patrick.net

http://bcove.me/x73m21hk

An interesting point about the true agenda of the same sex marriage advocates:

http://illinoisfamily.org/print/article/?id=4711

An act is immoral when it is performed on someone against his/her own will. In other words, there is no victim when two people engage in an activity voluntarily, irrespective of their genders.

Patrick rightly mentions about the historical reasons of those religious laws. But I do not see any moral, or at least legal ground for this.

Of course, not everyone has to like or approve activities of everyone else. Someone may find this act repugnant. But this is no different from drinking raw milk. Religious people have the right to disapprove it if they choose to. Laws, on the other hand, should be oblivious to this.

Anyone that posts on this thread is obviously a closeted gay... oh wait, never mind.

I bet the religious people that think being gay is immoral would admit that they are gay for Jesus.

michaelsch says

An interesting point about the true agenda of the same sex marriage advocates:

One RadFem does not a whole movement make. Many RadFems think that all non-lesbian relationships are exploitation, including gay male ones.

michaelsch says

An interesting point about the true agenda of the same sex marriage advocates:

http://illinoisfamily.org/print/article/?id=4711

1. Never trust any organization with the word "family" in it. "Family values" is code for bigotry. All people have families, even gay people. To say that homosexuality is an affront to family values is to demonstrate why the very term is bullshit.

2. The entire purpose of marriage equality is equality under law. Either you believe in equality under law, and thus that the laws cannot discriminate in any way against same-sex marriages, or you do not believe in the principles of America. The 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court of Loving v. Virginia illustrate this point perfectly.

3. The entire quagmire the state has gotten itself in is because the state is doing something that it should not have the right nor the responsibility to do: to decide which personal relationships are legitimate and which are not. Marriage should be a social and a religious institution, not a secular one.

4. Masha Gessen's personal opinions about whether or not she would be happy in a marriage are irrelevant to the debate and obviously do not reflect the opinions of gays who want to be married.

5. This thread is about the morality of gay sex, not the legality of gay marriage. The two issues are independent of each other.

curious2 says

But, that doesn't explain why adulterous politicians (e.g. Newt Gingrich) campaign against gay couples getting married.

It gets votes.

Dan8267 says

Well, a lot of people replied to this thread today. However, no one has presented a reason why he or she thinks gay sex is immoral.

You cannot reason out morality.
when you keep asking why there is a certain moral code and you keep doing that till you reach something. you will find that whatever you reach will be something which cannot be explained.It is something that most people agree on instinctively if thier mind is left un corrupted by other crap ( beliefs/religion/rationale) from society .
lets take the example of slavery. If you keep asking why slavery is wrong, you will finally reach to something that cannot be explained and that would be " its wrong to cause suffering to another human being". you cannot go beyond that.
can you explain why its wrong to cause suffering to another human being ? No .
Most people will agree that its wrong to cause suffering to another human being if they are allowed to listen to their heart.you can confuse them easily by corrupting that process by introducing rules,religion,rationalizations, status quo...etc.

In most cases, people are OK to cause suffering to others when they can be convinced that the other people are different than you.

So the questions is : If you didn't have any religion,bias,prior access to moral code,belief system of a society and you were living on an island with your family with no prior contact with civilization. Suddenly you see male coupling, what would you think./do ?

will you be disgusted. will it be something than you don't want your children to see ?

will you be ok to let them do whatever they want but not publicly ?

For shame, Dan - are you so far gone that images like this do not fill you with revulsion?

zzyzzx says

She's got some good muscle memory, that one. Could use that kinda thing around the ranch.

jaldi1 says

You cannot reason out morality.

when you keep asking why there is a certain moral code and you keep doing that till you reach something. you will find that whatever you reach will be something which cannot be explained.

Absolutely incorrect. Morality has a rational and natural explanation as has been confirmed many times by biologists.

All moral arguments are essentially logical arguments based on assumptions of principle. As long as two people agree on the principle, then moral codes can be constructed according to logical laws and game theory. This is precisely what nature does through evolution. It can and has also been modeled in computer simulations using genetic algorithms.

If two people cannot agree whether to accept or reject a principle, then that indicates a fundamental disagreement in opinion. Furthermore, if I reject a principle you propose, such as eating green foods is inherently evil, then I most certainly should reject any moral codes you based on that assumption.

Morality, like anything else worth doing, should be done as an engineering discipline.

Complicating common sense again. Typical Homo trait.

You do realize your question has an internal contradiction, correct? If anyone answers why sodomy is immoral, you will simply harangue them for making a relative values judgment.

Skipping morality, let's restate this thread as "can anyone tell me why sodomitic conduct is intrinsically defective?"

Why yes... yes I can. The purpose of your mouth is generally to take in food and liquids, and breath. Oh, and talk. It is true that people derive sexual excitement from kissing or oral "sex" but kissing is generally part of sexual foreplay towards completing the coital act, and oral "sex" isn't sex. It's masturbation of another with your mouth. You could use your hand to the same effect, which I believe is called a "handjob."

The purpose of a man's rectum is to hold shat until you are ready to excrete it. Its purpose isn't to receive an erect penis until the penis ejaculates. That isn't its purpose... it's reason for existing. It is designed to be the end of your digestive tract, not a receptacle for semen.

Lastly, the purpose of a penis is to engorge with blood and be stimulated until it ejaculates semen. It's other purpose is to empty the bladder.

Semen has a single purpose: it is the portable mechanism to move 23 chromosomes to the egg of a female, who has a complementary ovary that releases an egg holding a complementary set of 23 chromosomes, and the cycle repeats roughly every 28 days or so.

This is why nothing related to same sex attraction is either sex, or love. It's masturbation, in concert, typically by a dominant male abusing the rectum of a passive male until the dominant male ejaculates. This is typically accompanied by a "blowjob" or "handjob" to complete the ejaculation of totally wasted semen of the passive male. Love has a purpose. As John Mayer says, so it has to be true, love is a verb. The nature end of love is attraction, and attraction brings about coitus, normally. That, ignoring modern pharmacology, usually begets children, furthering the race.

Pointing out irrelevant straw man arguments like other species is only a distraction. Homosexuality is a biological dead end, and directly contradicts the fundamental purpose of any species' body.

For women, it is largely the same. Two women waste their eggs in menstruation each month because all they do is orally or physically stimulate one another's clitori until they ejaculate. That isn't sex. It's masturbation. If you can do it alone, it isn't sex. Only a man and a woman can copulate as designed, and "mate" possibly furthering the race by having children.

Whether you care about this fact, or want to go off on some overpopulation diversion, is irrelevant.

Everything about a man, penis and testicles, and a woman, clitoris, vagina, uterus, and ovaries, are "made" for one another. They have a well functioning design and purpose. You can argue with... whoever, about the design of things - God, mother nature, the universe - if you want. I had nothing to do with it.

Perfect (male) and imperfect (female) sodomy is "immoral" for traditional religion as much as anything because it runs directly counter to the "natural law" and the basic biological function of a human male. It isn't normal, nor a variation of normal. It simply is what it is -- a deviant perversion of a basic human behavior.

You don't need to respond to me. This is basic science and anatomy. There doesn't need to be subjective values judgments or empty emotional appeals to "love." If you have a problem with my arguments, curse mother nature and shout at the dirt.

Um...yes, Oral Sex is Sex. Sex is Oral Sex's last name.

Unless you want to get into Bill Clinton/Kenneth Star word wrangling...

Sex is coital relations. Sucking on a dick is masturbation with your mouth. Taking in the anus is masturbation with your rectum. It isn't sex.

Sounds like you've got this human sexuality thing all figured out. Your partner is extremely lucky to have someone so in touch with their needs and free of any hangups. Your pillow talk must be fantastic.

Glendon says

Sex is coital relations. Sucking on a dick is masturbation with your mouth. Taking in the anus is masturbation with your rectum. It isn't sex.

Please don't tell me you say that to all the boys - I'd die of jealousy!

What about allowing a gay couple to adopt a child????( not ther biological children).
Not talking about a mother or father with children that now live a gay life.
I would say a gay male couple can live their life but allow them to adopt a kid ...IMO is no no way.... For a gay female couple HMMMM i got my doubts but maybe

Dan8267 says

If two people cannot agree whether to accept or reject a principle

why would somebody agree to not having slaves ?
why would two people agree on a principle ?

Glendon says

You do realize your question has an internal contradiction, correct? If anyone answers why sodomy is immoral, you will simply harangue them for making a relative values judgment.

Hardly. Why is rape immoral? Rape is immoral because it inflicts physical and emotional harm onto a sentient being. Why is drowning puppies in a river immoral? Drowning puppies in a river is immoral because doing so takes away their right to live and all the experiences of life they would have while inflicting pain upon them. Why is theft immoral? Stealing things is immoral because you are financially and possibly emotionally harming other people. Why is having an adulterous affair with a married person immoral? Adultery is immoral because it damages the relationship of the married couple, inflicting direct harm on them and any children and in-laws they have.

It's damn easy to explain why things are immoral, if they are indeed immoral. There is no trap here. It's not a trick question. If no one can come up with a valid reason why gay sex is immoral, then it is quite reasonable to conclude that gay sex is not immoral and that those who say it is are doing so simply out of bigotry and, ironically, acting quite immoral by doing so.

Now before you get on a soap box about "what is an invalid reason", I'll give you some examples. "Gay sex is immoral because it is unnatural" is clearly a invalid reason because gay sex occurs frequently throughout nature across many species. "...because the ass was not made for sex" is clearly invalid because evolution does not have intent or design goals. "...because gays can't procreate" is invalid because accepting this requires that we consider many other sexual relationships to be immoral that we absolutely consider to be moral such as an old married couple having sex.

The question, "Why the hell is gay sex immoral?", is a perfectly fair and reasonable question to ask. The fact that no one has yet come up with any reason that isn't easily shown to be self-contradicting, contradicting facts, or contradicting other, more fundamental and universally accepted moral statements simply proves that the premise is wrong, that gay sex is not immoral in any way, shape, or form.

Glendon says

You don't need to respond to me.

Is that your way of expressing fear at a rebuttal? Sorry, I responded already just based on the first paragraph of your post, which contained an incorrect thesis. However, there are some factually incorrect statements in your post that need to be addressed as well. There are also meaningless statement masquerading as questions.

Glendon says

can anyone tell me why sodomitic conduct is intrinsically defective?

Sodomy is a nonsensical notion, like profanity. Why some words or actions are considered "filthy" and others are not is purely an arbitrary and meaningless distinction. Why should shit be profane but crap not? What inherent property of the sounds \ˈshē-ət\ make it more offensive than \ˈkrap\? The very concept of profanity is utterly meaningless and childish, as is the very concept of sodomy.

Glendon says

The purpose of your mouth is generally to take in food and liquids, and breath. Oh, and talk. It is true that people derive sexual excitement from kissing or oral "sex" but kissing is generally part of sexual foreplay towards completing the coital act, and oral "sex" isn't sex.

I'm afraid you have a very deep misunderstanding of nature and evolution. A body part, a trait, a gene does not "have a purpose" other than increasing the number of copies of such genes in the next generation. Evolution is not "intelligent design" by any means. A body part, a trait, a gene has zero or more effects and serve zero or more functions that may be useful, harmful, neither, or both. To say that the mouth exists for the purpose of eating is not correct. What is correct to say is the mouth evolve as a means of eating. This is a subtle, but extraordinarily important, distinction.

To illustrate further… Wings did not evolve for the purpose of flying. Some feathered dinosaurs gained a random mutation that make their forearms more wing-like. This gave those dinosaurs an advantage in running faster. Further mutation and selection refined the wing-like features of the forearms giving those dinos even more advantage in running and jumping long distances. Slowly jumping phased into gliding which phased into flying. There was never an intention behind any of the mutations or natural selection other than passing on genes.

So the mouth evolved and started to get used for multiple things including eating, attacking, defending, exploring the world, talking, courting, and even mate selection. Yes, Virginia, oral sex does an evolutionary purpose, perhaps many. Oral sex can be used to determine if a mate's immune system is different from you and thus would result in a more diverse immune system in offspring, a great advantage in defending against a wide variety of diseases. Oral sex may be used as a means of detecting infidelity. Oral sex is most certainly used for pair bonding, and that is damn important in species with high paternal input.

Glendon says

Pointing out irrelevant straw man arguments like other species is only a distraction.

In order to understand human behavior, including human sexuality, one must compare and contrast it with non-human counterparts. This is academically obvious.

Glendon says

Homosexuality is a biological dead end, and directly contradicts the fundamental purpose of any species' body.

1. Homosexuality is not a biological dead end. At best, you could argue that exclusively having homosexual relationships prevents reproduction. That is not an argument that gay sex is immoral. It is an argument that not having straight sex is immoral. Essentially, you are stating that chastity is immoral. Hmmm, most religions would disagree with you.

In any case, even with your premise that "good is whatever serves our genes and evil is whatever doesn't", having buttloads of gay butt sex is perfectly morally fine as long as it doesn't interfere with you also having unprotected sex with the opposite gender to produce as many babies as possible. I'm not sure that most people will agree with you about the moral imperative to produce as many babies as possible, but even if we accept that, you still have not shown any reason for gay sex to be immoral.

2. As already stated, your premise contradicts the universally accepted idea that chastity is not immoral. Hell, most religions promote chastity as being moral, many even requiring celibacy in the priest caste. But who believes that turning down sex is immoral? By your premise, every time a 16-year-old girl turns down a guy for sex, she's being immoral because she's not procreating.

3. Numerous scientific studies have shown there are great advantages in social species for having some homosexual members. Such gay aunts and uncles help ensure the safety and upbringing of offspring.

4. Your premise, "what increase reproduction is good, what doesn't is evil", quite frankly makes no sense. By that premise, rape is moral and family planning is immoral. Why should maximizing procreation be a moral imperative? In a world populated by 7 billion, soon to be 10 billion, people that is currently only capable of supporting and sustaining 2 billion, it makes far more sense that decreasing procreation is a moral imperative.

5. Maximizing populations is most certainly not an optimal survival strategy. Many species drive themselves to extinction due to over procreation. It is a common theme in nature. A species finds an abundant food supply, reproduces rapidly, exhausts the food supply while destroying the ecosystem supporting it, only to result in mass starvation and death. The predator-prey relationship does not always reach a stable ratio. Such stability requires negative feedbacks, without them, a species can destroy its habitat and render itself extinct.

For example… Humans are food to many parasites that kill them. In the Stone Age, really nasty parasites would so quickly destroy a tribe that they end up dying with their hosts before reaching the next tribe. This placed an evolutionary cap on how nasty a parasite could be. As a result, we didn't have plagues like the Black Death in the Stone Age. Such plagues could only evolve and survive when human populations reached a level and a density that the parasites could rampage without regard and still have enough hosts left to take refuge.

In conclusion, strategies to maximize populations are not necessary good for survival and certainly are not justifiable as being inherently moral. As a corollary, strategies that do not maximize populations cannot simply be labeled as immoral.

Glendon says

Everything about a man, penis and testicles, and a woman, clitoris, vagina, uterus, and ovaries, are "made" for one another. They have a well functioning design and purpose. You can argue with... whoever, about the design of things - God, mother nature, the universe - if you want. I had nothing to do with it.

"Made for one another"? Not quite that simple.

There are mechanisms in a woman's body whose sole function is to kill male babies. Didn't know that, did you? Yep, the mother's body actively tries to kill off her own baby, and that's in our species. More specifically, genes inside our mitochondria do things that increase the likelihood that male babies will die before being born, and the another part of the mother fight back with nuclear genes that prevent this.

But why should this even be the case? Is god just a sick fuck? Or is he just a very inefficient engineer?

This situation, of course, makes perfect sense if you accept a purely naturalistic, evolutionary explanation for life. Mitochondria DNA is passed asexually from mother to child. Male babies do not pass on mitochondria DNA. Therefore, it is advantageous to mitochondria to do things that kill off male babies and cause the host (the mother) to be ready to bear another (hopefully, female) child.

Think about what this means. A part of the mother is actively working against the rest of the mother's self-interest. It sure as hell isn't in the mother's interests to bear only daughters! If she did, she'd have less of a chance of having descendants in the distant future. Nature heavily penalizes sex ratio disparities in species with reproductive strategies like us humans!

So not even the mother's own self is "made for itself", nonetheless, made for a man.

The fact is that genes can and do fuck each other over all the time. Genes can and do fuck over their hosts (that's you) all the time. Basing morality on the best interests of genes is as ludicrous as basing morality on the best interests of a rampaging homicidal maniac!

Glendon says

Only a man and a woman can copulate as designed, and "mate" possibly furthering the race by having children.

Arguing that this implies that gay sex is immoral is logically identical to arguing that an old married couple having sex is immoral, that an infertile couple having sex is immoral, or that a couple using contraceptive having sex is immoral.

A few people might agree that contraceptive use is immoral, but who the hell is going to call grandma and grandpa sexual deviants for having sex on their 50th anniversary? If you don't, then it's just pure hypocrisy.

And quite frankly, the many infertile couples out there should take great offense at anyone who implies that they are immoral for enjoying sex with their spouse even though they cannot conceive.

Glendon says

If you have a problem with my arguments, curse mother nature and shout at the dirt.

It is your reasoning, not mother nature, that is incorrect. Mother nature has no problem with homosexuality.

http://intentblog.com/catholic-leader-claims-homosexuality-is-unnatural-5-pictures-to-prove-him-wrong/

Nope, I have no problem with nature. Now that you have learned how common gay sex is in nature, will you change your position as reasoning and knowledge demands?

snmREDDY says

Dan8267 says

If two people cannot agree whether to accept or reject a principle

why would somebody agree to not having slaves ?

why would two people agree on a principle ?

- Why would somebody agree to not having slaves?

Two people each have an equal claim to a pie. How does one ensure that neither party takes advantage of the other? I.e., what is the optimal strategy for ensuring social justice?

Let one person cut the pie in half. The other person choose who gets which slice.

I'll let you choose whether or not slavery is practice. Once you make that decision, I'll decide who gets to be the slave and who gets to be the master if it's legal. I'm willing to bet that you and most people would choose to make slavery illegal.

- Why would two people agree on a principle?

Many reasons from self-interest, to kin-interests, to fear or hope of reciprocity. Think about all the principles we do agree upon almost universally in our society. For example,
- murder is unacceptable
- rape is unacceptable
- theft is unacceptable
- self-sacrifice is noble
- victims should be compensated by their assailants