A disability implies a reduced standard of living. There is nothing implicit in homosexuality that will inevitably lead to a reduced standard of living, which is the difference between bulimia/anorexia/mental retardation/etc and homosexuality. You can say homosexuality is abnormal, but so is having red hair or green eyes. Abnormality ≠ Disability. A genius has an abnormal level of intelligence, but they are not disabled.
So based on your failure to understand homosexuality the ultimate conclusion is its a mental disability. Becauae how could a man not like p*ssy...like you just don't get it.
...lol...breh your small minded as fukk. You should have a clear understanding of what qualifies as disability before you go associating things to it..
"Operating properly" implies a designed purpose. Functionality is the crux here. You seem to be taking for granted that the teleological purpose of an individual's life is procreation, and I don't think that's true from an evolutionary or personal standpoint. Most gay people don't hate being attracted to members of their own sex, they hate the societal discrimination that comes along with it. It's not hard at all to imagine a homosexual person in a tolerant society having the same standard of living as a heterosexual person. So I guess I'm just not seeing what ability homosexuality is disabling. What is it a hurdle to? Having a child? That's a disability like being too short to play in the NBA is a disability. Not everyone wants to play in the NBA, and not everyone wants to create a child. Those are both subjective preferences.
You still seem to be operating under the assumption that the goal of life is to have children. I don't think that's any sort of basis for a reasonable moral or practical teleology. According to you, if I discover the cure for cancer but don't have kids, my life's purpose has been unfulfilled. Meanwhile some scumbag with multiple baby mamas has fulfilled his life's purpose? Just because we can doesn't mean we should or have to. Merely having reproductive capability doesn't infer our entire life's purpose.
Imagine two competing tribes. One has 10% of it's members being homosexual, and the other is 100% heterosexual. Seeing as children are free riders, the first tribe will have more members who are contributing to the building and maintenance of the society without draining resources, while the second tribe will have an abundance of members who take without giving. Homosexuals tend to skew the population age upwards, which is beneficial for both tempering exponential population growth and providing services without draining resources. It's the same reason immortality would be the end of the species. Homosexuality (as long as it is not the dominant sexual orientation) is a population control mechanism, and is a move towards stabilization of civilizational growth. The game of evolution is not won by who has the most numbers, it's won by who is growing smartest and most efficiently. It's like a single parent household with a bunch of kids vs a dual parent household with only a couple of kids.
I'm not trying to change the argument, i'm merely pointing out that the only way in which being homosexual would produce harm to the individual is when society actively discriminates against them. That's the difference between homosexuality and real disabilities. The former is only problematic due to external/societal circumstances, whereas the latter is inherently problematic. A blind person can't see regardless of society's beliefs.
No, I agree that human beings are designed to procreate. Homosexuals can and have procreated with members of the opposite gender. It's not like they're born without genitalia. My point is that you cannot infer existential purpose from our biological design. The dividing line between your life being a failure or a success (assuming there even is such a line) is most definitely not having a child. It's almost as absurd as saying whoever has taken the most pisses and shyts is the most successful because our bodies are designed to do so.
Again, you're assuming that every homosexual secretly wants to have children through heterosexual procreation, which seems to be completely unfounded. Whereas the agoraphobic faces psychological stress because his desire is in conflict with his instinct, there is no such inherent conflict with the homosexual.
ok, I'm not actually too familiar with body dysmorphia, but I was under the assumption that it's a mental disorder in which the afflicted has a mental image of their body that does not line up with the actual image of their body, and they become obsessed with altering it. Whether or not the body is actually healthy, the distorted mental image persists, which is where the disorder is located. Regardless, the human body is fully capable of engaging in homosexual physical love/intercourse. There's no inherent conflict. Just because the body can do A as well as B doesn't mean not doing A is a problem.
It's not a strawman, it's the very basis of categorizing what is a disorder and what isn't. It's the reason why I brought up red hair and green eyes, which although abnormal is not a disorder because it present no real hurdle to a healthy life, while body dysmorphia does. Again, i'm not too familiar with body dysmorphia, but according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the key symptom of body dysmorphia is being obsessed with perceived flaws in your appearance. It can manifest in many ways, but some of the most common are excessive dieting, excessive working out or anxiety. To be honest, i'm not even sure why you brought body dysmorphia up in this discussion. The body dysmorphic are obsessively attempting to alter their state, which is what causes anxiety. Homosexuals are not obsessively attempting to become heterosexual. I don't see the connection to between the two at all.
Does Tim Cook want to have children? Am I disabled because I cannot dunk, even though I have no desire to? If we're to use the term disability with any sort of usefulness, it should denote an inherent conflict or harm caused by the condition. If the only thing that homosexuality is restricting Tim Cook from doing is producing a child through heterosexual sex, which he has no desire to do, in what way is he disabled? I'm completely fine not being able to dunk, in what way am I being disabled? It seems like you're assuming everyone wants the same thing, which is simply not true. The majority of heterosexual people I know don't want as many kids as possible, and many of them don't even want any kids. The reproductive desire is to some degree socially programmed. Obviously no one needs to be told to fukk, but actual reproduction is a separate, but connected, issue. It's why there's a difference between the desire to fukk with birth control and the desire to fukk without birth control.
Ray Charles was disabled because he could not see. If he could see, he wouldn't have to take the extra steps he took to function in both his professional and personal life. I don't see how Tim Cook's life would be any different if he were heterosexual, except in terms of the external factor of social acceptance. He's doesn't have to use different bathroom stalls as heterosexuals, he can walk, drive, eat, drink, get paid, do his groceries, etc the same as heterosexuals. In fact, no one would even know he was homosexual unless they met his partner. It would be very difficult to meet Ray Charles and not know he's blind. The argument for homosexuality not being a mental disorder isn't predicated on the professional success of homosexuals, but rather on the absence of mental or physical hurdles or anguish that would distinguish them from non-homosexuals.
You're committing one of the cardinal sins of evolutionary studies; conflating the personal with the species-wide. If the species consisted of one animal, then yes, being homosexual would be the end of the species. But seeing as we're dealing with scale when we talk about evolution, homosexuality being present in the minimal rates that we see in humans and other species obviously doesn't destroy survival rates. Humans are still here and homosexuality has been present since the dawn of recorded time.
Of course children are free riders. It takes effort and resources to raise them, and they don't contribute equal, if any, productivity. They slow mobility and distract capable members of society from doing growth oriented tasks while requiring feeding, sheltering, increased protection from harm, etc. Human infants are a mix of precocial and altricial. You're exactly right when you classify them as an investment. Investments don't pay dividends immediately, only once they mature. Same with children. I know your argument is that homosexuality is a disability, which is why I'm providing examples of how it is in fact not necessarily a disability in both evolutionary and personal sense.
It's difficult but not impossible, because sexuality isn't a switch but rather a spectrum. If heterosexuality was heavily condemned by society and even punishable by death, you would see rates of homosexual activity and posturing increase. Just like gay people lived in the closet, so too would straight people. Humans are social creates, and societal influence is an incredibly powerful force. I'm not sure what medical procedure you're talking about. Homosexuals throughout history haven't undergone any sort of medical procedure to become heterosexual. If you're talking about those "pray the gay away" camps, that's a recent invention of the modern Christian ideology of the west. It's a phenomenon of the 20th century.
When you say things like "The more apt comparison of homosexuality and the inability to have children, but wanting to" and "They have the physical ability to do so, something mentally is wrong with them and they can not complete the action without suffering from psychological stress." are you not talking about the desire to create children through heterosexual intercourse? Because that's surely the dividing line between a heterosexual and a homosexual in this discussion, is it not? If the agoraphobic doesn't have a desire to go outside (unrelated to his fear of going outside), then he will experience no actual phobia. The phobia is only present when confronted with the object of fear; in this case, the public. The only way your analogy makes sense is if you believe that heterosexual intercourse and reproduction is akin to the outdoors. I'm saying that it is eminently possible to live a healthy and productive life without the former, but not without the latter. This is the basis for categorizing agoraphobia as a mental disorder, and homosexuality as simply a sexual orientation.
lol, what would make me even happier is if you admit that body dysmorphia is not an appropriate comparison to homosexuality and your use of it in this discussion is based on a flawed understanding of mental illness
Homosexuality is also quite rare and infrequent. But again, your mistake is conflating a biological design with an existential purpose. I think we'd all get a lot further is you simply cop to the fact you hold the erroneous belief that the the purpose of an individual's life can and should be derived by their bodily constraints. Your whole argument hinges on heterosexual intercourse and reproduction being something without which you suffer a diminished standard of life. You privilege the body over the mind. That's fine as a personal belief, but you must stop acting as if your opinion is based on any sort of objective or scientific consensus. There's a reason the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DMS over 40 years ago. It simply doesn't match up with any of the standards for mental illness.
My argument is simple and consistent. It's the same argument used by the experts who study mental illness for a living. Homosexuals display no inherent discomfort, anxiety or lack of essential functionality due to their sexual orientation. Having the inclination to produce a child through heterosexual intercourse is not necessary to fulfil your individual life's purpose in any meaningful system of evolutionary science or ethical philosophy.
I brought Tim Cook up as an example of a prominent gay man who faces no discernible inherent hurdle or barrier to living a successful, productive life. It's an absurd leap to then think that any person who lives a successful, productive life must not have a disability. So i'll ask again, what inherent hurdle to living a successful, productive life has Tim Cook faced? I can point to the fact that Ray Charles got scammed due to his blindness so had to enact a system where he's paid in base level currency as an example of his disability. I can point to the fact that Stevie Wonder has to have a handler with him to physically guide him around as an example of his disability. I can point to the social toll Mozart's erratic mood swings and obsessive thoughts took on him as an example of his disability. I can point to the letters Beethoven wrote outlining the social and professional problems he suffered as caused by his deafness. All of these people would rather not have to deal with these circumstances. What is Tim Cook's equivalent? Not wanting to fukk women? Not even an inability to, but a lack of desire. Do you think gay people are just sitting there pining to be heterosexuals, only to be thwarted by their pesky sexual orientation? Let me ask you this: Do you believe that the more children you produce through heterosexual intercourse, the more successful your life is? Is this a sliding scale thing or is it just producing one child is enough to enter the successful club? If I could have had 10 children but only had 6, am I 6/10th of a success?
You're committing one of the cardinal sins of evolutionary studies; conflating the personal with the species-wide. If the species consisted of one animal, then yes, being homosexual would be the end of the species. But seeing as we're dealing with scale when we talk about evolution, homosexuality being present in the minimal rates that we see in humans and other species obviously doesn't destroy survival rates. Humans are still here and homosexuality has been present since the dawn of recorded time.
Of course children are free riders. It takes effort and resources to raise them, and they don't contribute equal, if any, productivity. They slow mobility and distract capable members of society from doing growth oriented tasks while requiring feeding, sheltering, increased protection from harm, etc. Human infants are a mix of precocial and altricial. You're exactly right when you classify them as an investment. Investments don't pay dividends immediately, only once they mature. Same with children. I know your argument is that homosexuality is a disability, which is why I'm providing examples of how it is in fact not necessarily a disability in both evolutionary and personal sense.
It's difficult but not impossible, because sexuality isn't a switch but rather a spectrum. If heterosexuality was heavily condemned by society and even punishable by death, you would see rates of homosexual activity and posturing increase. Just like gay people lived in the closet, so too would straight people. Humans are social creates, and societal influence is an incredibly powerful force. I'm not sure what medical procedure you're talking about. Homosexuals throughout history haven't undergone any sort of medical procedure to become heterosexual. If you're talking about those "pray the gay away" camps, that's a recent invention of the modern Christian ideology of the west. It's a phenomenon of the 20th century.
When you say things like "The more apt comparison of homosexuality and the inability to have children, but wanting to" and "They have the physical ability to do so, something mentally is wrong with them and they can not complete the action without suffering from psychological stress." are you not talking about the desire to create children through heterosexual intercourse? Because that's surely the dividing line between a heterosexual and a homosexual in this discussion, is it not? If the agoraphobic doesn't have a desire to go outside (unrelated to his fear of going outside), then he will experience no actual phobia. The phobia is only present when confronted with the object of fear; in this case, the public. The only way your analogy makes sense is if you believe that heterosexual intercourse and reproduction is akin to the outdoors. I'm saying that it is eminently possible to live a healthy and productive life without the former, but not without the latter. This is the basis for categorizing agoraphobia as a mental disorder, and homosexuality as simply a sexual orientation.
lol, what would make me even happier is if you admit that body dysmorphia is not an appropriate comparison to homosexuality and your use of it in this discussion is based on a flawed understanding of mental illness
Homosexuality is also quite rare and infrequent. But again, your mistake is conflating a biological design with an existential purpose. I think we'd all get a lot further is you simply cop to the fact you hold the erroneous belief that the the purpose of an individual's life can and should be derived by their bodily constraints. Your whole argument hinges on heterosexual intercourse and reproduction being something without which you suffer a diminished standard of life. You privilege the body over the mind. That's fine as a personal belief, but you must stop acting as if your opinion is based on any sort of objective or scientific consensus. There's a reason the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DMS over 40 years ago. It simply doesn't match up with any of the standards for mental illness.
My argument is simple and consistent. It's the same argument used by the experts who study mental illness for a living. Homosexuals display no inherent discomfort, anxiety or lack of essential functionality due to their sexual orientation. Having the inclination to produce a child through heterosexual intercourse is not necessary to fulfil your individual life's purpose in any meaningful system of evolutionary science or ethical philosophy.
I brought Tim Cook up as an example of a prominent gay man who faces no discernible inherent hurdle or barrier to living a successful, productive life. It's an absurd leap to then think that any person who lives a successful, productive life must not have a disability. So i'll ask again, what inherent hurdle to living a successful, productive life has Tim Cook faced? I can point to the fact that Ray Charles got scammed due to his blindness so had to enact a system where he's paid in base level currency as an example of his disability. I can point to the fact that Stevie Wonder has to have a handler with him to physically guide him around as an example of his disability. I can point to the social toll Mozart's erratic mood swings and obsessive thoughts took on him as an example of his disability. I can point to the letters Beethoven wrote outlining the social and professional problems he suffered as caused by his deafness. All of these people would rather not have to deal with these circumstances. What is Tim Cook's equivalent? Not wanting to fukk women? Not even an inability to, but a lack of desire. Do you think gay people are just sitting there pining to be heterosexuals, only to be thwarted by their pesky sexual orientation? Let me ask you this: Do you believe that the more children you produce through heterosexual intercourse, the more successful your life is? Is this a sliding scale thing or is it just producing one child is enough to enter the successful club? If I could have had 10 children but only had 6, am I 6/10th of a success?
lol the argument is not on the merits of reproduction, it's whether or not homosexuality is evolutionarily viable. There are EvoPsych theories that account for it. Simple as. Of course reproduction is necessary for propagation. No one is arguing that homosexuality is or could be the dominant mode of sexual orientation. I say you're conflating the individual and the species-wide because you don't seem to be able to differentiate between an individual homosexual not reproducing and a species that contains homosexuality reproducing.
Economic theory?? Are you talking about the term "free rider"? That's not solely an economic phenomenon...The point is that children use more resources than they contribute. Having certain members of the population not contribute children but still contribute all other forms of work makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. It makes the civilization more efficient. It's the same reason you can trace the particular evolution of human civilizations to the fact we don't have litters of kids.
No, of course I'm not arguing that sexual orientation is "purely" socially conditioned. That's why I highlighted posturing and activity. In my hypothetical, the heterosexual's sexual orientation wouldn't actually change, just as a gay man in the closet is still gay. As for your "purpose derives from bodily ability" argument, yes, the male body is designed to ejaculate sperm when orgasm is reached, and the female body is designed to be impregnated. My argument is that those are not the only things the male and female bodies are designed to do, and reducing something as all-encompassing as purpose or mental health to that sole function is absurd. Again, the human body is designed to shyt and piss, but we don't ascribe existential purpose to excretion.
The bolded is where your argument falls apart, and is why I said you seem to think all homosexuals secretly want to be heterosexual. You seem to think that the bolded applies to all homosexuals. That homosexuality in abstract is a mental illness because certain homosexuals who want to procreate through heterosexual intercourse are not inclined to. Firstly, if this is the sole cause of homosexual mental anguish, then that's a pretty weak illness. Most people, homo or hetero, don't think about creating children to the degree that an agoraphobic would have to encounter the outdoors, or someone with body dysmorphia is confronted by their own image. Secondly, what do you say of heterosexuals who have no desire to have children? Are they mentally ill too?
You in fact did not use body dysmorphia correctly when you attempted to compare it to homosexuality. The illness in the body dysmorphic is located in their obsession with a false bodily image, and anxiety at not being able to reconcile their body in actuality with their mental perception of their body. You seem to be convinced that the homosexual is obsessed with heterosexual procreation, and they face anguish from not being able to reconcile their sexual instinct with their desire for heterosexual procreation. That's the only possible argument I can see for that comparison, and it is of course absurd, so I should hope you disabuse yourself of that argument.
If you had simply said "The human body is designed to allow heterosexual procreation" there would be no discussion to be had. Where you erred was attempting to then infer purpose or mental illness from that benign statement. If you would like to now claim your argument was never about purpose or illness but rather stating an obvious biological fact, then I will grant you that favour.
Yes, usually when I have these discussion my opponent ends up pointing to politically motivated conspiracy theories when confronted by the weight of the scientific community's consensus. You will not find a modern, reputable psychiatric source that lists homosexuality as a mental illness. It's an archaic belief that has been discarded by the scientific community. The APA took it off the DSM because independent scientific studies couldn't support the claim. Look up Evelyn Hooker's blind studies, look up cross-cultural and cross-species research done on this issue, look up the decades of ineffectual attempts to "treat" the "disease". If you are now reaching to conspiracy theory to explain your point, I think that speaks to the weakness of your position.
ok so what exactly is your argument then? Do you consider homosexuality to be a mental illness/disorder or a physical disability? Is it like autism or is it like being sterile? If you're agreeing that a homosexual can live in comfort, independently, then please locate the disability. It's only a disability in the most abstract sense of the term, as in I'm disabled because i'm not tall enough to dunk, or I don't have a womb so I can't give birth, regardless of my desire to do so. That is, unless you believe that all homosexuals secretly desire to procreate heterosexually, and their sexual orientation is stopping them from doing so. Is that what you believe? If not, you're basically saying homosexuals are disabled because they don't want to do something, even though they're fully capable of doing so. No matter how much the blind man wants to see, he can't. No matter how much the autistic wants to have normal social functionality, he can't. What is the homosexual equivalent? They can, and have historically, engaged in heterosexual intercourse at will. They have procreated. No other "illness" or disability can be discarded at will so easily.
We both agree that disabled people can live fruitful, successful lives in spite of their disability. I'm asking you to locate the disability that is inherent in homosexuality. The only way your argument makes sense is if you believe that homosexuals are inherently disabled because they have a desire (heterosexual intercourse) that is being thwarted by an impulse (homosexual orientation), thereby leading to symptoms of a mental illness (anxiety, mental anguish, etc). I'm saying that homosexuals on average do not display any of those symptoms at a higher rate than their heterosexual counterparts, and this is backed up by blind studies done on this subject. So what basis is there for diagnosing a patient showing no signs of illness? It seems like you're working backwards from an assumption.
