homosexuality and the Bible

How can that be when:1) God made animals that have gay sex;and2) He made humans with a gay gene?Sounds like being gay was part of god's plan to me. (I'll leave the Bible debate to people who know what they're talking about.)[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-19-2003]

If your maternal uncle was gay, statistics show that there's a way-better-than-even chance you will be, too, if you're male. That's a pretty convincing indicator that there's a gene that provides an influence towards homosexuality on the X chromosome.I mean, if it wasn't biological, why would people be gay? There's still a significant amount of intolerance and invective delivered their way in our society. If it's just a sex thing, why bother?

Not really. It's the same as any genetically influenced behavior. You can inhereit a gene for alcoholism. But you can't be an alcoholic without alcohol, so the gene doesn't "automatically" make you an alcoholic.Likewise you're not gay unless you're having (or intend to have) gay sex. A gene can't get you laid, after all. But a gene can be a big factor in who you want to have sex with, just as a gene can be a big factor in how much, and under what circumstances, you drink.

Well, until Rrhain comes around, is there anyone to address Truthlover's points?I suspect we'll be back on topic before long.

So, it looks like you agree - gay sex isn't any worse in God's eyes than straight sex.Why all the flap about a gay bishop, I wonder?

That's hardly loving and charitable. Not much of a Christian, are you?So, are you here to debate, or to threaten?

Sure, but don't you find it the height of arrogance to assume a parental role in terms of my spiritual health? I sure do. Who made you the expert on what I should believe?As for parental indifference you can look to your God for that, I think. For your own part you might seek a little Christ-like humility.

No, it does. As evidence see my other posts, and Mammathus's journal articles.If it's not genetic, then why is it hereditary?

True, it was simplistic on my part to refer to the "gay gene", although I find that's a nomenclature that highlights homosexuality's highly important biological basis.It's as hereditary as any behavior, like alcoholism. Is that an accurate way to put it?

Yeah, it's obviously wrong.We've presented evidence that homosexuality has a component that can only be explained through heredity. Are you just going to ignore this? You can't chalk it up to the family because we've done separated-at-birth twin studies that show that if your identical twin - whom you've never ever met - is gay, there's a big chance you will be too.

I guess I find the uncle-nephew concordinance very compelling in suggesting that male homosexuality at least has a genetic component on the X chromosome. Don't get me wrong - it may very well be pre-natally hormonal, as well. But the fact that there's concordinance between persons who developed in sepearate wombs is highly suggestive of a genetic component.

No, it couldn't be. Scientists have statistical ways to determining whether or not their findings are significant, or just coincidence. It's called a "confidence interval" and they mention it at the bottom of the article:

quote:

---

The linkage to markers on Xq28, the subtelomeric region of the long arm of the sex chromosome, had a multipoint lod score of 4.0 (P = 10(-5), indicating a statistical confidence level of more than 99 percent that at least one subtype of male sexual orientation is genetically influenced.

---

So, as you can see, the chance of their findings representing mere coincidence is less than 1 percent. If this doesn't make sense to you you may wish to take a statistics class. Then why the concordinance of genetic markers? Upbringing won't add markers to your DNA where they weren't before.

If you had read the article closely, you would have seen that the experiment was designed to eliminate just the possibilites you raised. After all what good would it have been to design a study about the biological causes of homosexuality without eliminating the possibility of non-biological causes?

But we're not talking about one or two sets of twins. We're talking about big studies. That's what the confidence interval is about. And the interval here is high enough that we can statistically reject coincidence as an explanation.If there's a statistically significant corellation between the sexual preference of twins - who are separated at birth - then it has to be genetic, because that's the only thing they have in common. What's hard to grasp about that? What does that mean? We determine sexual preference through lifestyle choice. I mean, how do we know if you're gay besides finding out if you have sex with persons of the same sex as you?You'll have to explain what you meant here a little better, because I just don't understand.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-21-2003]

Uh, yeah. That would have been Mendel, back when he discovered how heredity works.What you're arguing is Lamarkian adaptation - like, you get a tooth knocked out, and all your children are missing that tooth. That's been a discredited theory for the past 200 years. Having sex with another man when you're a man yourself doesn't change your DNA.You're really digging, here, when it's simpler to concede the truth - homosexuality has a very strong genetic component, as strong as any other hereditary behavior, like alcoholism. I know you're asking Rrhain, and not me, but my answer would be whichever list had love on it. According to Rrhain's signature he'd RTFM.But seriously, maybe Jesus would display a little more humility and love for what's essentially a biological predisposition than you have been displaying so far. Jesus NEVEr says anything about sex in the Bible, did you notice that? Maybe because sex isn't really that big a deal to Jesus?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-21-2003]