Public opinion on whether or not people are "born gay" remains largely unchanged since 2001, Gallup reports:
Forty-two percent say being gay or lesbian is "due to factors such as upbringing and environment," while 40% believe it is "something a person is born with."
48 Comments
This type of post- which has little to do with marriage and more to do with your effort in continuing gay animus- is what will get you listed as a hate group like the evil lying devils at FRC.
What difference does it make if someone is born gay or becomes gay do to environment or experiences? It's still not a choice.
Citing a Gallup poll get you listed as a lying hate group?
Nice to know what you think of SPLC's standards!
I think Lady Gaga is the only one still promoting the discredited idea that anybody is "born that way".
Either way, it is still not a choice.
Give me a break, Eric. Even the American Psychological Association has backed off from the "born that way" claim. It is a notion based on faith, not fact.
Maggie, citing the poll in a a well written article on marriage would be one thing and would fit NOM's mission. Leaving the poll to speak for itself when it has nothing to do with marriage on your blogs which frequent anti-homosexuals as well as your focus on the pro marriage crew. It incites animus with the antigay crew and provides nothing to your base. Your intent is queationable.
I don't see why this poll incites antigay animus, or why it's hateful. Honestly, questioning anything HRC holds up as gospel truth gets a gag label of "hate'' from some quarters.
Nature or nurture, it is true that many people feel they didn't choose to whom they are attracted. But then a portion of people who once were attracted to the same sex seem to be able to switch that. And many women do report choosing to prefer relationships with other women after relationships with abusive males. Attraction does seem to have a fluid character with lots of people...
I guess what the poll shows is that trends in this area of how people perceive lifestyle choices and identity claims are changing again. It's interesting from that standpoint.
We don't publish articles, we publish mostly brief links to news we think of interest to those who care about marriage and care about the fight to protect marriage as one man and one woman. It's a news aggregator blog primarily.
What the stability of public opinion on this question means, is open to interpretation. But to claim it's okay for Gallup to publish it but it becomes hate if we do is intellectually and morally absurd.
Your standards for what others are permitted to say without engaging in hate appear to be rather restrictive.
Everyone has control over their behavior, no matter the desire or inclination. Natural marriage should not be compromised to appease the desires of a few...
I appreciate this post and this poll. Why would anyone be "incited" by facts? I'm certainly not.
Hint for Oifvet: If you see colored words on a website, use your mouse to hover your cursor over them. If your cursor changes from a funny ][ shape to an arrow, it's a link. If you click on a link, you will be taken to another page.
In this case, it will be the well-written article from Gallup that contains information about the effort to legalize SSM.
You might want to check for things like this before blasting blogs for 'leaving' the part they include in their post 'to speak for itself'. It'll keep you from looking silly.
Its misleading. If Maggies intent was to discuss marriage then She could have had that somehow reflected in the title of the article or the part of the article she chose to include on the page. I did click the link but that wasnt the point. Who is she trying to attract with what was posted? What would you expect to read when clicking through? That was the point. I enjoy reading her posts about marriage... But was apprehensive to click this because it was not about marriage.
Happy memorial day!
Eric: "Either way, it is still not a choice."
Except for when it is.
http://www.queerbychoice.com
It is interesting that NOM cherrypicked the Gallop survey to make it appear that support for sexual miniorities is not in the process of changing. It would appear that the only thing the highlighted survey shows is that the general public does not connect their acceptance of the LGBT community with what they believe the underlying "causes" of same-sex attraction / orientation.
Interesting graph. It is a great example of why more and more people lump NOM into fringe hate groups like westboro baptist, and FRC.
That poll tells me that equality is winning. Since I was born over a quarter of the population has changed their mind in favor of recognizing gay people are the same as them. That many people who previously didn't have an opinion on the matter are having a dialogue about it. That tells me people around them are coming out and sharing their stories.
There is a very strong correlation between believing sexuality is a choice, and using that as justification for why its OK to discriminate against gays. Even though it's a red herring argument, people are good at finding any excuse to justify discrimination if they tell themselves the person chose their circumstances.
Marty: that website doesn't prove a thing. 100% of gay people will attest to the fact that homosexuality is not a choice. What about those ex-gays that you site as proof that homosexuality is "just a behaviour?" Even they have to go through comprehensive "therapy" in order to "become straight." They did not choose to be gay. No one does.
One might CHOOSE to PARTICIPATE in homosexual activity, but this does not mean that they're actually gay.
Maggie: Great blog, this goes to the heart of the matter and I also checked out the link that Marty provided.
The homosexual agenda if it is to succeed depends upon getting enough people to believe the big lie that you were born that way. Those of us who have looked at the issue know that it is a choice. The former homosexuals, their insisting on going to public schools to recruit, and the fact that they have no credible scientific evidence to back up their claim proves it was a choice.
If they were born that way there would be no ex gays. Do you see any ex blacks or ex left handed people? If they were born that way there would be no need to go into the public schools and try to convert the kids. Are left handed people going into the public schools and indoctrinating the children?
The born that way is the big fraudulent hoax that they pull. They need it to get their agenda. I remember back in the 80's when the term sexual preference was used. They got no where, because society holds you responsible for the choices you make in your life. So out came the sexual orientation claim and denying it as a human conduct or behavior. This would allow them to deny all responsibility for their behavior.
Eric, if being gay has nothing to do with sexual desire towards one of the same gender, then what the heck does it *mean*?
There are lots of straight people that engage in same-sex sexual activities. That doesn't make them gay. If God programmed them with the instinctual drive to pair-bond with the same gender, that is what makes them gay. In other words, were gay because of who we love, not who we schtoop.
...except that all humans are designed with the ability to form non-sexual bonds with members of the same gender. So if you're talking about non-sexual bonds, then every human being in existence is gay.
When it comes to pair-bonding in particular, it is biologically impossible for two people of the same gender to form one, because the male pair-bonding hormone is not the same as the female one, and the two work together in ways that we are just beginning to uncover. So if it has merely to do with pair-bonding of the sort that creates a lifemate, nobody is capable of being gay.
There is no biological basis for homosexuals to form couples; what would it purpose be? To NOT procreate and to kill off the species? Homosexual couples are merely imitating heterosexual couples.
Oh, and Gothelittle, I didn't say that it had nothing to do with sexual desire - it does - but that's not all of it. Just as sexual attraction isn't the only factor in a straight relationship.
Eric, I chose to be straight. I could have chosen differently.
I assume I'm not alone.
If civil marriage rights were based solely on biological capacity to create children, then we would be forcing anyone who wants to marry to undergo DNA tests and making people marry only their best genetic matches. Since that would make the best chance of having a blond haired blue eyed...oh wait. Someone already tried to do that.
In a minority of cases, romantic love exists without any sexual desire. This can occur both in opposite-sex and in same-sex relationships.
Equal2You: "If civil marriage rights were based solely on biological capacity to create children, then we would be forcing anyone who wants to marry to undergo DNA tests and making people marry only their best genetic matches."
Heh, maybe in the totalitarian society of your dreams. But not here in America, where freedom loving people keep it real simple: one man one woman.
Neither physical disability (impotence), nor social inability (homosexuality) is any bar to marriage.
OK, but the comments are going off on tangents...
A poll is a Statistical survey (not a census), and it has a certain probability (a mathematical concept) of representing the overall population, in a City, or State or wherever it was carried out.
Look how they posed the question before 2008, and how they pose the question lately - it's not the same question. Yet, they continue to graph it all together.
How about: Do you believe that (natural) gays are gay? Or is are they that way due to some overpowering social trauma? (talk about biasing the question).
Also, it gives better numbers if the question groups so called gays and lesbians in the same question.
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But, if the question was: do you think people of homosexual behavior were born that way? That would bias the question in the opposite direction (orientation?)
Anyway, those polls are of public opinion. As you can see in the comments, even people of homosexual behavior have a hard time defining who is "gay" and who isn't. But they are ready to call you names, like "little girls" do, if you don't agree with their self- made "reality".
They managed to confuse people that marriage is just love, for a while. Now, people are starting to wake up and reason through everything - and they are losing ground, not gaining ground. Must feel awful... Someone told them they are being discriminated against, when actually not.
Prop 8 finding of fact #51
"51. Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."
Saying gay people should marry opposite sex partners is advocating for broken families, toxic social repercussions, unstable environments for children, and higher divorce rates.
How many gay people does God have to create?
The fact that gay people are God's children has NOTHING to do with whether they should marry.
Put simply, there is no societal benefit in gay marriage; they dont (and cant) and become one flesh, as do a man and a woman.
"Gothelittle, I didn't say that it had nothing to do with sexual desire - it does - but that's not all of it. Just as sexual attraction isn't the only factor in a straight relationship."
Precisely. But it is the determining factor for a pair-bonding relationship, as opposed to a simple (however deep) friendship.
We're human beings. We form bonds. We love other people. We love friends, parents, children, spouses. Each bond, however, is different.
The Pair Bond that constitutes marriage is formed through a series of interactions that not only mingle the bodies of the participants, but set off an entire chemical/hormone reaction that changes both bodies.
This reaction can only happen fully and healthily between one man and one woman who remain monogamous. That's simple scientific fact. It isn't religious ire, it isn't social engineering, it's simple scientific fact.
Thus, even if a man derives sexual pleasure in a relationship with another man (or a woman from another woman), it will not create the pair-bond. They may maintain a very close and deep friendship-bond in addition to the sexual relationship, but it is still not a pair-bond.
Sorry E2Y, I guess you're stuck between two unrealistic options.
Expecting God-fearing Americans to treat same-sex marriages and fatherless families as "equal" is what's unrealistic here.
As if separate were ever equal.
Gothelittle,
"But [sexual desire] is the determining factor for a pair-bonding relationship, as opposed to a simple (however deep) friendship."
If that were true, romantic asexuals wouldn't exist. They would be indistinguishable from aromantic asexuals, who only form friendships. Yet they do exist, and come in both heteroromantic and homoromantic varieties.
We all have our own sexual issues, and they can vary from partner to partner as well (because they come with their own baggage too!).
So what? Mother Nature says one man plus one woman creates a family. Either Marriage is about creating a family, or it isn't.
I support marriage as being between one man one woman only for life. That said, I don't think same-sex attraction is a choice. Engaging in same-sex sexual acts, however, is a choice.
"The Pair Bond that constitutes marriage is formed through a series of interactions that not only mingle the bodies of the participants, but set off an entire chemical/hormone reaction that changes both bodies."
"This reaction can only happen fully and healthily between one man and one woman who remain monogamous. That's simple scientific fact. It isn't religious ire, it isn't social engineering, it's simple
scientific fact."
You keep saying this. Please provide some documentation. I simply do not buy the notion that heterosexual bondings are inherently superior to homosexual bondings, unless, of course, one happens to be heterosexual.
Bruce -
Take a heterosexual couple, put tjhem on an island; take a homosexual couple and put them on a different island. One couple will procreate and advance the human race; one will die out. Inherently superior enough for ya?
Mike Brooks,
Better make sure that the woman in the heterosexual couple is pre-menopausal and that the man has no impotence and/or fertility issues. And are you ready to tell the 25 year old couple who can't have children their relationship has less value because of that? The 80-year old couple who decide to marry?
Bruce, it's EASY to find documentation. Start by reading through the Wiki articles on Oxytocin and Vasopressin. Then look up the reason for Lazar Greenfield's resignation. (Hint: He wrote an article telling the truth about the components in male ejaculate.) That'll give you the beginning foundation for understanding how pair-bonding chemicals differ by gender.
It does help if you have some education in biology and/or chemistry.
Golthelittle,
I'll use what you've provided to see what I can find; however, you really should provide direct links, particularly when you're proposing ideas which are clearly outside the mainstream of accepted science. I'm not a biologist or a chemist, but I do know that current wisdom across all the behavioral sciences is that homosexual behavior is part of the normal human spectrum. Even though I'm not a scientist, I'm sure I'll be able to grasp the underlying ideas, your condescension notwithstanding.
"current wisdom across all the behavioral sciences is that homosexual behavior is part of the normal human spectrum"
Who decided what the normal human spectrum is, the homosexual researchers? That's who decided it in the APA when homosexuality was removed from the DSM. Biology and chemistry are objective sciences, somewhat manipulable but not nearly to the extent that behavioral and social "sciences" are.
Gothelittle, did youi know that simple hugging can increase oxytocin?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,249138,00.html
Or that women experience an oxytocin boost after 10 minutes of playing with their dogs?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/made-each-other/201005/dog-good
Given that (especially the part about dogs), I'd be wary of basing public policy on bits of science found here and there.
Good point Mike. The human spectrum is wide indeed, and includes some glorious and some horrendous things at either end. The line that separates "normal" from "abnormal" is culturally fluid. Always has been, always will be.
"I'm not a biologist or a chemist, but I do know that current wisdom across all the behavioral sciences is that homosexual behavior is part of the normal human spectrum. "
Didn't say it wasn't. But that doesn't make it biologically equal to the pair-bonding that we refer to as 'marriage'.
gotothelittle, that is the single most ridiculous long winded argument I have ever read and it omits two things:
1. not all gays partake in anal sex.
2. some heterosexuals do partake in anal sex.
It seems that this tangent has been created to take attention away from the fact that this post misrepresents the Gallup poll.
1. So the gays who do not partake in anal sex do not receive oxytocin, the female bonding hormone, at all. However, the male gays who practice mutual masturbation are both filling themselves with a hormone that increases aggressiveness towards men. I wonder if there is a correlation between that and the high rate of abusive relationships? Anyways...
So if they're not having actual intercourse, we have even less reason to label their activity as "pair-bonding".
2. The woman who receives ejaculate into her vaginal tract OR her anal tract is being given the same pair-bonding hormones. She's getting the estrogen, progesterone, oxytocin, and seratonin either way it's put in. Why is that hard for you to understand?
3. This "tangent" was started by SSM supporters on this thread who argued first that the homosexual bonding was non-sexual, then that it was not only sexual, then that despite it being not entirely sexual, it still counted in the physical/scientific/medical world as "pair bonding". I got asked for a further explanation of why gay sex doesn't produce the same form of pair-bonding as heterosexual, and I have answered it.
If you don't like it, then get your OWN GUYS to stop changing the topic.
Gothelittle,
Pair-bonding is a behavioral concept. It's not defined by a single biochemical pattern to the exclusion of all others. You seem to want to create your own definition of pair-bonding, which is over-narrow compared to the one used by biologists. Your definition would even exclude a married male-female couple who only have protected sex, isn't that right?
The bottom line is that your claim directly contradicts the Wikipedia article on pair-bonding. If you want me to believe that Wikipedia is wrong and you're right (which is possible, but less likely than not), I suggest you contribute your wisdom to the article and make your argument to the other editors.