John Kerry believes people are born gay

You just gotta love that narrowminded, bigoted, hate-filled brand of Christianity don't 'cha?

Sounds to me like Pastor Fred Phelps was describing himself.

Here is the website for Pastor Phelps church:

http://www.godhatesfags.com/main/

Interesting Bio Pastor Phelps has here


Timeline
13 Nov 1929 Fred Phelps born, Meridian, Mississippi.
Dec 1944 Fred Phelps Sr. marries Olive Briggs, age 39.
8 Sep 1947 Ordained a Southern Baptist minister.
1951 Meets future wife, Margie, at Arizona Bible Institute, Phoenix AZ.
11 Jun 1951 Campaign to stamp out necking and petting on campus makes Time Magazine.
15 May 1952 Marries Margie M.
Nov 1955 Becomes pastor, Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka KS.
1966 Doctors court records to indicate he had been paid $250 to handle a divorce case, instead of the $50 he actually received. The extra $200 came from Phelps illegally pocketing the bond posted by the wife to free the husband from jail.
May 1966 Files to run as a Democrat for Kansas State House, 45th District.
1969 Brought before State Board of Law Examiners, on seven counts of professional misconduct. Attorney General Kent Frizzell: Phelps' conduct "is one of total disregard for the duties and the respect and consideration owed by an attorney to his clients. Where money is concerned, the accused simply lacks any sense of balance and proportion. Whatever the reason for this, it appears to me a permanent condition." Phelps is suspended for two years from practicing law.
1970 On the first anniversary of his suspension from practicing law, administers a harsh crewcut to his wife.
28 Sep 1972 Ruled disqualified to running for District Attorney, due to suspension. He ran in the August primary unopposed.
Nov 1973 Files a $50,000,000 suit against Sears Roebuck, Inc., because the $186 television they purchased on layaway and paid off early would not be ready until Christmas (exactly as specified in the contract Phelps signed.)
14 Oct 1977 Fred Phelps Sr. dies, age 84.
8 Nov 1977 Kansas files a complaint seeking Phelps disbarrment.
1979 The Kansas Supreme Court disbars Fred Phelps, declaring in part that he had "little regard for the ethics of his profession."
16 Dec 1985 Nine Federal court judges file a disciplinary complaint against Fred Phelps and six of his attorney relatives, claiming that Phelps and his brood had made false accusations against them.
29 Jun 1985 Stepmother, Olive Briggs Phelps dies, age 82.
1989 Fred Phelps surrenders his license to practice law in Federal court.
1991 Westboro Baptist Church stages its first public demonstration at a public park in Topeka, Kansas.
19 Apr 1996 Westboro Baptist Church flier:
Fag Jew Nazis are worse than ordinary Nazis. They've had more experience. Jews stirred up the Romans to butcher 6 million Christians in the catacombs in the 1st century. The First Holocaust was a Jewish Holocaust against Christians. The latest Holocaust is by Topeka Jews against WBC.
13 Nov 1996 Westboro Baptist Church press release:
Anybody babbling about 'multicultural affairs' and 'celebrating diversity' is a propagandist for the militant sodomite agenda...Westboro Baptists will picket this black obfuscator, in religious protest and warning. Being black won't get you to Heaven. But promoting fags will take you to Hell.
5 Jul 1997 Fred Phelps sends a letter to Russian President Boris Yeltsin:
Homosexuals now pervade and control American government at every level and branch. Thus, only those churches that support and promote the militant homosexual agenda enjoy religious freedom. Any church in America that dares to preach what the Bible says about soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth of the vile homosexual beasts among us, loses all Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and speech rights.
30 Nov 1997 Fred Phelps sends a letter to Saddam Hussein:
We understand that Iraq is the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets without fear of arrest and prosecution. Alas, the United States no longer allows the Gospel to be freely and openly preached on the streets, because militant sodomites now control our government, and they violently object to the Bible message...The same majoritarian sodomite tyranny that now guides the Clinton administration's repressive policies toward Gospel preaching on America's streets, is apparently responsible -- at least in part -- for the merciless slaughter by starvation of 400 innocent Iraqi babies each day in your country. If our government and laws will allow it, and at the invitation of your government, we would like to send a delegation from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, to preach the Gospel on the streets of Baghdad for one week in the near future.

I dunno.

I have never read any medical article about this in my life. So I'm speaking as a perfect dilettant.

But the thing about "being born gay" that doesnt line up with my world (ie what I know of people I've known) is that it suggests an A or B kind of predestination. You are either born gay, or born straight.

Now I can see why it would be hugely important for a gay community (or person), who has to face the attacks from homophobes every day who try to "cure" him or make him see the wrongness of his "choice" - to establish once and for all that its not something to be cured or to be chosen against - its just the way they are. If you can say: we were just born that way - you've gotten rid of all that, instantly.

But then how does this work with the many, many people who are, either, bisexual, or, are straight but still are at times attracted by someone of the same gender, or, who were straight at one time in their lives and gay at another? All those variations are determined by which hormones invaded the womb how, too? Just seems improbable to me - as a perfect dilettant on the matter.

My pet theory has always been that everybody is simply somewhere on a gradient scale from perfect straightness to pure gayness ... but I dont think society is ready for that kind of perspective. I've always seen the "born gay" argument as a function of the gays' emancipation - the argument that allowed them to claim the right to be themselves. I suspect we'll move beyond that again, too, to find out that not all gays were born purely gays just like the overwhelming majority of straights are not, if they are really honest, 100% straight.

I mean, thats how theory has involved on most other identity matters - just look at the discussion of ethnicity. Also once, none too long ago, seen as a purely physical-biological question, one that could even be measured in percentages (a "real" German vs a 75% German). While now ethnicity is seen as something much more contextually defined - basically, we are who we are because we ourselves and the people around us call and perceive us that way - period.

But again, I'm wholly unburdened by any knowledge of the medical research on the matter.

I've said this a zillion times, but I think everyone is born somewhere on the Kinsey scale -- 0-6. 1's to 5's have some choice in the matter. 3's are either admittedly bisexual or perfectly happy to choose one orientation or the other.

There is a substantial amount of research that supports the claim that Homosexuals are born with such preferences. Just because it hasn't been completely "locked down" doesn't make it any less persuasive.

Of course, there are going to be some people who are not born that way who try it, like it, and decide to follow that path. No biggie.

In any case, being born gay is no more a defect than being born with green eyes, or with freckles or anything else for that matter. Its natural, and it should be left at that.

Now, people born with a club foot, or another leg, or a tail... now THATS a defect!

Or a hairy, toothy, fetus-mole.

i want a tail!

"Fag Jew Nazis . . . " That will necessarily be an awfully small, readily identifiable group, no?

I dunno man ... they're everywhere, you know? 'S just ... like, you cant recognize them immediately for what they are - cos they're sly like that. Y'know?

Dude ! ! !


I can smell where yer comin' from . . .

I accept the possibility that there are those men and women out there who have sexual confusion and make a "choice" which they discover down the line isn't the right one. However, from stories I have seen, read and heard about, I believe these are likely in the minority.

Your comment about those who were straight at one time and gay at another isn't usually about a choice. At least not from what I have seen/read/heard. The explanation I've often heard here is that the individual had known they were "different" but fought against it. Eventually they acquiesced to the lifestyle they knew was true for themselves rather than conforming to society's expectations.

As for hormonal variation in the womb, it makes perfect sense to me. It isn't so much about determining who you become sexually attracted to later in life, but more about developing traits that are either more masculine, more feminine, or, perhaps, a combination of both.

Certainly the environment cannot be discounted, but perhaps more so towards the masculinity or femininity of an individual than to their sexual interest in one gender or another.



I can quite honestly say I have no sexual interest in other women. Nada. What made you state this claim? What sort of interests would one straight woman have in another? Could you explain?

There was a series that I saw on t.v. several years back that does a great job of explaining gender differences and the possibilities of sexual orientation being determined in the womb. I taped it all and I should have another look at those tapes again, perhaps I could post some of the more salient explanations here once I do.

Here is a blurb giving a rundown on the documentary.

I wouldnt call it "sexual confusion". I think that the more people get over the hang-ups that exist about gays, the more people will feel free to express that their interests may not always be as unambiguously one-sided as we generally like to make them out to be. Basically, I agree wholeheartedly with Sozobe's 0-6 idea: people are 0's (fully straight), 1s or 2's, 3's (bi), 4s or 5s, or 6s (fully gay). I think the dominant homophobic climate (in the US much more than here) forces people to fence themselves up in either a 0 or 6 identity, just so they wont be pestered about it any further. (I'd be a 1 ;-))



Yes, of course, this is true for many, many people. Best friend of my mother's was married to a man for a decade, had a son, and only then discovered (or dared to express) that she was lesbian. Divorced and became pretty happy with a new girlfriend. Lots of stories like that.

But I've also known a girl, my age, who was lesbian, but had also fallen head over heels in love with this guy once - after discovering she was a lesbian and having had her first girlfriends. She had an apparently passionate affair with him, then returned to women. So I'm just saying its not all as cookie-cutter clear as people on both sides of the gay debate like to make it out to be, and the more tolerant a society is, the more ambiguities might show.



But what is considered a masculine or feminine trait itself has greatly varied over time and cross cultures ...



Well, let me go for a short rundown here, since I'm anonymous on this board anyway, and noone will know my friends or acquaintances - hardly a Dutch poster on here, in the first place. Lemme think. Apart from the girl I mentioned above, there was:

- an ex girlfriend of mine who once had a girlfriend for two years. She considered herself lesbian back then, later returned to men though. Still sees the occasional woman she would "go for", but has basically exclusively fallen for men the past ten years. Straight? Bisexual? Lesbian? You choose.

- a friend of hers who considers herself lesbian but lives with a man - the only man she's ever had a satisfying sexual relationship with, apparently.

- an ex lover of mine who has only had boyfriends but still regrets not having jumped at the chance when an attractive friend of hers asked her to go to bed with her.

- a friend of mine who's only had boyfriends, tried sex with a girl once but found it to be "nothing for her" - yet totally had second thoughts when a girl student of hers fell in love with her. If it hadnt been for her scruples about the situation, she'd have taken the opportunity.

Plus, she had another "offer" - from a girl who had long been her friend, and who also was otherwise straight.

- a friend of my then-best friend, party girl, was hanging out with a friend after some night out and they were so, err, horny (no way to put that more subtly) that, lacking men, they went for each other, satisfactorily so apparently.

<shrugs> Thats just from the top of my head. probably could come up with other examples if i tried. The subject of LUGs (is that the abbreviation? - "lesbians until graduation"?) has come up here oft enough too. This kind of thing just happens way, way more often than the usual categories for talking about it allow for.

I once read that a great many people - cant possibly remember the percentage - had their very first pubescent sexual experiments with someone of their own sex, which totally makes sense if you think about it. I did, for one ;-)

When i was about 12 or 13 years of age, a boy in my class at school privately told, evincing a great deal of excitement, about an experience he had had with his cousin, which the country boys of that time and place would have referred to as "cornholing." That is to say, his cousin had introduced him to sex, by being the passive partner in anal sexual intercourse. I recall vividly to this day the sense of dismay which overwhelmed me. I had not solicited such an important and intimate confession; perhaps because i had older brothers, who were often rather nasty about other people and their behavior, i knew that were he to reveal such an event to any other of our contemporaries, he would quickly be branded a "homo." It also occured to me that he had vouchsafed this experience to me, which was obviously very important to him, in the belief that i might be interested in such a "consummation." I did not reply, nor did i ever refer to the subject again; he did not either. He was an adopted child (such things are general knowledge in a rural community), and his mother was so rigidly strict in her attitudes, and her treatment of her "son," as to elicit tongue-clucking and sad shakes of the head from other women in the community, women of staunch Protestant virtue. At the time, i thought that her behavior was responsible for this "perversion" on his part--and that was, after all, one of the prevalent theories of the time. In later years, when the idea that homosexuals are people who are inclined to that sexual expression as a matter of natural course was become a subject of public discussion, i thought again of that boy. My immediate response was one of those senses we sometimes have of seeing the truth incarnate--i have never doubted the proposition since first i encountered it, on either an intellectual, nor on a "gut" level.

arrrrr

Oh come on. I'm speaking of the english dictionary definition, not what society defines as feminine or masculine. I was using those terms in their most generic sense. Feminine meaning woman and masculine meaning man.



How did that writing define "experiments"? I can remember doing a "let's show each other our boobies" sort of thing when I was, oh, 10? But it was a curiosity thing about what a different body looked like and certainly had nothing to do with sex.

Your examples weren't really the sort of answer I was looking for. You claimed that "the overwhelming majority of straights are not, if they are really honest, 100% straight." Well I'm being as honest as I can be and I don't fall into that majority, as you see it. What am I failing to see about myself? Can you answer that?

There can be an "overwhelming majority" -- ones through sixes, say -- who are not 100% straight, while still allowing for some -- the zeroes -- who really ARE 100% straight.

He didn't say "ALL straights are not, if they are really honest, 100% straight." So you might just be a zero, Caprice. :-)

I think I am one too, though I've been curious enough about whether I am or not that I put it to the test. (So far, seem to be zero through and through.)

Hmmm . . . howzabout less than zero?


Mayhap i will start a thread to expose the asexual agenda . . .

Here is some more information on gay genetics.



Source

No I cant, cause I cant look into your mind.

Why were the examples I came up with not "really the sort of answer you were looking for"?

When I wrote, "I suspect we'll move beyond that again, too, to find out that [..] the overwhelming majority of straights are not, if they are really honest, 100% straight", you asked me, "What made you state this claim? What sort of interests would one straight woman have in another? Could you explain?"

Well, I explained. I mentioned a range of different women I've known closeby who were either straight but still at times felt or succumbed to the "interest" in gay sex, or were hard to classify either as straight or bisexual, period.

Now that may need not apply to you, personally. I suspect, again, (just to stress my word choice), that an awful lot more people at some point or other may feel some kind of ambiguity than what is generally mentioned or accepted, and I feel a little confirmed in that suspicion by seeing that in my generation, the kind of cross-experimenting seems already a lot more current and accepted than in previous generations. Not everyone, for sure. But enough to make a purely biological, deterministic explanation seem like an ill fit.

You asked me what made me state such a claim, and I showed you what real-life examples I base this feeling on, that the pure, born-X or born-Y, gay/bi/straight division fits badly on actual individualities. Why was that the wrong answer?