patrick.net

This should be interesting.

Probably going to rest on the idea that god created men and women and sex so that we could have more people...sex that can't create people is against god's plan or something...

I doubt you are going to get any reasons that you find compelling...

Also, for what it's worth (not much), I knew a few prominent gay-bashers that turned out to be gay. I always take note of the ones who are super outspoken...I'm sure they aren't all gay, but I do pause to consider it...not to out Bap or anyone else.

turned out to be gay
^^^^^^^^^
This is exactly why I like the expression, "Better BLATANT than LATENT!"

I too would love to hear a compelling, objective reason for peoples' hatred. I'm pretty convinced that in the case of most people, THEY DON'T HAVE ONE. It is down to their superstition, err, religion.

I wouldn't say gay sex is immoral, but I think there is evidence that promiscuous unprotected anal sex does spread disease rapidly, faster than oral or vaginal sex.

And a lot of the old biblical rules seem to equate immorality with things that were likely to cause disease, like promiscuity in general, or eating pork or shellfish, or even eating without washing your hands first. So maybe the "immorality" of gay sex was just one more of those rules based on the observation that people who did certain things tended to get certain diseases.

evidence that promiscuous

There is evidence that promiscuity can spread disease, and the NT quotes Jesus saying repeatedly that adulterers will not be allowed into his kingdom. But, that doesn't explain why adulterous politicians (e.g. Newt Gingrich) campaign against gay couples getting married.

If the bible speaks about it, it means it existed back then too. It exists in all cultures and across most recorded timelines-way before jesus and his time. Perhaps it is just a way for some people to feel morally superior by crushing someone else?

lostand confused says

Perhaps it is just a way for some people to feel morally superior by crushing someone else?

That might sum up religion generally. Along with the whole denial of death thing, and rationalizing the extermination of outsiders to take their resources.

curious2 says

rationalizing the extermination of outsiders to take their resources

Pretty useful from an amoral evolutionary point of view, except that it's usually not the utter extermination of outsiders, but simply extermination of the men. Their women then become property of the new male overlords and bear their children. The women may even willingly go along with it because obviously the new guy is more powerful than the husband who could not protect her.

I read some paper about how the American Indian Y-chromosomes are actually pretty rare in Latin America now, because the Spanish men often took native women for wives.

Here's a related paper:

Admixture analysis suggests a pattern of directional mating that preferentially involved immigrant men and native women. Although it would be desirable to expand sample sizes, in order to have more accurate estimates of admixture, the same pattern has been detected in non-Amerind populations from Mexico (Merriwether et al. 1997; Green et al. 2000) and Colombia (Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000). This observation agrees with historical records showing that during the colonial period (late 15th to early 19th centuries), most of the immigrants to Spanish America were male (Sanchez-Albornoz 1977). This trend is also likely to have been reinforced by the preferential incorporation of immigrant women and their descendants into criollo society rather than into native American populations. The analysis of uniparental genetic markers in a non-Amerind population from Colombia has shown that Amerind male lineages have almost entirely disappeared from that population but that, at the mtDNA level, Amerind lineages are by far predominant (Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000). This suggests a marked pattern of directional mating in which native women and immigrant men established neo-American populations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288567/

It's immoral because it is. Look up what morality means.

Oh, heck. I'll get you started.

If someone says homosexuality is immoral because they get their morals from an old book, and that's what the book says, then they're right. Within the context of their moral system, of course. That doesn't mean there's anything unethical going on with homosexuality, under your moral system.

Ethics are philosophical consequences derived from value-based premises. They can be rooted in religious premises, but they can also be rooted in other premises. The value systems that ethics stem from matter a great deal in determining if common moral understanding can be reached. But those premises can be arbitrarily arbitrary, and vary from culture to culture and from person to person.

It's a little reductionist to say that all morality boils down to opinion, but it's essentially correct. And opinions are like assholes.

If you seek to debate morality of homosexuality, you need to stake out some rules of engagement. I'd recommend picking a secular (common-ground) ethical framework to circumscribe your debate. Otherwise, everyone is right, and everyone else is wrong.

msilenus says

If someone says...they get their morals from an old book, and that's what the book says, then they're right.

But if they ignore most of what the book says, and fixate on certain points that they need for reasons of their own, then they aren't "right" objectively with reference to the book itself - they're merely illustrating something about themselves.

Wasn't it some combination of:

Jealousy: Gays = The original DINKS
Greed: Kill the DINKS and take their stuff (less chance of a blood feud with no kids in the picture)
Need: More kids = more taxpayers, tithers, serfs, cannon fodder, etc.

Well with 7 billion people on the planet and growing I think we should embrace homosexuality if for anything as an effective means to population control.

Its not for me but hey if its your thing be my guest.

New Renter says

Well with 7 billion people on the planet and growing I think we should embrace homosexuality if for anything as an effective means to population control.

Thank you. Doesn't anyone think Mother Nature, DNA, and the Planet itself might think of that?

For the record, in Europe they have shower attachments you won't find at Home Depot or Lowes for cleaning up before anal sex. Straight or Gay, anal sex without douching before hand is not only just plain nasty and stupid, yes, it's unhealthy.