Bryan Fischer, a host on Christian Hate Radio sponsored by the American Patriarchy Association, recently received mail from a listener appalled at his suggestion that homosexuals ought to be imprisoned. Fischer was quick to reassure his listener that yes, he really does believe that, he will happily repeat the claim multiple times, and that you aren't a True Christian™ if you don't agree that homosexuals ought to be treated like murderers or slavers.
Hi!
Thanks for writing me about my comments on my program regarding homosexuality.
It might be worth noting that what I actually suggested is that we impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. I'd be curious to know what you think should be done with IV drug abusers, because whatever it is, I think the same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior.
If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program.
Secondly, I'm afraid you're simply wrong about the Bible's perspective on the law and homosexuality.
Paul lists quite explicitly in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 the actions and behaviors that are the proper concern of the law:
"Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine..."
The bottom line here is that, biblically, those "who practice homosexuality" should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery.
You express a belief in the Scriptures, and I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective. If you believe all Scripture is inspired, then you are compelled to accept that legal sanctions may appropriately be applied to those who engage in homosexual behavior.
Thank you for contacting us, and I hope this response will help you think in a thorough and biblical way about this important social issue.
Bryan Fischer
Host, "Focal Point" radio program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association
Well, gosh. His analogy is so powerful that I think we ought to take all the heterosexuals who carry sexually transmitted diseases and subject them to sex aversion therapy (I think it involves a car battery, a couple of cables with clamps, and a porn video) and prolonged jail time. The ones who have the diseases should be made to suffer even more, and while they may be in the minority, the disgust we feel at these infected pariahs should be extended to all who practice the sloppy, fluid sharing, slimy business of male/female sex.
I've got some old Biblical misogynist to back me up, too. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, says "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." That's clear: you should be celibate. The only reason to marry is if you can't contain your own lustful urges, which are wicked, so that you aren't fornicating. Sex is dirty, so perhaps an even better solution would be to jail everyone who practices it. That will keep them even purer than marriage.
Ouch. I need to stop trying to think like these guys—it hurts my brain. I think I need to lie down for a bit now to recover.
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I wouldn't call whatever these sorry excuses for human beings (and also sorry excuses for Christians, if you ask me) do with whatever there is between their donkey ears "Thinking"
Yes, definitely, all good Christians should immediately and permanently take up Paul's suggestion that they give up on sex entirely, or, as I'm sure he would have suggested had the technology existed in his day, marry a blow-up doll.
PZ: Keep thinking you could be on to something here. Could it be evolution doing its thing to rid us of religion? ;)
Or maybe a little more effort on this line of thinking and we might convince them evolution is a good idea just so they can keep a bit of fornication in their lives!
Save a homie, set a GOAT ON FIRE!
Hm, I love it that PZ is in the same time zone as me, the comments come in a lot slower when the Americans are sleeping...
According to them, it is not only homosexuals who should go to jail. Let's read again:
- The disobedient (to whom?)
- The ungodly
- The sinners (everybody?)
- The unholy and profane (according to wich religion?)
- Those who strike their fathers and mothers
- The murderers (we can agree with that one)
- The sexually immoral (maybe they could define that more precisely)
- Homosexuals (of course!)
- Enslavers (slave traders in some translations, owning your slave is still ok)
- Liars (everybody again?)
- and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine (anyone but christians)
Of course, I don't think Paul wanted to put in jail all those people. Who would be watching the prison if everybody is inside? Is it still a prison?
But of course he meant that homosexuals must be in prison \sarcasm off
wow, i thought this was a joke at first.
we simply must build more jails! I think it would be much easier to just stick everyone in jail who has sex out of wedlock. when that is accomplished, we can go after those who have lustful thoughts about those they are not married to. then, we should definitely go after anyone with bad thoughts in general. we'll get to the bottom of this sin thing eventually if we stay focused.
After what they've pulled in Uganda, this isn't much of a surprise.
The blather about HIV is just an excuse to make it sound like there's a pragmatic reason for this talking pustule's little policy proposal (something other than hatred of gays).
If HIV were the actual basis for this, he'd have to concede that there should be no legal repercussions for drug users who only use clean IV needles or gay men (HIV isn't very common among lesbians) who are careful in their sexual activities.
Intravenous drug use tends to be inherently harmful, and treatment should be available for that in general. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is not inherently any more harmful than heterosexuality, and there is no such thing as an "effective reparative therapy".
I actually agree with him - if you are going to be a Christian, then you have to accept what the Bible tells you. You can't pick and choose, interpret the way you want things to be.
If you can't accept what the Bible says, then you shouldn't be a Christian. If only the majority of Christians would wake up to this and make the only moral choice available to them, then this world would be a much better place.
@PZ - although I agree in the most part with your views on this matter, I disagree with your analysis.
As far as this immoral sinner is concerned, an evening involving a car battery, a couple of cables with clamps, and a naughty video is just light entertainment.
I recommend continuous viewing of Jabba the Hut in lingerie for real adversion therapy.
Under Biblical law, there are 36 capital offenses. They include disobedient children, breaking the Sabbath, blashemy, atheism, sorcery, adultry, and being a false prophet among others.
It is estimated that if Biblical law was enacted in the USA, 1% of the population would end up slaughtering the other 99%.
The good news though is that the vast majority of the fundies would be stoned to death by their fellows. Fundies rate higher than the national average on just about any measure of social problems including divorce, abortion, and so on.
Most of the fundie leaders would be the first to go. Many are false prophets such as the wingnuts who keep predicting the Rapture that never happens.
What Fischer is doing is being a cafeteria xian. Picking and choosing a few verses from the bible and ignoring all the others. He probably wears mixed fabrics and eats pork.
FWIW, there is little evidence that Biblical law ever actually existed in practice. There are no piles of tiny bones outside the city gates of ancient Israeli cities from stoning children to death, for example.
This indicates that "men who practice homosexuality" are a different category to "the sexually immoral" (it's bad, but it's not sexually immoral).
Non-practicing gays (or lesbians, practicing or otherwise), apparently, are not an issue Biblically speaking.
Presumably it's OK if you don't need to practice anymore.
Paul as a mysognynist has nothing on Jesus. Jesus said anyone who can "accept" voluntary castration should do so.
Origen, an early theologian castrated himself.
Wonder why Ted Haggard hasn't taken that route. It would fix some of his problems easily.
@11: isn't that because the whole Leviticus thing is not attested before sometime around the return from the Babylonian exile? It's temple priests writing out a really prescriptive code and assigning it to a fictitious past in which it was never practised.
Anyone got the references to some of the more abhorent bible passages regarding disobedient children sold into slavery etc?
Seems that sending Fischer a few of those and asking for his position is the sensible way to reply to his letter.
#11
"What Fischer is doing is being a cafeteria xian. Picking and choosing a few verses from the bible and ignoring all the others"
Yeah but... no but.... yeah but....holy dude said!....
" I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective"
Indicating that his was not either...
But we all know that this dumbass bozo is a skating on very thin ice.
With a just god in his heavens we can only pray that his own fucktards will string the bastard up and chop off his manly bits to prevent further polluting of the gene pool!
(The fact that very few here would actually believe in such a just god and even fewer actually soil themselves by praying to such a figment should really not dissuade the hope...however unlikely)
Good question. I don't really know enough about it.
It probably never existed. With a legal code like that, the society would end up with mass slaughter and the neighboring tribes would have walked in and picked up all the pieces.
The Jews themselves effectively abolished it millennia ago in their commentaries. They made it so hard to convict someone of a capital offense that it virtually never happened.
Didn't remember this wording in the bible I read so went online to compare and there are quite a variety of interpretations. The bible we were taught at school (40+ years ago) has the term "sexual perverts" rather than the specific "homosexuals" though I see that's the wording in modern American bibles. Anyone know what the original (Greek?) wording actual said?
Shouldn't we be putting all heteroxesuals in jail too?
Because they can transmit HIV as well.
#14
"Matthew 19:12,[18]. where Jesus says, "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.""
Okay...the chopping off of bits is one way to interpret this nonsense...there is another interpretation which seems is far more apt...
Impairment through brain washing with jeebus effluent are in fact 'Mental eunuchs'
He seems fine with lesbians. On that, he and the commenters of this site can agree.
I wonder if he likes bacon?
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
Using the juicy King James "translation".
#22
"I wonder if he likes bacon?"
Unfortunately he seems to have not that much taste.
The Lesbian bit though...hmmm!...
I have always understood that to be a integral to male sexuality, never met a man yet who did not see the obvious advantage to stoke the fires of raging desire...or maybe that is just me?
"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death."
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
Bryan Fischer seems to be seriously concerned that either hell (1) does not exist or (2) represents a nominal punishment despite being hand-crafted by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-wrathful gOd. If he doesn't work to punish sinners in this life, they may very well get away with their sins when they die. What a tragedy!
Well, as unpleasant as it is, they're right. The bible is pretty specific on how homosexuality should be dealt with.
I think the real lesson here is that if you've got a problem with what the bible says about homosexuality, you aren't allowed to completely ignore that part and still say the bible is the word of god.
No deity worth their salt would declare something worthy of death one day and then suddenly change their mind.
I'm guessing that 50 years from now Christians will say that no true Christian could support such treatment against gays. They say the same thing about slavery, Antisemitism, apartheid, and a whole host of issues that are opposed today. The way history will be rewritten is that Christians were in the forefront of the gay movement and only godless heathens ever persecuted gays.
I'm sorry, I can't read this without hearing Vader: "I find your lack of faith disturbing".
#24, on hot lesbian action:
Count me out. As a straight man, why would I be turned on by women who, by definition, have no use for me? But it's possible I have an overly literal attitude.
"... the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient ..."
OH! So *THAT'S* why lying for jesus and raping children behind the tabernacle are virtues, and why scum like Anal Roberts have a place in heaven. If you're part of the "in" crowd you're just and can do as you please. Or was the apostle just lying for jesus even back then? Augustine was an avid liar for jesus, so lying for jesus certainly isn't a new phenomenon.
Using the same book, we find that:
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.--1 Tim.2:11-12
5:5 Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day.5:6 But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.
1 Timothy 5
6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6
6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
1 Timothy 6
Oh, and the car battery and cables - that works on the cows. It's certainly not as messy as fisting an elephant.
To be fair, I have heard that many scholars think this may have been interpolated, and was not actually in the original letter written by Paul (or by whoever originally wrote the epistle, since not all the "Pauline epistles" are known to have been actually authored by Paul).
The trouble is that most of the textual sources we have are, by any objective measure, highly unreliable; "the Bible" in its current form is the product of centuries of politicking, selective editing and dodgy translation. It's a bit pathetic that so many fundies consider the KJV - which is a poor translation by modern standards, having drawn on a limited range of source material - to be "The Inerrant Word Of God" which everyone must believe in order to be saved. I suppose the fundie Protestants are just following the dictum of Martin Luther that "reason is the Devil's whore", hence why they assiduously avoid anything resembling actual critical thinking or historical research.
Escuerd @8
Is that correct? Are there not in fact sexual practices more strongly associated with homosexuality which are likely to be more unhealthy than typical heterosexual activity?
As Bible readers know, sanctions against homosexuals are very biblical. In fact, the Bible says they should be killed.
That's one reason that the Bible is unfit as any guide to public or private affairs.
Clausentum @ 34: If you mean anal sex, perhaps. However, many heterosexuals engage in this as well.
Lesbians have much less STD's than hetero's, and so the safest thing is for all women to adhere to lesbianism. It's the right thing to do!
Jesus approves of this message.
I know this is completely missing the point, but the NIV version of those verses is as follows:
"We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. / We also know that law[a] is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, / for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine / that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me."
Too bad I can't read Latin or Greek, I s'pose.
All bodily fluid exchange is equally dangerous. All genitalia contact is equally dangerous.
(emphasis mine)
Isn't that an oxymoron?
#34
"Are there not in fact sexual practices more strongly associated with homosexuality which are likely to be more unhealthy than typical heterosexual activity?"
I have no idea...perhaps you can enlighten us?
did he seriously call his show "focal point"?!
he's just setting himself up for it.
fecal point! there i said it!
As 1 Timothy and the other pastorals are late forgeries and weren't even written by Paul, it's hard to get too excited about that what they say, anyway. They were mostly attempts to "correct" Paul's actual letters to make them more Catholic and oppressive.
You can read the RSV here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=5399468
or the NRSV here: http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=1Timothy+1
Both the RSV and NRSV are far more accurate than the NIV.
*Sigh* I knew I'd be found out sooner or later. How much do you want to keep quite about this?
Clausentum @ 34:
I included the word "inherently" specifically to avoid discussions of whether gay people perform acts X, Y and Z at higher rates than straight people, which would be beside the point.
Yes, it's true.
Truckle @ 39:
Not sure that it is, but if you had highlighted the words "think" and "biblical" I might be with you.
The term 'Homosexual' in a biblical verse just doesn't ring true.
First Google result : http://bible.cc/1_timothy/1-10.htm
There are seventeen versions of that verse listed. 'Homosexuality' doesn't appear until 1995. It seems like if the bible doesn't say what they think it should, they can just change it. A case of found by creative translation.
clausentum-
It used to be that childbirth was incredibly dangerous for women and/or the baby, but medical advances have resolved that problem quite well. I wonder how many of these religious zealots are opposed to medical care for women in labor because it was God's will that they die in childbirth and now His will is being thwarted.
Har. Wasn't aware.
I note they still say sodomites, but.. doesn't everyone say that about their version?
Ah, this is a bit of an emphasis fail on my part, was trying to convey 'thinking thoroughly' and 'thinking biblically' being the oxymoron. So basically what you said!
Rutee, @38
You are saying that anal sex carries no higher risk than straight sex?
Escuerd @8
Why?
As far as I can tell, these folks preach one unforgiveable sin: Thinking for yourself.
The Greek word translated “men who practice homosexuality” here (1 Timothy 1:10) is αρσενοκοιταις (from αρσενοκοιτης). This noun appears only here and in 1 Corinthians 6:10. Its meaning is uncertain, but it is derived from the words αρσην (male) and κοιτη (bed, and by extension, sexual relations). Presumably it refers to men who have sex—perhaps “male prostitute” is intended, but nobody really knows.
Homosexuality isn't inherently more dangerous than heterosexuality.
Anal sex may have a higher rate of disease transmission (citation please) if safe sex is not practiced. But the assumption here is that all homosexual men practice anal sex.
Anal sex and homosexuality (in men) are not interchangeable terms.
But it's easy for those who want to criticize homosexuals to make that correlation for the "shock" value.
In 1 Corinthians the word αρσενοκοιται (men who have sex?) is paired with the word μαλακοι (soft ones), leading some to speculate that the former refers to men who take the active role in homosexual intercourse, while the latter refers to men who take the passive role. As far as I know this is pure speculation, however.
Rutee @ 48: Yes, but the word "sodomite" is crap anyway because as sbh points out in #52, no one is sure what the Greek word αρσενοκοιταις means. I had read that it might refer to the Greek practice of an adult man taking a boy as a lover, but I've never seen any evidence to support this.
Plus, the "sin" of Sodom was not homosexuality -- it was inhospitality, for treating the visitors like women (i.e, by threatening to rape them). "Sodomy" is a wrong-headed word, even though until recently it was in common usage.
Anyway, it would not surprise me if 1 Timothy is condemning homosexuality since these pastoral letters are backwards and oppressive in general. It doesn't mean that we should pay much attention to them except to denounce them when others try to apply them to the present.
clausentum @#50:
Your terms are confusing. Since a man and a woman can participate in anal sex together, it's inaccurate at best to contrast "anal sex" with "straight sex". Anal sex does indeed carry more risk for both partners (whatever their sexes) in terms of STD transmission. Moreover, not all gay men participate in anal sex.
The argument was that it's stupid to compare intravenous drug use with gay sex in that way, because there are benefits to preventing the proliferation of intravenous drug use aside from the fact that it acts as a disease vector - we don't lock drug abusers up because they're exposing themselves to the danger of infection. There is no such additional justification for stopping people from engaging in anal sex - we would have to rely on "but you might get sick! If you make stupid, risky decisions etc".
Is it safe to assume that by "straight sex" you mean female-male vaginal-penile intercourse and by "anal sex" you mean male-male anal-penile intercourse and by "higher risk" you mean transmission of HIV? Where are you going with this line of questioning anyway? Are you attempting to declare gay and bisexual males "unhealthy"?
As well as the convenient omission that heterosexual couples practice anal sex at a rate higher than those criticizing homosexuality would ever want to admit...
Am I the only one thinking of Tom Sharpe's 'Indecent Exposure'?
By the way, I wasn't aware that it was actually the spread of HIV / AIDS that was the reason for jailing intravenous drug users. So if we find a cure for HIV / AIDS, this guy will be OK with letting all the drug users out of jail?
clausentum @50:
I thought it was pretty clear in my original post, but perhaps not.
Because the point was that if his concern is HIV, then what he says doesn't apply to people who take precautions to reduce risk. But it's obvious that Fischer's problem is with homosexuality as such, and the rest is a post-hoc rationalization.
For those who haven't seen the light, here's the Chasers' take on taking the bible literally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95hH1H5qK08
And if you wonder why the rest of us have a problem keeping a straight face when the US religious are 'doing their thing':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8GvrZutbcE&feature=related
Enjoy!
Also the comments above about the authorship of 1 Timothy are correct; at least style tests show that its author is not the same as the author of Galatians, Romans, and the Corinthian correspondence, universally accepted as Paul's. Also the interests of the author are those of the late first or early second century, not those of Paul's time. And it appears to have been unknown to Marcion (c140 CE), who considered Paul to have been the only true apostle.
The Pastoral Epistles--Titus, and 1 and 2 Timothy--are usually taken (by New Testament scholars anyway) to be a work of fiction written to make Paul seem more "orthodox" by the standards of the early second century church. They express interests similar to those of Polycarp of Smyrna and are written in a style similar to his; it seems likely that they come from his time and place--in other words early second century Asia Minor.
Speaking from the viewpoint of a former-Christian-turned-atheist, I think Mr. Fischer clearly doesn't understand the bible. The laws of god are not the laws of man. The verse in 1st Timoty is not talking about laws of man, it's talking about the laws of god.
@34
Oh, you mean tribbing and agh, what's the male version called again, never mind. Both have a fairly low incidence of risk of STD and definitely nice and easy on the tissues. Those are the only acts that are gay-dominated.
Oh, oh, wait, you're an ignorant bigot. I'm sorry. Right, lesbians don't exist, straight people engage solely in missionary for the sake of procreation sex and gay men only engage in butt sex to which you're pathologically fixated on because of the fear that some gay man somewhere will see your ass in the same way you personally view a woman's vagina.
I'm terribly sorry. In that case, allow me to answer your question. Not exactly.
I'll leave aside the obvious, that straight couples these days are having a fuck ton of anal sex, especially since young christians see it as a great way to remain "virgins" while exploring their sexuality and so it hasn't been remotely gay dominated for a good long while if ever.
If you're thinking of physical risks (tearing, etc...), um, yeah, that's all penetrative sex. While you want to use more foreplay, lube, and go slower with the anus, all of those aspects are crucial for not fucking up a vagina as well. The sole difference is pretty much that a vagina can be partially self-lubricating, but the being careful and making sure it is primed and relaxed are crucial for both traditional vaginal insertion and anal insertion.
We don't talk about vaginal tearing in our society all that much because we don't really view women's pain as wholly real or worthwhile so somebody randomly thrusting around causing a vagina to ache and bleed afterwards is seen as potentially normal, especially at the time you are most likely to be awkward sexually and just getting used to the sensation.
But yeah, it's somebody's body either way, do the prep work and be responsive and it's pretty much a wash. You have to be slightly more careful on anus, but that's because it's drier and needs external lubrication because it doesn't make it's own.
But I imagine your focus is even narrower. STDs. Yes, receiving unprotected anal sex is the number one way to catch an STD.
The key word there is unprotected and another key word that gets ignored is "ignorant". The anus is one of the more dynamic organs of the human body, it also as mentioned above is not self-lubricating. It therefore can have the most potential for forming a rip or tear that allows entrance to the blood for STDs from semen. This is especially true if you have the type of ignorant person who'd fail to wear a condom fucking you, they probably are also ignorant about proper anal sex and are so less likely to do the prep work and the gentle and thus risk essentially tearing it up in their raw ignorance.
Course, the number one group of people these days practicing unprotected anal sex would be fundamentalist christians in their teens who are doing it to "protect their virginities" by engaging in the riskiest form of unprotected sex possible.
It's also the case that receiving unprotected vaginal sex isn't much better on the STD front. Especially with an ignorant or unmindful partner (aka the exact sort of douchebag who'd fail to wear a condom). The risks are potential tears that would allow seminal fluid to come into contact with the blood stream for the most part.
Also the narrow STD focus also leaves off the biggest STD which would be unwanted seminal fluid breaching the egg perimeter to form an unwanted pregnancy. Add that in and it's pretty much a wash or a vagina win for which is more dangerous to your sexual health.
With protection and with careful conscientious partners receiving either type of sex can be relatively low risk, though obviously not zero risk.
#
But of course, again anal sex is hardly "gay sex" and viewing it as wholly inclusive of even the gay male traditional sex life is hilariously narrow much less the sex life of all gay people, which would include most lesbians. Furthermore if we really wanted to ban the "most dangerous sex" we'd ban penises. While receiving anal and vaginal penetration unprotected is the easiest way to receive STDs, penises are the number one transmitter of STDs. They are the cause of the whole top half of the list of unprotected transmission rates.
Given that the ass and vagina are mere victims of the plague rat known as the penis, we should for the sake of morality and health, ban them from sexual interactions. Men for the sake of safety can have their prostates massaged, but in all other actions, must use hands, tongues, dildos, and various other body parts and accessories to please their partners or derive pleasure themselves.
Or we could all use protection especially men rather than focusing all our attention on anal sex like the mysterious power of the ass is incubating bioweapons against America's heartland.
Or we could all switch to being lesbians. STDs are about as close to zero as you can get for most sexual activities. I realize this would require sex changes for most every male on the planet (trans men would be allowed to be our sole remaining patriarchs), but it's a small price to pay for health and safety that doesn't involve making men wear a goddamn condom and do some god damn prep work before shoving it in.
Your choice, concern troll.
ianmhor #19
Didn't remember this wording in the bible I read so went online to compare and there are quite a variety of interpretations. The bible we were taught at school (40+ years ago) has the term "sexual perverts" rather than the specific "homosexuals" though I see that's the wording in modern American bibles. Anyone know what the original (Greek?) wording actual said?
There ain't any originals. I think the fourth century is about the earliest it gets as far as 1 Timothy goes. Here's a lexicon...
http://biblelexicon.org/1_timothy/1-10.htm
It looks like "gay men" might be the closest interpretation. (I'm no scholar and I could be completely off base. FWIW.)
OK, but as a christian, would not the laws of god be of greater importance then the laws of men, to that christian?
@34: it appears that you are considering anal sex as the distinctive and characteristic form of male homosexual intercourse.
Take a moment to run the numbers, though. The incidence of homosexuality in the general population is variable but probably not greater than about 10% at the outside. So we can estimate that, of all the sex that is being had, about 90% of it is heterosexual and about 5% each is male homosexual and female homosexual. Since not all male homosexual intercourse is anal, it's clear that if the incidence of anal sex among straight couples is greater than a few per cent- which seems like a reasonable estimate- there is more straight anal sex going on than the gay version.
If you are a fundie, you probably now have an erection. Enjoy your repression!
@Celtic_Evolution:
I think the 'render unto Caesar' verse explains that rather well - that you can't ignore the laws of man.
Cerberus:
Nice treatment. And I believe the word you're after is frottage.
I am indeed. Why would it have a higher one? I can only imagine it being very slightly less risky, if the bottom had an infectious contact-based STD and the top did not, which should-ish still be safe for the top.
Notwithstanding that there's always fingers, for lesbians, which I'm damn sure is absolutely risk free as long as you don't lick your fingers afterwards.
Kevin @ 64
And this is why the bible completely fails as a guide for morality or law because it can be interpreted any damned way the reader feels like it, and the "no true Scotsman" fallacy gets trotted out if you disagree.
Most versions of Christianity (tm) claim to use the bible as gawd's laws and morality yet every sect has its own spin on it, all of which seem to coincide with that particular sects followers general views already.
And if you don't agree you just switch sects to one that does agree with your morality.
Whoda thunkit. Humans subjectively selecting which bits of the bible they find morally correct.
@53
Not entirely true, unless you're talking about unprotected penis-orifice sex for both and being the receiving partner.
Being the partner in possession of the penis ends up often with vaginal being more dangerous. Vaginal fluid being in greater abundance in unprotected sex with a potential entrance either up the old spout or through a cut, tear, or nick allowing contact with the blood again. Both penis and anus have to have a tear for a lot of the risk vector for being the penis in anal sex.
Of course a good penis-bearer would care about putting their partner at risk even when they are clean, because a conscientious lover is a good lover.
And when you get to actions like dildoing anus or vagina, licking, fingering, fisting, etc... those are relatively safe as long as you wash before reusing on any other orifice. This is also true of changing orifices. Always change condoms or wash something before switching anus to vagina, anus to mouth, or vagina to mouth.
@70
Thanks. I often forget the male same-sex terminology because I mostly run with the dyke crews.
This thread needs more citations and less assertions.
Plenty STDs out there that are not HIV btw that get transmitted very differently to HIV.
Wasn't Paul in jail for years? Chances are he had a cute posterior and was angry he was getting lots of attention. In response, he backlashes against homosexuality telling his jail mates they are gonna go to hell if they keep taking a piece. I dunno, just conjecture.
Rorschach is right (and Cerberus), I'm ashamed of my assertion at #56 about higher risk of STD transmission. I retract it until I can properly support it.
PS Is there a trick to getting rid of the interminably long username that is the wages of logging in using Google?
@75
Right, sorry, should be "most STD types" rather than the universal.
There are some which are contact based, the cold sore based ones such as genital warts, and even one singular one which is slightly easier for lesbians to get (HPV).
But most of the group STD requires seminal fluid to reach a blood stream or go back up a seminal fluid pore or shaft.
ianmhor #19, also see comments by "sbh" and "Ray Moscow". It's all an unclear horrible mess, as you would expect from the religious loonies and sheep flock manipulators of the past, and of today too.
Oh, and as Rorschach #75 says, "This thread needs more citations and less assertions." :P
About the notion that anal sex is the only 'gay sex', see Docking
(possibly NSFW, depends if they put any pitcures in, i didn't check)
@71
Only one I can think of is maybe one of those contact based STDs that can appear anywhere. You know the ones where someone does a facial and now the girl has an STD on her eyeball or you nosed someone's vagina and now you have STD bumps all along the ridge of your nose, but yeah, pretty rare as shit.
It's funny though in lesbian subculture, there's this extra layer of conscientiousness because safe sex is really important as a general thing and especially gay culture as a "we're all in it together" thing after the AIDS crisis, so you end up with a lot of just crazy extra mile stuff like using gloves for fingering a stranger's vagina or using dental dams when eating out a stranger despite a lot of disease vectors being really close to zero for unprotected sex.
What's even funnier is I think lesbians are pretty close to the entire market for both of those despite those actions not even being remotely lesbian dominated (as is also true of anal sex).
Yes indeed, let's throw the homos in prison. After all, everyone knows that if there's one place where gay sex NEVER happens, it's in prison.
As 1 Timothy and the other pastorals are late forgeries and weren't even written by Paul, it's hard to get too excited about that what they say, anyway.
Yeah, try telling that to pastor plastic hair dude, who is definitely not gay.
Also Rorschach, more citations, less assertions?
What, you want the thread to just be a long list of links to the entire content list of Scarleteen and the Midwest Teen Sex Show, with a few side references from Planned Parenthood's STD pages?
"You express a belief in the Scriptures, and I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective. If you believe all Scripture is inspired, then you are compelled to accept that legal sanctions may appropriately be applied to those who engage in homosexual behavior. "
I trust his confidence in scripture is not selective either. Has he offered the LORD any animal sacrifice lately?
Thanks to those who have answered my question about the original source of that particular biblical verse. It's is just too easy nowadays to find out how week the foundations are for fundie thinking. It used to require visits to libraries and lost of reading. Now you ask the question and within a few hours you have more than you could ever wish.
I suspect this is just another proof that thinking and fundamentalism are poles apart.
Also
Sorry, no citations, but I agree with the sentiment.
As someone who has studied 5 foreign languages I can tell you that figuring out what people writing in another language "actually said" is seldom simple. Add to that the fact that Paul wrote in a kind of code to avoid (unsuccessfully) prison. The bible is an early example of "dog whistle" communications - statements worded just right to fly over the heads of Roman censors then land squarely on target with Christian readers. In college my religion professor once assigned a paper on the translation of 1 Greek word. Not kidding. There's lots of room for interpretation. Word for word translations will not help you.
A bit OT but related: my favorite of the new Star Trek was the episode in which Picard made first contact with a species that could only communicate abstract concepts by means of literary allusions. It's actually not that far-fetched.
And to those who trim their beards. And eat shellfish. And wear mixed-fibre clothing. And plant wheat and barley in the same field.
The not gay pastor:
I like the not gay logic there. The same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior, therefore a detox program is the same response as an effective reparative therapy program.
This pastor is definitely one who is a not gay pastor, so don't let the blue eyes fool ya.
SW #15: isn't that because the whole Leviticus thing is not attested before sometime around the return from the Babylonian exile? It's temple priests writing out a really prescriptive code and assigning it to a fictitious past in which it was never practised.
And there's more to it than that. If I've understood correctly, the big conflict of 1st century Judea between the Saducees and Pharisees -- aka, temple priests and rabbis -- was that the priests believed that the code was primarily applicable to just the priests (they had to be pure to handle the magical utensils), while the rabbis believed the code applied to all Jews. That makes a big difference in terms of power distribution.
Then going back further, apparently the Maccabean revolt was an internal struggle between fundies and hellenists -- that before the Maccabees revolted, the high priests had names like "Jason".
That would seem to imply that much of the Levitical code was not considered law code at all for some period between the return from Babylon and the Maccabees. Since that window is anyway from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC -- you can see that at most, it was applied to a small subset for a short window.
@Truckle:
Exactly. The bible has few good merits that I can really think off the top of my head, I think my favorite being the 'don't criticize your brother over a speck in his eye when you've got a huge honkin' log sticking out of your own' verse.
I was at a meetup yesterday, and I think I called it right when I called biblical morality 'ala carte religion.' Christians pick and choose specific verses that they believe are morals and laws they should follow, and discount others entirely. One law I understand why it can be discounted - eating unclean animals - because Peter was told in Acts that all animals are fair game - but the others they discount aren't legitimized.
Christians are a silly people.
I think his biblical logic is sound. Of course, biblical logic generally leads to absurd conclusions, which is why biblical premises should be rejected to begin with. Rather than trying to square bronze age superstition with modern, humanistic society, we should be pointing out, "Yes, indeed, this is the absurdity that your religion leads to. Reject it."
Cerberus (#65)
Chill out. The reason why male homosexuals are at higher risk of stds than other groups is because a) anal sex poses a significantly higher risk of disease transmission than other forms of sex and b) man-man is the only gender combination in which each sexual partner can penetrate the other. The second point is important - the penetratee is always at higher risk of infection than the penetrator, so comparing homosexual couples practicing anal sex to heterosexual couples practicing anal sex is not a fair comparison, because the woman will never penetrate the man and the overall transmission rate remains lower.
Obviously, in any group there are people who don't engage in sexual practices normally associated with that group. Not all homosexual men indulge in anal intercourse. Not all hetero couples engage in penetrative sex either. But practising safe sex is not the issue. There's always a risk, and that risk can be mitigated but not eliminated. A male homosexual couple practising safe sex will still be at higher risk of disease transmission than a hetero couple doing the same thing.
This isn't a judgement about homosexual men, it's just the way things are. Don't let the fact that it happens to serve the purposes of a wide variety of utter bastards for this to be true force you into the position of denying that it's true at all, demanding that exceptions be taken into account etc. Male homosexuals are absolutely the highest risk group for std transmission because of the mechanics of penetrative sex for that particular group.
@87: it's not far-fetched until you start to wonder how the aliens teach the stories to their children; they must have a descriptive communication method to teach the stories for their allusive communication method.
@93: might I point out that a gay couple who are both healthy and in an exclusive relationship are at zero risk of transmitting an STD? You seem to be saying "gay men" when you mean "gay men practising unprotected anal sex with multiple partners", which is a dangerous elision.
linzel #76: Wasn't Paul in jail for years? Chances are he had a cute posterior and was angry he was getting lots of attention. In response, he backlashes against homosexuality telling his jail mates they are gonna go to hell if they keep taking a piece. I dunno, just conjecture
Anachronistic. First century Roman Empire was not the kind of place where people got too worked up about rape, except as a property crime. The idea of owning yourself, of being an autonomous entity with clear boundaries, is a very modern idea.
Remember, the police force were the politicians themselves. Lots of wandering soldiers carrying weapons everywhere. A large portion of the population were slaves. Lots of bandits in the hills. A completely different society -- rape was the last thing you were worried about in prison. I'd be surprised if most people weren't "raped" several times in their lives.
Remember that in Rome -- "homosexuality" wasn't disparaged, the issue was being the "receiver".
(And yes, I know it was a joke -- predicated on the same anachronism that leads Christians to believe that a sensible "translation" of ancient works is possible, short of being a full-time academic archeoethnologist)
perfectlysafe @93:
I don't understand what point you're making about homosexual partners penetrating each other. You seem to be suggesting that (most) homosexual men adopt a versatile penetrative role with most of their sexual partners. You also seem to be making the assertion that anal sex is characteristic of sex between men. Neither of these arguments should be taken for granted, and I'd like you to provide some evidence to support them.
#94: it's not far-fetched until you start to wonder how the aliens teach the stories to their children; they must have a descriptive communication method to teach the stories for their allusive communication method.
Ahh, but that's exactly where most theories of language flounder, when they require good referents to bootstrap. It all sounds like literary allusions and poetic reverie to small children.
@Very Long Google Name (#77): I don't know why some people get that, and I get my Google screen name. Must be something weird with Google interfaces. But then, I am not tech-savvy. Triskelethecat is my gmail name, and that's how I sign in with the google choice.
@perfectlysafe:
Ah, if only intuition were a safe guide to anything at all, other than what other people are thinking.
What about economic stratification over the last half century? Why are poor people at a much greater risk of STDs? Or associated drug use?
Or, even more, social networking patterns? STDs infection rates are often not associated with a higher modal rate of penetrative sex -- and sometimes it's inversely related (compare American Jewish populations to African-American populations).
Might it have something to do with a few members of the community involved in extremely risky behavior, combined with low sexual activity by the rest of the community minimizing network distance?
The "obvious, common-sense" answer is rarely the answer to anything except as predictions of mental states -- obviously, since that's what it reflects.
@perfectlysafe,
As a gay man, I have to say that I hate being painted with the "takes it up the bum" brush. It's a major factor keeping me in the closet with a lot of people, particularly Christians or other religious sorts, because they're taught that we just love that sort of thing because we're filthy animals. I don't. I don't enjoy it, either way, nor do I find it sexy, and it bugs me to have to point that out to people. Women don't have to tell anyone but their partner whether they enjoy anal sex, so why must I?
I guess only lesbians should be allowed to have sex. They're pretty awful at spreading STDs.
Also since intravenous drug use is only bad because it spreads disease, I guess we can go ahead and legalize cocaine, LSD, crack, etc. No needles there!
Ssempa's screening is an asinine misrepresentation of homosexuality. (And why is he looking at gay porn anyway.)
True, Pikachu. Also, I don't mean to sound judgmental toward anal intercourse. Plenty of people love it. I've been rather surprised at how many of my female friends tell me they enjoy it (what with not having a prostate and all). I just don't, and I don't like having that assumption made about me. I don't catch myself wondering how much my female coworkers go in for it, why should they wonder that about me?
These people make it their business to care about what gay people do in bed, because they are already up in arms about what straight people do in bed. They might be more obsessed with sex than your average teenager.
"Enslavers"?
I can find you a bunch of passages in the babble about the legitimacy of taking, selling, buying, owning and being slaves, but I don't know of any saying the opposite.
Help me out here, scripturologists!
If those Christians were primarily worried about HIV and other STDs, they wouldn't object to harm reduction efforts like teaching addicts to use clean needles and not share syringes. If they were only worried about HIV, they'd be in favor of legalizing marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamines, and they would be encouraging heroin users to snort instead of inject.
There is one real risk factor that is possible only in heterosexual sex: pregnancy. That's never 100% safe, though it's a lot safer now than a century or two ago. But what do they care? No man ever died in childbirth.
There are no risk factors that are unique to male-male sex, or female-female sex.
Yes, I realize that the Star Trek episode treated the idea a little simplistically. As I understood it (saw the episode in question a long time ago) the allusions explained abstract concepts, but they had vocabulary for concrete concepts. Concrete words tell the stories, references to the stories express abstract concepts.
I am very skeptical of artificial intelligence used as a translation tool. Star Trek's "universal translator" gizmo looks pretty far-fetched to me. In the episode in question the aliens use of literary allusions stumps it completely. Presently, it's even easier to stump something such as Google Translate (I like to play with this for laughs sometimes - it's really bad). But my all-time favorite has to be an early test of an AI translation program that took "out of sight, out of mind" translated it into Russian, then took the Russian result and ran it back through the program into English. "Out of sight, out of mind" comes back as "invisible maniac."
Happy Monday.
@93
Not really, there's a lot wrong with your statement, but I think the chiefest sin is the comparison of ideal world (everyone uses adequate protection and knows what the fuck they're doing) and comparison of failure world (everyone engages in the high-risk, no condoms, ignorant love making), which in those two instances, anal sex is more dangerous, but in the ideal world, it's not really more dangerous than vaginal penetration and a case could easily be made that in the world of near zeros vaginal would be slightly more "fraught" though neither would be much to paralyze yourself in fear over.
Unprotected, yeah, sure, though I would heavily argue against significantly. Compared to vaginal, it's not really in a separate league, but being the receiver for anal or vaginal are certainly significantly separated from all other transmission vectors (well except for some of the contact based ones). It's not like unprotected anal brings down the fury and unprotected vaginal is a nice cuddle. Both are the two most dangerous and moronic sex acts you could do especially with an untested partner.
Though, it's worth noting that with a tested partner, anal sex completely outshines vaginal because anal sex ends up with perfectly safe whereas vaginal can still end up with unwanted egg breach.
And that's where we get into a big problem. People seem to easily fall into the trap wherein anal sex is still seen as "gay sex" and furthermore all gay people do, who are themselves all gay men, lesbians like all women being too unimportant to be noted (yes, I did catch you being completely nonplussed at the heavy risk to women in unprotected sex to make your argument).
Anal sex is hardly gay. Gay men don't really see it in the same way straight men view PIV sex and a shit ton of straights regularly incorporate anal play into their sexual routines. Most damningly and dangerous from a public health perspective?
Saddlebacking. Abstinent and christian youth engaging in unprotected and most critically ignorant anal sex with multiple partners to protect their virginities until marriage. Huge potential disease vector as was the downfall of the free love movements of the 70s with the rise of the AIDS crisis.
So we have gay men rubbering up fairly reliably post AIDS scare and a gay community strongly promoting safe sex for everyone and an apathetic straight community wherein straight men view sexual protection as "the woman's job" and a young christian community putting themselves at maximum risk because of deliberate ignorance.
In this culture, hewing to a "gay men are at the most risk" ideal comparison ignores that these cultural shifts means that the people most at risk are straight women who really need to stay firm when their partners try to weasel out of using protection. Especially with the higher rates of infidelity in the straight community.
@104
Well, basically, nerve endings. This is also why the myth of the g-spot. Basically, their magic spot that is a huge cluster of nerve endings is the clitoris, but they still have nerve endings strung throughout the body which can lead to bundles or erogenous zones potentially anywhere. Stimulation of large areas of this in the vagina or anus can stimulate greatly especially when combined with clitoral stimulation or the stimulation of other erogenous zones on the outside of the body.
Not as direct or neat as the prostrate but can still feel amazing to the woman especially if she has been well primed to make her erogenous zones and nerve endings sensitive to any touch.
Random off topicish interjection:
Sorry this would be "sex aversion therapy"? You've just partially described "Friday evening". Aversion my arse!
My coat. I gets it.
Louis
As pointed out above several times, many of the Pauline letters are known forgeries.
Including Timothy, one of the more notorious. This was written by some proto-Catholic guy in the early RCC when they were formalizing a doctrine that hasn't changed all that much in 2,000 years. Women still can't be priests
This is one of the things that make the fundies so laughable. They claim a contradictory mess of old writings, some of which are known forgeries and one filled with failed prophecies as the word of god. Not even possible and not a position of most xian sects.
The US was never a christian nation and US law is not based on the bible or the ten commandments. If it was, Pat Robertson and the Rapture Monkeys would all be dead, false prophets are explicitly condemned to death in Deuteronomy and Pat Robertson has made many prophecies that failed.
I am very skeptical of artificial intelligence used as a translation tool. Star Trek's "universal translator" gizmo looks pretty far-fetched to me. In the episode in question the aliens use of literary allusions stumps it completely.
Which was the whole point of the episode. They wanted to eliminate the too convenient plot device of the universal translator but make it impossible to fix it technologically. So this gave them a perfectly working translation that was completely useless for actual communication.
So does God love lesbians?
Typical male (of the Howard Stern variety).
Blimey.
#97
Well, homosexual men as a group have a higher rate of STD transmission than any other group. Do you deny this? I was merely explaining why this is true of homosexual men who have penetrative sex more than it is true of heterosexual couples who engage in anal intercourse, say. I'm not really making a statement as to whether most or some or few homosexual men engage in the behaviours described, merely that it's more than heterosexual couples (because the number of versatile penetrative sexual relationships among heterosexual couples is zero).
I raised this specifically in relation to the fact that the point "but heterosexual couples sometimes engage in anal intercourse too" is always raised during this sort of discussion. But it's still not the same magnitude of risk because the high risk role in the relationship is always borne by the penetratee, and in a heterosexual relationship, the penetratee is always the woman. This is not true of male homosexual penetrative sex.
So my point is that it is correct to say that, statistically, homosexual males have a higher STD transmission rate as a group - because they do - and that it's foolish to deny that fact simply because it can be used as part of a moral judgement against male homosexuals by, for example, certain types of Christian. The fact that STD transmission is very low between homosexual women is, similarly, not a glowing recommendation of lesbianism as a moral pursuit. That's just a statistic too.
Obviously, I'm being a bit broad brushed by referring to STDs in general - homosexual men aren't particularly vulnerable to all STDs, but are comparatively terribly vulnerable to, say, Hepatitis B and HIV.
frog, Inc. (#100)
I don't know what your point is, sorry. You were so busy asking questions that you forgot to provide any substance. I speculate that you're saying that homosexual males, as a group, are high risk because of the behaviour of certain members of the group rather than the group as a whole, but that's true of all groups. The behaviour of members of any group affect the group as a whole from a statistical perspective. So...if I were making a moral judgement about homosexual men, then I guess you've got me because then I'd be talking about ALL homosexual men. But I'm talking about homosexual men as a statistical cohort.
Obviously, if your point is different, then I apologise in advance for failing to divine the obviousness of it, but maybe a couple of sentences involving neither airy speculation nor question marks?
destlund (#101)
Point to where I said that all homosexual men take it up the bum. I know I did say "Not all homosexual men indulge in anal intercourse". I know that I talked about groups and statistics for a bit. I am under no illusions that all gay men take it up the bum. But homosexual men, AS A GROUP, take it up the bum AND give it up the bum in a way that no other group does or indeed can.
Would it genuinely be more helpful if I talked about "men who have engaged in anal intercourse with other men in the last five years" or something? I honestly didn't mean to offend, but I'm surprised at this reaction. I'm not talking about you personally - I'm talking about the group "homosexual men". Penetrative homosexual male sex is up the bum. If I talked about STD rates among heterosexuals, and started talking about vaginal intercourse, that I'd get a slew of people coming in saying "I'm heterosexual but we only do oral! How dare you!".
Cold shower, bud. Thinking about all that hot man-on-man lust is getting you worked up.
Or is it the woman-on-woman sex? After all, Fischer only spoke of "homosexual behavior", not "male homosexual behavior". So, if his solution to HIV is to lock up people engaging in "homosexual behavior", does that include lesbians, who are at lower risk than just about anyone else?
As for anal vs. vaginal penetration: Receptive anal intercourse is of substantially higher risk than receptive vaginal. The vagina's walls are thicker than those of the rectum; the rectum has blood vessels immediately adjacent to the surface, which absorb excess water from feces.
Some bleeding/microtears are to be expected in receptive anal intercourse. The same can and often does occur in receptive vaginal intercourse, but to a far lesser extent.
HIV is transmitted via semen->blood, blood->blood, or vaginal fluid->blood contact. (Yes, you can get it via cerebrospinal fluid->blood contact, but if that's going on, you probably have more important things to worry about at the moment than HIV.)
So, think about pathways. It's the route into the bloodstream that matters.
"perfectlysafe"?? Did you come up with that just now to disseminate your prudish views? Asshole.
Cerberus -- Anal sex can be clitoral stimulation. (It's all clitoral stimulation.) The clitoris is huge, and most of it is inside. Thinking of a clitoris as if it's just the little sticky-outy bit at the end is like thinking that a penis is entirely the glans and none of the rest of it does anything at all. Some women have clitoral nerve endings in the kinds of places that make anal sex really fun; some women don't. Other women might, but never find out because they're too prudish, or they have the kinds of medical problems that make anal undesirable.
I suspect the reason that the fundies invariably conflate "gay" with "anal sex" is because in their hyperpatriarchal conception of sexual relations, "you poke it, you own it," and if nobody's poking anybody, there's no actual sex going on. The reason that lesbians don't exist in their world (except perhaps as "women who pretend to be men," and even that's iffy) is that they think women don't actually want sex, they trade sex for the things they do want -- financial support and babies. Women like me, who don't want either, really piss them off. :)
[Risking smartassery withough having read the entire thread]:
I don't think most straight men actually believe that lesbians "have no use for [them]." Instead, for most of us testosterone-poisoned fellows, hot lesbian action translates pretty much directly to EXTRA GIRLS!!!
Or as Jeff Murdock would put it, "lesbians are porn-efficient." ;^)
Also, Cerberus (@65, et seq.):
FTW!! Only the first day of the month, and already my February Molly ballot is half full!
The large majority of the world's HIV/AIDS patients are females and children.
Worldwide, most cases are spread by heterosexual transmission.
This "HIV/AIDS is a gay disease" is a lie of the fundie xians. The virus first appeared in the USA in the gay community for historical reasons. The pattern in the USA is shifting to the world norm. IIRC, the number of US HIV+ who are female is around a third heading towards one half.
A lot of fundie xianity is just an excuse for haters and wannabe killers to act out their antisocial dreams. They never let facts get in their way.
@Bill Dauphin 118:
Besides, most lesbian porn stars aren't even really lesbians.
OK, perfectly safe and all the other homophobes, I have to ask. Why is it that any time anyone mentions "gay" you guys immediately start spouting off about the hershey highway? Look, I know plenty of gay guys who do not practice that particular act, and I know quite a few heterosexual couples that do. But I've never known anybody as obsessed with said act as the homophobes seem to be.
Look, one could suggest that number of partners is a better predictor for AIDS than any particular act. The cure: monogamous gay marriage for any couple that wants it. Why doesn't that spring to your mind?
Uh, hello prudes. Not every gay guy takes it up the ass. There are other forms of sex too. And even if we do take it up our asses an increasing number of gay men are doing it safely with a condom. So instead of blaming gays for the spread of STD, why don't you blame anti-contraceptive policies since STD happens more often in places with inadequate safe sex policies.
The greek seems to be "arsenkoitais." This seems to refer to temple prostitution in other texts from that era rather than homosexuality.
But it's still not the same magnitude of risk because the high risk role in the relationship is always borne by the penetratee, and in a heterosexual relationship, the penetratee is always the woman.
One word: Pegging.
Y'all are focusing only on one of the freedoms supposed by the true believers to be promised them by this line: "the law is not laid down for the just" also is interpreted as a grant of immunity from the rules on insider trading, tax evasion, philandering, and anything else they wish to do.
Remember this next time you see the sober Christian businessmen in the news -- the law, they believe, is not laid down for them.
Which law?
Oh, "whatever."
#120
"Besides, most lesbian porn stars aren't even really lesbians."
I was kindda hoping they were all Bi!
HIV prevalence and AIDS is higher in females than males in Africa. The large majority of the world's HIV/AIDS cases are in Africa.
The other large group of HIV/AIDS sufferers are children who contract the virus from their mothers as babies.
I gave up wading through this thread. The whole thing starts with a lie, that HIV/AIDS is a gay disease transmitted by gays. It is mostly an STD although also spread by pregnancy and childbirth, sharing dirty needles, and other bodily fluid exchanges. Most of the world's HIV/AIDS is spread by....HETEROSEXUALS!!!
Fundies never, ever let facts get in the way of their hates.
117-
Yeah, that too. Sorry I forgot to mention it on the first pass.
121-
It's not even that. Polyamory, or hell being a giant slut with a thousand trillion partners is no big deal as long as you keep getting tested, get your partners tested before sexual conduct, and use multiple forms of protection.
The risk jump from unprotected to protected especially to protected and educated about what the hell you are doing, is staggering. It takes something fairly risky and turns it into something less risky than driving your car to work. Something can still go wrong, but as long as you are conscientious and avoid any shortcuts and constantly check yourself and your partners and avoid partners who seem to play fast and loose with safety, you are pretty solid.
Which is why women are starting to skyrocket. Safe sex has been pretty well pentrating the lgbt community, but a lot of straight men seem to be going "hmm, protect myself and my partner with a simple act, wait, it has a slight decrease in sensitivity and I actually have to expend effort? Fuck that!"
That's the biggest risk factor these days. Well them and the lied to kids from the abstinence only movements.
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space #121:
*clap clap clap clap* Lovin' it!
Actually, the single act most likely to transmit HIV from one person to another is an HIV+ woman giving birth vaginally without taking anti-retrovirals beforehand. The risk is (IIRC) about 1 in 4. Much higher than the risk of any sexual act.
@Strangest Brew 126:
Either bi or well-paid 'actresses.'
@ redmjoel #123:
Which, using the translation style of Billy Bunter Latin, really ought to mean "arse coitus".
Kevin (@120):
Yah, even (especially?) when the package proclaims "Real Girlfriends! Making Real Love!" OWTTE. It's unfortunate, because my own porn ethos values the authenticity of what I'm seeing far more than the heteronormative hotness of the women. Of course, that rules out pretty much all mainstream commercial porn; thankfully, there are some alternatives in the sphere of erotic media.
BTW, isn't it interesting that there's a term of art — gay-for-play — for straigh male performers who play gay scenes, but (AFAIK) no equivalent term for female performers who do "girl-girl." I assume the difference reflects a presumption that female-female sex is apealing to pretty much everyone, including straight women.
From a strictly parochial personal POV, I find that hard to argue with: To me it seems so obvious that women — pretty much all of 'em — are orders of magnitude sexier than men that it seems a very miracle that anyone wants to sleep with us guys. Ahh, but that is just a personal viewpoint; from a more global perspective, the automatic presumption that women in porn will do same-sex scenes is no doubt just another manifestation of enculturated male bias.
Only if you're doing it right.
*waggles eyebrows in vaguely Groucho Marx way*
Still learning,
Robert
P.S. I'm very late getting back to Pharyngula after a hectic Dec./Jan., so congratulations to aratina cage and Lynna on the OMs! Huzzah!
Urrk!
Talk about a typo that totally defeats the sense of the utterance! [sigh]
The Pastoral Epistles--Titus, and 1 and 2 Timothy--are usually taken (by New Testament scholars anyway) to be a work of fiction written to make Paul seem more "orthodox" by the standards of the early second century church.
The pseudo-Pauline literature (of which the pastorals form a part) wasn't written to rehabilitate Paul, I don't think. The pseudepigraphical epistles were written in the name of Paul to give the anonymous author's views "apostolic authority." The epistles of Peter, James and John the same, and, for that matter, the spurious attributions of the anonymous gospel texts to disciples (Matthew and John) or to named figures in the early tradition (Mark and Luke).
@Bill Dauphin 133:
Agreed - women are sexy, and guys are... odd.
I actually love this sort of "logic," if you believe in the Bible, then you also believe in .
When I was trying to figure out my religious views several years ago, I saw this sort of thing and said, "You're right; I guess I don't believe in the Bible." I hope others reach the same conclusion.
@133
Interestingly enough for you, there's some FUBU style porn out there that's by dykes for dykes featuring genuine lesbian sex. I went through a lot of it trying to find decent lesbian porn for my partner.
Basically, if you want authentic lesbian sex, the best producers are abbywinters, Crash Pad, and some of the kink.com stuff but anything that looks to be targeting itself to dykes rather than straight men is probably going to have what you're looking for. If it's indie and advertises having a "boi" in it or talks in-depth about queer communities, it's probably what you're looking for.
In my local area, the HIV+ rate is low. Most of it is spread by a subculture of IV drug users among themselves.
So the health department very quietly started a needle exchange.
Then during a budget crisis they had to stop it.
The HIV+ rate immediately started up. Ultimately, this ends up costing the taxpayers huge amounts of money treating them with life long anti-retroviral therapy not to mention more HIV+ cases.
Next time they had a budget crisis*, they cut a lot of things. They didn't dare cut the needle exchange.
The program is very quiet. You would never know it existed. Evidently the people who need to know, know. This is because if the fundies ever found out they would scream and try to eliminate it. It's more important to them to be malevolent evil religious kooks than to save lives or taxpayer money.
*The WC invented the perpetual budget crisis. This is the new normal.
@btj:
It's what turned me away from Christianity. Although kind of the opposite. I saw what I did believe in, and looked at the bible to see what I would have to disbelieve:
Evolution
Radioactive dating methods
Stars
Big Bang
Physics (almost wrote psychics here, whoops)
And several other things - but having to disbelieve in STARS hit me the hardest. I would have to somehow believe that not only did god put stars in the sky, but he also put them so that their light hit us from before time even existed.
WAY too much BS there.
but having to disbelieve in STARS hit me the hardest. I would have to somehow believe that not only did god put stars in the sky, but he also put them so that their light hit us from before time even existed.
Technically, all we really have ever seen from any star except for the sun is the light hitting us from far, far beyond. So if god created the universe to really screw us up s/he might have simply produced the light in progress and not made stars at all. If interstellar travel proves unfeasible we may never even notice the deception...
@Dianne 142:
Yeah, but in that case, god is a dick.
That's simply not true. Some do both, some do neither, but most do either one or the other. The fact that heterosexual couples can only have penetrative anal sex in one configuration is a red herring.
TheRealInterroBang, Thank you.
*bows to Desert Son #134*
Thank you. Glad you are back. :)
Folks, I am Timothy and I do not endorse that message.
#143
"Yeah, but in that case, god is a dick."
That was already established methinks?
But one does wonder where he sticks himself...those gaps are getting far to narrow?
@Strangest Brew 147:
They'll always be making new gaps. Even if science eventually finds every transitional fossil, some creobot will be saying that 'oh, but there's too much difference between those two fossils.'
Of course, one can hope that if science found every transitional fossil, creobots would be a decidedly minority group - tossed into the same category as moon-hoaxers, UFO-believers, and people who think Elvis is alive.
"In a nutshell" indeed!
Aratina Cage,
M'lady is too kind ;-). Damn, what' the proper form of address for an OM?
But seriously, you mention "gay" and these homophobes go straight for the butt. Jeebus, what's the matter with a little foreplay ferchrissake?
Cerberus (@139):
I'm familiar with abbywinters and aware of the others you mention. I would also add ifeelmyself.com, which has a considerable degree of overlap with AW, both in membership and contributors. IFM is primarily dedicated to solo female scenes, but also posts material in a category called Friends. The site's ethos is all about authenticity (the founder's motto is "we don't publish fiction"), and while the Friends contributors (newcomers to the site's forums who incautiously refer to them as "actresses" or "models" are swiftly corrected!) may not be full-time lesbians, whatever they're doing in those scenes is clearly stuff they're engaged with in RL as well.
At the end of the day, it's not so important to me what lifestyle the performers live when they're not in front of the cameras; what's important to me is that what I'm looking at is (to as great a degree as possible, given that it is in front of cameras) not fake.
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space 150:
'Meaning of Life' quote?
As suggested in #136, the matter of some "Pauline" epistles' having been written by someone else is not necessarily a "forgery" in the sense we use the term; borrowing a well-known name to put on one's manuscript was a legitimate writer's tool of that time in order to assure acceptance. We can use textual criticism to ferret out some of these instances, along with other scriptural passages which were added (or sometimes much-altered) by later hands. Also hinted at above, and borne out by careful study, some "historical" passages were written several centuries after the events they describe and bear little or no resemblance to other culture's mention - or non-mention - of those same events. Of course, having a steadily growing body of authentic manuscripts (some of which call strongly into question certain traditional interpretations) and a steadily growing body of scholarship focusing on these very issues is highly troubling to fundamentalists.
Kevin says: "Even if science eventually finds every transitional fossil, some creobot will be saying that 'oh, but there's too much difference between those two fossils.'"
In fact, since the fossil record will always discrete rather than continuous, finding fossils to stick in all those gaps just doubles the number of (albeit, now very small) gaps. The way Creobots look at it, that means they win. We're playing science. They're playing Calvin-ball.
Kevin @152,
Actually the quote from The Meaning of Life is "What's the matter with a simple kiss, boy?"
Why, yes, I have seen the movie. Why do you ask?
419 scammers also wish to "assure acceptance".
Deliberate fraud is not legitimate.
Being lesbian or gay doesn't put you into a higher risk catagory, having unprotected sex does, and anyone can unprotected sex.
The problem is that what they mean by "transitional form" is not what scientists mean by transitional form. What they want is a lego block like mix of features from two different species. Something that is really "between" the two will always be identified by them as a "seperate" species and not a transition. They want a chihuaha head on a wolf body or chicken wings on an iguana. So even a complete, continuous fossil record would fail to meet their criteria for a "transitional" species.
Okay, let's be consistent here.
Deut. 22:28
"If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her."
So, we're going to need some new rape laws. Also, we'll need to figure out how much a shekel is in today's dollars.
SteveM@158, like I said, Calvin Ball:
http://www.bartel.org/calvinball/
It's just like the climate denialists claiming that a cool year invalidates a 30 year warming trend. Stupidity of the gaps.
@feralboy12 159:
A shekel was about 11 grams, so what is the worth of 550 grams of silver?
I'm sure a young girl being forced to marry her rapist is going to be a popular feature when the fundies take over and institute Biblical law.
aratina cage of the OM at #145,
Many thanks; nice to be back!
Still learning,
Robert
Where do I even enter the picture, or, more literally, the TV screen? This isn't about persons to have sex with, it's about a picture to wank to. And that means straight men (…at least if "straight" is defined as "0 on the Kinsey scale"…) don't want to see a man in porn, because any such man just takes up space between the woman and the camera! The whole point is to see the woman!
In other words:
I may be misremembering, but I think Richard Friedman argues against this in Who Wrote the Bible?.
There may be some few exceptions, though.
feralboy12 @159:
Well, according to the converter widget on my Mac, it's currently 3.737 Israeli new shekels to $1.00US. So 50 shekels would be $13.38US.
Even more proof that the Babble undervalues women....
re ray in dilbert space @160
Yeah, I understand Calvinball. Wasn't disagreeing with you, just expanding on what you wrote.
According to google, at current rates a shekel is about $0.269 in U.S. currency.
That's not even going to pay for the marriage license.
Deliberate fraud is not legitimate.
The phenomenon is not limited to the 2nd century NT texts. In the same fashion, the sayings collections of Hellenistic philosophical schools like the Pythagoreans and the Cynics were expanded by attributing new variations on the teaching to known figures. And the midrashes of the Talmud were composed by "putting words in the mouth" of famous rabbis. Plato's use of Socrates is also similar.
Since it (the NT) is a bunch of hooey anyway as far as being an acceptable guide to ethics, I tend to think of the lot of it as a kind of "deliberate fraud," whether or not it was actually written by the person to whom it was attributed.
Origen, an early theologian castrated himself. - raven
Doubtful apparently - the source for the story is Eusebius, who believed it, but it may have been a libel by Patriarch Demetrius of Alexandria, intended to cast doubt on the validity of Origen's ordination (you must have testicles in order to turn bread and wine into zombie-flesh and zombie-blood, as I'm sure you know!).
David M (@164):
Well, sorta': I would say that the whole point of porn (i.e., as opposed to nudie pictures) is to see the woman having sex. There are, of course, a variety of sorts of sex she might be having, but I like 'em all (well, almost all...), so I'm willing to not only tolerate but celebrate the presence of men in at least some of my porn, regardless of my disinterest in watching them, per se. It's still true, of course, that "lesbians are porn efficient," but efficiency isn't everything! ;^)
I'll spare y'all yet another reposting of the Ron White bit on men in porn....
#148
"They'll always be making new gaps.'
Well they will certainly try, cos otherwise they is a tad goosed.
But the goal post dragging is getting cumbersome.
Even AiG are having a bit of a problem getting their clones to drop the Paluxy river footprints which should be avoided as argument and the 'Darwin recanted on his deathbed', 'Ron Wyatt has found much archeological proof of the Bible' and other such dross they recommend should never be used....
But seems 'the word' is not being heeded.
One reason these discredited 'old faithful' arguments are still being bandied about is simply matter of choice, as in they have none.
Most clones have not a clue in general but trying to argue ID is so far beyond the common or garden idiot, hell it is even beyond the Discovery Institute itself, that the idiots just revert to the memes they grew up with!
The rhetoric is stale and folks are turning off, the audience might be open to a bit of woo but the arguments are becoming putrified in their own glob!
Hence you get the likes of Bergman and Ray banana brain trying to sweet talk the same audience with a different opening gambit, that eventually filters down to the same old same old ones, and finally the coup de grace the Nazi thing they all seem so proud of!
The 'tricky dikkies' might try to change the gaps to elsewhere but the legions of the hard of cognitive process are firmly stuck in the middle ages!
They are affectively dragging dead weight!
It is falling down around their perfectly designed lugholes, and much gnashing of toothy pegs can be heard!
550 g of silver is in the vicinity of 325USD, at a market price of $16.70 an ounce. The price of women is trending upwards lately.
In somewhat unrelated news: WTF!! Chris Mooney is one of the people replacing Groethe on Point of Inquiry!?!
Great. Just what we need - lectures about how we need to be nice to people like this. Ick.
James Dale "Jeff Gannon" Guckert had "Role: TOP!" in his famous profile. (I don't remember if it said "role", and I won't try to find out, but I remember the all-caps and the exclamation mark very clearly.)
Shouldn't that rather be "a steadily growing body of Coptic translations of, we hope, authentic manuscripts"? They're interesting enough in their own right, but… :-/
And they commonly borrow a well-known name to explain why they've got a dozen megabucks or two (though often they mangle it most hilariously).
Note how she's a mere object of punishment inflicted upon the evildoer.
Sort of how Job's entire family gets killed just to teach him a lesson.
Cerberus (#109)
I'm sorry for linking to Wikipedia, but I haven't been involved with this subject for some time and don't have any better references handy. HIV transmission rates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS. Receptive anal intercourse is five times more likely to transfer than receptive vaginal intercourse. Not the same. How big is a league these days? But I'm not sure why we're talking about vaginal sex.
Condoms are certainly important, but the assertion that you made was something like "heterosexuals engage in anal too therefore it's the same at homosexual male anal sex" and my point was "no, not exactly, here's why". And then you kinda went postal.
See, this isn't the issue. It's not a question of comparing vaginal to anal sex and the associated transmission rates. It's a question of the transmission rates between penetrator and receiver during anal.
Is that pregancy?
You miss the point, I'm afraid. Anal sex between a woman and a man will by necessity always have the woman as the reciever. Apart from
Dianne (#124)
obviously, but that's not a big transmitter of STDs.
The receiver is at much greater risk compared to the penetrator (going back to Wiki, 50/10,000 for the receiver, 6.5/10,000 for the penetrator). This is not necessarily the case with homosexual males [engaging in anal sex]. Either sexual partner can be the receiver. So either one can be the in the higher risk category. It's not that they're engaging in anal that's specifically risky, although it's a contributor. It's that either sexual partner can be the receiver. A woman with HIV will have a 6.5/10,000 chance of giving HIV to a man during a single (unprotected) anal intercourse encounter. That's her ceiling. A homosexual male engaging in (unprotected) penetrative sex as the penetrator has a whopping 50/10,000. Obviously, if there are condoms involved then the probabilities will be smaller, but will be proportionally the same relative to each other.
It doesn't matter that not all homosexual men engage in anal sex and that not all of those will take both the penetrator and receiver roles. The fact that some do, and that it happens to be another route through which STDs can spread, and also that it happens to be a particularly easy route for them to spread, increases the risk for the group. Because homosexual men have relationships of whatever kind with other homosexual men. Do you see? It's not just anal on its own, although anal is relatively high risk. The fact that anal is risky is compounded with the fact that there are more potential routes for transmission, and those extra routes are the riskiest. This is not the same as saying that "homosexual men engage in risky behaviour", which I can only imagine is what some of the people here are reading.
Again, I am explaining HOW STDs, HIV in particular, are transmitted through the "homosexual male engaging in penetrative sex" community more quickly than among heterosexuals, even if the heterosexuals are routinely engaging in anal sex. This is why men who've had sex with another man in any given time period can't donate blood, along with IV drug users and other high risk groups. Do you think we don't need the blood? That the medical community is operating a wildly bigoted policy to fuck the fags over?
I don't understand what you think I should be saying about lesbians. Lesbians don't engage in penetrative sex and are incredibly low risk for STD transmission.
I don't know why you're telling me this. Are you assuming that I'm a christian and that I've come to bash the gays or something? Try not assuming that and actually reading what I've said. I'm not attacking homosexual men, I'm explaining why the transmission rate among homosexual men is higher than any other sexual group. I think you're so far down the line of thinking that I'm some kind of baddie who's saying nasty things about gay men that you can't actually manage it, but we'll see.
Oh, this is why you don't get why I'm not talking about lesbians? Because I should be having a go at all homosexuals equally because all you read is "blah blah blah gays is bad blah blah blah"? Jesus.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space (#121)
Well, sonny, here in homophobiasville, when we talk about STD transmission among homosexual males, or, indeed, any other group, it's sort of assumed that we're talking about people who actually have penetrative sex. But do enjoy your peanuts.
@Strangest Brew 172:
AiG seems to be, at least partially, intelligent. Their point of view is idiotic, but they're learning enough what points to avoid. The Creobots who spout stupid retorts to evolution should probably learn to stop talking.
I'm arguing with someone over at The Good Atheist - and he's so easy to refute because I just post a relevant TalkOrigins article. His arguments are basically pulled, one by one, from the TalkOrigins page.
@Orakio 173:
Wow, $325? I figured it wouldn't be as much, but that's pretty impressive. Of course I doubt a silver shekel was completely - or at all - silver, could very easily have been a pretty silvery colored metal, and no one would have been the wiser.
Sure, but that doesn't mean the cognitive dissonance goes away. :-) So, if you can see the woman having sex without having to see a man…
In a nod to our recent grammar kerfuffle, my...
...@171 should have been either...
...or...
And now, let the wild rumpus begin! ;^)
Like what? Iron? Tin?
Don't tell me "chromium" or some such. It wasn't known yet, and isn't easy to produce.
That's not realistic at all. I do think the 5 sheqalim are supposed to be a large chunk of wealth.
Bullshit. You are attacking gay—oh pardon me, homosexual—men.
I wonder if there are data on just how many sorts there are...
Sven:
I'm sure there is!
Not necessary to criticize Bryan Fischer on liberal grounds, when he is easily criticized on Christian grounds. I have yet to see the authority, scriptural or papal, that homosexuals are to be reprogrammed by the hand of government. God says don't be gay, not that gays are owed a duty to be "converted."
Perfectlysafe, your stubborn insistence on treating "homosexual men, AS A GROUP" is a fallacy. It is about the same as declaring that you have two children and two cars because Americans families, AS A GROUP, have two children and two cars.
You appear to be saying (while trying to still be able to weasel out of it) that all gay men like to fuck and get fucked. You're making some fundamentally wrong assumptions about gay men and you're smearing statistics about group behavior over all the individuals in that group.
All the group statistics in the world mean nothing when applied to an individual case where the factors and outcomes can be directly measured. People who have sex while infected with a disease are more likely to transmit it than people who have sex while not infected. The chances of a healthy couple spreading an STD are ZERO.
The shocker is that there are many more kinds of sex than anal. You really should stop publicly obsessing about anal sex. If you're that interested in it, that's fine. Buy yourself a butt plug (small) and wear it for a day. Use lube and wash it afterward. Best of all, you don't have to tell anyone.
Your obsession about anal sex and your insistence on applying group statistics to individuals makes me think you're trying desperately to be mistaken for a hate-mongering homophobe. That sort of behavior could get in the way of your social acceptance.
perfectly safe, I'm still trying to figure out this obsession you have with guys butts. I mean, you're pretty dismissive of women's butts--you only devote about half a column inch to that. But guy's butts, WOW, something like a 17.5 inch tome (Oh, sorry, did all this talk of inches get you excited?)
Know what? I've got some gay male friends. One of them is HIV+ and the other HIV-, and you know what, they've stayed that way for nearly 2 decades now--very happy...and sexually active.
Seems to me that if your concern were really controlling the spread of AIDS, you'd be all about condoms or monogamous relationships between gay men--you know, marriage.
Nope, all you want to talk about is butt sex. Still don't understand that. Want to expalin it? Why is it so important to you that you'd devote over 97% of your attention to it in a very long post?
Again wrong, god, who doesn't exist, says nothing. The homophobes who wrote the fictional babble said don't be gay. You need to get your story straight.
@David 180:
Well, actually I take back that the silver was likely fake. The real deception was more with weights than anything. All it would require is a slightly heavier, or slightly lighter weight, and suddenly your money is worth far less.
Since all money was originally based off of weights, changing from one kind of money to another was done by weighing it. A gram weight instead being a little over a gram could alter the weight of your money in the trays. Get a 3/4 gram weight, and every 5th gram on the other side is 'free.'
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space 186:
I am fond of ample posteriors, and I am unable to mislead.
perfectlysafe: I don't know what your point is, sorry. You were so busy asking questions that you forgot to provide any substance. I speculate that you're saying that homosexual males, as a group, are high risk because of the behaviour of certain members of the group rather than the group as a whole, but that's true of all groups. The behaviour of members of any group affect the group as a whole from a statistical perspective. So...if I were making a moral judgement about homosexual men, then I guess you've got me because then I'd be talking about ALL homosexual men. But I'm talking about homosexual men as a statistical cohort.
It's better to ask questions when you're ignorant than just blather on.
My argument is that you're jumping from a simple observation of rates of STD infection in different populations to an "obvious" or "intuitive" mechanism -- with no evidence that it actually is the mechanism.
You don't ask whether you've properly divided the population -- whether it's a homosexual male vs. heterosexual difference, or a poor/rich division (why do AAs have high HIV rates?), or an ethnic division...
You don't ask whether it's some other mechanism -- such as the network structure of sexual partners (again, AAs vs JAs?)... or some even more obscure mechanism. Why are AIDS rates so high among heterosexuals in Africa?
Your putative mechanism is "intuitive" (aka, it's common mythology), but I'm not sure there's any actual evidence for it being an actual cause of STD rates among gay males, other than "intuition".
It's a "Just So Story" -- you don't even recognize the alternate explanations available, which explain a greater variety of cases.
Science hates "common sense". Common sense is just common myth -- from time to time it turns out to be correct, just like the legendary stuck clock -- but is basically useless in selecting good hypothesis from bad.
THINK. Good questions are more substantial than mumbled ideas presented in an authoritative tone. You give no substance -- just the same mumblings you can hear from a drunken college student on why gay butt-fucking is bad -- often with some kind of nonsense about the elasticity of the female anus leading to good straight butt-fucking. Yes, I've heard that argument -- with the bonus of a priestly authority on the argument.
Are ya gonna tell us next about how it's well known that Negroes have a lower average IQ than whites? Or how fewer women have won Nobel Prizes?
These other gentlemen are not able to abnegate.
Bah. If someone came up with an effective vaccine for HIV, this nutball would be at the forefront of the prudes saying we shouldn't allow innoculation because it would protect from the consequences of gay sex. I guarantee you that WILL happen when researchers finally do develop a vaccine against HIV that gets the job done. "O noes, now there's nothing to stop the gays!" It will totally happen.
God says don't be gay, not that gays are owed a duty to be "converted."
I think you mean that the totally not gay Paul, after whose (ungay) fashion Timothy was forged, says don't be gay. Well, as I recall, Paul did indeed wish to convert people away from sin. (That would include teh gay too.) Even in the real Paul letters as well as the fake Paul letters, assuming there are any real ones, or even a real Paul. (A real Paul would be totally not gay of course.)
Well at least that would be consistent with their opposition to contraception protecting girls from the consequences (pregnancy, though not necessarily disease) of "normal" sex. And their opposition to abortion, which in their mind, is only for letting girls "escape" said consequence of sex.
Chris Mooney is one of the people replacing Groethe on Point of Inquiry!?!
so much for that program.
HTML FAIL @194! But I think y'all can figure it out.
... and your eyes are drawn to her spherical assets, you are immediately aroused.
You feel an imperative need to remove your innuendo-laden item, as you have noticed that her hindquarters are contained in trousers of inadequate size.
perfectlysafe (#176)
And the reason you're not saying anything meaningful with this is that you have to apply "can be" to actual sexual practices to get actual rates of risk. Not hard to understand. Just because gay dudes can switch it up doesn't mean they do.
No, you're not. You're going from "can be" to "are" with nothing to connect the two other than your woefully limited imagination.
I would continue assisting in the Thesaurus-humping of Sir Mix-a-Lot, but I'm afraid I know no more words to the song, and lyrics sites are wholly blocked at work.
Why?
Kevin, Rev, Bill D., et al.,
Shake it!
Still learning,
Robert
So people won't be looking up songs about big butts when they should be working? I'm just guessing, of course.... ;^)
@tsg 202:
Viruses? I dunno, they just don't like them.
Anyway - work over.
From my expirience, those sites have many pop-ups and sometimes tries to download things on to the computer.
"perfectlysafe"
1) You haven't once addressed the statistic that in Africa, women are disproportionately HIV/AIDS victims, and that heteronormative sex is the main mode of transmission for STD's, including AIDS.
2) You have not addressed the problem of societal repression of and ignorance of gay sex exacerbating and skewing the STD transmission figures. Closeted gay men having ignorant, furtive, rushed, secret, anonymous, unprotected sex greatly distorts transmission statistics.
3) That as acceptance of male gays has allowed for both sexual education and for the establishment of monogamous, sexually exclusive relationships, the rate of AIDS (and other STD transmission) in the gay population has fallen (and the transmission rate amongst heterosexuals has risen).
4) There is your assumption that there is no overlap between the male gay population and the population as a whole. The amount of furtive male-male sex that goes on, whether in closeted, bisexual, or situational(i.e. - prison/prostitution) population again skews the statistics.
Your obssession with male buttsex strictly as a physical act, without factoring in historical and cultural contexts, and in ignorance of the real range and prevalence of various sex practices in the gay community leads you to incorrect conclusions.
Fact: consensual, informed, buttsex between knowledgeable and considerate partners is quite low-risk. Demonizing exclusively the act of buttsex between males (you have made the point multiple times that heterosexual buttsex is "low-risk" enough to be just fine) is one fine step from bigotry -- whether you realize it or not. And it leads your readers to speculate on your motives and personal investment in such an interpretation.
See also: HPV, Gardasil
I note that if you replace "butts" with "goats" in the lyrics for "Baby Got back", hilarity oft ensues.
That would make sense, but it seems like an awfully specific thing to block and there are better ways of doing that.
@Bill Dauphin #202
I have a hair-trigger for IT-as-productivity-cop issues and didn't want to jump to any conclusions. In my experience, all overly severe web-blocking policies do is encourage users to circumvent the security.
I didn't see the link to the original blog post. Here you go...
http://www.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147491522
If this is a repeat my apologies in advance.
tsg (@210):
Yah, I didn't mean to be offering that as a good reason; just channeling my inner office drone. Our system blocks some lyrics sites, but not all. Many personal blog hosting sites are blocked (e.g., I can't get to my own Blogger site), but sites that host mostly "pro" bloggers are generally not (hence my continued presence on Pharyngula). As near as I can tell, all video and photo hosting sites are blocked (which is why I pretty much only respond to YouTube links on weekends and evenings), but video hosted directly on news sites (e.g., NBC video posted at msnbc.com) makes it through.
Also, occasionally something I've been generally able to access will suddenly turn up blocked. Less often, I'll forget and hit a link to something I expect to be blocked, only to find it isn't. I don't know for sure, but it seems there's some sort of algorithm that evaluates sites users hit, and decides on the fly whether to block them or not.
Whenever I do try to hit something that's blocked, I get a very stern message informing me that I've been a very bad boy, indeed, and the bobbies will be around momentarily to clap me in irons. So far <fingers crossed> I'm still here.
@Kevin #177:
Precious and semi-precious metal prices are high at the moment; Gold, and to a lesser extent, silver and platinum are investors refuges of last resort. Five years ago, 550 g of silver would have been closer to $160 USD.
Even copper is through the roof.
The importance of weights were noted, but it is important to note that the 'real' content of the silver coin is negligable, as long as everyone agrees to behave as if the coining authority was striking it out of pure silver. That said, silver coinage is, and I would presume was, often diluted with copper.
Perfectlysafe-
Just a quick point that you seem disastrously resistant too.
Male infection from female infected receptive partner is indeed rarer than female infection from male infected penetrating partner. It is not however rare. Nor is it close to zero.
There's a pretty good chance of infection, especially if the sexual interaction is ignorant. This is especially true of vaginal intercourse where there is a swimming sea of vaginal fluid just waiting for a micro tear or a chance of swimming up the pipe for the idiot stupid enough to eschew his rubbers.
This is even more the case when you factor in illegal prostitution. Prostitution in countries where it is illegal tends to get dominated by crime syndicates. Often these syndicates are or were drug syndicates. Fun fact, these same syndicates like to hook their prostitutes on drugs or recruit some of the druggies to be prostitutes taking a high risk population and subjecting them to another high risk population that is even less like to use a condom, because why would you waste a rubber on a whore goes the thinking.
Men are not invincible warriors and while there is a slight difference between the transmission rate for unprotected ignorant anal sex and unprotected ignorant vaginal sex as well as a difference between the likelihood of transmission to the receptive partner versus the giving, these pale in comparison to the vast and I can not stress this enough difference between safe sex practices and unprotected sexual interactions.
With safe sex practices, the risk factor is pretty damn near zero. Still enough to be careful and get tested, but safer than driving to work certainly.
So, while I get that you are married to the fixation of diseased gays pitching and catching and breeding homo viruses, it simply isn't being reflected in current trends even in the "gay" virus of HIV. Rampant promotion of safe sex within the community has greatly stopped the spread in the gay male community. Meanwhile the vast majority of new cases are straight people. Now, some of them may have been having gay sex on the downlow, but most of them probably caught it the old fashioned way, straight sex with an infected woman.
And that's why behavior is important and noting practices is important. It doesn't matter if every gay male on the planet receives anal sex (the fixation is fairly obvious since the major sin is that a man would dare take the penetrated role of a woman). If they use protection, they will have orders of magnitude less of a chance of catching something from an infected top than a straight man will have a chance catching something from an infected woman if he's stupid enough to forego protection.
So yes, behavior matters in this discussion because as you seem to be failing to note, men are not invincible. Just because there is less of a likelihood is not the same as no likelihood. In fact, it's fairly high.
So yeah, safe sex statistics matter and a large group of straight people engaging in high-risk unprotected sex is going to be at high risk of stumbling into the same problems that the gay male group did in the 70s when they assumed that just because they couldn't get pregnant they didn't need to use protection.
Interestingly enough, I just started re-reading Terry Pratchett's Making Money and had to giggle when they started talking about the "very nearly" gold coins.
I didn't mean to suggest you were. It just happens to be a sticking point with me: IT's job should be preserving and maintaining the integrity of the equipment. Making sure people are working when they are supposed to is someone else's job.
I only block the sites I know are dangerous (combined with virus scanning and filename rules) at the web proxy and tell my users in no uncertain terms that I can find out what they've been doing all day, but I don't care. If they want to play Scrabble all day, that's fine with me. But if we get compromised, then I have to find out how and make a report to my superiors (which also happen to be their superiors) and they may not like it. In other words, if you don't want me digging through the logs to find out what you've been doing, don't give me a reason to.
My personal opinion is that as long as people are getting their assignments done, taking a mental break to look up the lyrics to "Baby Got Back" shouldn't be an issue.
It seems to me people are being rather hard on perfectlysafe [no pun intended]. I don't think his/her comments are obviously homophobic.
I know this wasn't perfectlysafe's point, but it's certainly general medical opinion that receptive anal sex is more risky than receptive vaginal sex Noncoital Sexual Activity May Not Be "Safe" Sex (The ACOG Committee Opinion itself is behind a paywall - presumably Rorschach can access is, and might be able to tell us how well supported by peer-reviewed literature the opinion is.)
It's not like unprotected anal brings down the fury and unprotected vaginal is a nice cuddle. Both are the two most dangerous and moronic sex acts you could do especially with an untested partner. - Cerberus
Conversely, it seems to me Cerberus is being highly judgemental here. "Dangerous"? "Moronic"? Well, Cerberus, it depends on the context. OK, you say "especially" with an untested partner, but you are clearly saying unprotected, penetrative vaginal or anal sex is always dangerous and moronic. Believe it or not, even unprotected penis-in-vagina sex to ejaculation does not always carry the risk of either pregnancy or disease transmission. Are you sure you're not letting your own feelings about what is "icky" influence your judgement just a bit?
Indeed. An interesting variant on this happened to me yonks ago. At the R&D centre where I worked, there were no restrictions on the use of the 'Net. Accesses were logged but the logs were audited only if there was a suspected breach.
However, the corporate BigWigs didn't think too many people should be accessing the Internet and insisted the R&D Centre implement the draconian corporate policy, which was (in essence), no Internet access unless you apply in writing and both your manager and the site manager sign off on it (and we proactively monitor what you do and blah blah blah). Site management put them off for years. (The R&D centre used to be an independent company, which is how they wound up with a rather different "culture" and policies.)
For reasons I no longer recall, site management eventually gave in, but with a twist: They let be known that anyone who filed a written application would be automatically approved. And as far as I can now recall, the IT staff let it be known they would not start doing the silly proactive monitoring corporate policy required.
Cerberus at #65:
Ooh! Ooh! Can this be the mechanism of the Immaculate Conception? Is this physiologically possible?
Here's an informative discussion of the passages from Timothy that Bryan Fischer references: http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc7.htm. I went looking for this when I saw that Fischer was quoting a Bible that specifically referenced homosexuality, as apparently a few contemporary translations do. The problem is, such a concept did not exist at the of the apostles - didn't exist until the modern era really. The term used that's here translated as "homosexual" is "arsenokoitai." Problem is, nobody really knows for sure what it means, though scholars of the period believe it probably refers to keeping a male child as a slave for the purpose of sexual gratification. Something everyone would agree is a bad thing to do. Consenting sexual activity between two adult persons of the same sex? No clear biblical statements on that - not even Leviticus can be seen as unambiguously condemning it. The fundamentalist insistence that it does reveals more about their obsessions than a it does about the contents of a thousands-year-old library of poetry and history written by some bronze-age desert nomads.
@175
Note how she's a mere object of punishment inflicted upon the evildoer.
Sort of how Job's entire family gets killed just to teach him a lesson.
Actually, she's an object period. The rape is a property crime against her father. She's nearly irrelevant in se. The punishment is to give over a fine to compensate her owner for damaging the property and then to become her new owner (i.e. you broke it, you bought it).
There have been comparisons made to the price of silver today and the 30 shekel bride price, but of course the buying power of silver today and in the 7th century BCE are completely different. It was probably closer to $20 000-$25 000 (even that's a guess).
During periods of economic uncertainty easily storable and retrievable commodities go up in price. Precious metals have been increasing in price, bulk wheat has not.
Coitus up the arse. That's an easy one, and my Greek is krappi.
Oops, I guess nested blockquotes don't work. Everything below "lesson" is mine in #221.
BTW, the same ACOG opinion also says (on the first page, which is not paywalled) that anal (and oral) sex are much more common among adolescents who are also having vaginal sex, than among those who are not http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Citation/2008/09000/ACOG_Committee…. Maybe it's not only homophobes who believe comforting myths about sex and its risks?
What a psycho. What else is there to say about people like this?
Owlmirror,
What was forgery or fraud 2000 years ago does not equate to our use of those concepts.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc7.htm
I mean. Don't know how that extra period got in there. @ Sven #223 - it's entirely possible the translators where just riffing on what the word sounded like to them.
And, completely unrelated, a story in todays The Age, the Melbourne rag, noting that the Atheist Convention has sold out. Mr Dawkins is listed as the worlds most famous atheist, but PZ does get a name check.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/oh-my-god--atheist-convention-sells-o…
And to think I will be in NZ when Melbourne is a seething hotbed of rational thought.
@217
Hmm, true, it's not a universal that it's always stupid or moronic or dangerous.
Unprotected anal sex with a regularly tested closed-system partner (or an open-system partner whom you always test since their last partner before forgoing protection) is pretty safe.
A similar setup but with male partner with vasectomy or proven sterile or a woman proven sterile or with her tubes tied or on reliable birth control (though it's always best to have several layers) is also reasonably safe but slightly more dangerous, but not tragically or worryingly so as long as that regularly tested closed-system partner (or etc...).
But outside of those circumstances, you're pretty much playing fast and loose with the health of yourself or your partner given the relative simplicity of putting on a damn rubber.
And yeah, unprotected receptive anal is more risky than unprotected receptive vaginal in terms of STDs, but focusing on it like its some super diseased area is kinda messed up when protected receptive anal is orders of magnitude safer than unprotected penetrating either. Which is what ps keeps trying to elide over to hammer home the obvious.
Yeah, between unprotected sexes, anal is riskier, but frankly no one should be engaging in unprotected sex, especially of the penetrative variety without testing one's partner and the health experts recommend testing even before oral with an unknown partner (though a lot of people just play fast and loose with this one though they should always get tested before their next sexual encounter to make sure).
I wonder if one of the reasons why early Christians were obsessed with the thought of men playing 'leapfrog' rather than sowing their seed in more fertile pastures was that, numerically, the Christians were few, to begin with. Maybe it was a way of ensuring that there were lots of babies made, to help the religion grow.
Or maybe they were just a lot of miserable old bastards who couldn't bear the idea that people might be enjoying themselves.
And to think I will be in NZ when Melbourne is a seething hotbed of rational thought.
Where in NZ, Nick?
there are a few of us that hang in Welly.
anal (and oral) sex are much more common among adolescents who are also having vaginal sex, than among those who are not
the way that's written, it sounds like the "not" means not having sex... at all.
I'm sure it meant to say those who participate in non-vaginal sex, but even then, I can see complications in trying to make comparisons here, especially among young people.
Ok, there is this old guy, who wears a funny hat and carries a pretty gold stick, who thinks that there is such a thing as 'natural law'. Given that he believes in such things, I assume he will immediately stop wearing clothes (what is 'natural' about that), eating cooked food (no other animal does it), travel other than by foot (ever seen a moose driving a car?), use a computer, a microphone, warm his ancient, bigoted bones by a warm fire....
From the Times Online edition -
The Vatican condemned Britain’s proposed equality law yesterday, complaining that legislation to give homosexual equal rights “violates natural law”.
On the day Rome finally confirmed that the Pope would make a state visit to Britain this year, the Vatican launched an unprecedented attack on the human rights policies of Gordon Brown, claiming that they threatened religious freedom and urging Catholic bishops to fight back with “missionary zeal”.
The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, added his voice to the assault, describing the new equality legislation as “unjust”.
Timberwoof (#185)
No, I'm quite plainly not saying that. You've made stuff up and attributed it to me, you dishonest toad. Do feel free to actually quote me saying anything of the sort. The only statistics that I've provided relate to sexual penetration types and the relative HIV transferrence rate. These aren't group statistics. Do you consider these rates to be incorrect?
The rest of your post is just childish. What on earth is wrong with you?
a_ray_in_dilbert_space (#186)
I think you'll find that gay men can be monogamous and use condoms without marriage, sparky. Gay marriage is about equal rights and political and cultural acceptance. But hey, I pointed out a statistical issue so I must be totally against that sort of thing, right?
frog, Inc.
You don't really need evidence beyond the transmission rates, though. So unless you're saying that the transmission rates are incorrect somehow, or that there are no men who engage in anal sex with other men and who are both penetrator and penetratee on different occasions, then I don't know what evidence you would need. I mean, you'd need statistics to work out the extent of the additional risk, but the fact of the additional risk is evident from the data that we have, unless the god of making things fair gets into the gaps somewhere.
Bear in mind that I originally responded to the assertion that heterosexual anal sex and homosexual anal sex are absolutely the same in terms of risk. But they're not, and that is where your intuitive, common sense problem lies; the natural reaction is to think that they must be the same, and that is what seems "obvious". It's a bit like the Monty Haul probability problem (with the car and the goats), in that even when you explain it to people, they sometimes don't get it and think that you're stupid. Except in this case, I get to be a bigot for the day instead.
So, physician heal thyself, I guess.
It strikes me that people are a bit scared of the idea that man-man penetrative sex is more risky than for other sexual demographics, as if it makes homosexuality less okay or something. It doesn't. It can be, and is, mitigated by consistent condom use and blood testing, but even if it weren't, it'd be no reason to prevent people from loving each other.
Okay, on to your questions.
AAs have a high HIV rate at least partially because there's a high penetration of IV drug use among AAs. This is why we prevent IV drug users from donating blood rather than preventing AAs. Because people engaging in the risky behaviour get prevented, you see. This does mean that more AAs are prevented from donating blood, but it's not because they're AAs.
Heterosexuals have a high HIV prevalence rate in Africa because there are so few known homosexuals. Whether this is because homosexuality is largely off the cultural radar or because so few people will admit to it - what, with the ramifications being somewhat more serious than being "misunderstood" by people on the internet - is unknown at present. Getting basic demographic statistics out of sub-Saharan Africa is nigh on impossible.
I know you were asking for a different reason, and there are lots of other issues as well that apply to sub-Saharan Africa that don't apply elsewhere - but we really can't get any insight into HIV demographics from sub-Saharan Africa anyway.
How about "have you stopped beating your wife"? You should be ashamed. Don't pomp on about THINKing and tell me what science hates and then pull this sort of cheap shit.
Ichthyic # 232
Funny enough, I will be in Welly for a few days enroute to see the folks in Nelson.
oh dear god, there's more:
Hairhead (#207)
1. Addressed above, sort of. I can go on at length about this, but, hell, you don't read what I actually write anyway, right?
2. Not relevant to the actual point I made. I responded to the assertion that heterosexual anal intercourse was the same in terms of risk as homosexual anal intercourse.
3. Indeed so.
4. I made no such assumption. My point was and is that there is more inherent risk to male-male penetrative sex, because either partner can take the more risky "receiver" position. This physically cannot happen in any other gender mix. IT IS A STATISTICAL THING.
Sorry, I can't talk about this without talking about buttsex. See, I'm doing it again now. Now, I wouldn't have to talk quite so much about buttsex if you people could actually just throw aside your prejudices for the moment and not assume that I'm some sort of bigot. And then read what I've actually said rather than what you expected me to say.
Cerberus (#214)
The rate is 5/10,000 for vaginal, 6.5/10,000 for anal.
Yeah, 5/10,000. Doesn't matter how you describe it.
Okay.
You will receive no argument from me there.
Quite so.
I am not married to any such fixation. Your assertion, that heterosexual anal intercourse is effectively the same as homosexual anal intercourse, is incorrect. By all means, argue with my reasoning. It's further up the page.
Just to point out, I have not once mentioned sin or any such thing. I'm not religious. I rather naively pointed out a commonplace statistical error that you made. It doesn't matter if male homosexuals are more at risk from STDs. I do not like lesbians more because they have such a low transmission rate.
Knockgoats (#217)
That's part of it. During heterosexual anal sex, the woman is at relatively high risk, the man is at relatively low risk. There's no way for the man to be at relatively high risk. In man-man penetrative sex, either partner can be (not necessarily will be) the high risk partner because either one can be the receiver. It won't necessarily happen, but it can happen in a way that it can't happen in any other gender pairing. This is why, with all other things being equal, STDs can travel faster through chains of man-man lovers than through chains of heterosexual lovers.
Obviously, everyone can and should take precautions.
Oh, and you're clearly obsessed with anal sex.
Wow. I step out for a few minutes and then come back to find that perfectlysafe has become the sacrificial goat of the thread. I'm just as glad it's not me this time. Sorry, perfectlysafe; I sympathize with you.
And you think this wasn't obvious 2500+ years ago?
Proverbs 20:10
Leviticus 19:36
Deuteronomy 25:15
=====
Sorry, but no. Leviticus 20:13 is unambiguous in condemning them to death.
Er, that is, condemning consensual male homosexuals to death.
Leviticus is silent on the topic of female homosexuals.
Not sure if this point has been made already. It seems like the mention of botty sex sparks some serious commenting. Which is all good, I must say. But one of the confusions seems to me to be between 'homosexual' and 'homosexual behaviour'. Prisons are full of straight men who partake in 'homosexual behaviour'. There are plenty of homosexual men who don't partake in back-passage fun. It points to the fact that the language we use belies a fundamental problem. We can't seem to seperate the person from the act. And I have to ask, why should we. Given that it is possible to partake in anal sex no matter what your gender or sexuality, why do we need to create this categorisation, however clumsy it is. The reason? So that those who want to can treat people differently. And they can persuade the law makers that the law should be different. We use the word 'homosexual' as if it was a clearly defined thing. It isn't. Sexuality is fluid, and can never be usefully used to define a person. Lets look forward to a day when people are no longer homosexual, because people are no longer defined by what they do in bed.
perfectlysafe: Bear in mind that I originally responded to the assertion that heterosexual anal sex and homosexual anal sex are absolutely the same in terms of risk. But they're not, and that is where your intuitive, common sense problem lies; the natural reaction is to think that they must be the same, and that is what seems "obvious".
No -- this is where you miss the entire argument. The important question is not whether form of sex A has a +200% transmission rate over form of sex B, when stripped of context. The question is whether that linkage makes a practical difference -- whether it's what drives higher HIV rates in different populations.
That's a very difficult question to answer. Epidemiology is a very hard field -- you have to go from "natural experiments" to theory, which is much harder than from controlled experiment.
You posit, for example, that HIV rates among AA's is due to higher rates of intravenous drug use. Is that explanatory? I don't know. I don't know at what threshold you go from low HIV to high HIV -- I'd be surprised if it was a simple function.
What does the African data mean? You rightly throw up your hands as unknowable.
I'd suggest that for all these activities -- it doesn't depend strictly on transmission rates, or even percentages, but on a complex function driven mostly by the topology of the network of transmission. That's what we should care about.
That's why I ended with the comments about IQ distributions, etc. Simple statistics are useless on heterogenous manifolds. You're not talking about N independent transmissions, like a bulk chemical reaction -- a better analogy is self-catalyzing structures. The transmission rates maybe parameters of the system -- but to what extent that even matters is unknown until you know what formula you're plugging them into.
The only fairly simple parameter that we know is condom use. Whatever the network is -- it interrupts it massively. Everything else is really kind of unimportant. So yeah, you can argue all day about relative transmission rates -- but you'll still get everyone asking you "So what? What does that mean? Does it have any implications whatsoever?"
As one of the homosexuals who DOES like to engage in anal sex I feel I must comment. It really is true that anal sex isn't a universal among homosexual men. I know plenty of guys for whom it just isn't a big deal. Even one or two who are just plain squicked by it.
Also to who ever said 'women are sexy, men are just...odd.' I whole heartedly disagree. Mmmm. Men.
:P
@KillJoy #244:
I wholeheartedly concur! Mmmmm...men. Though I do appreciate the bisexual point of view. That has to be some serious fun!
Funny enough, I will be in Welly for a few days enroute to see the folks in Nelson.
when will that be?
surely we can hit the local pubs for a beer or two?
Oh, and all this talk of tube traveling, and health, reminds me that I read once that men-who-have-sex-with-men have a lower incidence of prostate cancer.
*sigh*
just because it's biologically possible for a gay man to be both on the giving and the receiving end of anal sex, it doesn't actually mean that this is at all common. Before you can make any claims about what effect this biological possibility has on transmission of HIV, you first have to show that this switching is actually something that happens a lot.
And in any case, it's almost irrelevant at the individual level, where a gay man who is always a Top is at the same risk as a straight man, whereas a gay man who is always a Bottom is at the same risk a straight woman. And where does that leave the gays who don't engage in anal at all?
seriously: unless you show that varying between being a Top and a Bottom is something that a lot of gay men do, you don't have a point at all.
...shoot me an email, if you can, Nick:
fisheyephotosAThotmailDOTcom
we can arrange a place to meet up.
Yeah. Some times a feel a little left out because I'm pretty staunchly gay and not bi. But then I think to myself, I think "Hold your horses there KillJoy, momma always told you not to be greedy!" And I content myself with one gender.
This thread is irritating me, too many people asserting stuff without providing evidence.
Difference in mtf and ftm HIV transmission
Higher rate of transmission with anal intercourse and cofactors
HIV and heterosexual anal intercourse
perfectlysafe (#237)
You are still overgeneralizing and leaping from "can" to "does." You'll get no respect around here till you realize that and present a case based on the "does" bit alone. You might find that a bit inconvenient since how people "do" have sex isn't so easy to categorize. And try to be more careful in which demographic group you compare to another. Most notably, you tend to compare heterosexual couples with gay men in general.
Try throwing aside your prejudices first. I'm not saying you're a bigot, but I am saying your point is based on some stupid assumptions.
It is the same. You're confusing relationship patterns with sex. The best you got is that non-monogamous men who switch up roles in unprotected anal sex with other men are at higher risk of transmitting STDs than pretty much anyone else. That's it. Big fucking duh.
Killjoy:
Well, that wasn't exactly me, but it was someone paraphrasing me. Note, however, that the original comment made it very clear that I was expressing a personal, idiosyncratic position.
No doubt. "'To each his own,' said the lady as she kissed the cow," eh? ;^)
Cow kissing? Well thats just weird! ;)
Also just to add to the fire here, and take this comment how ever you like folks, I know a lot more guys who are 'versatile' than who are strict tops or bottoms. But, that's just among the crowd I hang with, who knows? We could totally be a bunch of weirdo outliers or something.
As is pointed out in some of the links I gave above, in terms of HIV transmission rates this depends highly on the social group you talk about, and cofactors such as STDs, anal warts, condom use, circumcision,virus load and the like.
As to comparison of anal intercourse between heterosexual and homosexual couples, there is an article here , but it's 30 bucks to download.
The Reverend Fischer used to live here in my hometown - Boise, ID.
My claim to fame:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=duplicitous+snake&aq=f&a…
All this babble about transmission modes misses the key point.
1. It is the result that is meaningful.
2. The main groups of HIV+ worldwide are in order of prevalence:
Heterosexual females, heterosexual males, children, and then a miscellaneous group of IV drug users, gay males, transfusion recipients and so on.
3. Most worldwide transmission is heterosexual.
4. HIV is just an STD spread like any other. Some details may be different, but each STD has its own quirks anyway.
Calling it a gay disease spread by gays is just a lie. It is far more accurate to call it a heterosexual disease spread by heterosexuals.
So I supppose the fundie xian wingnuts will be going after the heterosexuals. Any megayear maybe.
Even in the USA, the pattern is shifting towards the world pattern. IIRC, around 1/3 of all HIV+ are heterosexual females, heading towards 1/2.
Is the kook still babbling?
Irrelevant. From a public health or individual standpoint, that simply doesn't matter. What matters is who gets infected.
Worldwide, the majority of HIV+ are heterosexual females. The second largest cohort are....heterosexual males.
You want evidence about homosexuality and AIDS and who gets abortions, you need to stop thinking about your self-centered, selves. Look around you at the deprivation!
fuck off, blogwhore. you know precisely nothing about either abortions or homosexuality; stop spreading your vile lies
Dendy, you should fallow your own advice and look at the deprivation that your God has caused through out history. Lying twit.
How the fuck did abortions even come into this?
Do you do that on the bus? Like on the way to work and the seizures kick in 'ABORTIONS!' 'GAYS!'. Maybe froth at the mouth a little or something? Its the equivalent of textual tourettes.
Hey Prof, I'm looking around and not seeing much deprivation. Maybe you could send me some photos from your (I'm sure) extensive collection? If you could find something that involves homosexual men simultaneously performing an abortion whilst contracting HIV, I'd be most grateful.
And because we like our facts juicy and tender, here is a link to HIV epidemiology stats as per 2008, sorted by country :
http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/epidemiology/pubfacts/en/
or there's a handy summary here :
http://www.who.int/hiv/data/2009_global_summary.gif
Re: Nick @242
I very much agree with you here.
"Homosexual" is very much a loaded (and not always useful) designation. It serves as a meaningless catch-all that includes a behavior, a self-identity, and a moral judgement wrapped up in a tidy package. As you point out, this tidy package fails upon closer inspection. It really serves to be little more than a rhetorical attempt to dehumanize the LGBTQ community and reduce us to little more than the sum of our bedroom practices (real and imagined).
Some designations are much more useful depending on context. From a medical point of view, men who have sex with men (MSM) is a more useful cohort, since it attempts to include those individuals who do not self-identify as "homosexual." The US DHHS antiretroviral treatment guidelines make no mention of "homosexuals" and sticks with the MSM. The US CDC's STD treatment guidelines still has 3 in-text uses of "homosexual," but these are pretty non-significant. The STD guidelines by-and-large stick with MSM and WSW to address the unique occurrences in these populations, giving each their own section.
While useful from a medical and epidemiological standpoint. I don't find MSM as a useful way to self-identify. It's too close from a language standpoint, to the sex-act itself. The often parroted: "love the sinner, hate the sin" is completely meaningless when the sinner is defined by nothing more than the sex act. To circumvent this, I use the "gay" to self-identify. It's not perfect (i.e. I would love for the mindless fad of saying "that's so gay" to finish running its course"), but it's distanced from the evil homosexual act in a way that's small, but significant, at least in my opinion. Fundamentalists, methinks, absolutely shun that word. I think for that very reason, whether they are cognizant of it or not. The more malignant ones certainly are.
Some interesting facts about 'professor' dendy: despite being married he has expressed disgusted at the idea of male/female sex - and he has three step-children, i.e. all fathered by another man.
Could he be hiding something?
@A.Noyd #252:
When speaking of statistics, "can" is about as far as you get. It is, in fact, incorrect to speak of "does" at any time when using statistics to make a point - you can only talk about the probability of occurrence. Your counter to the argument is therefore unfair and ultimately irrelevant.
@KillJoy #262:
ABORTION on this thread is equivalent to GOATS ON FIRE. It's best to ignore the blogwhore and stick to the topic at hand.
perfectly safe,
I will admit to picking on you. It just pisses me off that any time someone says the word gay, people's brains disappear up their own assholes because they're too busy thinking what someone might be doing to somebody else's asshole.
To far to many, gay and anal sex are an equation. Their revulsion--or fascination--with the act makes it far to easy to forget that there is a person there. Let's worry about the people and leave them to worry about what they do behind closed doors.
@deriamis #267
True enough! I just couldn't resist throwing a little snark his direction. ;)
@KillJoy #269
Oh, I was as well. I was pretending not to notice the fact that he told us all too look around at the "deprivation". Apparently everyone else missed that and so it wasn't funny. Oh, well. I guess I'm just practiced at noticing (and greasing) squeaky axles.
SquidBrandon #265
It is a fine line to walk, when you are identified as gay in a larger, societal context, but personally don't. I have only had sexual relations with men, and have been in a same-sex partnership for 20 years. I don't like to call myself 'gay' or 'homosexual' simply because I think that there is no valid reason, theoretically, for creating a definition of someone (myself) based on sexuality, or even the gender of my partner. Of course, this raises the danger that I will be accused of being closeted, or ashamed. I'm not. Whenever I talk of the gender of my partner, I am happy to tell them he is a he, and not a her. I am happy to mention, when discussion, in any context, turns to matters pertinent to sex/love/preference etc, who or what I prefer. But I don't want to be a 'homosexual', or 'gay', because by doing so I am perpetuating an ultimately harmful way of identifying people. I don't think of my straight friends as being straight. They are humans, and who or what they choose to love is interesting only in so far as it is part of the overall composite that makes them people. Some of my friends are follow the Jewish faith, but I don't think of them as 'Jews'. It is often simply a matter of subtle rearrangement of words, but it reveals a deeper process.
Perfesser Dandy, either bring your arguments here and present them to us by posting the arguments, and not a link, or shut the fuck up. That is what a person of honor, truthfulness, and integrity would do. To blog whore says you are nothing but a liar and bullshitter. Welcome to real science Dandy, where personal integrity is required, along with no imaginary deities. Still no evidence for yours, making you a delusional fool.
@deriamis
Yeah, it totally went right over MY head. But then, I'm not the brightest or most observant guy sometimes. ;)
@Nerd of Redhead
I love that you used the phrase 'delusional fool'. Fool is a very under used, under appreciated word.
@Nick #271:
That mirrors my thought processes as well. I will sometimes not mention the gender of my partner simply because I don't think it's appropriate for people to know my home life (like when I am at work), but I am otherwise unwilling to label or closet myself. I don't think of myself at all as "gay". I have a husband with whom I have sex, but the label wouldn't say anything else about me - things which I consider to be much more important.
In respect of that, I also use terms like "partner" and "significant other" to describe others' life partners until I have determined their preferred means of referencing loved ones. For some people, "husband" in the context of a same-sex relationship connotes extra and possibly untrue understandings they don't want expressed. When speaking of transgendered or transsexual people, I try to express their point of view more than mine so I don't introduce unwanted labels into my conception of them. All it takes is wanting to understand people as they are and not as you want them to be. I find it unfortunate that most people seem incapable of such a thing.
Fixed.
KillJoy, Nerd uses the word fool often. But it is usually warrented. As for me, I call that fool either old fuckface or shitstain on the panties of life. But I will shut up now, I do not want this thread derailed by the words of a lying fool.
@Janine
I think for my part, I will just call him 'ProfessorDandruff', because it has a ring to it that I like. And now I too will shut up about it. :P
Fuckosaurus, do you have a point? Or are you being the oh so brave contrarian.
I'd just like to say, a propos of nothing: 'please read my blog'...
No, it doesn't have anything whatsoever in it about the topic at hand. Nor about abortion. Nor about burning goats. But it does have a pretty white background.
... oh, okay. I lied about that, too. It's really not that pretty.
... somewhat more seriously: re said mouthpiece's claim about being 'selective' about what bits of the babble you buy, har de har har, and as per previous commenters, I say we check his wardrobe, and if we discover his socks are a cotton polyester blend, into the sack he goes.
(/The ritual stoning of all who've eaten at Red Lobster begins right after, natch.)
frankosaurus # 275
Yeh, I miss the good old days, before all this 'political correctness' rubbish started. You could call a spade a spade then.
frankosaurus: In my opinion, politically correct speech is a darn good thing. Fixed
Frankosaurus wins the internet for the most unintentionally ironic statement ever. Ya at least gotta give him props for sincerity.
Being Right means never having to say your sorry.
He finally got too boring:
Comment by frankosaurus blocked. [unkill][show comment]
just sayin, lovey-dovey feelings about how we should embrace one another for who we are won't get one far in this world. If your solution is to cleanse language, then no thanks.
You stupid fuck, all Nick was saying is that he does not define himself by who he is attracted to.
I have feelings along the same line. I'm not so much 'heterosexual' as I am, at this point, just 'monogamous'. Since I don't have sexual contact with anyone but my wife, the question of my 'sexual orientation' is moot.
I can not see any harm in identifying as gay, any more than identifying by my profession or hobbies or any other way that I spend my time.
Humans reflexively use labels, and I would offer that if you don't take the opportunity to label yourself in some manner that is tolerable to you, others will label you anyway, whether for malice or simply their own convenience. I'd rather be gay than a sodomite, and I don't have the luxury of being neither.
That said, I think I understand where you (Nick, SquidBrandon and deriamis) are coming from, and you aren't wrong to feel that way.
(and Miki Z, who wrote that comment at about the same time as mine)
Fuckosaurus is still trolling for a banhammer. And still is being a boring, insipid, pointless idjit.
Re: Nick @271
Personally, I think the reason for my self-identification as, "gay," originates from my strict upbringing in the Church of Christ, which taught that homosexuality is the worst sin an individual could possibly commit (although sins such as instrumental music in church and women having any sort of role in the church beyond filling the pews with children are also pretty contemptible). Identifying with the "gay" community, many of whom had similar shared experiences, was really important to restoring my sense of self-worth which was shattered the same day as my realization that I found guys attractive. I knew then that I was not as utterly alone as I had initially felt in Lubbock, Texas.
On a day-to-day basis, I don't necessarily think of myself as "gay." I certainly don't introduce myself to others with that label. I have no qualms about discussing my partner and identifying his gender with people with whom I work. This actually is how most people discover my sexual orientation. Having typed that, I think that echoes your sentiment. We've been together 4.5 years now, and in many ways I identify myself through my relationship with him. On one level his gender when I am presenting myself to others is more or less incidental, but it's not completely incidental. Perhaps this will continue to evolve the longer we are together.
I agree with you, I rarely think of my "straight" friends as such. They are just my friends. I can't always say that the reciprocal scenario is the same for my LGBTQ friends. I have more somewhat more of an inclination to think of these friends by the way they label they used to identify themselves; certainly not all the time, but it happens not infrequently.
I understand what you are saying here. I agree with it to the extent that in a more progressive society (one which I think is indeed feasible to attain), this label would be needless at least for society as a whole (excepting say specific medical ramifications of particular behaviors). However, as we have not arrived at that goal (certainly not the US, anyways), I think a label like, "gay," provides value as a means for individuals to self-identify with a specific community that has shared/continues to share experiences and faces similar challenges as minority group. A minority maligned by not-insignificant, non-tacit portions of society.
I guess I view it in many ways the way I view hate/anti-discrimination legislation. There absolutely should not be any specific secular reason for them, other than the fact that they serve as a makeshift bridge while "is" and "ought" are still too far apart to guarantee equal protection under the law.
Perfessor Can I go to where youse go ta school so I can string preety words together like you?
Perfessor Can I go to where youse go ta school so I can string preety words together like you?
can you believe someone, somewhere in CA, accepted him into their PhD program?
yeah, me neither.
deriamis (#267)
You're not even making sense. If perfectlysafe is going to talk about the probability of occurrence, he(?) needs to stop making assumptions based on what's possible and instead focus on on how people actually behave sexually. I mean, a woman can have sex with a dozen men each night. Is that fact in any way a useful predictor for how risky sex is for straight women in general?
OK, here is a bit on the risk associated with being a woman in sub-Saharan Africa, for those of you who were just dying for one possible cause of what statistics we have on that demographic: Dry sex. Seems there is a cultural thing where the men prefer much friction. Women use certain herbs vaginally to dry themselves out a bit pre-coitus. So there is a higher risk of tearing and semen-blood contact. Men tend to have more partners than women (especially those who work in one locale for a week or month, then come home for a few days to their wives). So each man engaging in these behaviors can infect many more women.
This, of course, as with that which perfectlysafe submits, likely does not and cannot account for all factors and pathways contributing to the much higher incidence of HIV infection in women and their children than men in sub-Saharan Africa. It seems to have been deemed an important factor at one time by researchers looking into this phenomenon, though.
I'm not exactly up on current opinions at this time. These cultural behaviors may or may not be held as large contributing factors now.
Interesting thread, though.
frankosaurus # 283
'just sayin, lovey-dovey feelings about how we should embrace one another for who we are won't get one far in this world. If your solution is to cleanse language, then no thanks.'
Yes, absolutely, part of the solution is to cleanse language. When was the last time you called someone a 'nigger', 'coon', or 'jigaboo'? Those words, with all the nastiness they implied, have been 'cleansed' from our common language, and are now clearly in the realm of the language of bigotry and hatred. Language is a living thing, and reflects the values and mores of the users. If we want to live in a better world, we need to find ways of communicating which each other that reflect respect for each other. And I want to live in a better world. Don't you?
The response should be vomit-worthy.
You are talking to a guy who quotes David Duke approvingly.
Oh shit! I forgot about that!
There is your answer, Nick. A better world for the likes of you and me is one where fuckosaurus loses some privilege.
OMSM! The Ad Council is running ads for anti-autistic person, anti-vax wingnut hate site "Autism Speaks". What the merry hell?
Who do I shoot?
Shoot me! Shoot me! [/Daffy Duck]
Well just got some time to run some numbers on who gets HIV.
This is from Uganda, the current wannabe target of American fundie xian genocidal maniacs.
The total is from the WHO. This can be accessed in message #264 by Rorschach.
Total 940,000
Adult female 480,000
Children 130,000
Adult males 330,000
1. Note 60% of the adult cases are women.
2. Let's assume 10% of the male HIV+ are gay. This information wasn't on the WHO fact sheet. This is 33,000 cases or a whole
3.5% of the HIV population being due to MSM transmission.
Which leaves 96% of the Ugandan case load due to heterosexual transmission and perinatal transmission. The idiots who call this a gay disease are just plain stupid bigots. I'll be more impressed with their sincerity and xian love when they go after those disease ridden heterosexuals.
Of course not. Jesus wants us to prepare them for Hell. You know, eternal, infinite torment. The worse we treat them while they are here on Earth, the better prepared they will be for the afterlife.
Sadly, no.
not recently, never really had the occasion (I live in Canada). But I do know that you can never eliminate terms and categories of disempowerment, just transfer them to other things like...
see?
citation needed. If you were to say your theory of language reflects your values and mores, then you'd be on to something.
You're obviously not a student of history, but that's okay. The world never gets better, it gets different. There are morals, and wrong ways of treating people, but respect isn't something we can all decide to settle upon - it's either earned or enforced. I prefer the former.
Don't hang around Christian "natural birth" forums. You will have a shit fit. Natural birth brings to mind hippies and alternative medicine. But in fact it's a brutal form of wingnut birth control.
Fundy women on these forums will claim that it's morally wrong to use birth control (that includes vasectomies and tying the fallopian tubes) no matter the circumstances. What results is that they have more babies than they can care for and end up on Medicaid, food stamps, etc. (They rationalize this because they're taking money from "the enemy"--you and me.)
But even with public assistance they really can't care for these babies--so some of these pukes have rationalized the INEVITABLE deaths in childbirth of perfectly healthy children by saying it's "Gord's will" or whatever. They engage in super risky practices like vaginal birth after Caesarean (VBAC) at home with some unlicensed midwife attending (a direct-entry midwife, or DEM). When everything goes south they call 911 and pitch a high drama fit on the internets, as if they didn't cause the situation in the first place. Because of EMS, I don't know of any North American women who have died pulling these stunts--but I'm sure it was a near thing in many cases.
I do know of a case of a Catholic woman who chose to die rather than have an abortion (I don't know if the baby lived). The priest had advised her to go ahead and have the abortion (especially as she had several children already depending on her). Of course this was totally hypocritical of the Church, as in countries where they have more control it would be illegal to even perform such an abortion. I guess every Catholic priest has their "good abortion" just like every Nazi had their "good Jew". Ignorant fucks.
Before someone jumps on me and accuses me of a straw man argument, one need only mosey over to the comments section of Amy Tuteur Provacateur's articles to find women who say it is MORALLY CORRECT for them to lose perfectly healthy babies at birth by their own inaction because THEIR DESIRE TO AVOID C-SECTION trumps THE LIFE OF A HEALTHY INFANT. And they commit the naturalistic fallacy all over themselves claiming that deaths at childbirth are "nature's way".
So: can't use birth control, either surgical, chemical, or barrier methods. Can't (ohnonono) opt for an abortion. But a perfectly healthy baby dying at birth is A-OK.
WTFBBQ?
Shorter Fuckosaurus: You fucking faggots have not earned my respect and therefore deserve shit. And any whining you may do is just fucking Political Correctness.
You guys are insane... heteros may be spreading HIV throughout Uganda, but initial transmission of the virus was through homos!
There's something really amusing about asshole dendy charging into the thread like that, basically coming out and saying, "you guys! I'm a moron!! Trust me, I'm a lot stupider than other people! Look at meeee!!!"
Okay, well, "amusing" might be a stretch.
IGNORE THE FACTS! THE FAGGOTS ARE TOO BLAME!
No, I don't see. What the fuck are you talking about, Frank? Elaborate for my amusement.
Within the lifetimes of many here, African Americans have gained the right to be considered on equal terms with white people when seeking employment, and to seek enforcement of this right through the courts when it is denied to them.
According to Frank, this does not count as the world getting better.
You'd think that after all the atrocities that it's done, bigots like dendy would abandon scape-goating. Especially since the real problem is their prohibition on contraceptive.
Well, Gyeong Hwa Pak, of course, improved contraception use and comprehensive would also lower abortion rates, but I'm sure dendy is opposed to that too.
Why fix things when we can blame, right? Yes I'm pretty sure that attitude would have totally worked for the Europeans during the plague . . . Oh wait. . .
"According to Frank, this does not count as the world getting better."
Hey, don't get me wrong. I don't think slavery is morally acceptable, nor is racism morally justifiable (as opposed to racialism being intellectually justifiable). But no, I don't think it does make the world better. Even if I were to go with your deontological ethics and gush over "equality" as being politically praiseworthy, I would still point out that it has come at the expense of larger administrative apparatuses, fueled by income tax, with culturally imperial agendas. + in column A, - in column B.
(What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?)*2
Bzzt.
Here we are talking about equal rule of law, enforced by equal access to the instruments of state. This is a proposition you have previously "gushed over," but of course you are ready to abandon that position when it might benefit black people.
As does the existence of any court system at all, but you have no complaint and even account this as a net gain when it's merely enforcing the property claims of landed white people.
(What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?)*3
That's insane troll logic! LGBT people should not have equal rights because of income tax?
Oh, wait, there are privileges that fuckosaurus would lose if LGBT people had the same rights he takes for granted.
frankosaurus,
I also live in Canada and I have black friends here who have had people call them n***er.
You aren't much better than those people, seeing that (as mentioned) you quoted David Duke as a source to prove segregation prevented racial violence.
The idea that people's rights should be abridged to reduce administrative costs was put on trial in Reed v. Reed. It wasn't persuasive then (1971) either.
banhammer.
that is all.
frankosaurus also believes that sleeping people have no brains.
You guys are insane...
says the irrational hatemongering homophobic moron.
crawl back to your cave, Dendy.
SG: My principal reason for rejecting your "equality" isn't because it doesn't make my heart melt. It does. But I consider such equality to be so aberrant to human nature as to require strict administration, not from the courts who interpret the law, but the executive who puts it into force. If you can't see why your liberal egalitarian utopia bristles conservative or republican (small r) political views, then maybe you should consider this an invitation to better inform yourself.
And thanks for bringing up our past conversation. I've rethought things since then, which I hope we're allowed to do. Though the contradiction you point out, if we're on the same page, isn't a contradiction at all. There is equal application of the law, which is what rule of law stands for, and there is "equality" as an ideology that shapes domestic policy. I object with the latter in principle, and agree with the former in principle.
When I speak of administrative apparatuses, I'm not referring to the judiciary. I mean government bureaus, employment administrations, human rights commissions, propaganda in the education systems, the whole works.
For more information on American's cultural imperialism, please see what your favourite politicians have said to legitimate action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Heck, I'll save you the effort, here's a nice gem a google search turned up:
"The world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan slides back into chaos."
-The Bamster
(It's not that the values themselves give rise to global domination. But to the extent those values could possibly be enforced, this has required the emergence of the great state which, as it happens, has found itself a little trigger happy from time to time. Chalmers Johnson is a good author to read on the nature and scope of US imperialism).
NSFW.
because the woman will never penetrate the man and the overall transmission rate remains lower.
Hahahahahahaha. FAIL.
Equality is a secular religion...
It has only been four months but I forgot just how much this shithead pissed me off. This is such an easy thing for a stupid and self centered straight white man to say.
I also forgot how he was against LGBT weddings until he changed his mind. And then changed his mind again when THe Hoax charged in, defending 'traditional marriage'. Funny how an atheist was rescued by a medieval Catholic theocrat.
Say, 'professor' dendy - care to elaborate on exactly why you have a wife who had to find another man to father your step-children? Because, you know, combine that with your vicious attacks on homosexuality and that will lead people to a certain conclusion.
frankosaurus,
Why then did we abolish slavery and fight for civil liberties if not for a "better" world ?
Please provide evidence of a causal connection ?
And why is a larger administrative apparatus (you probably mean public service) a minus ? Would you rather live in Somalia than in Western Europe ?
But I consider such equality to be so aberrant to human nature as to require strict administration, not from the courts who interpret the law, but the executive who puts it into force.
Amazing how so few people at the short end of this equation make this argument.
I ask you this months ago and I will ask it again. How to you explain to people that they need to be second class citizen?
You are one disgusting example of humanity.
I also forgot how he was against LGBT weddings until he changed his mind. And then changed his mind again when THe Hoax charged in, defending 'traditional marriage'.
ban.
hammer.
If things cannot get better than they are, are we not in the best of all possible worlds?
"Why then did we abolish slavery and fight for civil liberties if not for a "better" world ?"
slavery was good to get rid of. But the war was fought to strengthen the union. Lincoln is one of your great uniters, you see. No serious scholar considers the war to be over slavery first and foremost.
"Please provide evidence of a causal connection"
see last post, the parenthetical bit.
"And why is a larger administrative apparatus (you probably mean public service) a minus ? Would you rather live in Somalia than in Western Europe ?"
Because while there are constitutional restraints, a sword cuts through a parchment in seconds. A large liberal state practices non-interference, but with always the capacity to dominate.
No, I would rather not live in Somalia.
Funny how fuckosaurus cannot explain to a homosexual female that she should be a second class citizen for the good of society.
This is not some fictional debate here. These are people's lives. If you are going to have an inhumane argument, you better explain to the victims why it should be this way.
Go post on NRO or some other wingnut welfare site where adherence to facts and logical coherence are not required.
First you puff out your chest about "statistics" (while offering no actual references to public health research), then you talk out of your ass like this. GDIAF.
PS: I hope ERV doesn't find your punk ass and stomp it into the dust, perfectlysafe.
frankosaurus,
I'll repeat my question : why was it "good to get rid of", if not for a better world ?
You seem to have a problem with the word evidence.
I wish I had the privilege of thinking like this (I, too, am married and monogamous), but as a bio-female I still have men either treating me oddly or becoming attracted to me, and I still, after all these years, find that threatening and secretly want to bash them with tire irons.
So "ftm" and "gay" still apply ... still here, still queer, stick that in your fucking male privilege pipe and smoke that shit, bro.
I repeat, dumbfuck:
"Here we are talking about equal rule of law, enforced by equal access to the instruments of state."
This has nothing to do with equality of income, nor indeed any other imaginable equality of outcome.
This is why you're a troll, Frank, and not an honest player. You are unwilling or unable to address the actual arguments being made.
I can see why: you are a racist and a homophobe.
But that's a side issue, since I'm not talking about any equality except equal access to the rule of law.
I doubt that very much.
No, you are disagreeing with both right now. You are disagreeing that it was a good thing when black people gained the right to be considered on equal terms with white people when seeking employment, and to seek enforcement of this right through the courts when it is denied to them.
This has nothing to do with any equality of outcome, or with your incoherent nonsense about "equality as an ideology." This has only to do with equal access to the courts which uphold the rule of law.
Employment administrations already existed before this event. No human rights commissions were created for it. Government bureaus have always existed; propaganda in education has always been inevitable; you make no fuss about these when they exist merely to uphold the property claims of landed white people.
Absolutely irrelevant to the discussion, troll. You brought up cultural imperialism specifically in the context of an objection to African Americans gaining the right to be considered on equal terms with white people when seeking employment, and to seek enforcement of this right through the courts when it is denied to them.
Now you dishonestly try to decouple "cultural imperialism" from consideration of black applicants on equal terms with white applicants. Either you knew you were full of shit when you brought it up, or you are so confused and incompetent that you don't understand the issue you're trolling about.
What stupendous nonsense. States expand because they can, for power's own sake, not so that they can serve as vehicles for spreading values. If you seriously imagine that the propagation of values is either necessary or sufficient for the expansion of state power, then you're a tool. Power for power's sake is sufficient -- to propose anything more is to unnecessarily multiply explanations -- and you're a shameless shit to bring this up as an objection to mere equal access to the rule of law.
Also within recent memory, the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror over African American communities and their thousands of lynchings were finally halted.
According to Frank, this also does not count as the world getting better.
What I noticed is that I no longer have to explain or defend my sexuality now that I'm in a relationship. When I was single, I constantly felt under attack.
Then again, I was also living in the Northeast, which is a very unforgiving place for non-gender conforming XX.
Personally, I absolutely think of my straight friends as my straight friends. There's the het couple that's also queer--they are seriously cool. Then there's the two het couples that are always doing their icky het thing in front of everyone. Get a room, guys! Then there are these acquaintances who have sprogged ... creepy ...
I dunno, maybe my brain is the opposite of yours, because I don't think much about the sexuality of my single friends (although usually I'm aware of it) but I'm pretty aware of the sexuality of my partnered friends.
Okay, I lied, I think I know who the single gay guys at work are ... I think about them a lot because I feel bad for them living in ignant backwater bumblefuck North Florida. (psst: move to Tampa)
From the perspective of the Confederacy, the war was over slavery first and foremost. Of course Lincoln was "forced into glory." But he was forced by those on the pro-slavery side who would fight to preserve their chattel property, and by those on the anti-slavery side like John Brown who would fight to make the issue too expensive to ignore or procrastinate further.
To suggest that no one fought to end slavery -- or to preserve it -- is simply false.
(What the fuck are you talking about, Frank?)*4
what a clueless, hatefull fucktroll you are. The original transmission was from eating bushmeat, which doesn't care whom you like to fuck.
"I ask you this months ago and I will ask it again. How to you explain to people that they need to be second class citizen?"
And bingo, that's where the problem is. You give too much priority to the substance and contents of rights (like a person is second class if they don't have as much money, property, lifestyle, or position as the next guy), where in my view, liberty is defended where power is kept in check through structural constraints that limit size and capacity of liberty-hostile institutions. expanding the scope and content of inalienable rights for every disempowered interest group that comes along do none of these things. Such again the liberal view to keep adding things the state, however large, won't interfere with, as opposed to the republican view of things the govt should not have "capacity" to dominate over.
So to answer your question I don't think you are a second class citizen. I don't approve of how you live, but then you probably don't approve of me (assuming I'm american), so we're even, and neither of us can rule over the other. Unless you think the whole not-marrying thing is a sting to your status as a citizen (it isn't, though you may feel less socially accepted given the present milieu) then I don't think you have a valid point. about "citizenship" that is.
Being gay has two aspects: very private, personal sexual behavior, which most of us, absent the exhibitionists among us, are hesitant to discuss with anyone outside our friends and lovers; and non-gender-conforming behavior, which is completely public and sometimes an integral part of a person's identity.
In this second sense the word gay can become oppressive because not every gay person conforms to the norm of gayness. Furthermore, this norm of behavior is inextricably tied to the subculture. If you don't participate in the subculture and you don't see yourself in that stereotype of gayness, then I could see why you would want to distance yourself from that label.
I just want to live my life without being threatened, attacked, or discriminated against. I can't help the non-gender-conforming behavior and I would hate myself if I tried to be otherwise. So, yeah, I'm going to own that label. At the same time, I feel embarrassed coming out as such. I mean, why the fuck does some stranger or coworker need to know about my sexual preferences, right? Funny thing is, I've had to do it a lot, because people flirt, you know? (Not only that, but they ask about your s.o.) And I never was any good at lying.
well, well. look at that epic, shiny privilege talking.
you and your privilege are hostile to the liberty of all minorities and women
Don't be such a trivially dishonest fuckface. There is no basis for such structural constraints without individual rights, the substance of which delineate the structures in question.
Also within recent memory, African Americans gained access to the previously all-white educational system which facilitates the acquisition of skills important to generating private wealth.
According to Frank, this also does not count as the world getting better.
Dear Brother frankosaurus and Brother Professor Dendy,
God bless you for fighting the good fight on behalf of Christian morality on this heathen excrescence of a blog!
I'm not sure we've met before, my name is Smoggy Batzrubble and I'm God's anointed missionary to the atheists. However I've been on a holiday rooting sheep, and thus I must beg your forgiveness for turning up late to this divinely inspired hate-fest. First, let me say "Thank you, in Jesus' name!", for flying the flag of faith and intolerance in my absence (it's doubly impressive the way you can hoist your flags on those big beams sticking out of your eyes).
May I say, Frank and Den, that you both seem the sort of muscular Christians that I find are secretly struggling. In my experience, all that repression, self-loathing and frustration you have inside you (those ropes of scriptural semen pressured to erupt over the submissive faces of the lesser mortals your biblical ejaculations would cow into submission) represents a powerful impulse to perversion. But fear not, my brothers, for I can help you. No more need your children and pets live in fear for their bottoms!
Brother F and Professor D, let us get together for some Christian mano-a-mano. I'm thinking a prayer-circle with my friend Floyd Rubber, where we could bare ourselves before the Lord, lay hands upon each other, and then you could both submit yourselves to being entered by the Holy Spirit (heh... that's Floyd's pet name for his willy, what do you call yours?) Don't get me wrong, we're not (gasp) homosexual or anything, but this is the ministry that Jesus has laid upon our hearts to give freely to our repressed fellow brethren in Christ.
"Verily Smoggy," Jesus said to me in a vision,"As I dids't slip my pork sword of righteousness up the back passage of Simon Peter, so I command you to go into the world and cum ye in the bottoms of your intolerant and small minded brethren that they may be loosened a bit and all the shit cluttering their minds might be rapidly evacuated."
So what do you say, brothers? Shall we meet for a bit of straight Christian anal? You'd be simply amazed at how many mighty prayer warriors enjoy a little extra-curricular man fun! Afterwards we can circumcise our daughters with the sharp edge of an abstinence pledge, teach our sons to practice anal with their girlfriends so they won't have to visit no abortionist no how, and then knock our wives up to achieve an even dozen children in our quivers.
Yours in Christurbation,
Smoggy
PS I hope that you'll take my offer in the spirit of Christian charity with which it was made. Sometimes the truth hurts. But before you get angry, just remember Jesus knows your every secret, including the time you were home alone as a young lad and you inserted your mother's toothbrush handle up your bottom and made that sticky mess on the bath mat. To chastise me when you know that Jesus knows you've investigated your back passage on more than one occasion would be a sin!
Of course, if you say nothing...
You already lost this argument, Frank.
It's a fact, not a matter of opinion, that in the United States there is a right to marry, and the state apparatus affording this right, extended to straight people.
Again, from Zablocki v. Redhail:
Since this right to marry is legally established and extended to others, and since it is not extended to Janine, she is in fact being denied the full benefits of citizenship, specifically the equal protection of the laws.
"From the perspective of the Confederacy, the war was over slavery first and foremost."
It was fought foremost by the confederacy because they didn't want to take orders from the Union, nor recognize their ability to give them. Hence a war of secession. That the substance of the orders were often about slavery is secondary. To be stripped of property is an incidence of tyranny. That the property probably shouldn't have been people is secondary.
we all know, in fact, the causes were complex and I'm with you on being anti-slavery about it all. I also hope we know that "great nations" love simple mythologies of how they grew up, matured, came of age, got their moral direction, etc.
shatfat@333:
I wish you had the privilege of thinking like this, too! I hope you didn't feel I was saying everyone should think like this; I think everyone should have the realistic option of doing so. I realize that's not the case for some men and most women.
I'm for the freedom to keep what you want to keep private and the freedom to disclose what you want. The idea that self-identification is not valid unless proven seems stupid to me. It seems like an assertion "straight until proven otherwise," and I've known too many celibate gays to think this holds any water in the real world. You are what you think you are.
If I'm not completely misunderstanding the abbreviations, it sounds like you were able to undergo female-to-male reassignment. I'm happy for you, but you wouldn't be any less of a man to me if you had lacked the money for the surgery and had just declared yourself a man. In either case, you should have the right to live as you like, love as you want, marry who you please -- and the reasonable expectation that others will respect that right.
I apologize if I gave a different impression.
Hmm. Blockquote fail in #346. shatfat's statement ends at "smoke that shit, bro."
FS:
How unBiblical of you.
that just needed highlighting and quoting for posterity
Yes, indeed. The statement itself says a lot about Arks Anus Four (IAS) and his views. It's been a long time since I've seen the word 'probably' be so damnning.
Janine,
I'm confused... who were you quoting there? I couldn't find that phrase anywhere else on the thread.
Walton,
I think this is a (rather kind) summary of this phrase from frankosaurus@313:
Frank, negentropyeater is still waiting for an answer to the question: 'why was [slavery] "good to get rid of", if not for a better world?'
Did you think if you just ignored it, we wouldn't notice your incoherence?
Thank you for confirming that you are a neo-Confederate sympathizer, still eagerly swallowing lies from David Duke. Is that what you mean by your "intellectual racism?"
The lie that you promote now -- the white supremacist's Lost Cause of the Confederacy -- was expressly contradicted by Alexander Stephens, vice president of the CSA, in his announcement of the formal founding of the Confederacy:
He said it himself, Frank. You're a little late to contradict him. Slavery was the foundation of the Confederacy, full stop.
The slave states were not opposed to taking orders from a federal government, and the "states' right" in question was the right of those states to keep holding slaves. The events that led to the war concerned not the institution of slavery within the old South, but the expansion of slavery into Territories outside the South. The slavers were not interested merely in maintaining slavery back home, but in expanding slavery throughout the continent. Your defense of their conservative morality stumbles here.
Would you like to be any more explicit in legitimizing white supremacy?
And there it is. In a conservative's own words, conservatism is about property before freedom, property before life. Even when the property was taken illegitimately, even when the property is human life itself, revocation of that property is still tyranny.
Take a bow, Frank. You've done it again.
Walton:
It took me a moment too, but it's hard to forget such a stupid, morally-vacant claim. Janine was quoting frankosaurus from the Equality everywhere for everyone thread.
I really need to get myself a killfile. I would also be quite happy if some of our less noble trolls are anointed with the banhammer. That frankosaurus probably shouldn't be a bigoted asshat is secondary.
frankosaurus, let's get one thing straight here.
"Equality" has a range of different meanings. In this context, we are not talking about socio-economic equality, or anything similar. This isn't a debate about political or economic ideologies, or about how society should be structured.
Rather, we're talking about the much narrower concept of equality before the law: namely, the principle that government should treat all its citizens equally, except where it has an objectively justifiable reason for discriminating between them. This principle is enshrined in the US Constitution by the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires states to guarantee to all persons within their jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws".
In this case, the state grants to opposite-sex couples the ability to contract a legally recognised marriage, which is a legal status that carries with it certain rights and privileges. At the same time, it provides no mechanism by which same-sex couples can acquire the same or equivalent rights and privileges. Accordingly, it is denying the equal protection of the laws to a group of people. The onus is therefore on the state to illustrate that it has an objective justification for discriminating between opposite-sex and same-sex couples. And since the US Constitution is a secular document, sectarian religious beliefs are not an adequate justification.
As I said, this is simply equality before the law - something which is enshrined in the US Constitution, and which is a widely-accepted principle in most constitutional democracies. It has nothing to do with socio-economic equality, or with any other kind of equality. As you will be aware if you've been reading the threads for a long time, strange gods and I vehemently disagree when it comes to politics and economics; he's a socialist, whereas I'm a classical liberal. As such, we have wildly different ideas about how much "equality" there should be, and about the proper scope and extent of government power; but we both agree that there is no objectively justifiable secular reason for denying gay couples access to the rights and privileges of marriage.
Don't you remember, Walton?
That was the thread where you eagerly jumped to reassure Frank that even though he's a race-baiting piece of shit who needed to make clear he'd be "unhappy" in a nation that was 60% Latino, your lovely conservative-libertarian alliance is too important to let these little things come between you.
Shame, that's like forgetting an anniversary.
frankly no one should be engaging in unprotected sex, especially of the penetrative variety without testing one's partner - Cerberus
Cerberus, I trust my wife, and she trusts me (rightly, so far, a matter of some 18 1/2 years), to keep to the agreement we made that neither of us will have sexual contact with anyone else. Is that OK by you? Testing, by the way, is not the panacea you seem to think it: the usual HIV test, for antibodies, will give a negative up to 3 months after infection, and even the HIV PCR test, which looks for the virus itself, will give a negative for about 3 weeks after infection (of course this means there isn't circulating virus at the time of the test, but if you're in an open relationship, you're going to need very frequent PCR testing to be certain you're not infectious any time you have sex, so I agree, condoms are then essential). I'm non-judgemental about others' sexual practices, including those that are much riskier than the unprotected penetrative sex within a "closed system" I admit indulging in, so long as no coercion or deceit is involved. Maybe you could try the same? What matters so far as disease spread is concerned is to reduce the mean number of transmissions per infected person. Judgemental attitudes, whether from homophobes or "penetraphobes", do not help.
Fixed that for you, Comrade.
I sorely wanted to go ahead and fix your own self-description, but if I'm going to ask that you acknowledge mine, I owe you the same courtesy.
That is to say, I don't mind being called simply "a socialist," but I do object to that abbreviation being contrasted with classical liberalism, when as I see it one follows inevitably from the other.
That is not what I said. You're entirely misrepresenting the content of my post. (Which I honestly didn't remember, since that thread was more than three months ago and I've made thousands of posts since then. I don't have as good a memory as you.)
Fair enough. While it's a heterodox viewpoint, you're entitled to describe your own views however you wish. Ideological descriptors don't have fixed, immutable meanings; in practice, they mean whatever their purported adherents want them to mean.
And you're welcome to "fix my self-description", though I imagine what you had in mind was some kind of snark about property or the absolute rule of corporations.
Perfectlysafe weaseled:
"The behaviour of members of any group affect the group as a whole from a statistical perspective. So...if I were making a moral judgement about homosexual men, then I guess you've got me because then I'd be talking about ALL homosexual men. But I'm talking about homosexual men as a statistical cohort."
"It doesn't matter that not all homosexual men engage in anal sex and that not all of those will take both the penetrator and receiver roles. The fact that some do, and that it happens to be another route through which STDs can spread, and also that it happens to be a particularly easy route for them to spread, increases the risk for the group. Because homosexual men have relationships of whatever kind with other homosexual men."
"But practising safe sex is not the issue. There's always a risk, and that risk can be mitigated but not eliminated. A male homosexual couple practising safe sex will still be at higher risk of disease transmission than a hetero couple doing the same thing."
All of that is true only if the men fuck each other without condoms and one of them is infected. If safer sex rules are followed, there's no fucking or if neither man is infected, then the risk of infection is eliminated or severely reduced. Buttsex doesn't cause AIDS; unprotected buttsex with an infected partner may transmit it.
You've painted yourself into a corner by equating "can" with "does", by insisting that statistical rates apply to individuals without regard to actual practices, and by ignoring sources of data that negate your point. You tried to weasel out by stating that not all gay men get fucked ... but you failed at weaseling out when you said that "doesn't matter".
But of course it matters, and of course safe sex is the issue. There's only one good reason to lump us all together as AIDS-infected butt fuckers, to ignore that sexual practices vary, and to ignore safer-sex campaigns in the gay community. That reason will reveal itself when you tell us what ought to be done with gay men to prevent the spread of HIV and other STDs. Go ahead: reveal your plan.
"Frank, negentropyeater is still waiting for an answer to the question: 'why was [slavery] "good to get rid of", if not for a better world?'"
I helped a little old lady across the street today. It was the right thing to do. Did I make the world a better place? If I did, thank you. In the alternative, negen is an ideologue who asks ideological questions that are meaningless to answer.
"Thank you for confirming that you are a neo-Confederate sympathizer, still eagerly swallowing lies from David Duke."
this is just mudslinging, though it confirms my earlier hunches about the majority of those on here subscribing to constitutional nationalism.
"Slavery was the foundation of the Confederacy, full stop."
As you've probably heard elsewhere, you can't expect to get the facts from politicians. Here's a nice lecture to enrich your understanding of the situation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5wdfV-UaLI
in any case, no one denies they were racist. But it was a war foremost about suppressing secession.
" conservatism is about property before freedom, property before life"
that's just nonsense. citation needed.
i just need to say, even though it is not related, that Fundamentalist Religious denial of human nature and not allowing a boy to have female friends or have proper sex ed during teenage-hood causes possible incest. with his older stronger wiser sister. sexually harassing her. straight after church with their native language love songs. erkk.
i feel sorry for him, but there is nothing to do.
his mother couldn't listen and his father would be too scared to find out the truth.
had to get out of system arghhhhh!
this has happened twice in the last 3 months.
"anal (and oral) sex are much more common among adolescents who are also having vaginal sex, than among those who are not" - me
the way that's written, it sounds like the "not" means not having sex... at all. - Ichthyic
No, it meant "who are not having vaginal sex". It concerned only heterosexual adolescent pairs. I was responding to the claim here that a lot of teenage Christians are having heterosesxual anal sex to preserve their "virginity"; the survey (as I said, I don't have full details as they are behind a paywall) apparently indicates that most heterosexual US adolescents start anal sex (if at all) some time after vaginal and oral sex. There's plenty of good reasons to bash the Christians about their sexual attitudes and hypocrisy without repeating unsubstantiated claims.
also forgot to mention the whispering with the sort of material one would usually utter to lovers and jumping shirtless into one's bed.
A classic ad hominem non sequitur:
Not even wrong, not even funny.
It's opining; a given interpretation of the evidence.
A cynical hasty generalisation.
Yes, and your deadpan reply tells me that you didn't get the point: it's really disappointing to watch you reach out to these vicious fuckheads time and again on the flimsiest of pretenses, while there are people right here watching, who you claim to respect, who are being hurt by them.
No, just a neoliberal. Have some coffee.
Interesting that Franky has claimed that infringing on the property rights of slave-owners was a bad thing- tyranny, in fact. But the slaves themselves are not, for Franky, people at all! If they were people he'd be up in arms about the terrible violation of their rights that slavery entails, wouldn't he?
From the Texas declaration of causes of secession: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states."
But of course if we think the civil war had anything to do with slavery we're just so naive; it's a good thing Franky is here to set us right.
If you can't see why your liberal egalitarian utopia bristles conservative or republican (small r) political views - frankosaurus
Oh, I can see why that is: it's because such people are either selfish scumbags who want to preserve their privileges, or ignorant and/or fuckwitted dupes of the former.
But of course if we think the civil war had anything to do with slavery we're just so naive; it's a good thing Franky is here to set us right.
And don't forget, he also taught us that Jim Crow segregation was a benign system that kept African Americans from getting violent.
I'm not "reaching out" to anyone. I'm certainly not "reaching out" to frankosaurus: I think he's wrong about gay marriage, and have clearly said so above, with a statement of my reasons.
I did say, on another recent thread, that frankosaurus was not a troll. I'm not totally sure I can now maintain that assessment - he does devolve into flinging abuse at people from time to time - but I do believe it was a reasonable assessment at the time. FWIW, I don't think having wrong or repugnant views automatically makes a person a troll. Piltdown Man was not a troll, for instance.
FWIW, I seem to have been drifting somewhat leftward in recent months (as you might have picked up from some other threads) and I wouldn't now call myself an orthodox libertarian, let alone a conservative. I'm more and more a moderate, these days (which is not a position I wanted to reach, but intellectual honesty demands that I can't pretend to be something I'm not). Of course, compared to you I'm still a raging capitalist.
Damn, you are stupid. Let me remind you of something, Frank. You were the one who made the assertion that 'The world never gets better, it gets different.'
Now, either that assertion can be tested meaningfully, by questions like 'why was [slavery] "good to get rid of", if not for a better world', or your initial assertion was meaningless, dogmatic ideology.
In the latter case, you were trolling from the beginning. In the former, you are trolling from the moment you ignored the question.
So now it's nationalism to recognize when someone is repeating neo-Confederate propaganda? Are you sure you're not a libertarian?
If the Southern people believed that they were fighting for slavery, then they were fighting for slavery. This is pretty simple, Frank. The reasons why people do things are the reasons why they do things.
from Donald Livingston, who founded a neo-Confederate organization, the Abbeville Institute, specifically to promote the Lost Cause. Brilliant.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Lincoln. You will not find the real ones in a video called Abraham Lincoln EXPOSED.
Around and around in circles. You really are a very confused person, Frank. We've already established that Lincoln was interested entirely in crushing the secession ("If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it").
Now, why were they seceding? Because they wanted to expand slavery into the Territories (and in fact included provisions for doing so into their new constitution).
Citation provided by you:
Walton,
You need experience in nuance; the Frankosaurus isn't always trolling, but it is a troll.
(In my opinion, of course)
What you are is a seeker; you (hopefully) will always be that, but at some point you will acquire the ability to differenciate between opinion and fact as a matter-of-course, not just when you focus on that.
You're smart, you're earnest (and, I think, honest when you try)... but you've not yet matured.
I do like your attitude.
And that's enough stroking for now... ;)
I'd suggest that for all these activities -- it doesn't depend strictly on transmission rates, or even percentages, but on a complex function driven mostly by the topology of the network of transmission. That's what we should care about. - frog, Inc.
But perfectlysafe's main point was about the topology of transmission. It is common ground that the "penetrated" is at much greater risk of HIV transmission than the "penetrator". If everyone in the network is either always the penetrator or always the penetrated when penetration occurs, transmission by penetration beyond a single step always involves a (low risk of transmission) penetrated-to-penetrator step. If a significant proportion are sometimes one and sometimes the other (whether in the same pairing or not), this is no longer so. Now, is this the case for networks including MSM? I can't offhand find the surveys that must be out there, but according to More Myths About Homosexuality, it is: the division into "active" and "passive" is no longer general among MSM, if it ever was.
I repeat: I think perfectlysafe has been unfairly stigmatised as homophobic (s/he may be, but I submit that nothing s/he has said has shown this); and I think some apologies, from people I respect highly, are in order.
Huh. Then you could do to find better ways of "not reaching out" than "Yes, there are plenty of good reasons to oppose the left. If you read my blog ..."
It isn't a reasonable assessment when you've spent only a fraction of the time arguing with him that others have. Try getting straight answers out of him, Walton. You've largely watched, and a few times lectured to him. Try to engage him and pry something honest out of him. You're not prepared to assess until you've had that frustration. What you've done so far is the equivalent of chilling at ANI and saying "{{Resolved}} Nothing requiring intervention here. DR is that way."
I have some questions, but it's very early in the morning here, and I don't have the capacity for much more than troll-stomping. We'll have occasion some other time.
Troll Stomping, Youtube style
Equality is a secular religion - frankosaurus
Liar. The preference for greater equality, unlike any religion, is evidence-based: more equal societies (at similar wealth levels) do better on almost every measurable index of health and social problems. See the book The Spirit Level: Why more Equal Societies Almost always Do Better by Wilkinson and Pickett. You can find much of their evidence (from around 400 peer-reviewed scientific studies) at The Equality Trust. You won't examine the evidence seriously, of course, because you don't give a shit about anything other than retaining your privileges.
frankosaurus,
Walton, as you are a libertarian, I understand how extremely protective you are of the substance of the freedoms carved out in the constitution, and perhaps more notably the preservation of economic freedom, and even the cultural permissiveness that is the rage amongst most students of our ilk. Though I would expect you, as a fellow law student, to be at least a bit more attuned (though not necessarily sympathetic) to the direction I'm coming from. My angle IS a take on political structure, but considering my haste and brevity, I've probably done a bad job of illustrating how the present liberalism is an imposing worry. If we wish to restrict the discussion to what flows from various SCOTUS fiats on marriage, then I don't blame you for being in league with most intellectuals about the so-called abusive inconsistencies of disallowing gay marriage, and how blatantly ideologically defiant the legislatures look in light of it. But then I suspect you haven't ever fully come to grips with the continued perversion of American founding principles (a process starting with the constitutional conference itself, mind you, only 11 years after the articles of confederation). An amendment ratified in the full swing of swinging 19th century liberalism will obviously not command my unbounded loyalty or respect, smacking as it does of the crudest positivism in light of the original founding compact.
"there is no objectively justifiable secular reason for denying gay couples access to the rights and privileges of marriage."
I posted this before, but I think you in particular would benefit from this. It's about the Canadian same-sex reference, but many of the arguments are relevant.
http://www.marriageinstitute.ca/pages/DECOSTEJ2005.pdf
Yawn, Fuckosaurus is still inane, pointless, stoopid, boring, and trolling. What a waste of food, air, and water to keep such idiocy going.
Just to be clear, you're referring to the Fourteenth Amendment?
Or are you still railing against the tyrannical seizure of property, as in #345?
frankosaurus,
I see your point, but I disagree.
Firstly, whether or not you think that the Fourteenth Amendment was a "perversion of American founding principles", it is nevertheless a part of the Constitution, and has equal authority with any other part of the Constitution. The federal courts are obliged to apply and enforce it, and they are therefore obliged to engage with arguments as to whether denying of the privileges of marriage to same-sex couples constitutes a denial of "the equal protection of the laws" within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. That's an open question, and is likely to make for some interesting arguments when Perry et al v Schwarzenegger reaches the appellate courts; but it is a decision that the courts have to make.
Moving on from the legal argument, though, I'd like to address the philosophical aspect of your post, which is far less clear-cut and much more interesting. If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment, and many of its sister amendments, are part of the process of "the perversion of American founding principles", and therefore lack moral authority. I have heard this argument made before, but I vehemently disagree with it.
Simply put, I don't see why "American founding principles" should be viewed as morally binding, or why a departure from those principles should be viewed as a bad thing. The Founding Fathers were not gods, and the founding political principles of the United States are not fixed, immutable moral laws. As I'm sure you're well aware, the original Constitution was the result of a long process of political compromise, and contained plenty of provisions which by modern standards were morally abhorrent (such as the infamous "three-fifths of all other persons" provision dealing with the enumeration of slaves). In my view, therefore, it is good that the Constitution was updated, via amendment, to reflect the changing moral standards of subsequent ages. I don't see how the "original founding principles" are remotely relevant; I, for one, have no desire to return to the moral standards of the eighteenth century.
I also don't believe that the notion of "states' rights" has any moral force. Instead, I believe in the consistent and uniform protection of individual rights. Same-sex marriage is either right or wrong; if it is right, it is equally right everywhere, and if it is wrong, it is equally wrong everywhere. It cannot be morally right in Iowa but morally wrong in California. As such, this kind of decision should be made at the federal level by the federal courts - and the Fourteenth Amendment, by imposing a uniform standard of rights-protection ("the equal protection of the laws"), clearly gives the federal courts the power to do this.
(This doesn't mean that I'm opposed to a federal system of government, or to localism in general; decisions about, say, the allocation of tax funds to local projects can best be made at the state or local level. But moral questions about individual rights should not, IMO, be decided locally.)
"constitutional nationalism" - the nationalist theory of the constitution teaches that the states were never sovereign. Upon breaking with Britain, all political jurisdiction vanished, leaving an aggregate of individuals in a state of nature. These individuals spontaneously formed themselves into a sovereign political society and created a central government which authorized the formation of the states. The union created the states, the states did not create the union.
The upshot of this is that it serves the mythological (not historically grounded) assumption that southern secession was politically reprehensible.
Yawn, nonsense by a political idjit. What a fool and tool.
Franky's definition of "economic freedom" includes the right to own slaves. But slavery is an ongoing act of theft from the slaves, and cannot represent "economic freedom"; it is simply a form of armed
robbery.
A rapist cannot obtain a right to rape by appealing for the "preservation of sexual freedom".
Ha! No one gives a shit one way or the other, Frank! It doesn't matter. There is no intrinsic moral authority to either proposition, because both rely upon the genetic fallacy, because there is no intrinsic moral duty to obey laws as such. Nations are absurdities that we live with, in part because they exercise violence against the citizens and in part because they serve many of our needs.
In a civil war, where the resulting nations will be very nearly equivalent except that one perpetuates slaveryyouasshole, the slaveholding nation is wrong. It matters not at all whether the pre-federation states asserted sovereignty. The slaveholding nation is wrong, and violence is legitimately on the table.
wait
WHAT?
that's:
because both rely upon the genetic fallacy, and because there is no intrinsic moral duty to obey laws as such.
Wow... for more-or-less the first time, I agree (virtually word-for-word) with strange gods. (Though I wouldn't have expressed it so coherently, since I'm not in the best condition today, and am trying to read EU law cases at the same time in preparation for a seminar.)
Whether the states were ever sovereign, of course, is a question that could only interest essentialist idiots, who see sovereignty as some kind of magical woo which some political entities have and others do not, rather than a matter of practice, particularly recognition by other sovereign states. The legislatures of the states that joined the Confederacy had all agreed to the US Constitution, which does not provide a right of secession: if their rebellion had successed, of course, either the individual states or the confederacy itself would have become sovereign.
I'm still waiting for frankosaurus to apologise for the lie that Confederate secession was not about slavery, in light of the quotations to the contrary from Confederate leaders provided by others above. And of course, his numerous other lies, distortions and weasel words. I suspect it will be a loooooong wait.
"successed" -> "succeeded" @391 of course.
I note (mainly to annoy Walton) that the Treaty of Lisbon provides, for the first time, the explicit right for member states to leave the EU - so it is not a superstate, cannot become one without agreement between all the member states, and he should have been rooting for it all along. This right was always there in practice, since there would have been no question of any state wanting to leave being coerced into staying by military force, but the treaty provides an explicit procedure for doing so. Its inclusion was apparently down to Gisela Stuart, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, who sat on the European Convention's 13-strong presidium that drafted the failed EU constitution.
Clarification: in:
"it is not a superstate, cannot become one without agreement between all the member states, and he should have been rooting for it all along" @292,
the first "it" is the EU, the second "it" is the treaty of Lisbon.
The third "it" is the Iliad of Homer. For ten points, identify the next two members of the series.
Nothing wrong with Frankies revisionist history, provided you don't care about:
1 The premises.
2 The logic.
3 The conclusion.
4 The inane way expressed.
Reality and Frankie, not friends.
A. Noyd (#252)
I'm afraid that I do not find this community's respect particularly desirable right now, which is a shame. And my argument remains valid unless "does" is zero. This really isn't that hard. The only reason people struggle with it is that they tend to conflate "not being a bigot" with "assuming that anything that may paint a particular group in a negative light must be both bad and wrong".
Since I don't compare demographic statistics, I don't see how it matters whether I call homosexual or heterosexual pairings a "couple". I have largely gone for things like "man-man penetrative sex" to describe such things since some homosexual men who don't engage in penetrative sex took issue with my saying things like "male homosexual sex" and I wanted to be accurate. Of course, once I started referring specifically to "male-male penetrative sex", I started getting "LOL UR REALLY OBSESSED WITH BUTTSEX". But by all means, quibble away. After all, what I'm saying isn't NEARLY as important as how I'm saying it, right?
I'd like to see evidence of my prejudices. There are plenty of people here who knee-jerked into thinking I was something I was not - their prejudice, insofar as they were expecting bigots to turn up and, gosh darn it, I looked on fleeting examination to be close enough, is plain to see. Show mine.
Is there any way that you can identify the assumptions that I've made that challenge the thrust of my argument? Saying "you've made stupid assumptions" doesn't get much respect 'round my way, you see.
The argument "man-man penetrative sex carries with it a high risk of STD transmission", is not balanced by "heterosexuals do anal too!" for reasons that I've explained throughout this thread. You are absolutely correct that any single given instance of anal sex carries the same transmission risk no matter who is doing it, but the group "men who have penetrative sex with men" is most inherently at risk from STD transmission because, with all else being equal, the mechanisms of penetrative sex in that particular gender pairing enable STDs to move through the population more easily. On the understanding that this risk can be almost entirely negated by proper use of condoms and good sexual safety practises generally, do you disagree with this?
The argument "homosexual males (or indeed, men who have penetrative sex with other men) demonstrate better discipline in terms of condom use than heterosexual couples, which has reversed the risk differential" is a correct statement that can be supported statistically. "Heterosexuals do anal too!" is irrelevant flim flam.
Rorschach (#255)
I do appreciate the fact that you posted links in an attempt to actually engage in an argument, but the problem is that the links that you post don't inform what I've been saying. I mean, there are obviously factors which can impact the transmission rate for any given coupling, but I don't think that there's anything that's specific to heterosexual anal or homosexual anal that would skew things one way or another.
Let me try to explain this from, say, the HIV virus' perspective, and therefore hopefully illustrate further what I've been saying about increased risk. When HIV infects someone with a penis then it's got a great deal of mobility. If that penis ends up in someone else's butt, then the virus gets a good chance of being transferred. If that butt happened to belong to a woman, then it's a bit stuck. It has to wait for another man to come along and then really rather struggle to infect the man. If it succeeds, then it's back on high risk status.
However, if the butt in question happens to be that of a man, then it potentially has the chance to be high risk straight away, because the man has a penis that could, depending on his preferences, go into a butt or a vagina, and, as already discussed, it's massively easier to go from penis to butt/vagina than the other way around (6.5/10,000 anus - penis, 50/10,000 penis -> anus are the stats that I've been using, although you may feel free to challenge if you think that these are wildly off or somehow misleading). So there is at least the possibility that the virus can eliminate one of the steps that is completely unavoidable if it's stuck inside a heterosexual woman, whether she does anal or not.
Which is, once again, why "heterosexuals do anal too!" is not the zinger that some people think it is when talking about transmission rates. There are plenty of good arguments to be made to anti-homosexual people about STD transmission rates.
I feel that I have to state yet again that: obviously any individual or group practising good sexual health can almost entirely eliminate the risk of STDs.
raven (#258)
You think it's irrelevant only because you fail to understand what I'm talking about. It has nothing to say on the subject of wombat hair length or fairy dance troupes either, and remains silent on the "who would win? Batman or Wolverine" debate to boot. It is, indeed, irrelevant to all those things. So can we just accept that you don't actually understand what I'm saying well enough to successfully judge how relevant it is to what and leave it at that? Thanks.
F (#293)
Yeah, I've heard of this, but I have no idea how prevalent it is. The distribution appears a bit odd - it's not confined to one location but isn't, as far as I can tell, particularly prevalent anywhere. I've also heard rumours of a virus that contributes to increased vaginal dryness, but I'm so far out of the loop on this stuff now that I'm not sure if this is just speculation or something more.
Other likely contributors are likely to be lack of clean donor blood, lack of female empowerment, predominance of rape, and the simple fact that it's far easier for a man to infect a woman than for a woman to infect a man. Lack of hope and evangelical christians are, as far as I'm concerned, the main reasons why the new infection rates aren't dropping as quickly as they should.
shatfat (#331)
If you have reliable statistics on the prevalence of homosexuals in sub-Saharan Africa, then WHO and UNAIDS really need to hear from you. Otherwise, I don't know what you're angry about. Nor do I know what NRO is, but I suspect its got something to do with me being a bigot, amirite?
I am incredibly bored of people like you. This isn't a comic book. Go find a creationist to bash or something - then it'll be clearer to you which "side" everyone's on.
perfectlysafe, by your argument it is also the case that an HIV virus that finds itself in the body of a person with a knife is far more likely to be transmitted than if it is in the body of a person without a knife, since the person with a knife could easily go around cutting themselves and others. Clearly this devastatingly insightful point required that I write several lengthy posts on the subject. If you are very bored of us, you may be assured that the feeling is mutual.
Also you claim that "the group 'men who have penetrative sex with men' is most inherently at risk from STD transmission because, with all else being equal, the mechanisms of penetrative sex in that particular gender pairing enable STDs to move through the population more easily. On the understanding that this risk can be almost entirely negated by proper use of condoms and good sexual safety practises generally, do you disagree with this?" I disagree, because you have conflated the group "men who have promiscuous penetrative sex with men" with the group "men who have penetrative sex with men". Stop doing that.
Funny, I tried telling a professor this not 20 minutes after she harangued Judges for not being perfect Gods, using the most obviously correct example. "The tree of liberty must periodically be fertilized with the blood of tyrants and patriots" or however it precisely goes. I pointed to you know, two entire continents (South America and Africa) as proof that this doesn't work out too well.
Rather then confront the evidence, she claimed only the US' armed revolution, throughout all of history, was based on what she termed 'The Right', which is no/low government, and every other one was from 'the left'. I'm sure Pancho Villa, Benito Juarez, and Chang Kai-Shek are all thrilled to be communists.
Smoggy #343, one of your best posts yet! I don't think tentacle clusters would be appropriate for you; how about an honorary oosik staff?
strange gods before me #353, thank you, thank you for putting that lie to rest (and the link to the documentation).
Somewhere in this morass, Frank posted:
"I also hope we know that "great nations" love simple mythologies of how they grew up, matured, came of age, got their moral direction, etc."
This shows a very simplistic view of mythology as an aspect of a given culture. Simplistic, perhaps, but never simple. As the most commonly available example, I give you the Old Testament.
I'd like to correct a few things that I've been seeing in this thread. Not all STDs are transmitted the same way. Herpes, HPV, gonorrhea, and syphilis all spread through skin contact, while HIV is transmitted through an exchange of infected body fluids (semen, blood, breast milk, vaginal fluid, with some amounts in pre-cum and VERY minimal in saliva). Therefore, when we discuss transmission rates, and rise in infections, of ALL STDs, we aren't always discussing anal sex. I think it's worth pointing out that a good reason why simplywhatever's comments are viewed as bigoted is that there's a strong implication that all gay men have anal sex, and therefore all gay men are at a higher risk for all STDs, which is simply not the case.
No. perfectlysafe had no point other than to see how many times xe could condescendingly cram "homosexual" into a single comment, further borne out by this being the first thread (to my knowledge) where the smugly named "perfectlysafe" has ever commented. The facts about how HIV is transmitted speak for themselves.
aratina cage of the OM,
perfectlysafe had no point other than to see how many times xe could condescendingly cram "homosexual" into a single comment
Simply not true.
further borne out by this being the first thread (to my knowledge) where the smugly named "perfectlysafe" has ever commented
People should not be judged on whether this is the first thread they have commented on, nor on your interpretation of their chosen handle.
The facts about how HIV is transmitted speak for themselves.
Facts never speak for themselves.
Franky's definition of "economic freedom" includes the right to own slaves. But slavery is an ongoing act of theft from the slaves, and cannot represent "economic freedom"; it is simply a form of armed robbery.
But, our agitator for treason in defense of slavery doesn't recognize the theft that is occurring because it isn't happening to white folks. Slavery was a paternalistic institution, don't you know, responsible for civilizing those Africans. Slaveholders were good and loving people who treated their slaves well and only wanted the best for them. How dare anyone say that good white people can't own and use non-white humans in their search for profit! Shame!
Stephen Wells (#396)
I have written numerous lengthy posts on the subject in the hope that people will skim through them quickly, assume that I've said something really bad, and then write what I can only describe as a "batshit insane" version of what they imagine my argument to be. So well done and thank you.
No such conflation has occurred. This is what "with all else being equal" means. HIV, for example, will transfer through a population of men who promiscuously engage in penetrative sex with other men faster than it will transfer through a similarly promiscuous heterosexual group, even if the heterosexual group exclusively engages in anal sex, assuming that at least one member of the men-men group takes a versatile sexual role. If both groups are less promiscuous, then HIV will travel through the groups more slowly, but still faster in the first group than the second. If both groups take sensible precautions against STDs, then HIV will move at a snail's pace through both groups, but faster through the first than the second.
aratina cage of the OM (#402)
Um, well, I'm british, so if in the US there's a heavy implication to the word "homosexual" beyond, you know, adjective, sometimes noun, referring to people who are sexually attracted to members of the same sex, then I don't know about it. And my internet handle is one that I've been using for years, ever since I assured a small internet-based community that that downloading that that gnome bowling game was "perfectly safe". I've commented here prior to this thread.
These things shouldn't matter anyway, because you should respond to arguments, not your own assumptions about people based on their names and what you intuit the hidden meaning behind the commonplace words that they use to be. You might as well have done a tarot reading or something.
In short, you have zero standing to judge me. You're a shallow fool, and a nasty one to boot.
"perfectlysafe," you may fuck off. That's it, just fuck. OFF.
perfectlysafe: The issue, as many other commenters here have pointed out, is that you are applying the statistical behavior of a large population to the individuals of that population. Much like saying some number of white people are racist, so that person over there is. This is a classic non-sequiter.
Yes, some homosexuals do engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners as both penetrator and penetrated. That does not mean that every individual in the population does. It doesn't even mean that a sizeable minority do. Gay men, largely due to the AIDS epidemic are more cognizant of condom use than their straight counterparts. In the US, the fastest growing group of new infections is among black women, not gays. This has been the case for many years.
Oh, and "perfectlysafe," what does all your blather about STD rates and homosexual sex have fuck all to do with the morality of homosexuality? In other words, get to the frakin' point and stop obfuscating with statistics--you're deploying them to make a rhetorical point, so make the damned point.
Roger,
Unless I've missed it, perfectlysafe has said nothing about the morality of homosexuality. But clearly you're a highly talented telepath, since you know he has a "rhetorical point" to make, so I guess you also know he's been thinking that "teh gays is ebil" all along.
Knockgoats, give me a fucking break. What's the point of bringing up a bunch of bollocks about homosexual sex and STDs--especially in a thread where the main post has been about a bunch of godbots using "statistics" in order to buttress stereotypes of and prejudice against homosexuals? Are you saying that perfectlysafe is just passing the time here? And since I am a highly talented telepath, here's what I'm sensing from you: bullshit.
Oh, and furtherfuckingmore, what am I to infer from perfectlysafe when he/she insists on wading in that canard about homosexual sex/HIV when he/she's been shown that worldwide, the majority of new HIV infections are among heterosexuals? That there are a variety of sexual practices open to homosexual men--and we avail ourselves of them? That he hasn't nuanced his statistical diarrhea in the slightest? And that, in the face of critiques of his methods, he resorts to a bit of name calling and whining? That he's actually *opposed* to homophobic practices based on the very statistics he trots out? Again I say, bullshit. I've seen nothing in his commentary worth defending or supporting.
@frankosaurus #380
Oh please, what a load of bullpucky. The SCC did not just create the idea of civil marriage out of thin air. It is the state that is in charge of the legal institution of marriage. Always has been. What churches wish to sacralise as marriages--that's up to them. Really it's no different from naming: there's a legal birth certificate registered with the province with the baby's name on it. The government doesn't care if you have a christening, a wiccaning, a namakaran sanskar, or no ceremony at all.
Second, the idea that the government should leave us alone as long as we're doing no harm is one that a majority of Canadians would not subscribe to. We also want the government to pool a portion of our resources together to make life better for us as a whole. The notion that it is part of the job of government to help us to progress and improve upon the past seems like a no-brainer to me. To adhere to conventions of the past, even when they are immoral or impractical, just because our grandfathers' grandfathers had different ideas seems like idiocy to me. And our history bears this out. We keep things that work, change things that don't. We have a history of having to adapt to each other and to our environment that lends itself to this kind of approach. (Ironically, if this weren't true, we wouldn't have a Charter of Rights at all!)
How can this person say that government's legitimacy derives from the people, and then in the next breath say that it derives from "the people's past"? He wants to say that the dead people have more sovereignty than the living people.
And that's only up to page 11. I don't imagine it gets better than "we always dun it this way, so this is the way it has to stay" -- not much of an argument (especially since it's factually false).
Oh and, by the way, we've had same sex marriage for 5 years. Our society hasn't disintegrated (not for lack of trying by our Conservative PM), odd sex couples still get happily married and divorced, no priests were held at gunpoint to sign the marriage register for Scott and Maxime (one of our gay, married, MPs & husband), and (shocker) gay military personnel can get married and invite their CO (they can still do their jobs and everything).
in any case, no one denies they were racist. But it was a war foremost about suppressing secession.
If all of the territories entering the Union in the mid nineteenth century as slave states, slave holders would have had a lock on the Senate and House.
Fuckosaurus, you do know that southerners were trying to take control of all the territories that were working to enter the Union. What do you think Bleeding Kansas was about? The slave owners of the territory of Arkansas were trying to place a slave owning government in Kansas, by force if needed.
Do not push this bullshit that that the Confederate states were fighting against northern tyranny, that it was a principled and noble cause. If they controlled the Senate and House as well as having a strangle hold on the Presidency, it would have been southern tyranny over all of the states.
The Confederacy rebelled because one president attempted to stop there growth of power. And the bedrock of southern power was slavery.
One more thing, Fuckosaurus. I loved how you conflated my demand of having the same rights as everybody else into my demand of property. You really are a dishonest assclam.
Re #353 strange gods before me.
You are absolutely right about Alexander Stephens infamous Cornerstone speech which you quote. It is easy to go through contemporary documents and find reams and reams of stuff shricking about the threat to slavery and the horrible threat black men would be to wives and daughters if the blacks were free.
In fairness I should mention that Frankosaurus is hardly alone in his opinion that the Civil War was not "really" about slavery / or slavery had little to do with causing it. Alexander Stephens after the war published a book, A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States, 2 volumes, National Publishing Company, Philadelphia PA, 1868-1870 in it Alexander Stephens alleged that the war was over the principle of constitutional liberty and that of centralization and tyranny. That slavery was a mere question over which these two principles fought and that to call those who fought the efforts of those in the north to centralize and impose tyranny a pro-slavery party or group was utterly false. To describe this as untrue is to be evasive it is quite simply bold-face lies.
Alexander Stephens like so many Ex-Confererates after the war engaged in mass campaign of propaganda and lies to get around slavery for example regarding his Corner Stone speech he said:
Stephens lies we know he is lying because he said similar things in other speeches he gave at the time. For example in Atlanta he said that the new Confederate governement had:
Like Jefferson Davis and many, many others Stephens laboured mightily after the war to deny by a massive amount of lying that the war was much about slavery. They did everything possible to NOT talk about or refer to what they said before the war or during the succession period of 1860-1861 which fairly reeked of them screaming about slavery and the threat to it. And of course they waxed hysterical after the war about how evil the Abolitionists were and how because of them they were unable to reform slavery making it less bad.
Goebbels would have been proud.
Roger (#406)
I shall consider myself dismissed then, Roger.
redmjoel (#407)
No, I was originally pointing out that "heterosexuals do anal too!" is not a valid riposte to the assertion from the anti-gay crowd that, for example, homosexual men are disease-spreaders. This isn't because I think that homosexual men are disease-spreaders, it's just that that particular comparison of behaviour doesn't work very well for reasons gone into at length, multiple times, in this thread.
There are multiple good counters to the argument, such as:
I have mentioned this in this thread before as a far better argument. OKAY?
Roger (#408)
Hi Roger, I'm back! I made the damned point already, Roger. I'm not talking about morality, Roger, I'm talking, for the love of motherfucking christ, about a particular riposte that doesn't actually work as well as people intuitively think it does. Roger. Or I was. Now I'm just explaining that over and over again to every unique snowflake that drifts in here.
Roger (AGAIN!) (#411)
Hello again, Roger! You're just making stuff up and sort of indulging your imagination a bit here, I'm afraid. It's all in the thread. I'm not going to reexplain it for your benefit so that you can slope off and someone just like you can come fresh into the thread, form an opinion within 30 seconds, and demand an explanation from me for shit that they've imagined I've said.
Although the fact that you're complaining about me doing a bit of namecalling is absolutely precious.
Ibis3--You're arguing with someone who has asserted that things never get better, just different, so pointing out real progress will wash right over him. (I do wonder, though, if he thinks things never get better or worse, only different, why he's even bothering.)
And Frankosaurus has probably never even heard of peace, order, and good government. He has explicitly rejected the idea that a good government is something other than a security force for the property owners. That same-sex marriage does nothing to hurt mixed-sex marriages isn't going to impress him, because what it does, what he knows it does, is increase personal freedom. The lizard is a defender of slavery.
Roger,
May I make the introductions:
evidence - Roger; Roger - evidence. Evidently you two have never met.
I suggest you read perfectlysafe's first comment @93, and the comment it was a response to (Cerberus@65), and the comment that was a response to (clausentum@34). What I see there is: naive or homophobic question (impossible to say without context) @34, OTT rant about how evil penises and penetrative sex are @65, arguable but not unreasonable response to that rant @93 - which was not the introduction of the topics of homosexuality and anal sex to the thread - they were already there - and did, contrary to your claims, contain explicit statements such as:
"Not all homosexual men indulge in anal intercourse.", and
"This isn't a judgement about homosexual men, it's just the way things are. Don't let the fact that it happens to serve the purposes of a wide variety of utter bastards for this to be true force you into the position of denying that it's true at all"
So perfectlysafe "whined" about being called a homophobic bigot? What a dreadful thing to do! At no point has s/he made any specific statement that justified such a description - while most such bigots just can't help convicting themselves as such by their second comment at latest.
I'm not the one bullshitting here.
@Ibis3
Just go to the conclusions pp. 23-25. Good stuff:
I know it could be considered a kind of ad hominem, but I don't bother reading anything that comes from the Institue for the Study of Marriage, Law and Culture anymore. I have yet to see something intelligent written over there.
For example, watch this very intelligent piece by Douglas Farrow where he argues the now classical "oh noes, we gonna have to accept polygamy" and the more tortuous "we're gonna be stripped of our rights" (to be assholes).
Or this even more brave article by Margaret Somerville where she commits a beautiful naturalistic fallacy, using a respected author to argue her stupid point : incest avoidance is natural so we got laws against it. Homosexual bashing is natural so we got laws against it. If we accept the latter, we have to accept the former. Since it would be bad because it's not natural, both sould be banned.
Wow. I walk away for 12 hours and the thread goes crazy. I dont have patience or brain power enough to read and comment on everything today. So I will just take long enough to say this:
Smoggy: HA ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha............ha ha ha ha ha! Oh man. *Tear of mirth*
perfectlysafe (#396)
No, because you're relying on there being no risk factors unique to other groups.
Well, to start with, it also doesn't help that you're using a stupid set of categories. If you're going to associate risk with groups, "homosexuals" or "heterosexuals" or even "men having sex with men" aren't very informative categories. Using categories based on actual sexual habits is much more enlightening.
It matters because non-monogamy is a huge factor in transmission and referring to heterosexual pairings as "couples" and avoiding the same for homosexual pairings implies, whether intended or not, that you've got different expectations of monogamy within those groups. It's sloppy.
Why don't you cry to the people who are saying that, then?
You have been conflating sex as it can be practiced with sex as it is practiced without factoring in other risk increasing or decreasing behaviors. You're also assuming non-monogamy in places where you really need to mention it explicitly. (You are getting better about both of these, though.)
Try "men who receive penetrative sex with other men and go on to penetrate others" or something and avoid "that particular gender pairing." Because even with "all else being equal" it's not about the gender pairing, it's about switching roles while being non-monagamous. Also, by "the population" are you making sure to include everyone affected by non-monogamous switcher-uppers?
Bottom line is this. You're pretending to talk about basic biological facts about penetration but you're implicitly including behavior such as non-monogamy and preferences for switching roles for one particular group. You can't just conveniently ignore what those behaviors do to your conclusions by claiming "all else being equal." By including behavior, you've gone from "can" to "do." If you're doing that, then you need to examine how sex is actually "done" in all the groups you're comparing. If you properly restrict yourself to the facts of risk in penetration/being penetrated, then you don't have much of a point. (I believe that's what Stephen Wells is telling you in #396.)
Does that have anything to do with what I've been saying?
~*~*~*~*~*~
aratina cage (#402)
He might be prone to making inappropriate generalizations and bogus rationalizations, but those aren't traits restricted to people with a hateful agenda. I think he's getting flak in large part because he seemed to be supporting clausentum by arguing with Cerberus. If you read what perfectlysafe says, though, he clearly is trying not to say all of group X does Y. He's not careful enough when making his conclusions, but I don't happen to think he does it out of hostility. That his point, so much as he has a valid one, is exceedingly trivial compared to the way STD transmission happens in the real world isn't helping either.
frankosaurus: just sayin, lovey-dovey feelings about how we should embrace one another for who we are won't get one far in this world. If your solution is to cleanse language, then no thanks.
So you'll make fun of people speaking in lovey-dovey terms in order to minimize it, by invoking the spector of "PCism" and the "cleansing" of language?
And you don't see how that's just stupid? And stupid in that classically conservative way of claiming to be a victim of your own methods?
I have to say that I'm particularly entertained by all the 5 dollar words in franky's repertoire. Reminds me of the worst excess of post-modernism, where looking good is more important than feeling good... (Yes, I must be that old).
Stephen Wells
Worse yet, he has conflated the group "men who have penetrative sex with men" with the group "men who have sex with men".
Rowen
In my own thirty years of research into the issue of antigay bigotry, the cohort of people who present that kind of argument is highly correlated with bigots who wish deny gay people their civil rights. Remember, AS A GROUP, they behave this way, and perfectlysafe has shown us that this methodology is sound.
Perfectlysafe
Yes, the hell it has! You did it every time you posted. Indeed, when I pointed out that group statistics are meaningless when applied to individuals, you dismissed that objection as childish. But, I concede. You've shown how reasonable it is to apply conclusions based on group behavior to individuals.
Since I have no better statistical methods than to treat the cohort of people who trot out bad public-health arguments the same as the cohort of people who want to promote an antigay agenda, and since you have insisted that such methodology is accurate and any other sources of data can safely be ignored, I can only conclude that you are an antigay bigot.
Do you support herding gay men off to jail or quarantine camps in the interest of public health?
Well, I do admit the possibility that your methods could be in error, at least when applied to you. So what's your point in all of this?
Well, I stand corrected and foolish and even nasty and should have stepped back and looked at #93 and the rest of your posts more objectively. I apologize.
Walton @ 383
Thanks for the long response, though I see it less as an argument than the articulation of the liberal premises in a liberal society. But maybe I can set you straight:
"Simply put, I don't see why "American founding principles" should be viewed as morally binding, or why a departure from those principles should be viewed as a bad thing."
This is what you simply don't get. It is many liberals' fascination to view the founding as an incarnation of morals and values that, as the populace grows, must be tinkered with to adapt to the spirit of the time. But this was not the idea of the framers of the articles of confederation at all (which is not to supply a genetic fallacy, but to clarify purpose). The idea was to enact a republic that would stand as a bulwark against tyranny. By asserting a "moral reading" of the founding and then rejecting how outdated it all is misses the point of seeing it as providing a means of securing liberty, not securing x,y,z, liberties. How best do you protect the liberty of a homosexual? Protect his life, property, and let him have a gun.
I'm not one of those people who say the founders weren't fans of homosexuality, and thus neither should we be. Yet again, I don't see support of your idea of "what's good morally for Idaho is good morally for California" either in history or as a sound constitutional precept in light of what I mentioned. I agree, though, that your reading of the constitution as it stands now, in light of SCOTUS fiats, gives ample weight to support the unconstitutionality of restricting marriage to heteros. As you say, we will continue to see how narrow or broad the courts interpret the 14th.
Again, your flaw is your moral reading. If you look to the constitution as a moral document (a danger foresaw by many, and one of the reasons many objected to a written constitution), you will see the moral liberalism, how it has continued, and how it plays out, and there's not really much to argue. Is this progress? My view is no. To seek redemption in the realm of politics is to be a hollow man. And if what is actually at stake is, as Janine says, not liberty from a govt with eyes to tyranny, but the so-called "politics of recognition" (re her statement of second-class citizenry) as advancing all people, by law, to be morally on par with each other, then I don't see much into it - that's not the function of law at all.
And for all the civil war buzzing going around, no you won't get me to accept that the suppression of secession stands for the proposition that a benevolent state is superior to a people's republic. On this, I would equally reject the expansionist visions of a victorious confederacy. Power centralises, grows, and gets out of hand as it is wont to do. Story of history, and who knows how long it will actually take for the US to blossom into the military dictatorship it was meant to be. Doesn't mean I don't have principled objections about it all, notwithstanding my side will always lose.
Shouldn't we care more about the people who made a useful document, rather then a failgovernment?
This is retarded. If we take the very charitable assumption that the gun was useful (If you want to examine just how useful Jefferson's 'The tree of liberty must be periodically fed with the blood of patriots and tyrants' line was, just take a gander at South America. Or most of Africa) in protecting gay people from physical assaults, it still doesn't actually protect their civil liberties. The Black Panthers certainly exercised their second amendment rights, for a certain value of 'bear arms', and that's not what actually got the African American community their rights.
FYI: Walton isn't really 'liberal'. Well, apparently growing slightly moreso.
This is lulzworthy. Are you like, not remotely familiar with the Civil Rights movement? The feminist movement?
Are you aware that you have 5 other continents full of countries to examine when you make your philosophical arguments? 'cause its sorta relevant.
a good reason why simplywhatever's comments are viewed as bigoted is that there's a strong implication that all gay men have anal sex - Timberwolf, quoting Rowen with approval
Only since his very first post (#93) explicitly said the contrary, this is just a load of crap, and we clearly needn't take anything you say seriously, since you're either a liar, or unable to read.
Kudos to aratina cage@423.
Are you like, not remotely familiar with the Civil Rights movement? The feminist movement?
He's opposed.
I mention that I dislike using the word 'gay' to describe myself. It gets called 'political correctness'. Boom. It's all on. Sleeves rolled up, floors spat on, names called, 'facts' and 'theories' twisted and torn, stretched and shredded. Finally, everyone withdraws from the fight, convinced they got the upper hand.
Gotta love the interwebz.
That really depends what you mean by "liberal". Frankosaurus is, unfortunately, using the word in a rather imprecise way. In the sphere of constitutional philosophy, "liberal" principally refers to a political system in which the powers of government institutions are restricted, and governance is conducted according to the rule of law. In that sense of the term, the US Constitution is a liberal document, and I am a liberal (as is almost everyone here).
This isn't, of course, the same as the way the word "liberal" is used in American partisan politics, which in turn is not the same as its meaning in European politics. This isn't really the time or the place for a detailed discourse on all the meanings of the word as an ideological descriptor (especially since it's getting late here, and I have an essay to finish by tomorrow morning). Suffice it to say that I am a "liberal" for some values of the word but not for others; I'm probably not a "liberal" in the colloquial American sense of the term, though I don't doubt that some conservative Americans would characterise me as such.
Nick - whaddya mean claiming credit for this bar-room brawl? It was well under way before you spilled someone's drink! ;-)
Walton: That really depends what you mean by "liberal".
Ok, so you're not a fascist or a Bolshevik.
Great for you. I guess it was a useful definition back when there were significant royalists or fascists. But today? Not very useful -- not until a new non-liberal ideology appears.
Who are the non-liberals today? The Saudis? Even the Iranians are "liberal" in your sense, with a constitutional theocracy.
Aratina Cage's mea culpa @ 423 was graceful.
And kudos to perfectlysafe for remaining patient while under misunderstood assaults.
Both displays of strong character IMO.
Frankosaurus, I confess that I don't fully understand your point (which may be my fault, at least in part, since I'm not at my best right now). Insofar as I understand it, you seem to be arguing that because the framers of the Articles of Confederation believed in state sovereignty and a very restricted federal government, all subsequent constitutional developments which have moved away from this goal must somehow be morally wrong. I really don't understand this. Why do you ascribe some special wisdom to the authors of the Articles of Confederation?
You say that you want constitutional arrangements "to serve as a bulwark against tyranny". Yet you are advocating a view which would effectively give state governments carte blanche to take away individual liberties. Time and time again, US state legislatures have enacted laws that deprive their citizens of liberty, and it has fallen to the federal courts to strike down these laws. Without Supreme Court decisions, state governments would still be able to arbitrarily arrest and detain their citizens (Miranda v Arizona), to segregate schools (Brown v Board of Ed.), to prevent interracial couples from marrying (Loving v Virginia), and to invade the privacy of citizens' sexual lives (Griswold v Connecticut, Lawrence v Texas).
I just don't understand quite what your point is. You seem to dislike much of American constitutional history, without really explaining your reasons; and you also seem to be disregarding the fact that, if your view of states' rights and limited federal power had been consistently followed, many states would still have racial segregation and various other forms of institutionalised oppression, arbitrary detention without trial, intrusive "sodomy laws", and so on. Do you really think this would be a better America? I'd appreciate a straight answer to this question.
Knockgoats # 431
It was my bleeding-heart lefty liberal do-goodery post that lured Frankosaurus into the pit. But you are right, the concurrent theme of bum sex/nasty diseases also got a hell of a lot of action. Clearly, the trick in future is to have a frothy mixture of sodomy and civil rights to mawl over. And no, I take no credit for it.
Really, my post was more of a wondering-out-loud, being as this is the first time I have posted in earnest. As opposed to deposited in Earnest. (Sorry, bum sex on the brain).
A.Noyd (#420)
Clearly not. It should do. This is why your comments seem to assume that I'm pursuing a different point, I guess.
Timberwoof (#422)
That information already exists in the thread.
The original implied assertion to which I originally responded was that "heterosexual anal sex is effectively the same in terms of risk as homosexual anal sex". Thus:
All of my posting since #93 has been in defense of myself as, you know, not actually a bigot. As I admitted in my second post in this thread, I had rather nerdishly and naively set about an explanation as to why you would think that they are exactly the same but actually are not in the first, without either blockquoting or making what I was doing plain enough that a skimmer would necessarily understand. By that point, people had already started attributing all manner of opinions to me that I don't hold and certainly haven't expressed.
aratina cage of the OM (#423)
Holy crap. Respect.
Knockgoats & lose_the_woo: thank you.
Knockgoats, no, I have read perfectlysafe's comments. I did read that he acknowledged that not all gay men have anal sex. I also read where he denies that it matters, insisting on "talking about homosexual men as a statistical cohort." He's trying to have it both ways, concluding that
It's the same old argument. A boy can be the captain of the football team, date the prom queen, and shag six fangirls on the side, but if he experimentally sucks one drama student's cock, he's gay. Similarly, since some (unknown) number of gay men have anal sex both ways, perfectlysafe feels perfectly safe in claiming that, statistically speaking, all do. (While, of course, weaseling that some don't, but it doesn't matter.)
Walton:
"I just don't understand quite what your point is"
well just on the big picture side of things, I see a general trend in the US to become administratively and militaristically bloated, and culturally erosive of family and faith. basic conservative stuff. If you ask me about my opinions about removing institutional segregation, intrusive sodomy laws, and that stuff, I can't say with a straight face that the promulgation of tolerance is inferior to rampant instability and violence. I don't like the abuse that goes on between groups any more than the next person, and appreciate how a nation has to become cautious of how it exerts its, especially criminal, power. Though again I would say that decisions you highlight do not constitute any net "progress", as I suppose we get the laws we deserve, but I'm happy with overall efforts of SCOTUS oversight of law for the facilitation of peace in a general sense.
However, the non-recognition of same-sex marriage is not an abuse of criminal power. It's not criminal power at all. My own position is we feel compelled to acknowledge it because of the moral authority we've endowed the constitution and the courts with, which I just don't buy, and see as overly Hobbesian. That's the libertarian in me. The conservative in me sees the continuation of faith, family, and tradition as important to western life. The reason you don't get my point is that you're not a conservative, and if you haven't noticed, it's fairly difficult to get people encamped in their positions to say persuasive things to the other side.
So why am I here then would be a good question. Smug Control I reckon.
perfectlysafe (#436)
If you like. It's an atrocious summary of the statements you made, though, and your justification is still problematic.
?
What? I'm pretty sure that's not ps said, at all. "As a statistical cohort" implies nothing but a probability about any individual member of the cohort.
It is a separate issue to ask whether "gay men" is too heterogeneous a group to be a meaningful statistical cohort in the first place.
franky: Smug Control I reckon.
You really are entertaining me. It's like mirrors don't exist in your world. The only thing you're succeeding at is making me fell more smug than ever.
Yawn, Fuckosaurus keeps proving any relationship between his delusions and reality is purely coincidental. Including the delusion that we find him anything other than a insane and inane fool. And we don't give a shit about his opinions. We know they are wrong.
"You really are entertaining me"
well good, I'm entertained by you folks too
Timberwoof,
You actually quote perfectlysafe making an argument, which you clearly either haven't understood or simply refuse to understand, fail to address it, and then immediately interpret it as making a completely different argument. Contemptible.
In itself, that's true... but I nevertheless think that the non-recognition of same-sex marriage is an abuse of the power of the state.
Simply put, the state grants a number of legal privileges to married couples. The status of marriage has a range of implications for taxes, job-related benefits and pensions, visitation rights in hospital, inheritance of property on dying intestate, and so on. There may or may not be good policy grounds for granting these special privileges to married couples; I offer no opinion on that.
But the problem comes when the right to enter into a marriage, and therefore to access all the legal privileges granted to married couples, is permitted to opposite-sex couples but denied to same-sex couples. In this context, the state is essentially making a policy statement that opposite-sex relationships are intrinsically more worthy, and deserve greater legal recognition and privilege, than same-sex relationships. It is discriminating between one group of people and another based on their choice of domestic living arrangements; and it is, therefore, arguably denying "the equal protection of the laws" to gay couples, bringing it within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The state can only justify this difference in treatment if it can furnish some rational basis for believing that there is a public interest in privileging opposite-sex over same-sex relationships. You, of course, do address this in your post:
But while you're entitled to hold that opinion, you need to substantiate it. If you believe that the state should discriminate between one group of people and another, you need to provide some clear-cut, objective, secular evidence for why such discrimination serves the public interest.
I'm unconvinced that the perpetuation of either "faith" or "tradition" is beneficial to the public interest. Insofar as "faith" means "believing things without solid evidence", then I don't see that it does any good to the interests of society; indeed, in some contexts (creationism, for instance, or "faith healing"), faith can be actively harmful to society. As to "tradition", you need to be more precise if you want this to be a convincing argument. Some traditions are good, others are bad; the mere fact that something is traditional does not make it worth preserving.
And as to "family", I agree that family is important, and that there is a compelling public interest in encouraging stable families. But there is no evidence that gay marriage undermines this - quite the opposite, in fact. As Ted Olsen has cogently argued, the institution of gay marriage encourages gay couples to form stable relationships, which, on a conservative view, is positively good for society. Furthermore, there is simply no evidence at all to suggest that gay marriage "undermines" the stability of marriage or families in general. If you want to substantiate this argument, you need to produce some actual evidence from the social sciences.
Basically, what I'm saying is this: by default, the state should guarantee the same legal rights and privileges to everyone. Where the state discriminates between different groups of people, it needs to have a compelling justification for why such discrimination is in the public interest. Therefore, if you argue that same-sex couples should be treated differently from opposite-sex couples, the onus is on you to produce a compelling argument, substantiated with solid evidence, for why this should be the case.
Faith is not a virtue. It is the rationalization of willful ignorance and intellectual laziness. Not only can this be shown, it is by definition.
With just that one seemingly insignificant point that people like you like to waft around like a smelly old rag, puts the divide between us as expansive.
We are not a great nation because of faith. It's a crippling disease that needs to be eradicated from public discourse.
perfectlysafe, purely as a matter of scientific reasoning I still have to disagree with your claim about the risk stats for MSM versus everyody else.
Your argument is that since a gay man can be both a pitcher and a catcher for anal sex, they're in a uniquely high risk situation for STD transmission. I accused you of conflating "men who have sex with men" (group A) and "men who have promiscuous two-way penetrative sex with men" (group B).
You deny the conflation? Okay, I'll take your word for it. But that leaves you arguing that the risk for group A is raised (by the inclusion of high-risk group B) above... what? It must be, above the risk for group C: "everybody other than group A", viz. hets and lesbians.
But now we have a problem. Group C also includes high-risk subgroups: African women whose partners demand unprotected sex and "dry" sex, for example: group D. Their risk for catching and for transmitting HIV is devastating.
So you can't just point out that group A includes high-risk group B and conclude that group A has higher statistical risk, because you haven't actually run the numbers for group C and their high-risk subgroups like group D.
And you must run those numbers, because you must calculate the risk based on what people actually do. If instead you run based on what people _might_ do, you run into my "ridiculous" argument concerning what people might do with knives. So now you see why I included that argument.
A lot of people have reacted very badly to your postings here. Why? Because statistically, a lot of the people who post very long, anatomically detailed articles on the internet about how gay buttsex is bad (group E) are viciously closeted fundamentalist homophobes (group F). And people have reacted to you as if you were a member of that group F, a group which is... not popular here. If you did not enjoy being judged, as a group-E member, by the actions of group F... what does that tell you about how your arguments have sounded?
@445: Damn, Walton, that was a good post. Kudos.
Hey look, there's the ["gay men" is too heterogeneous a group to be a meaningful statistical cohort in the first place] argument now!
There are always subgroups of subgroups. Epidemiologists who want to compare risks among groups have to just define their groups and live with the inherent heterogeneity. Statistical differences between groups have to be strong effects to emerge despite the i.h., and are therefore robust. I think that's how the statisticians talk, anyway; I R not 1.
Walton: I'm unconvinced that the perpetuation of either "faith" or "tradition" is beneficial to the public interest. Insofar as "faith" means "believing things without solid evidence", then I don't see that it does any good to the interests of society; indeed, in some contexts (creationism, for instance, or "faith healing"), faith can be actively harmful to society. As to "tradition", you need to be more precise if you want this to be a convincing argument. Some traditions are good, others are bad; the mere fact that something is traditional does not make it worth preserving.
Let me act as devil's advocate here -- it's an interesting question, but I find franky frankly dull.
The public interest in "tradition" and "faith" is that it makes others predictable. They respond in an automatic fashion to certain classes of claims -- it's why, for example, oaths are traditionally sworn to "god", to cause the kick in of emotional responses that overwhelm rational responses.
So the argument is that there's a public interest in folks acting irrationally but predictably. It assumes, of course, that rational thought is dangerously narcissistic, and only an oligarchy or aristocracy can be trusted with certain questions. I find that assumption to be bullshit -- but it's there and can be questioned empirically.
But hell if I can find a conservative who will say it honestly since the 18th century.
@Sven: if 449 was aimed at me@447, I'm just arguing that "gay men" is clearly a statistical cohort, no problem, but the argument about the risk of the whole cohort being high because of the high-risk subgroup fails.
Knockgoats, I asked perfectlysafe what his point is and he referred me to his endless list of posts, basically leaving me to come to my own conclusion, based on my experience and his words. If he wanted me to come to a specific conclusion and not the same one that many here have arrived at, he could have said what it was.
Sven DiMilo, I grant your point about epidemiological risk groups. I do not grant the idea that rights adhere to such groups. Conservatives keep telling me, and I agree, that rights adhere to individuals. So quit trying to lump gays into a homogeneous group, and especially, don't get all upset when we say we don't like getting lumped.
Sven: There are always subgroups of subgroups. Epidemiologists who want to compare risks among groups have to just define their groups and live with the inherent heterogeneity. Statistical differences between groups have to be strong effects to emerge despite the i.h., and are therefore robust. I think that's how the statisticians talk, anyway; I R not 1.
You have to know the heterogeneity beforehand. You have to have reason to believe that the distribution which you're sampling is, in fact, gaussian or whatever, to use specific tests on it. Otherwise you're limited to non-parametric tests... and I doubt that was what was being referred to.
You don't have to be a statistician -- this is all covered in stats 101. But everyone forgets it, because using statistics properly means that very little published in many fields (but not all) isn't statistically significant. (Which doesn't mean it isn't meaningful -- just that abusing statistic is a sport in many disciplines).
It's one of the reasons why theory matters. It's one way to get around the statistical bootstrapping problems, by using other known facts to justify the analysis of empirical data. It's why I think that questions of an epidemiological sort have to describe the underlying network model -- that tells you what statistics you need to collect, what "good questions" are, rather than just staring at the pretty rocks (loosely paraphrasing the late Darwin).
walton:
"I'm unconvinced that the perpetuation of either "faith" or "tradition" is beneficial to the public interest."
that's because you're a utilitarian. I don't believe in faith and tradition because they produce a "better" society. To even frame it like that is to conceive of society as goal-oriented. Like I said, fairly netural on the whole progress idea, but it's a concept that runs deep, and that's one of the main things that sets apart conservatives from all the brands of liberalisms out there (socialism, marxism, libertarianism, etc). But I believe, and forgive the clumsiness of this sentence, that faith, family, and tradition produce better people (I being the counterexample to this). Some people obviously disagree, and the art of politics is balancing everyone together with their differing beliefs. But I don't like these things being eroded.
Your mentioning of marriage benefits is telling. It should be clear that my stance against gay marriage, as the issue is framed today, isn't to deprive gay couples of state benefits. Perhaps we are in agreement about the dismal coddling the state has had to do to promote stable relationships, but that's beside the point. it's not about the benefits, it's about the designation of "marriage" - the state secularizing a religious institution because its distributionist mechanisms got out of whack. The reason we look to history is to understand how the state acquired its capacity to cross this rubicon, and whether it should have been able to acquire this capacity at all (in politics, I think the capacity to uphold a morality is prior to the issue of the content of that morality, lifestyle equality in this case and what flows from it). Though its quite understandable how atheists do not behold nor want to understand the profundity of the objections. It's not "rational" enough.
that should say "whether it should have been able to acquire this capacity at all...short of voting for it"
franky: But I believe, and forgive the clumsiness of this sentence, that faith, family, and tradition produce better people (I being the counterexample to this).
Who cares what you "believe"? That's a claim to irrationality. "People are better when they believe what I want them to believe, as judged by them believing it".
That's nonsense, except to people who believe like you do. That means, that your claims aren't secular political claims, but purely claims to power by your group.
That's why "conservatism" is basically anathema to secular politics. You are, essentially, for sectarian politics -- pre-modern politics.
That's fine and dandy for you. But stop trying to dishonestly frame it as a rational option. It's not -- you disdain rationalism as the measure of public politics. You can't claim the protection of the rights and privileges you aim to destroy.
In short, don't try to "argue" us back into the middle ages. Don't treat us as imbeciles who will give you the gun to shoot us with. Fuck off.
I just don't get this at all. If you are claiming that "faith, family and tradition produce better people", then you need, firstly, to define what you mean by "better", and, secondly, to substantiate this assertion with evidence of some sort. (You also, incidentally, need to define much more clearly what you mean by "faith, family and tradition" - something which I asked about at #445, but which you have not clarified. Faith in what? What kind of "family"? Which "traditions"?)
It's all very well to say that different people have differing beliefs. But if you want to make public policy on the basis of your beliefs, then you need to provide a convincing, reasoned justification for them. Just asserting that "I believe X" is not a sufficient basis for taking a political position that affects the legal rights and interests of other citizens.
I don't necessarily disagree; I'd be perfectly happy to get the state out of the marriage business altogether (though I disagree that marriage was ever solely a "religious institution", as it has always had civil legal ramifications). But as long as the state does define marriage, and as long as it continues to confer certain legal rights and privileges on married couples which are denied to everyone else, it needs to have a rational justification for restricting those rights and privileges to opposite-sex couples. You still haven't provided such a justification.
Oh really, who said that load of bullshit, Ted Haggard? Bill Donahue? The pope? All sterling examples of your idiot faith.
You get one point for being smarter than that fuckosaurous Walton.
No, there were marriages before modern religions co-opted them. And if you want to go with religious definitions of marriage, you'd have to allow for polygamy, and concubines, and forcing men to take on their brother's wives if the brother died, and so on.
Walton: I just don't get this at all. If you are claiming that "faith, family and tradition produce better people", then you need, firstly, to define what you mean by "better", and, secondly, to substantiate this assertion with evidence of some sort.
See -- you're a "liberal". You want an external, rationalistic yardstick. Franky won't give you one -- because none exists. What he cares about is the continuation and growth of his sect.
You ain't gonna "get" him, until you put him in the category of pure identity politics. His goal is to defend his tribe, as defined by it's cult. Everything else revolves around that.
What you demand is "liberal evidence". His response could only be in light of his cult -- "scripture says X". Franky is clever enough to avoid the question in this forum.
But it's at the heart of the matter -- there is no rational basis for discussion between "liberals" and "conservatives", used in franky's sense. You have to have compatible epistemologies -- and they don't exist here. By treating them as if they were compatible, you're giving your opponent an advantage you don't have.
It's like "arguing" with a real fascist. Sure, they'll use reason if, and only if, it's in their advantage, while you are tied to using reason even when it's in your disadvantage.
That's a bullshit game.
Frog
"stop trying to dishonestly frame it as a rational option."
I don't. The only alternate I've mentioned is republicanism. I don't view conservatism as a political philosophy. it's more of a moral philosophy that guides political discussions
Walton:
"it needs to have a rational justification for restricting those rights and privileges to opposite-sex couples. You still haven't provided such a justification."
Why not provide a justification that this isn't a matter to be put to a vote? Tyranny of the majority? But is this not also expressed in the courts? they are free to write the constitution anew (like by saying freedom of marriage is "guaranteed") predictably in accordance to what the majority of voters wanted in their confirmation process. The courts are more than willing to turn the Bill of Rights into a have-it- all document, making it a virtually meaningless instrument of limited government.
This is the heart of it. You support a) the activist judiciary, and b) the utilitarian notion that the government should act in a manner that maximizes equality at minimal cost. However, you have no grounds for saying when such equality should be limited. I'm curious, by what rationale do you deny polygamy? Or don't you? I'd like your "rational justification" for this, or have the courts merely not built up enough steam in this direction.
frankosaurus,
Then you're idiosyncratically redefining the term.
Conservatism.
Conservatism is a moral philosophy?
Can you adduce any evidence for this?
Do you pay any fucking attention whatsoever to constitional law? Like, ANY? The courts pretty consistently decide in favor of the rights of the slightly smaller minority. That was the entire point behind making a constitution in the first place, rather then sticking strictly to legislature. Seriously, did you not look at a single case Walton cited? What about Glassroth v. Moore? Was /that/ tyranny by the majority?
Gee, the courts aren't doing limited federal government, which our own history and that of the world provides pretty good evidence isn't an effective government. Sounds like a great decision to me, but I can see the problem with it if you're dead set on fucking everyone else over for your own gain.
That gets flung around a lot whenever the conservatives disagree. I notice that epithet's not been tossed around about say, Scalia, or Thomas.
...None. I don't claim it's a problem. Why do you think it is? Why is it relevant to this discussion?
Well, given divorce law, I guess I am willing to point out that it's complicated and eats up enough court time as is. Polyamorous relationships would really only complicate things.
Whoops.
Gee, the courts aren't doing limited federal government, which our own history and that of the world provides pretty good evidence isn't a terribly effective government. Sounds like a great decision to me, but I can see the problem with it if you're dead set on fucking everyone else over for your own gain.
And for that matter, you're pretty much saying "B- but the courts CAN'T protect their rights! If they start recognizing those other people as human, my argument to treat them as slaves/wage slaves/fools to be fucked over for my own financial gain". That's not a compelling argument.
conservative - "one whose character is informed by an un-generous disposition to defend the status quo regardless of the oppression of others"
doesn't sound like a political theory to me.
Source: common sense
This is the same common sense which insists that sleeping people have no brains?
Apparently, "common sense" is a dude named Donald Livingston who also says "[liberal and conservative] are highly contested terms, being in their very nature partisan expressions the explication of which cannot entirely escape a political commitment. [emphasis added]"
Is this the common sense that insisted that judges will bow to the tyranny of the majority on the grounds that they... face re-election? Or some other form of non-existent censure for most decisions they make?
frankosaurus:
Nor does it sound "a moral philosophy", as you earlier claimed, but as an inclination (or disposition, as you put it).
I'm amused that not only do you ignore extant definitions and instead provide your own (as I said earlier), but that it does not support your initial claim!
Uh-huh. ;)
"[liberal and conservative] are highly contested terms, being in their very nature partisan expressions the explication of which cannot entirely escape a political commitment. [emphasis added]"
and I agree. You don't a political system out of conservatism, but it nonetheless guides political discussions, or commitments as it were.
that was a joke definition, by the way...the "oppression of others" one
@frankosaurus #454
Um, what else could it be? Disagree about the goal if you choose (and then back up the assertion with some historical or philosophical evidence), but if it's not goal-oriented, it must be pointless. So are you actually an anarchist?
Would your position then not entail a return to the most primitive forms of these institutions? In the grand scheme of things, the most conservative "faith" would be a kind of animism; family would likely be self-sufficient tribal groups, likely of a matriarchal or hyperpatriarchal brand. Somehow I don't think that's what you have in mind. (And what difference would "better people" be if the ultimate goal isn't an aggregate "better society" anyway?)
They aren't being eroded (changing from something whole to something without substance), they're just changing, just as they have for all of human history. Faith in nature spirits changed to faith in natural gods changed to faith in philosophical gods changed to faith in tribal gods changed to faith in philosophical gods changed to faith in a nature god changed to a faith in the tribal gods, seems to be changing to faith in human knowledge. Family changed from tribe to extended patriarchal family, changed to patriarchal nuclear family, changed to mixed (mostly nuclear) families with adults in different but equal relationships. I'm not one to promote giving up traditions without a reason, but if we have a good one (say, the dignity and rights of women), then we should rush to abolish them.
Here you are just plain, factually, utterly, fractally wrong. Marriage was in the first place a social institution (to make sure fathers cared for their own (or their sisters') progeny), after that a legal institution (for much the same purpose, with the added 'benefit' of property traduction: women themselves and other chattels to inlaws and offspring), and only much, much later (like middle ages later), and as a secondary priority, religious. The state has a much more traditional stake in marriage. Religion is a modern, radical interloper.
Fixed that for you.
p.s. Thanks to those who have responded to my posts.
Yes, that's the neo-Confederate Donald Livingston mentioned earlier.
So, Frank's favorite writers include:
David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
J. Philippe Rushton, president of the white supremacist Pioneer Fund, writer for the white nationalist website VDARE.
Donald Livingston, member of the white nationalist League of the South, founder of the neo-Confederate Abbeville Institute.
Tell us more about your "intellectual racism," Frank. You mentioned this earlier in passing, but you won't elaborate. What exactly makes your racism intellectual?
Fs:
No shit.
That's the problem with establishing yourself as a troll; there is no way to tell when you're trying to be serious, and when you're just stirring.
You made your bed, now you're lying in it.
i said intellectually defensible racialism, if I recall. That's the Rushton stuff, that claims that there are measurable differences between races. No grounds of superiority, however. I'm not enough of a scientist to say it's correct, but as he seems to defend it intellectually, it appears to be intellectually defensible.
In any case you're off base with the racism stuff. I never made claims, that I recall, that one race is inherently better than another. I'm just too ignorant in the relevant fields to assert, with the mass of multiculturalists, that it isn't a meaningful concept.
But slandering Livingston isn't right. He's a well respected professor of philosophy at Emory University who, like PZ, has his quirky side interests.
FS:
Indeed, slander ain't right.
Perhaps you should read up on what constitutes slander and libel, both being specific instances of defamation.
It's not, and if Rushton were simply interested in science then he would not be the leader of a white supremacist organization. That ought to be a clue to you that he's not approaching the issue empirically; he has white supremacist conclusions that he is determined to come to.
Remember, Rushton isn't just talking about some innocuous "differences between races" (putting aside the fact that these supposed "races" are ill-defined by Rushton, who doesn't appear to understand that there is more genetic variation within Africa than within the rest of the world combined).
Rushton's claim is that black people are stupid. Genetically stupid. And that you can know this by measuring IQ in black people in the Deep South of the US.
And this is what you find "intellectually defensible," the claim that black people are genetically stupid. You are therefore a racist.
You did say that you would not want to live in a nation that was 60% Latino, or 30% black. You are therefore a racist. No belief in your superiority is necessary; you could believe that black people are superior to you, but if you were opposed to living near them, you would be a racist.
But for the record, you do in fact believe that white people are superior to black people, because you believe that Rushton's white supremacist nonsense is "intellectually defensible."
I don't know that this is true, the claim that he's well-respected for his work on Hume. It might be, but this has not been established.
And if it is true, what of it? It doesn't mean he can't be a racist too.
It's a fact that he was a member of the white nationalist League of the South, and the founder of the neo-Confederate Abbeville Institute.
I know the difference between slander and libel. They make us study torts in our first year. Yet these forums have such a conversational tone that slander almost has a better fit to it. FYI, defamation really doesn't apply anyway, as you haven't said anything about him that isn't strictly true. I just think that's a low way of referring to him. It would be like if I called PZ an overweight blogger. I'm sure he's done things to merit more respect than that.
......So like. You complain about 'slander', despite the fact that you're well aware that everything said falls under the Truth Defense. Are you stupid? High? Are you the living incarnation of Scrubs' Ted?
Someone's weight is not a matter of public interest, outside the tabloids. You could comment on it, but we would just wonder why it matters to you.
On the other hand, when someone is promoting neo-Confederate revisionist history, that has an impact on the society that the rest of us live in. It is of legitimate and serious public interest.
And of course, you brought up Livingston in the first place as a means of attacking Abraham Lincoln. In this context, it is rather important to note that he may be biased, even deliberately lying, as he is in fact a white nationalist and neo-Confederate.
frankosaurus (#478)
Oh, we're 'round to tone are we? Wondered when we'd get there. See, though, there's a difference between calling a spade a spade and, say, calling a black person a spade. I won't hold my breath waiting for you to figure it out, though.
"And of course, you brought up Livingston in the first place as a means of attacking Abraham Lincoln. In this context, it is rather important to note that he may be biased, even deliberately lying, as he is in fact a white nationalist and neo-Confederate."
But of course you really couldn't say he was biased until you heard the argument. Nah, you're way is right. Same reason natural selection is a waste of time. The guy who wrote the Origin of Species was a Whig sympathizer.
Yawn, Fuckosaurus still has nothing cogent to say. No reality checks with this fuckwit. Total and absolute insipidity, starting from his false premises on. What a total loser.
If the theory of natural selection was presented with political implications suggesting Whigs should rule, the question of bias would be relevant.
Ockham's razor, Frank. What is the simplest explanation for the fact that only neo-Confederates promote the lie that the South was not fighting for slavery?
Time out. I'm doing some reading right now on the Stanford Prison Experiment, maybe it's been a while since we've looked at it.
http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/39
I start thinking of liberals vs conservatives as prisoners vs guards. Only who are the prisoners. Who are the guards? Pause for thought. Is it possible that the gays feel like the prisoners, being denied privileges and humiliated frequently? What a brutish idea.
Hopefully PZ can help you with your little experiment.
Since many of the people here are ex-theists, I hope I won't get too much flak for saying that I see something of my own former thinking in perfectlysafe's writing. Actually, it was reading this thread that removed the last bits of it from my mind. Yay Pharyngula!
What I used to think was, "Yes, homophobes are disgusting bigots — but in one tiny way, they have a point, don't they? Isn't the practice of gay sex statistically and medically less safe than straight, due to anal tearing?" When I then encountered that question's usual first response — gay doesn't equal anal — I confusedly thought, "So why doesn't the gay community not have a 'Say No to Anal' movement? (Or a 'Don't have sex with someone who's had sex with someone who did anal.') Is that just simple human failing — like how America loved booze too much to maintain Prohibition?
"Gee", I would continue to think, "The gay people I know and love — I sure hope they don't engage in anal, any more than I would hope my nephew is doing drugs. I don't care that it's who they are — it's just plain dangerous!" You see how this is not necessarily a homophobic obsession with teh buttseks. It's just mulling over the things you read and hear, the things that are based on at-least-half-truth.
All that was before I learned about the dramatic difference protection and lube make. There doesn't need to be a "Say No to Anal" movement because there already is a "Use Condoms and Keep Getting Tested" movement. (Well, maybe there could be more pro-lube messages, I don't know. That would be a fun PSA to make!) If condoms didn't exist, these would all be very different questions with very different answers. As it is, my "just plain dangerous" thinking was fallacious.
I guess there's a mildly interesting thought problem here. Consider an alternate universe where "homosexual" really does equal an irrepressible desire specifically for unprotected anal sex, and things like condoms, oral sex, and true love never come into play (but the genetic/environmental predisposition to homosexuality remains). In that universe (not this one!) would it be appropriate to treat "gay" as something like an eating disorder, or worse — namely, as a bad habit or addiction from which people should be "turned"? My vague answer to this admittedly stupid question is a very uncertain yes.
Oh, and also, just like perfectlysafe, I felt that the blood-donation people needed some slack cut, given that they do incredible life-saving work. (Straights everywhere: Stop reading this and donate now! Oh wait, that would mean I would have to stop writing it. Never mind.) But I've started on the path to resolving the cognitive dissonance the other way.
For one thing, the way the policy is now, a man who has repeatedly tested HIV-negative is still barred if he had sex with one man once in his life ten years ago (and is honest about that in the questionnaire), whereas someone waking from a one-night stand would not be. Now, I personally don't ascribe that policy to bigotry but simple history from when epidemiologists knew next to nothing about "GRID".
On top of all that, I want to echo Knockgoats that I in no way believe perfectlysafe is being homophobic, and there is a tad bit of kneejerkery happening here (but kneejerkery is to be expected anywhere). When I felt like perfectlysafe did, I wasn't the least bit homophobic either, just misinformed.
To give him (I'm gonna go with male here, sorry) the ultimate benefit of the doubt, perfectlysafe might be considered a concern llort, so to speak — someone who wants us to refine our counter-arguments to the "health argument". Well, I know that's not his ultimate motive — his ultimate motive was simply to defend his earlier comments — but I can pretend, can't I?
(Oh, and so pronouns are clear, I, Lenoxus, am a man-dude-boy-XY-penis-having-person.)
No time out Fuckasaurous - show us gawd or shut up.
New trolls please!
Patricia, Fuckosaurus has repeatedly claimed to be an atheist. All he has been doing is making rationalizations for keeping keeping his previsions as a straight white man. That and drawing upon racists thinkers while claiming that slavery his bad. But it was also bad that the tyrannical Northerner took away the Confederates' property, er, humans held in bondage.
Okay, my own heteronormativity leaking into my writing: "whereas someone waking from a one-night stand would not be" should have specified a heterosexual one-night stand. Also, it was unprotected, and with someone the donor knows to be promiscuous. As I recall, the questionnaire would not filter you under those circumstances.
Oh, and "llort"? Troll backwards. Closest I could find to a fitting antonym for troll, although another one I found, but which didn't fit here, was "chum" (meaning someone who posts something bound to cause an orgy of agreement and goodwill).
Yes, we have seen his gawd, and it is him.
I get nervous about these screening questionnaires that ask about behavior rather than characteristic.
Do these blood banks not test for disease?
If you have HIV, hepatitis, sickle-cell anemia, thallasemia, or other conditions which affect the viability of the donated blood, it's reasonable to let you know that your blood can't be used.
If you have hemophilia, tachycardia, or some other reason why the act of donating would be dangerous to you, it's reasonable to bar you from donating.
Otherwise, just test the blood. I'm not comfortable trusting my health after a transfusion to the "honesty of donors", especially since some people have diseases without knowing so.
As I was reviewing the stanford experiment, a thousand memories rushed to my mind...
***the story of Frankosaurus***
I went to a very liberal arts college in one of our more socialist provinces. I started studying math, but then became very interested in literature. The English department, however, had more than its share of women and gay people who would go to great lengths to discredit the views I grew up with in my small town upbringing. I suppose from there I felt alienated and adrift, loving the subject material, but discarded socially by its guardians - the liberal elite. However, I was not quite ready to squandor my life away with the usual profession of the arts degree bearer -- barrista. So I went to law school. There, the opposite phenomenon. I felt myself ridiculed that I even once graced the halls of that socialist snake pit called the humanities, and I was forced to conform by the huge grade pressures to take a very negative view of the world, for one element I note to be present in most succesful students is contempt for others, especially the weak. And this is where I am today.
***
That is me in a nutshell. Now I wake up in the mornings, and think about what a wasted life I lead, continually searching for ways to respect myself. I am angry, and hurt, and a shell of the person I feel I could have been. But don't cry for me. In a way, I'm already dead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6u
Humor fail.
Janine,
Hm. Yeah, but it looks more like a cry for help, to me.
OTOH, see my #474. Nothing has changed.
I've seen this a lot, both as a student and subsequently as a practitioner in mathematics.
The bit at the end is a little overdone and cliche (I was thinking of that film Barney made in the simpsons), but when I see something as horrific as the stanford stuff, it just puts things into perspective. How much of my position is the result of principles I have arrived at, and how much of it is socialization. But since the impasses have come, and I have been unable to fumble my way into exposing critical weaknesses in the "liberal" camp, I suppose the mature thing to do is to let it lie. Or as the wise man said, "the best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging."
Reminds me of a whacking good read. Hermann Broch's "The Unknown Quantity". Though I wager I'm not the only one here who's read it.
There are a lot of us that have already experienced death. You don't get brownie points fuckasaurous.
Why didn't your god save my husband? Why did your god let my grandma die?
Because he has a plan? Well his plan sucks.
Fuckasauours - Your explaination is so lame my Bulldog is laughing. Idiot.
frankosaurus,
Your position ? You jump from one thing to another and come accross as confused and incoherent.
Hint : getting rid of all those delusions that cloud your thinking might help.