Sexual Preference vs. Religious Preference

[Raven]

I have listened to the civil rights arguments regarding gay marriage. I happen to agree that there is no difference between forbidding black/white couples to marry and forbidding gays to marry. The major counter argument has been that the gay lifestyle is a chosen one. This is a debate that will go on and on...who knows (and who cares) whether a gay life is pre-ordained or chosen. A spokesman for the gay rights movement in Boston was up against former Mayor Ray Flynn (more of an idiot than Bush!) today and he made the point that constitutional protections for people practicing their chosen religions are no different from protections for people practicing their chosen lifestyles. I thought that it was the best argument yet for gay marriage.

I maybe should have posted this in GD but I thought that in the Lounge we might have a civil discussion about this. And yes, we do have working brains in the Lounge, don't we!

I'd love to know what people think about this argument. :-)

[KCDem]

1. well, I think liberals would think this to be a good argument

Conservatives, especially religious folk, would say that there's no comparison between the need (and, for them, it is a need) to praise Jay-zus and the choice to have sex with someone of the same gender.

I like the spokesman's thoughts on it, though. I wonder what sort of reception it'll generate? Pls. keep us updated.

[BR_Parkway]

2. And if my religion is OK with gay marriage

isn't restricting it a form of religious discrimination?

[Az]

3. Useless

You choose to be gay just as much as you choose what foods you like. Sorry but its in the wiring. The hypothalamus seems to be at the core of it but you no more get to choose what turns you on than you get to decide what you like to eat. Its a discovery process. You learn what turns you on and you elaborate on it.

Thus trying to argue the choice issue simply means you are trying to save the strawman they built. Its not a valid argument to begin with so leave it alone.

[Raven]

7. This is not a strawman.

When you couch this in medical terms you run the risk of ending up with some folks thinking that being gay is a disability. If you take the position that being gay is what it is...a choice or a predetermined situation then you don't stain being gay with some medical abnormality. I, personally, don't care how people are gay...if they are then they should have the protections that I have. If we're going to talk about wiring or the hypothalumus, then maybe gays should be protected under the ADA. Not a good result. Tell me what wrong with my thinking on this.

[cprise]

17. Ridiculous. Blacks aren't protected under ADA

...because of a physical difference. Why should gays?

A strawman if I ever saw one.

[Az]

21. Normal

A difference in the brain is considered a disability only if it renders the individual incapable of functioning in society or is a danger to society. Homosexuality does neither of these. It is a difference. But a difference is not necissarily a disability.

To try to argue the choice issue concedes the argument in the beginning. It means you have given them the ground and are pleading for acceptance instead of demanding acceptance. It is like saying "This is who I want to be" instead of saying "This is who I am!"

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

8. funny, the foods I like have changed over time quite a bit

...and the hypothalamus thing was *one* study, as far as I know has not been repeated. I don't think there is *any* biological basis at all - it's a cultural thing, as evidenced by the behaviors of people throughout history.

[Az]

13. Taste changes over time

for a very physical measurable reason. Your taste buds are dying. As they die off the balance of preference changes with them. Again you have no choice in the matter. If something tastes bad to you it tastes bad. This is how we are wired.

[cprise]

22. And I like blue eyes now where I used to prefer brown

That doesn't mean I'll ever want to sleep with a blue-eyed woman.

I'm sorry, but heterosexuality is simply not so fragile as to be explained by cultural influences. If that were the case, there would be no homosexual animals (yet most species have them), or all animals would be bisexual.

I know the difference between taste and preference, and basic sexual attraction.

Human culture is far more about what is repressed when it comes to sex.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

28. I wouldn't say that all animals are bisexual

I would say that all mammals are "polymorphously perverse" as Freud termed it. Culture tends to try to enforce certain behaviors.

I wouldn't call heterosexuality "fragile" either - but there is an obvious biological component to heterosexuality, can you guess what it is?

I'm just saying looking for a "biological key" to homosexuality, genetic or otherwise, is most likely a lost cause. Of course, I've been wrong before, so ...

[GOPisEvil]

4. 14th Amendment - Equal Protection Under The Law!

It's only carved into the exterior of the US Supreme Court building.

This is a basic civil rights issue. People have the right to be what they are and expect full protection under the laws.

[Bertha Venation]

16. well said, GOPisEvil.

:hi:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. I'm gay and I often am at odds with other gay people on this

I don't think it is all biology or genetics but also don't think it is entirely a choice...at least not a conscious one. Some of the women I have been in relationships with have gone on to get married and have children and be content with that so it isn't PURE genetics and the day someone identifies a "gay" gene, I think we will see wholesale genocide.

I don't compare it to the civil rights movement entirely but there ARE some commonalities.

The main issue for me isn't whether it is a choice but whether we discriminate against people on the basis of their choices anyway.

Choice or no choice, I am entitled to equal protections and rights under the law.

In all other areas of life barring marriage, a gay person can hide their gayness to get equal treatment be it work, social or otherwise. Black people cannot hide their blackness.

I agree with the speaker in your post...that is the MAIN issue. IF one can practice SCIENTOLOGY and other "questionable" religions and be protected under the law...then please explain the basis of discriminating against me.

[Bertha Venation]

12. "Choice or no choice, I am entitled to equal protections...."

"Choice or no choice, I am entitled to equal protections and rights under the law."

AMEN.

And I'll take this opportunity to say that I believe for the vast majority of us: IT IS NOT A CHOICE.

I knew there was something different about me long before I even knew what sex was, long before I'd ever been aware of the concept of "boy meets girl and stuff follows." To anyone who tells me I choose to be gay, I say, "Tell me when I chose it, then." No matter what answer they come up with, I give it right back to them and say, "Oh, when something similar happened in your life, is that when you chose to be straight?"

God, anti-gay people HATE it when you suggest that they chose to be straight. They think it's different -- of COURSE they didn't choose to be straight because EVERYONE is straight; that's the way it's supposed to be. :eyes:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

20. What can I say?

A lot of women I have dated chose not to be straight when they met me :evilgrin:

[Bertha Venation]

23. you evil little thing

;) They were Kinsey 2s or 3s, maybe....

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

26. Want a toaster?

I'm giving them away!

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

6. I agree - it's very much like religion

It's an identity that you affirm, and no one can really say if you *really* are or not.

[Bertha Venation]

9. I don't point this out contentiously, but: It's not a valid analogy.

Hi, Raven. I don't think that analogy flies. I do choose to follow Christ but I do not choose to be a lesbian.

I'm sure <edited to add> heart of the spokesman in Boston was in the right place but I think he drew a bad analogy. The "right" can use it to say, "so, you DO choose to be gay!" We don't.

BTW, my sexual "preference" is, yes. I prefer to have sex when we're both up for it. My sexual orientation is lesbian. I choose to have sex. I do not choose the gender to which I am attracted enough to have sex.

[Raven]

10. Bertha, what's wrong with chosing to be gay?

And point taken on my terms...preference vs. orientation. :hi:

[cprise]

14. What's wrong with it is that you DON'T

.

[Bertha Venation]

15. Not a blessed thing.

I just think that the majority of gay people will tell you they didn't choose to be gay. I sure as hell didn't.

Honestly, in this country, you'd have to be nuts to choose to be gay.

I'm talking only about people who are attracted strictly to the same gender. I'm not considering the bisexual, the adolescent, the "confused," etc. I'm talking about Kinsey Sixes -- those who on the Kinsey scale would score a six, meaning "purely homosexual."

Feel free to ask more questions.

[terrya]

18. I despise the words "sexual preference"

It's NOT a choice, dammit.

For instance, why would some kid, iliving in Ku Klux Klan, Alabama, CHOOSE to be gay? It's patently absurd.

I certainly didn't choose to be gay. And in Decatur, Illinois, in the early 1970's, when I realized it....there was NO information, I couldn't talk to any of my friends (the few friends I had, that is) and I sure as hell couldn't talk to my parents. I was alone, isolated and confused. I didn't know where to turn and who to talk to. I wouldn't have chosen such a bleak life.

The words "sexual preference" will be hung over us. Why give us SPECIAL RIGHTS, the phobes will say, if we CHOOSE to live this way?

End of rant. But the words "sexual orientation" or even "sexual nature" apply to us. "Sexual preference" certainly does NOT.

Terry

[cprise]

11. Sexual preference is for Bisexuals

It is something quite different than sexual orientation, which determines what gender you are attracted to essentially all the time.


So you are mistaken to make such a comparison at all.

[Raven]

19. I've corrected that with Bertha and

it just shows my ignorance. So my post should have been Sexual Orientation vs. Religious ??? Prefernece... Orientation? I did not want to get into a debate on choice or non choice. I wanted to talk about the best argument to make the case for gay marriage. I thought the guy had a great arguments and he shut Ray Flynn right up which is no small feat!

[Bertha Venation]

24. The guy's argument is well used in reverse.

Say this Ray Flynn says something like, "you men choose to commit sodomy with one another! I don't care if you're consenting adults, and I don't care if it harms no one else in the world! I am not going to see you having rights to protect what I think is an abominable act!"

One could answer, "Then, Rev. Flynn, I am going to do all I can to see your right to pray in your private place removed. After all, it's something you choose to do, you do it in private, and it harms no one, yet I think it's abominable. In fact, I think you should give it up and start kneeling in prayer toward the east five times daily. . . ."

:shrug:

[cprise]

25. It's apples and oranges

Religion is a choice and a conviction (and an invention). That's why the founding fathers singled it out as something the state should never promote; there is a need to distance politics from the old political trick of claiming absolute truth supplied by an invisible being.

[geniph]

27. I regard orientation as something like eye color -

you're born with one and you might be able to change it temporarily with really convoluted methods (the analogy here is colored contact lenses), but chances are you'll revert to what you were born with, whether you were born straight, gay, or as many of us are, somewhere in the middle. It has very little to do with whether your parents and those around you as a child are straight, gay, or sleep with goats.

Religious preference, on the other hand, doesn't occur at all without social conditioning. Pretty much every culture has some kind of spiritual beliefs, and children generally don't develop ones completely contrary to what they've been taught is "normal" until they're old enough to have been exposed to those who believe otherwise. I except those who have had some sort of genuine personal epiphany, the ones whose gods actually spoke to them; some of those DO invent new religions. But they're rare.