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Closed for winter sex. !@#$%^&* those lucky lifeguards; a holiday just for sex! I never thought Baywatch was that realistic.

TJ: The first question to ask is: If homosexuality is unnatural, does this make it wrong? Is putting your penis into another man any more unnatural than masturbating? To put it blunty, it'd be like masturbating into another person. Would it be natural if the man replaced the unlucky rectum with a vacuum cleaner hose? There is nothing unnatural about the act of homosexual sex if we can get over the "nastiness" that we're conditioned by our parents to feel for the purpose of fitting into society. If we reduce sex to it's natural purpose, to populate the human race, we can ask more logical questions on homosexuality. From a Darwinian perspective it stops one from reproducing, and if prevalent enough could wipe out the species. However, a homosexual man could still reproduce by donating sperm and a lesbian could reproduce by accepting it. This does happen. We know from the stories all over the media that the desire to reproduce is not taken away by homosexuality. So the darwinian argument cannot be used as there is no desire to stop reproducing. Finally there is the simple anthropic argument that homosexuality does exist, has existed for millenia, and is therefore natural. That might not be convincing to some, but why would we choose to !@#$%^&* members of our own sex if some of us didn't desire it... and those desires are natural aren't they? Sorry to take so long to get to your question. There is one problem with comparing human beings to animals and that is: we are an extreme case. We are the most intelligent animal known on Earth. Any inconsistencies in our behaviour cannot be labelled as unnatural without suitable boundary conditions (a more intelligent species). I tried to rationalise religion as being unnatural many years ago and came to the conclusion that it's futile for this reason. We share the same basic survival and reproductive instincts of any other species, but our methods of achieving those goals are unique and incomparable to any other species on Earth. The quest to rationalise our behaviour in terms of our basic animal instincts has to be the most interesting field of research imaginable. Aileron: If we'd had a renaissance in the first few centuries of Christianity then i would have conceded the point, but it took over a millenium, still required artists to hide their sexuality in all cases (you mentioned Da Vinci), and began a path of decline in Christian influence. I don't think of the scientists Copernicus and Galileo as being in a tolerant world, do you? Do you have a source that the Church knew Michelangelo was gay before they used his art? Da Vinci was acquitted in 1476 of homosexual acts with Jacopo Saltarelli. Michelangelo, while painting the Last Judgment on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, wrote sonnets to Tomm!@#$%^&*o Cavalieri. When the sonnets were found by the Buonarroti family, they were later translated to interpret Michelangelo's love for Tomm!@#$%^&*o to actually be for a female patron. Neither men were open about their homosexuality. If found guilty of homosexuality they would have been executed. So you glazed over 1500 years of the Church doing it? You mentioned the renaissance which wasn't even a good example since any proven homosexuality would have resulted in execution, but what about the Christian world before the renaissance? Or even after? If Nazi's were right about Darwinism they wouldn't have been wiped out. Nearly all of my examples show that homosexuality was accepted in those cultures, just read the quotes in my post, or read the pages if you have the time. Who said anything about homosexuality needing to be a virtue? I'm talking about it being legal and acceptable practice in those cultures. True, i never said it was right, i said it wasn't wrong (for these cultures), and i think that's the correct approach to have. Christianity decided it was wrong and punishable by death, something most cultures in the world didn't do. I don't know what you're getting at. I agree, and even said so in my last post. That doesn't change our biology from producing cross-overs in the male-female divide as a result of random fluctuations. Do you know what hermaproditism is? Cross-overs don't have to be physical like in hermaphroditism. To back up my case further, you know bisexuals exist right? Obviously there is no gay gene as it would have to be half-on and half-off in this case. There are undoubtedly many factors. So yes, no specific "gay" gene, it would have been wiped out. JDS: Sure, knock yourself out, just use a condom.

Tied to a bed, naked, with a white substance filling his mouth? Sounds like an average day for X'terr!

Well it depends on what ancient civilisations you're talking about. Since the age of Christianity began we've been killing homosexuals left right and centre. But if you go a little bit further back it wasn't always that way. Ancient Greece for instance.

just comedians?

Well to some extent i do believe free-will is taken away in cases of homosexuality. Even though i believe genes only increase one's susceptibility for being gay, childhood developmental situations can help solidify homosexuality by causing one to identify more with the opposite sex during the teenage years. These situations have to take place during childhood and could be brought about by any number of issues such as sexual abuse, over-submission to bullies, a skinny body (in the case of males), and many more unforseen cir!@#$%^&*stances. The individual on the receiving end would have no control over the "psychological deformation" that would be taking place. So i believe gayness isn't chosen, but i think these geneticists are going down the wrong path to proving it. Maybe this is where we disagree TJ.

Oh i get your point, i merely disagree with it. You're trying to tell me that there are 38% more democrats than republicans in the USA based on party registration. I'm making the obvious rebuttal that the last two elections (the only ones i remember) have been close fought affairs, which have actually ended in victory for the republicans. I'm then offering the argument that maybe (just maybe) democrats are more likely to register for their party than republicans. Any opinions on that? Or are you sticking with a left:right divide of 1.4:1.0 (72 milllion vs 52 million)? To the second point, I very much disagree with you that democrats who vote republican remain democrats. I'll put it simply, the leader of a political party represents his party and has been selected by his party to represent them. The leader is everything the party wants the people to see and he therefore identifies the party. A democrat who votes for this party-leader (lets call him a republican in this case) is either a fool for voting for someone based on no political reasoning, or they're actually a republican. The fool is doing nothing but helping the republican party by giving away his vote and therefore showing mild-republicanism, and the closet republican agrees with enough of the republican parties ideals (chosen for their representative) to actually be a republican! There's nothing else to it. Anyone who thinks there are 38% more democrats in the USA than republicans is trying too hard to defend a point. But sure, if that really is the case then there actually are more Christian democrats than Christian republicans......... Sure why not. Doesn't hurt my point because it works for members of both parties. Except the poll was about people who feel religion is an important factor in electing a candidate, and therefore that sets the scale for religiousness. A sound logical deduction if i agreed with your previous comment.

I don't think we'll ever find a gay gene. I think we'll find a gene or a number of genes that increase the chances of being gay (much harder to search for) by being related to certain things like heightened emotions and other female characteristics. Then certain developmental situations during childhood would put the final nail in the coffin, probably during the iden!@#$%^&*y crisis all people go through in their teens when we attempt to explain ourselves based on our attributes. This teen-iden!@#$%^&*y phase solidifies any grey-areas and a grey-sexuality area could materialise into homosexuality.

Ask him why his name is on the sysop.txt and try to confirm any of the reports. Maybe looking at logs would help in that confirmation.

Of course they are accurate, but that isn't the point is it. I take it your short reply means you understand what i'm talking about. What? You were using party-affiliation as a reason to say more Christians are democrats! The "best candidate" is always affiliated with a political party! If i were American and voted for Ron Paul then i would call myself a Republican, because based on his nomination Republicanism would stand for something different.

TJ: I agree, these relationships don't always go two ways. In this case they do. It's not a trick, since from the start i never claimed totality. The survey i quoted said 68% of republicans are influenced by religious belief; that's 2/3 or "most". I never said otherwise, so please don't start accusing me of "word-play" like you did with Astro. I don't know about 'real' Christians (evangelical), my survey gives some data and i'm basing my claims of what that data means, rather than speculating on what it could mean. Evangelicals would be included and so would less extreme Christians, so i'm referring to Christians as a group. NBV: We could mess around all day talking about grey-areas, but i personally think it's very sneaky, deceptive and possibly ignorant to say there are 38% more democrats in the USA than republicans, based solely on party registration, don't you? Especially seeing as it conveniently makes your point for you. Democrats may be more inclined to register for their party than republicans. Based on who won the last two elections i'd suggest you look at this point with an open mind, since those numbers definately do not count for the whole voting population. Calling me an extremist because i recognise the best way to judge the right/left divide of the population to be a democratic vote... is a tad ironic. It would make me an extremist if i didn't recognise the grey areas in between, but the people in those grey areas have to vote one way or the other and that helps to identify them as slightly right or slightly left. There aren't two ways to live, but there are two ways to vote (usually). This applies to independents aswell, who usually end up voting for either democrat or republican, identifying which side of the political spectrum they identfiy with most.

You must be in the UK aswell! At my uni they do a "Dance" degree. Not only are these sorts of degrees useless for getting any kind of respectable job, but they're useless for the areas the degrees are tailored for. With TV studies or media studies you'd come out and be competing with 100 other schmucks for one job as a secretary/!@#$%^&*istant for someone who's already made it. As for dance, degrees mean nothing, experience means everything. They even do "counselling" courses to get people qualified as counsellors, and when they come out after spending thousands of pounds and a couple of years of their lives, the only jobs are taken already by the people teaching the !@#$%^&*ed course! In a few years you'll probably be able to do a degree in Magic Tricks. I personally have just finished a 4 year undergrad+masters degree in Physics with a year in research at ORNL in Tennessee. Now i'm doing a PhD in Nuclear Physics, so i can certainly relate to the "4 more years!!" comment, my friends are so jealous!

Yes NBV, it's a perfectly good analogy that isn't relevent in this case. In this case an analogy would be something like "Most cars have steering wheels, and most steering wheels are in cars" even though a smaller percentage of cars don't have steering wheels , and some steering wheels would have been 'dismembered' from cars. So yea, if fewer Christians were republicans than democrats then we couldn't stereotype Christians as being republicans, but this isn't the case (see rest of post). You don't seem to understand. If you take a political party with 100 million members - 40% of which are Christian, and compare this to a party of 50 million members - 100% of which are Christian, then the second party is the Christian party because the Christians hold all the power in this party. On a slightly less exagerated (but still relevent) scale, the second party is the republicans. Secondly, on my point that "most Christians are republican" (which i think is what you're contesting), i have a few bones to pick with you: This is surely rubbish, since the republicans won the election and therefore probably have more supporters and more "voters". In which case the divide that i'm proposing would be even greater. If there are 38% more democrats in the USA, then they would never lose an election. If some of these democrats are "less democratic than others" and happened to vote republican, then that makes them republican. The only gauge is which way people vote.

TJ: No i'm not crazy... Your analogy isn't sound because you've gone and changed the majority of Republicans to none-Christians. You can't just change the facts to make the point you want to make. My source shows that a majority of Christians are Republican, and a majority of Republicans are Christian. It does work both ways. Making up some analogy, where one of those statements is not the case, makes it a really poor analogy! NBV: The survey is about people who allow religion to influence their political choices. Inevitably some Christians will not allow religion to be a factor in their decision making process. Of those who do allow religion to be part of their decision making process 14% (67/58) more of them are republicans. Thus it proves my point that Christians are swayed more towards Republicanism. You are right to point out that not all Christians are accounted for in this survey. I guess i should have stated the !@#$%^&*umption that when you do a survey of a majority of Christians, you tend to get a fairly good representation of the whole group.

"In God we trust. We, as Americans, have the resolve to prevail in this conflict of wills. Our freedom will not be threatened in this way again. We shall fight them on their ground and not ours. Nazis were bad. We fight for liberty and freedom. These folks are evil men who live in evil countries run by evil dictators. Yet we pray, in God's time, that we will prevail" Sound like GWB? Well almost. It's an example of the sorts of things the President says in his speeches. America/Freedom/Liberty/God/Prevail/Evil/Terrorist etc etc etc. Patriots and Christians, they lap it up. I don't see your point, it works both ways or not at all, since most of America (~%) is Christian. 9% in a country where the republican/democrat divide is pretty even represents a massive proportion of Christians.

Statistically Christians are much more likely to be republicans, and atheists as democrats. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070...Republicans.htm I've seen countless other polls that show an even bigger difference between the two parties. As a result the republican party can use the God word alot more to get unquestionable support from their Jesus-club. Incidently, the Republican party also appeals more to patriots, so all they need do is say "America" and "freedom" every other sentence and they get big support that way too. In your last four posts you haven't made a single arguable point.

I agree. Although i think right-wing is quite clearly to blame for America's current problems.

NBV, that only shows that the liberals are actually more conservative than they appear to everyone, and not the other way round. This is because it's still conservative/republican ideals that are doing the damage. They just happen to get enough support from bought-out democrats. So yes, both parties are as bad as eachother, but liberalism isn't the problem.

There are plenty of Christian preachers who teach people to hate gays. Yet i'm guessing you're going to retreat into one division of Christianity where there are maybe fewer extremists than in other divisions. Who did you say was playing the word games? And Astro specifically said that hating the gay lifestyle is something that directly leads to hating gays, in fact i'll go further and say it's the same thing. So no, Astro isn't playing word-games, and once again you are. And from your response to my earlier post, the answer is no, i didn't mean a ban on gay marriage. I was proposing a hypothetical situation where a Christian government is in control of the US and bans homosexuality altogether. They would be locked up for being gay. If that happened, would you support the government?

But how do you know that? I'll elaborate, in the Bible there are a number of very sexist statements against women, i'm sure you've read a few yourself. One doesn't have to conclude that God is sexist, rather we should conclude that the writers of the Bible were sexist and put their own slant on the stories. This is typical of that period in history when women were seen as commodities to be traded. If the Bible was written today it probably wouldn't have such obvious flaws. This doesn't mean the Bible isn't true, it means one has to understand that the Bible writers were human, and being human they were subject the cultural standards of their time. Now, don't you think a bit of anti-gay got into the Bible through the same reasons? The question of hate is: Would you sit idley by if a Christian government decided to make being gay illegal? I think that's what defines if you hate someone or not; would you see their rights as a human being taken away. You could spend your whole life believing that God gave us morals, which are used for doing good in his honor. Wouldn't you then fail to understand the reasons for those morals? Wouldn't you also fail to use the feeling of empathy to convince yourself to do good things? There would be no need because you'd be serving God who gave you a rule book to follow with no explanations and no appeal to human nature. I will simply tell my kids that nothing is certain and anything is possible. If they listen they won't become Christians, but i'm not indoctrinating them with anything.

Earlier someone told us: I then read Astro's post which said: And i thought, being against gay marriage is exactly why Christianity is not about "love, love and more love". Gays love eachother and that love is no less significant than the love felt between a man and a woman. Christianity is about loving the few and hating the many. So if you're gay, or have an abortion, or support either of these things, or are a member of another religion, or are an atheist or even a critical agnostic, then prepare to be hated on by hypocrites preaching love like it's the be all and end all when it clearly isn't.

Honoring God is a flimsy reason to be good because your belief in God is based on faith. If/when your faith wavers will your incentive to be a good person waver too? I don't like living alongside ticking time-bombs... What of empathy? Do you think that a supernatural reason for being good hinders the natural development of empathy? For example, you don't try and relate to someone elses situation because you immediately feel a duty towards God and act on that duty alone.

yea it's over a month old, but this one of me smurfing isn't. You need about 140 kills in a row to get this bounty:

woo yea, bring it back cos dsb's getting too easy...