examples of what some people mean when they talk about politics being relative. It’s relative to who you are, what you want to say, whose math you want to use and what biases and preconceived notions you have and are trying to prove with your research.
Ðámņ. Gotta go. Just took out another glass wall with that last stone.
That’s assuming the genetic pre-disposition is a drive to heterosexuality or homosexuality, which seems unlikely.
If the genetic pre-disposition is a drive to have sex with a favored gender, then the drive of the mother to have sex with a male can be passed onto her male children to make them gay, and vice versa for the father and his female children.
Like gay people don’t marry heterosexually.
I haven’t found the paper I was talking about before, but these are actually pretty interesting.
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal.html
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-72574.html
http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/338.html
I’m not sure about everything in the last one. Some of it I would have to look up on my own, but kinda cool nonetheless.
“Personally I wish Presidents would just go back to vetoing bills they have a problem with.”
Ah, but no one can override a signing statement. Overriding a veto makes a president look powerless and is a political embarrassment. A signing statement provides much of the same advantages as a veto and none of the risk.
PAD
PAD: Good point.
(In my evolutionary biology class in college, we did an exercise where we calculated how long it would take albinos to be eliminated from the population if they didn’t reproduce at all–it was something like 10,000 generations. Granted we weren’t using real-world numbers, but the point is that a simple recessive gene, even with 0% reproductive success, doesn’t die out easily.)
You’re right. I should have specified that I was talking about some hypotheitical single gay gene (which is extremely unlikely).
In the case of albinism I wonder if one reason that it still exists is that it is advantageous to have the conditions that make albinism a possibility–the ability to change melanism in human skin has provided an evolutionary advantage to us as we colonized the world from Africa, But having that ability probably means that, occasionally there will be birth of kids with either too much or too little expression of the color producing genes.
It can be tricky to see some benefits in certain phenotypes but they may well be their (I recall one study suggesting that the gene for custic fibrosis might have given people some level of protection against TB).
“In completely unrelated news, Bush now says he can read out mail.”
Really tempted to make a joke here about Bush not saying he has the right to, but that he’s gotten that far in his remedial courses. But I wouldn’t do that. Nope, not this guy.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if homosexuality was genetic but continued to survive because so many homosexuals were forced by society to conform and enter heterosexual relations, thus passing the gene on to the next generation.
Based on the numbers some have thrown out there about how many people in the population are gay, it would mean just about EVERYBODY has the gene that could cause their children to be homosexual.
I wonder what some of the hard-core religious folks would think about that. 🙂
“I wonder what some of the hard-core religious folks would think about that.”
The truth is that it doesn’t matter to them. It’s pretty simple for them: homosexuality is a sin (according to the three monotheistic religions); people might feel an urge to sin but should suppress that urge.
Both religious and non religious believe that some urges should be repressed. The difference is which urges.
You’ll be happy to hear of a heartwarming unique incident of inter-faith consensus in Jerusalem between clerics and members of the different relligions: they were all against the gay pride parade taking place in the city.
If the sex drive is not a drive to hetero- or homosexual sex, but a drive to have sex with a favored gender, than the genetic source of a gay man’s attraction to men could be his mother’s attraction to men. Such women simply make up for non-reproducing sons by having more children.
“In completely unrelated news, Bush now says he can read out mail.”
Just don’t put a picture of a goat on the envelope, cause then you’ll definately get his attention.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at January 4, 2007 09:31 PM
Restless Legs Syndrome.
Bill, what do you take for this and does it work?
I take Mirapex, and yes, it works, but there is a catch-22 with this drug. RLS is one of two problems (the other being sleep apnea) that can cause me to experience poor sleep. Mirapex can aggravate drowsiness to the point where some people have fallen asleep behind the wheel. I have to be careful, to say the least.
Mirapex, by the way, is a drug that was originally created to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. The fact that it works for RLS suggests that the two diseases may be similar in some important respects.
But the cause of RLS can be hard to pin down. Scientists believe iron deficiency may be the cause of RLS for some. Pregnant women often experience RLS (I’m relatively confident we can eliminate this as a possible cause for Mulligan’s RLS). It may also be inherited.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at January 4, 2007 09:31 PM
I’ve been having a bit of this the last few months, though it may be residual nerve damage from the time I stepped on a 4 inch x-acto knife blade (remind me to tell this story the next time we have dinner together–it’s much funnier when I act it out, complete with sound effects and simulated sprays of blood).
Dinner theater. Cool!
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at January 4, 2007 11:36 PM
Yeah. The wildly different reports in the costs of the death penalty and in the number of signing statements are just two more examples of what some people mean when they talk about politics being relative.
But statistics needn’t be relative. You simply need to rigorously define what you’re measuring in order to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons. As Bill Mulligan pointed out, Michael Brunner was comparing the number of laws affected by Bush’s signing statements to the flat count of Clinton’s signing statements. Not a valid comparison.
Probably the most meaningful measurement would be comparing the number of “constitutional challenges” or other attempts to alter laws in Bush’s signing statements to the number of times Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan attempted to alter laws using the same mechanism. I don’t think the Wikipedia article provided that — I’ll have to check it later as my lunch break is almost up.
(By the way, the raw count of the laws affected isn’t a good measurement, as signing statements aren’t always attempts at altering the law. Sometimes those statements are written purely for rhetorical purposes.)
Y’know, this is one of the most off-the-rails threads I’ve seen in this blog… yet one of the most interesting and enlightening as well. I guess that just goes to show that “off-the-rails” isn’t always a bad thing.
Now that I’ve actually had a chance to read through these, I’d like to offer my own theory on homo- versus heterosexuality. First off, from what I’ve seen, it’s not JUST the sex drive that attracts either to the preferred sex. It’s always seemed to me that there is a comfort level involved also, as in Person A feels more comfortable being with Person B. One of the things I’ve wondered about for a while, since anybody with a spine started out female is that sometimes, maybe things develop differently and that’s responsible for a whole HOST of different characteristics, not just sexuality. In my family, people tend toward the short side, but I’m over six feet, but then, we all have hair-trigger tempers.
I also remember learning about the Roman army, where homosexual behavior was pretty common due to the lack of women. Gives credence to Jerry’s situational homosexuality. We are communal critters. We want companionship. We crave familiarity. Desperate times, and all that.
It’s also familiar, what Bill and Jerry were saying. I’ve talked about both my story and my wife’s story around here before, and I’ve also said that yeah, it would’ve been nice if certain things hadn’t happened to either of us, but then we wouldn’t be who we are. That’s why I react as I do when people talk about cloning. Unless you clone every sinapse and neuron, with all the data intact, a clone is a different person. (of course, now that I’ve said that, you know there’s going to be a special breakthrough soon–“Copy your every sinapse and neuron!”)
A few weeks ago, NPR interviewed a practicing lesbian who completed a sex change. She said the testosterone therapy surprised her on 2 counts. 1, she was surprised how extreme and relentlessly pornographic her imagination became, particularly when in the company of other women. And 2, she stopped crying, and no longer had the outlet crying provided.
Well, yeah, other than criminals and soldiers seeking the intimate company of other powerful and aggressive men, the homosexuality is completely situational.
“But statistics needn’t be relative. You simply need to rigorously define what you’re measuring in order to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons. As Bill Mulligan pointed out, Michael Brunner was comparing the number of laws affected by Bush’s signing statements to the flat count of Clinton’s signing statements. Not a valid comparison.”
Yeah, I wasn’t really clear enough in my post. The stats are fine. It’s the reports, papers and news stories that use the stats that I was talking about. Bush and the signing statements are a bit like Kerry and his voting record. There are several ways to count each of those. All of them can be argued to be a correct way to do so. Then, people just pick the one that works best for their POV and throw it out into the news cycle.
“I also remember learning about the Roman army, where homosexual behavior was pretty common due to the lack of women.”
Google “situational homosexuality” and just look for links to medical sites or universities. Prisons are the topic of medern discussion, but many of the papers do touch on the Roman and Greek armies as past examples.
Oh, and sorry for multiple misspellings of synapse.
Some historians believe that homosexuality not only happened in the Roman army, but was actively encouraged because it was believed soldiers would fight harder to preserve the lives of comrades they were “close” to.
-Rex Hondo-
I don’t know about the Romans but the Sacred Band of Thebes was acrack group of 150 gay couples who were said to be among the fiercest fighters of their day. The idea was that no man would dare back down or show cowardace in the face of his lover.
It apparently worked; the Thebans beat the Spartans (no easy task that) and won their independence. When they were finally beaten at the Battle of Chaeronea by Philip II of Macedon (Alexander the Great’s father) the Sacred Band fought to the last man and so impressed the Macedonians that they did the almost unheard of act of erecting a monument to their fallen enemies.
Keep in mind though that these relationships were primarily pederasty. There is an argument to be made that the Greeks were not as tolerant of what we today would consider a normal homosexual relationship as their reputation suggests. There were apparently clear distinctions drawn between the d”ominant” and “submissive” roles (of course, the idea of a marriage of equals between men and women would probably have been equally absurd to them).
I don’t know about the Romans but the Sacred Band of Thebes was acrack group of 150 gay couples who were said to be among the fiercest fighters of their day. The idea was that no man would dare back down or show cowardace in the face of his lover.
It’s entirely possible that’s who I was thinking of and got them mixed up with the Romans, having been a while since I heard or read that little tidbit.
For what it’s worth, I doubt we will ever isolate any one specific overriding “H-Factor.” Any attempt to do so (in humans at least) would be fundamentally flawed because it stems from the flawed assumption that different people “turn gay,” or are even predisposed towards homosexuality for the same reasons.
And that’s only when considering theoritically quantifiable factors. What happens when we ponder cases where it may not be a physical matter at all, but a spiritual one. We’ve all heard of soulmates, and I would hope that I’m not the only one here who has found his. What if, in some cases, on some level, people know that the person who holds the other piece of the puzzle (whether by design or by whatever arbitrary system determines who gets what soul) just happens to be the same gender as them.
Even that possibility only takes into account the linear and limited Judeo-Christian view of life and death. When you start to consider the possiblity of reincarnation, you open up the possibility of past-life experiences subconsciously affecting our decisions and thought-processes, not to mention karmic forces leading us this way and that.
-Rex Hondo-