John Kerry believes people are born gay

The articles I've read written by learned men and women in the world of psychology on this subject say the samething.

It's logical really. I mean, do people choose to be straight? Nonsense, you're born that way or you're not.

I agree with Kerry 100%. I don't believe anyone would purposely choose to live a lifestyle in which you faced so much discrimination and hatred by at least half the population.

Yes, I believe each denomination should decide for itself if it will marry couples of the same sex. I don't believe the government should force religions to marry people if they don't want to. I agree that the the government should recognize civil unions for same sex couples. Good for Kerry. I'm glad he had the guts to state his opinion on the matter clearly.
I was born straight. I never, ever made a conscience decision to like boys. It just happened. :wink:

Re: John Kerry believes people are born gay

If the name of the institution wasn't important, then why not just call it "marriage"?

Clearly, the name is important, otherwise Kerry wouldn't be making the distinction between "marriage" and "civil union."

Re: John Kerry believes people are born gay


Marriage is 'Holy Matrimony' and denotes a union sanctioned by God.

Civil Union denotes a union sanctioned by the State in which it was performed giving the couple the same rights and priviliges a married couple enjoys.

Re: John Kerry believes people are born gay



lol Hello! What color is the sky on your planet?

BBB
medical science is close to determining that homosexuality appears to be caused in the womb when production and release of certain hormones fail to invade the foetus at the correct triggering time.

BBB

Re: John Kerry believes people are born gay


And just what is THAT supposed to mean? I don't know what color the sky is but the room feels like it's moving. :wink:

Re: BBB


That sounds awfully violent!

Re: BBB


So now it's a birth defect??

The Development of Sexual Orientation
The Development of Sexual Orientation
By John Money, PhD, Professor of Medical Psychology and Pediatrics, Emeritus, at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Despite popular assumptions, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality are not preferences. Each is a sexuoerotic orientation or status. They are no more chosen than a native language is. The roots of sexuoerotic status are complex. According to one common view, the labeling or social-construction theory of development, erotic orientation depends only on social learning and is independent of genetic and prenatal influence.

That view assumes an outmoded dichotomy of nature and nurture. Instead, consider three terms: nature/critical period/nurture. Heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality all have both prenatal and later causes, which interact during critical periods of development to create a long-lasting or even immutable sexuoerotic status.

It is wrong to regard prenatal influence as biological and postnatal ones as
non-biological. Influences that reach the brain through the senses during
social communication and learning are just as much biological as those that reach the brain through hormones circulating in the bloodstream of a fetus.

A unified theory must explain how erotic orientation becomes masculine or
feminine. The theory should eventually account for both heterosexuality and homosexuality, as well as andromimesis (man-miming) in females and effeminacy or gynemimesis (woman-miming) in males. It should also account for transvestism and transsexualism.

In mammals, including human beings, it is clear that prenatal influences help to determine an individual's masculinity/femininity ratio. Genes determine directly whether the primitive gonadal cells in the embryo will become testicles or ovaries. After that the sex hormones take over; they govern the sexual differentiation of the fetal brain by determining whether its sexual pathways will be masculinized or not. This process is mainly prenatal but in human beings extends for some time past birth.

In the absence of special hormonal conditions, the brain is feminized. A fetus with neither ovaries nor testicles will ordinarily develop as sexuoerotically female. Masculine differentiation requires testicular hormones supplied either directly from the fetus's own testicles or from a
substitute source; brain cells change testosterone into a metabolite which can be used as a masculinizing agent. The fetal brain may be demasculinized without feminization or defeminized without masculinization. Both processes may also coexist to varying degrees, causing both masculine and feminine behavior in the same person. In other words, sexuoeroticism may be bisexual.

Hormonal Control

The first experimental evidence for hormonal control of brain masculinization and feminization was derived from sex reversal in the mating behavior of guinea pigs exposed to prenatal hormonal treatment. There is now also direct anatomical evidence of differences between males and females in regions of the brain prenatally influenced by hormones. In laboratory mammals and in songbirds, one such region is the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN-POA) in the hypothalamus. The preoptic area is also sexually dimorphic in human beings, although the difference may not become visible until after infancy.

Estradiol is one of the metabolites of testosterone normally used by brain
cells. When it is implanted in newborn female rats on the left side of the
SDN-POA, estradiol has a defeminizing effect on behavior; the animal no
longer adopts the normal female position for copulation, with the spine
curved forward at the base (lordosis). If estradiol is implanted on the right side of the SDN-POA, it has a masculinizing effect; the animal mounts other rats for copulation like a normal male. An animal that developed right-sided masculinization without losing left-sided feminization would be bisexual.

Congenital Malfunctions

In the study of human sexual development, clinical syndromes are the
experiments of nature that take the place of designed experiments. One
example is congenital virilizing adrenal hyperplasia (CVAH), a rare disorder that arises when a genetic error programs the adrenal cortex to secrete not the normal hormone cortisol, but an androgenizing masculinizing) substitute. This malfunction may occur in either a male or a female fetus.

In both sexes the result is masculinization of sexuoerotic behavior; females may also have altered external sex organs. CVAH males have no bisexuality or homosexuality in their erotic imagery, thoughts, or practice. By contrast, among 30 CVAH women we studied, 37 percent could be classified as bisexual or homosexual; five of them admitted to being exclusively lesbian. (Forty percent were heterosexual and 23 percent noncommittal in their sexual orientation.) The high rate of bisexuality and homosexuality persisted even though 30 women had been given cortisol replacement therapy from early infancy, and had also had surgery early in life to correct the ambiguous appearance of their external sex organs.

In another rare disorder, androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS), also known as the testicular-feminizing syndrome, the fetus is insensitive to androgens (a general term for male hormones) and becomes demasculinized. A chromosomally male infant (that is, one who carries a Y chromosome) is therefore born with the external genitalia of a female and brought up as a girl. Although she has internal (undescended) testicles, her body cells remain insensitive to the androgen produced by these testicles at puberty.

Testicles also secrete estrogen, a predominantly feminizing hormone, and
this has a normal effect on AIS women. Their adult body form is feminine,
although they have no uterus and therefore do not menstruate. In their
romantic and sexual lives, they resemble chromosomally normal heterosexual women who happen to be infertile. They are never bisexual.

Both CVAH and AIS prove that, whether we realize it or not, our definitions of heterosexuality and homosexuality are based on external genitalia and body build, not on chromosomes, gonads (testicles and ovaries) and their fertility, or the presence of a monthly hormonal cycle. Although AIS women and their normal X, Y husbands are both chromosomally male and both were born with testicles, they are not regarded as homosexual, because the wife has a female body shape, a vulva, and a vagina, while the husband has a male body shape, a penis, and a scrotum. A CVAH female is sometimes born with a normal penis and an empty scrotum, along with ovaries and a uterus. Such a baby may be declared a boy at birth and later given hormonal and surgical
treatment to preserve masculinity. With a normal female partner, he will
then be regarded as a heterosexual male; with a normal male partner he would be regarded as homosexual.

In subprimate mammals, early hormonal differentiation of the brain largely determines mating behavior. For example, the brains and behavior of ewe lambs can be masculinized in the womb by injecting the pregnant mother with testosterone at a critical period. The lamb grows up to be a lesbian ewe.

Its mating behavior, including mating rivalry and the courtship ritual, is
exactly like a ram's, although its ovaries are secreting estrogen and not
androgen. It even adopts the stance of a ram to urinate, and other sheep
respond to it as if it were a normal ram. In human beings, hormones
influence brain masculinization even after birth. Beginning at the age of two weeks, the testes produce a surge of testosterone, which reaches the
same level attained at puberty and then subsides totally within three months. No more testosterone is produced until sexual maturity.

Social Environment

Even in subprimate mammals, mating behavior can be modified by infant care and socialization. In human beings and other primates, the ultimate effects of prenatal hormones depend more extensively on social environment, beginning with parent-infant pair bonding. Hormonal history combines with upbringing to determine whether a primate will be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual.

One source of evidence for postnatal influences on human sexuoerotic status is the behavior of male hermaphrodites. Male hermaphroditism occurs when a chromosomally male fetus is partially demasculinized because it produces insufficient androgens or is not sufficiently sensitive to them; as a result, it develops external sex organs that appear ambiguous or indeterminate. Some male hermaphrodites are drawn sexually to males, some to females, and a few to both sexes. Although their sexual orientation depends partly on the cause of the hermaphroditism (which is sometimes unknown), it also depends on other circumstances: whether the infant is reared as a boy or a girl; how much stigmatization he/she encounters in childhood; how well surgery remedies the defect; and how the body responds to hormones at puberty.

It was during my study of gender identity and gender role formation in
hermaphrodites that I formulated the concept of complementation. I believe it to be, along with the familiar concept of identification, one of the two basic principles of childhood sexuoerotic differentiation. A child
assimilates social concepts of masculinity and femininity by identification
with members of the same sex and complementation to members of the opposite sex; for example, a girl identifies with females in learning to dance, and complements males in practicing the dance she has learned. Parents often serve as the principal models for identification and complementation; others, especially playmates, are important as well.

Europe and America traditionally regard homosexuality as morally, legally, and socially deviant. Medical theory has treated it as sporadic and
pathological. Equally ancient traditions, however, regard the absence of
homosexuality as deviant, sporadic, and pathological. For example, the
Sambia people of New Guinea believe that boys must ingest semen (men's 'milk') to attain maturity, just as they need women's milk for growth as infants. Before their marriage at the age of 19 or 20, young men participate in a homosexual ritual with boys between the ages of nine and puberty. Thus each boy, as he grows up, first receives semen by mouth and later donates it. In this way he symbolically casts off the feminine influences of childhood and becomes indoctrinated as an exclusively heterosexual headhunting warrior, fit for marriage and fatherhood. A unified theory of sexuoerotic orientation should account for phased homosexuality of the Sambia type as well as for life-long exclusive homosexuality.

Juvenile sexuoerotic rehearsal play is an aspect of male-female
differentiation generally disregarded by contemporary child development
theory. Monkeys who are reared in isolation and therefore deprived of
playmates grow up unable to copulate and produce offspring. Monkeys reared exclusively in sex-segregated groups rehearse both the mounting (male) and presenting (female) positions of coitus with playmates. At maturity they are sexuoerotically more adept and at ease with their own than with the other sex.

Juvenile sexuoerotic rehearsal play is widespread if not universal in
primates. In human beings it may be condemned or punished, especially if it is heterosexual play. The effects of this practice have never been
systematically investigated. There is some rather sparse evidence from
comparative anthropology that different traditions produce different
outcomes -- as among the Sambia, for instance. Much research still needs to be done. Studies that begin in early childhood will be more informative than retrospective ones, because the retrieval of biographical details is difficult.

Re: John Kerry believes people are born gay




The problem is neither Kerry nor you are doctors who specialize in this field.

They still don't KNOW what causes it. You may be right ... you may be wrong, but posting something as fact before all data is in is deliberately encouraging a possible fallacy.

fedral:

And the world is round. Haven't you heard? LOL!!!!

What the hell deos that have to do with anything?

Yes, and after many years of research, we have absolute proof that the world is round (actually its not perfectly round but thats just nitpicking)

But the scientists still haven't agreed on nor do they have proof as to what exactly what 'causes' homosexuality.

It may be something genetic, it may be something chemical, it may be brought about by environmental factors (as per how they were raised)

No one can point to something and say:

THAT is what causes it ... it's gene number 156B or It is at THIS point that the chemicals are released and thats what caused it.

As I said... the scientists don't know so how do you have the arrogance to believe that you know.

"believes...", "I think... personally...", "close to determining..."

Who is posting anything as fact?

It looks that way more and more, with more and more scientific evidence bolstering that belief.

Why do you require that Kerry or BBB need to specialize in the field before they "believe", or "think" that sexual orientation is innate?

I believe the same thing, based on the work of a lot of people who ARE specialists in the field, and I'm happy to get you cites.

But my point here is that the absolutism you rail against is not actually displayed here.

And yet, if I write an article that says:

I belive that John Kerry is a pedophile"

or

I think personally that John Kerry is an arrogant, lying, hypocritical weasel that has the moral integrity of a soulless viper"

or

I am close to determining that John Kerry was involved in the death of John F Kennedy."

I would be accused of printing untrue and unfounded items that have no basis in fact.
When you have the pulpit that a Presidential candidate has, it is irresponsible to start spouting unfounded facts to an audience that large.

Three things:

First, you specifically made an accusation that was not borne out by what was said HERE. You said



I pointed out, that's nice, but nobody posted anything as FACT. There were lots of equivocations; "I believe", etc. Not, "The fact is, all gay people are born that way."

Second, when will all the data be in? Scientific evidence is fairly overwhelming at this point. Again, I can get cites if you'd like.

Which brings me to the third point -- this belief has very solid basis in empirical fact. (Reputable scientific studies.) The "beliefs" you cite -- that John Kerry is a pedophile, for example -- do not have comparable factual basis.

"Aids cures fags"
"God blew up the shuttle"
two of the signs held by a Kansas anti-gay church protesting a Denver judge for a legal decision regarding custody issues of a former lesbian couple. the leader of the group, Fred Philips-the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church- of Topeka Kansas went on to declare Judge John Coughlin "an evil, demon-possessed man, irreversibly hellbound"
Denver Colorado 3/25/04

I was there counter-protesting on Thrusday. Its hard to believe such hate exists until one sees it up close. What was even more frightening was seeing two of my own Western Civ students in the Phelps crowd.