Is being gay a choice?

[pErvinalia]

GAY LOVE!

[Cunt]

If a member of the forum follows me from thread to thread, is it harassment? Love? Stalking?

In my case it's love

You look gay in that emoticon, devogue.

Steamily, sweatily gay.

Excuse me. I'll be right back.

[Cunt]

aahhhhh.


Damn I'm good.

[Seth]

"It's none of your business whom I fuck with, or how, or when" is a much stronger and more persuasive argument than "I need government protection because I can't help being gay."

I think this places it in clearer terms. I have always been in favour of gay rights, except for the 'g' word. Any rights invented and offered to anyone should be gender-neutral, race-blind and not mention what kind of humans deserve those human rights.

Thing is, here in the US, rights are blind and apply to all, equally. One has an absolute, natural, unalienable right to be "gay", which is to say physically sexually attracted to members of the same sex. Such attraction can never be prohibited or infringed. That right exists without being "invented" or "offered," it exists as a function of the individual's existence as a human being and cannot be denied or infringed upon because, as I've said before, "rights" are merely freedoms of action that can be defended against intrusion by others. Thus "being gay," which is to say opposite-sex attraction is a freedom of action (being attracted to another) that can be defended against intrusion by others (no one can prevent you from being attracted to another and you may defend your attraction to another against such intrusions). The gender of the respective parties is completely irrelevant to the assertion of the natural human right to be sexually attracted to another person. In fact, neither does the age of the respective parties. This is why NAMBLA can exist and its members not be criminalized. A pedophile's attraction to children may well be just as genetically based as homosexuality is (without suggesting in any way any equivalence), and therefore it is one's right to be a pedophile, which is to say it's a right to be attracted to young children, just as one has a right to believe in God, but not necessarily a right to act on that belief in particular ways.

What CAN be proscribed by society and law is if and how one acts upon that attraction/belief.

Thus, society can clearly proscribe acting on a sexual attraction on the part of an adult to a minor child. Likewise, legally speaking, society can proscribe acting on a sexual attraction between two people of the same sex or engaging in specific sexual acts in gratification of any sexual attraction by anyone. This was the law for a long time and the power of society to enact laws proscribing sexually-driven conduct has been upheld as a valid exercise of the police power of the state many, many times and is settled law at this point.

What changed recently was a finding by the Supreme Court that in addition to the liberty interest (right) to sexual attraction there exists a limited but regulable liberty interest in personal privacy with respect to acting upon those feelings. That liberty interest in privacy in engaging in particular actions associated with sexual attraction is NOT, however, a fundamental right that is immune from societal regulation.

The test, however, as expressed by the SCOTUS for whether such a regulation is constitutionally permissible is no longer a "reasonable basis" test, it is the much higher and more stringent "strict scrutiny" test that requires that the government be able to show that a) a compelling need for the government to impinge on that privacy interest exists; and b) that the regulation comprises the minimum necessary degree of intrusion on that interest consistent with achieving the legitimate governmental interest; and c) that the regulation in action actually achieves the legitimate government purpose in enacting and enforcing it.

Thus, the courts have ruled that it is constitutional to prohibit pedophiles from acting upon their desires with minor children (but not, one might note, with legal adults who look and/or act like minor children...it is not the fantasy that is proscribed, only the actual act with a minor child), but at the same time the courts have stated a protected privacy interest in the intimacies of the bedroom and what goes on there between consenting adults which renders all laws that intrude on such actions unconstitutional.

And that is the important point that gays need to focus upon: that their interests in the privacy of sexual activities is exactly the same as the privacy interests of anyone else in such activities. There is absolutely no legal or jurisprudential difference involved, so the argument should be "if heterosexual couples can have sex legally, then so can homosexual couples because all have an equal right (Fourth Amendment equal justice concepts) irrespective of their genders or preferences. It's not because they are gay, that their rights are protected, it is constitutionally irrelevant to whom they are attracted or with whom they choose to engage in sexual activity because all persons enjoy that right of intimate privacy to the same degree as every person does. No distinction can be made between heterosexuals and homosexuals and in my opinion it is legally impermissible for the gender preference to even be presented in court should someone claim a violation of the constitutional right to sexual intimacy privacy. The very assertion in a complaint that the activity involved that is supposedly proscribed by law that it's "homosexual" activity should be cause for instant dismissal of the charges because the only question that can legitimately come before the court is "do the parties involved have a legal right to intimate privacy in their sexual activities?" If the answer is yes, then the case cannot proceed on the argument that the individuals are same-sex. If the answer is no, as in a pedophilic relationship, then the privacy interest does not trump the proscription against molesting minor children.

[Tyrannical]

In some cases it is a choice / cultural. In most cases it's a birth defect probably caused by hormonal issues during pregnancy. Probably even detectable / curable in the future, and may one day even be a standard prenatal test.

[devogue]

In some cases it is a choice / cultural. In most cases it's a birth defect probably caused by hormonal issues during pregnancy.

Mum eating too much pink candy floss?

[Seth]

When people talk about rights for gays, they aren't talking about rights for gays that other people don't already have. They are talking about equalising rights.

"Equalizing" smacks of a program to provide equality of outcomes rather than simply the required Fourth Amendment equal protection under the law. Such misapplication of the concepts involved include statutory preferential treatment of homosexuals over heterosexuals, something that is NOT permitted under the Fourth Amendment. The law cannot provide benefits to homosexuals that do not likewise accrue to everyone else merely because homosexuals in the past were regulated differently than heterosexuals. The law must remain strictly neutral in applying sanctions to all persons equally without regard for their class status.

If by "equalizing" you mean "applying the laws regulating private sexual activities equally and without reference to the genders of the individuals involved," then yes, that's what it's about.

[pErvinalia]

In some cases it is a choice / cultural. In most cases it's a birth defect probably caused by hormonal issues during pregnancy. Probably even detectable / curable in the future, and may one day even be a standard prenatal test.

Why call it a defect? In a fair and equal society it wouldn't hinder anyone. It would be like calling red hair a defect.

[Seth]

In some cases it is a choice / cultural. In most cases it's a birth defect probably caused by hormonal issues during pregnancy. Probably even detectable / curable in the future, and may one day even be a standard prenatal test.

Could be. Then again it might not be a "defect" at all but rather an evolutionary offshoot like blue eyes or black skin, in which case it's up to evolution to determine which branch on the genetic tree is the successful one, not us.

[Cunt]

I've argued that fighting for 'gay marriage' was a shit idea. I would prefer they had made an effort to allow marriage between any people who wanted it, regardless of who or how they were fucking.

I wish some troll would troll those laws...

[Seth]

In some cases it is a choice / cultural. In most cases it's a birth defect probably caused by hormonal issues during pregnancy. Probably even detectable / curable in the future, and may one day even be a standard prenatal test.

Why call it a defect? In a fair and equal society it wouldn't hinder anyone. It would be like calling red hair a defect.

It might be a defect if by "defect" one means a damaged gene set that is responsible for the characteristic. That's something that we can actually look at now. We can examine DNA and look for either environmental or genetic markers that indicate damage to the proteins. But on the other hand who's to say that genetic differences, even those caused by environmental factors or, for example, gamma rays, are "damage" and are not merely part of the normal process of genetic drift and change over evolutionary periods.

Then again, what appears to one person as "damage" might appear to another as "enhancement," which brings up interesting moral and ethical questions with respect to genetic engineering and embryonic gene modification.

[pErvinalia]

Well given that heterosexual marriage is legal, people arguing for gay marriage ARE arguing for equal marriage.

A point I've already made to you.

[pErvinalia]

...

[Seth]

I've argued that fighting for 'gay marriage' was a shit idea. I would prefer they had made an effort to allow marriage between any people who wanted it, regardless of who or how they were fucking.

I wish some troll would troll those laws...

Well, I've long suggested that the whole "marriage" thing is an illegitimate exercise of governmental power in the first place. "Marriage" is an inherently spiritual/religious rite, which in the US anyway places it completely OUTSIDE the purview of government regulation, and should.

Government has no business or constitutional authority to regulate "marriage" at all because to do so is to violate the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion.

What government does have the power to regulate are the civil aspects of contractual civil unions, and IMHO it's a quite limited authority even then.

The public policy aspects of close interpersonal relationships exist, particularly when it comes to tax matters and children, but again IMHO such relationships are, and should be fundamentally issues of ordinary contract law. If you want to live together and be bound by mutual obligations in that relationship, then you need to write up a contract specifying the terms that constitute a meeting of the minds. The only involvement of the state should be as it relates to joint tax obligations, child custody and dissolution of the relationship's legal obligations, and its role should be primarily that of arbitrating the contract and enforcing the public policy conditions on such contracts as they apply to taxes, children and dissolution.

Anything remotely related to "marriage" is, and should be legally defined as an inherently religious rite that is strictly between the participants and their religious community, if any, and the state should have absolutely nothing to do with that joining beyond recording the contract, the enforcement of civil standards of conduct in personal relationships (like you can't cut off your spouse's nose for disobeying you, even if she agrees to it in the civil contract because that's an unconscionable provision) and when acting in loco parentis and as guardian ad litem for minor children caught up in some sort of relationship dispute.

Such a policy would dispense with all of the issues and conflicts we now face over "gay marriage" and every other kind of marriage.

You want to get married in a Catholic church, then go be a Catholic and find a priest who will do the honors, but understand that the religious ritual involved confers no secular civil-law rights, duties nor obligations on either party. Only a duly-registered contract of civil partnership can do so.

[Cunt]

I agree, which is why I thought it shouldn't be about gay marriage, but about forbidding government sniffing around who is fucking whom. If an aging brother and sister want to marry, for tax/support reasons, I think they should be able to. Hell, I don't even care if they want to double-dutch-rudder each other.