Prop 8?

@Lightwizard,

Quote:

I guess the Medieval chastity belt was not considered birth control?

Who said that? I'd consider it birth control. I'd also consider a woman throwing herself down the stairs to induce a miscarriage her own specific form of birth control-and introducing artificial means by which to diminish the pool in terms of natural selection.

Spontaneous abortion or miscarriage - though they also diminish the pool- occur naturally and thus are a form of NATURAL selection.

I specifically did NOT include homosexuality as an artificial means of limiting the pool because I DO believe it is a naturally occurring event or state of being and I DON'T believe it constitutes an artificial means of limiting the pool for selection.

You said: If you understand everything Spendius writes - you need cognitive therapy (or somesuch)./

Why is that any less judgmental than Spendius or Genovese saying: if you love someone who is the same gender as you are - you need therapy (or you're abnormal in some way)?

Diest - what did you mean by 'fit'? I didn't quite get whether you meant fit as in 'fittest' or fit as in good 'fit'. edited to say that I just decided it means about the same thing, but I'm not sure I am reading the second part of your sentence as you meant it to be read.
I can make an assumption based on how I read it, but I'd rather be clear on what you mean.

2 Replies

@aidan,

That wasn't specifically aimed at you -- it's not artificial means to diminish the gene pool, it's to keep horny males out of a vagina, unless she gives him the key -- as if she's got the key (well, they've been known to steal them!) Eventually she gets pregnant by the male selected by her parents. Arguing that that is or isn't a part of natural selection is not only futile but foolish. Who cares!

You don't seem to have a full education on evolution or natural selection making it tough to communicate, so you have to shout out NATURAL selection.

Where did I ever give you the impression I believe homosexuality is "artificial" and doesn't naturally occur? You want to try and find that?

Your logic alludes me on my supposed judgment of S or G -- I'm accessing their statements and rejecting them as a negative prejudicial judgment of a large group of people. If I am judging anything, it's S or G's constant ranting and beating the same drum of prejudice. I don't know them well enough to judge them personally but I don't believe I'd want to go out for a drink with either of them.

As far as judging you on understanding everything S writes, suggesting cognitive therapy was a sarcastic quip aimed not at you but you-know-who.

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@Lightwizard,

You are well advised not to go for a drink with me LW. You might learn something you are not too keen to learn. One has to use some discretion on a site read by the young.

You suggest I read the sort of thing you have read. You must be joking. Life is too short as it is for the literature which the world has tested out and passed. Not some here-today-gone-tomorrow mush written by people who are, by my standards, low as they are, barely literate.

Let me merely say that there are perfectly natural means of avoiding producing children for those who don't wish to and which do not undermine the dignity of women. What can one say of a man who cannot, for a few seconds, control himself and requires his lady love to make the whole of the sacrifice which, in the case of abortion, is wholly, even sadistically, way out of proportion to the one required of him.

The aboriginal population of Australia remained constant, according to anthropologists, for 15,000 years. The societies which selfishly bring the industrial mechanisms to bear on the act of love are growing daily and becoming more and more hung up.

Have you any information on population trends in the Americas before the days of diaphragms, rubber hose, spermicidal jellies, poison pills and fetus liquidation.

Quote:

Her resolutions were most truly great,
And almost might have made a Tarquin quake :
She pray'd the Virgin Mary for her grace,
As being the best judge of a lady's case.

Don Juan. Lord Byron. Canto I.

I don't need your advice on what to read and neither do readers here.

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Diest - what did you mean by 'fit'? I didn't quite get whether you meant fit as in 'fittest' or fit as in good 'fit'. edited to say that I just decided it means about the same thing, but I'm not sure I am reading the second part of your sentence as you meant it to be read.
I can make an assumption based on how I read it, but I'd rather be clear on what you mean.

"Fit" in the evolutionary sense of the word. I was just mentioning that what is fit in a world where we can adapt our environment to us (vice the opposite) is a world where fit can defined differently.

I'm pointing out that gays not breeding (even though they do) and birth control don't really effect the fitness of our species.

T
K
O

2 Replies

@Diest TKO,

I'm not sure anybody is saying it does. But giving official sanction to homosexual affairs might affect the fitness of a community. And the thread concerns that official sanction which 45 states have so far not given.

What is the population of those states which have?

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

But giving official sanction to homosexual affairs might affect the fitness of a community.

In what ways?

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Back to his crazed version of social Darwinism -- there's zero proof it affects any community. Except perhaps upgrading their homes and therefore the street, thus improving the environment.

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@Lightwizard,

Quote:

Homosexuality has existed since recorded history and that is why it is mentioned in the Old Testament. There's various ways that nature has been the force controlling the population. How about a comet hitting the Earth. That'll work. It's all random.

This is what you wrote, and it may not have been directed at me, although I thought it may well have been- and I just wanted you to know that you did not have to direct it to me, as if I didn't think that homosexuality has existed since recorded history and is as natural an occurence as perchance a comet hitting the earth (although much less rare).

Quote:

it's to keep horny males out of a vagina,

which limits the gene pool - or at least used to - I guess now we don't need horny men anymore (turkey basters will do) although we'll always need vaginas won't we?

Quote:

You don't seem to have a full education on evolution or natural selection

Yeah, believe it or not - that's why I'm reading. If I already knew everything- I'd take a pass.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

People might start cracking jokes about it. After all attention is being drawn to the matter and a large proportion of the population are known to be ignorant and coarse.

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@aidan,

You wont find natural selection or evolution explained very fully here -- there are classes, books and audio/visual materials for that. This is about Prop 8 and evolution and all the bullshit about it having anything to do with gay marriage is a fantasy in someone's drugged mind and brought up as a straw man argument by guess who.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

birth control don't really effect the fitness of our species

I think that's debatable, given the fact that the higher the level of education a woman has, the more likely she is to use contraception correctly and successfully and delay childbearing, tending to have fewer children than women who have lower levels of education, who are more likely to to use birth control incorrectly and/or not at all and produce more offspring over the course of their childbearing years.
How does this reality translate in terms of the fitness of our species? I think birth control does have the potential to, and in fact probably has introduced an evolutionary impact in terms of the eventual realization of the measured fitness of our species.

Just responding to Diest's post.

1 Reply

@aidan,

I think the point I was trying to make is that humans don't tend to play by the rules. Instead of us becoming fit to our enviroment, we make our enviroment fit to us.

Human's fit is not defined by ecology and predators but rather social factors. Humans advance as a species as we advance. I.e. - Bringing new and better technology into the world.

I think it can be argued that humans thrive as a species more from the societal contributions they make vice the number of offspring they produce.

Take the octo-mom as an example. In biolocial terms she is very successful at spreading her genes, but things like an education greatly effect our fitness. Her MANY MANY children now will be using the resources that could be spread over a smaller group (or a more diverse group). This could mean that her large amount of offspring could potentially offer a obstacle in modern evolutionary terms.

I'm mildy uncomfortable with this topic. I think it could eaily turn into weirds social darwinism, which isn't the point. I'm directly speaking to the actual fitness of the species.

T
K
O

2 Replies

@Diest TKO,

Interesting point. But not biological. It's the sort of point a Christian might make in view of the fact that the social factors we are dealing with were, in the main, created by Christian theology.

There are, they say, I have never counted them myself, 200,000,000 little sperm germs in every shoot. Could the order of precedence be determined by factors the possibilities of which I am reticent to discuss.

It could be that social factors create conditions in which the result is more random than it might be if biological factors were the sole arbiter. One might assume that biological factors are more evolutionary on the basis of how long they have been operating compared to how long social factors have.

2 Replies

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Interesting point. But not biological. It's the sort of point a Christian might make in view of the fact that the social factors we are dealing with were, in the main, created by Christian theology.

Uh, WRONG. These issues pre-dated Christianity by a significant amount.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

That won't do at all boyo. This has become more adult lately.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

That won't do at all boyo. This has become more adult lately.

Please explain in further detail.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I don't explain Cyclo. I work with nods and winks.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

Take the octo-mom as an example. In biolocial terms she is very successful at spreading her genes, but things like an education greatly effect our fitness.

Not really though - she had a hell of a lot of artificial help. Those children would not even have been able to have been born twenty years ago. But say she did have ten children on her own while the people who have higher levels of intelligence and education had fewer children (although I don't know what her level of education or intelligence is ).

Quote:

Her MANY MANY children now will be using the resources that could be spread over a smaller group (or a more diverse group). This could mean that her large amount of offspring could potentially offer a obstacle in modern evolutionary terms.

Yes, and it also means that birth control has altered the level (I hate to say quality) of the inherent genetic material in the total available pool.

Yeah, believe me - I'm not into eugenics and even pointing this out make me extremely uncomfortable too. But I can't deny that it is a logical and linear progression of cause and effect. Because we do, as you say, change our environment and change the rule to fit 'us' and there are evolutionary consequences to that - like the fact that we have developed time and work saving technology and methods of passive and indoor entertainment to the point that children today are less fit and more prone to chronic disease than they've ever been before.
Now when all these young girls who are already type 2 diabetics in adolesence become pregant, delivering large babies who have a congenital predisposition to also be diabetic it is changing the actual 'fitness' of our species.
And though I advocate the use of birth control, I have to admit that upon thinking about whether or not it has the potential to affect the overall strength of certain aspects of our species - I think that it does. I'd never thought of that aspect of it before.
But I don't think homosexuality can be looked at as having the same negative
effect.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

It could be that social factors create conditions in which the result is more random than it might be if biological factors were the sole arbiter.

I intuitively think of social factors creating conditions in which he result is LESS random (I'm not screaming - that's my way of emphasizing -it's faster than highlighting and italicizing). Anyway - yeah- because you're changing the proportion or ratio of outcomes inherently probable by weighting one side artificially in one way or another.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

spendius wrote:

Interesting point. But not biological. It's the sort of point a Christian might make in view of the fact that the social factors we are dealing with were, in the main, created by Christian theology.

Uh, WRONG. These issues pre-dated Christianity by a significant amount.

Cycloptichorn

I think it should be allowed only in the privacy of the home between consenting adults, and children should be protected from it as much as possible.

1 Reply

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