Moontanman

That is a rather narrow view, can you say it would be impossible for you to have sex with a woman? Have you ever had sex with a woman? Asserting that you have a mutation is quite true, we all do, asserting that some random mutation is why you are homosexual would seem to ignore all other people who are homosexual or do you assert that this unique mutation somehow also occurs in other humans randomly? Your assertion that neither or your parents have this gene ignores what we know about genetics, if you had blue eyes and both your parents had brown eyes would you assert you had a mutation or that you had inherited a recessive trait from your parents? I really don't follow your line of reasoning here...

14 science and technology questions answered by the two men competing to be our next POTUS, I think it's reasonable to ask if these are the questions that need to be answered as well as considering the answers they give to the questions that were asked. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=obama-romney-science-debate&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20120905 Personally I think the questions were too easy not controversial enough to really give us a clue as to what they are really endorsing. Romney has publicly said he doesn't believe in evolution, his party endorses the teaching of YEC in science class. At some point the hard questions need to be answered or at least asked...

It would appear you have to be a student of the book of Urantia to get that info on that one... http://encyclopediaurantia.org/ultimaton.htm

Huntsman showed this to be true when he had the audacity to say he believed in evolution... the fix was in...

You completely misunderstand, it's not up to us to prove you wrong it's up to you to provide evidence you are correct... read the rules dude...

I multi quoted this not to debate each of the quotes but to show how close and how far off the mark everyone is but still no brass ring... There is a huge elephant in the room, people keep toying with the idea of choice, not a choice, genetic, not genetic, various ways homosexuality can or could be supported by genetics and how it cannot be supported thusly. One of the biggest elephants in the room is our modern definition of sexuality, I'm not talking about a scientific definition but a social definition. We are assuming that the group has always defined homosexuality in the way we do and that homosexuality is somehow an impediment to reproduction.... I have my doubts that homosexuality has always been defined as an all or nothing, on off, type of behavior. In fact I am going to assert that homosexual behavior is part of the behaviors of all humans and in the past this was generally assumed to be true. A few hunters off on a long hunt get horny and decide to fellate each other around the camp fire after along hard hunt... homosexuals or just horny guys helping each other out? The dominant male requires that all the males he dominates submit to him sexually when females are not available.... or even when they are... homosexual or just a dominant male getting what is perceived by the group as normal behavior? Females left behind by the males in the cave, alone, lonely, so they have sex with each other while their mates are away... homosexual? Females that have male mates but also have occasional female lovers... homosexual? Men and women in prison, isolated far away from any opposite sexual contact, so they have same sex lovers... homosexual or just sexual? Bonobo Chimps seem to have a handle on the sexuality thing, everyone does everyone else at some point. We humans seem to want to assume or assert that any sexual contact with someone of the same sex labels you as homosexual or even if that is your preferred sexual encounter it somehow magically prevents you from having sex with someone from the opposite sex. I think the main disconnect here is the assumption that heterosexual and homosexual are opposites of each other when in fact they are not. Sexuality comes in many flavors, a spectrum, a rainbow if you will. It's mainly our society that attempts to isolate people whose desires for the same sex are known but on the down low the number is much higher and if homosexuality wasn't demonized by religion I doubt we would see it quite a polarizing behavior as we do now... On the whole the "is it genetic and it is not genetic" there is also the argument that a tendency toward preferring same sex is hormonal and occurred inside the womb due to the fetus being exposed to varying amounts of the mothers hormones during gestation. This could also be a big part of the genetics influence as well, certain genes when exposed to hormonal imbalances in the womb could cause a trend in the direction of sexual preference after puberty. I don't think it's a purely "I've got the gay gene thing at all"...

In the quest for real honesty I will admit to being more than a bit obsessed with the truth, it was one of those things beaten into me as a child

I am sure that someplace there is a politician that wouldn't consider lying to gain political capital and of course everyone lies... We all lie every day, actually telling the truth every time you speak is close to impossible in our society, lies are like a social lubricant that allows us to go on getting along reasonably well. If my wife asks me if this dress makes her butt look big I know the correct answer is not a completely truthful answer. But when someone asserts something like Rape victims rarely get pregnant because real rape victims can shut down the process of impregnation.... I think we are talking about something completely different, a level of lie that is not part of the social covenant to avoid undue stress by not telling your wife her butt does indeed look big in that skirt... When politicians tell "stuff" they either want to be true or spin that "stuff" so it sounds true but they know it's horse feathers and only say it so they can get elected then the system has failed. We accept the little lies so much in our daily lives the big lies either become ok because it's for a good cause or we fail to see the lie because it is so big that it's difficult to believe that anyone would lie about something so important. We are bombarded by the big lie so much that it has become ok to follow a political party that quite literally lives by the big lie. We want the world to be what we want it to be that we would rather believe the big lie than catch a glimpse of the truth. One of the basic tenets of one of our political parties is to teach Genesis as science and to teach that science is just a hunch someone had last night over pickled eggs and cheap beer. Maybe the original post title is too ambiguous and maybe I have blown this lie thing out of proportion, maybe praying that the hurricane passed the republican convention by worked, they really are the party of God, how could they possibly loose when God diverts hurricanes away so it doesn't interfere with the convention! God really is on their side and all those godless Scientists really need to pray those storms away instead of studying them....

Why are lies generally accepted as OK in politics? No where else in our society, other than possibly religion, are lies the accepted means to an end. In politics sometimes it actually seems like the bigger the lie the better the result even when the people know it's a lie. Why does hearing what you want to believe seem to be more important than the truth?

I know people think I'm beating a dead horse on this but I think that the unholy marriage of the conservative right and the religious right has been the undoing of the conservative movement as anything but a win at all costs and let the prophets flow free has become the platform of the Republicans. This idea that one side is lying and we should lie so we can win and do what is right disturbs me in a very fundamental way. Once the lie becomes not the truth but a weapon to kill the truth because the truth will result in us losing.... I don't know, this is all very confusing for me and I think for many others. There is no longer a difference on what direction the country should go but which lie is easier to suck up. Religion openly asserts that lying in the name of God is not just ok but necessary, politics is almost by definition the art of lying to convince others of the truth, the merger of these two is nothing short of a nightmare... 1984 anyone? Who lies the most? I am obviously biased but can anyone say that lying is not the back bone of politics? That twisting the truth and perverting reality is not the name of the game? Politics has become nothing but a scam a ponzi scheme, making money by convincing people to invest their money on the hope that will benefit but no one benefits but the politician and his real owners, politics has nothing to do with representing the people, being voted into office is a free ride to making money hand over fist. The fact that being elected to represent us in Washington immediately allows you to do things like insider trading that the rest of us mortals would be arrested for. This simple fact is enough to attract criminals like bees to honey. Then you have the true believers... in every way as batshitcrazy as true believers in UFOs, Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, Crystal Power and yes I'll say it... Religion... When an other wise sane and intelligent individual defends things his party says not because it's true or in anyway real but only because it's what he wants to believe. When these individuals ignore any and all evidence to the contrary when it is presented to them, when quite literally they will believe a lie instead of the truth simply because winning is all important and truth is meaningless what does that say about us as a society? As a people? Once you get to thinking that god is on your side all bets are off and the religious right has embraced the religion of riches and the success of what used to be fringes are now mega churches where money is the goal and the meter used to determine success. When greed becomes good Christian values and the pursuit of money is openly worshiped combining that with capitalism unchained the next step is religion unchained and that rolls everything back to the middle ages with modern technology to back up that philosophy freedom will be a meaningless word but Tea Party will no longer have anything to do with cups... To think this perversion of what it means to be an American started with taxes on diet soda at first seemed to be funny or at least ironic, I honestly didn't know how this perversion started, if it was some other country on some other planet it would be funny but it's us, the Reavers are coming, get your gun and shoot your self, it's the logical option....

Awesome... simply awesome...

Can you give an example of this? Can you give some evidence of this? Assuming the first two are true to support the last with no evidence of the first seems a bit premature...

Coffee with Claire, more dim bulbs and the GOP...

Isn't this a repeat of a recent question? Dogs would be considered ring species in one interpretation and sub species in another. If indeed the only dogs left were Great Danes and Chihuahuas and an outside source unaware of their origins were to inspect them they would qualify as separate species....

This movie "Steel Magnolia's" would give you a chance to hear several different Southern accents, from the upper class to the lower class accents... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Magnolias

Same guy again? He is nothing if not persistent. Bless his little heart...

Well... I never did hear tell of such a thing... bless his little heart.... A lot of it is colloquial sayings but speaking like fog horn leg horn helps some as well... I say I say boy you don't listen well do ya boy, not the sharpest knife int the drawer is he? now look heah boy i'm not a chicken, chickens have long floppy ears and big noses just like that critter over there, yeah that that one... now go get your self a chicken... the boy just don't listen not raised right i say, dropped on his head as a baby, made 'im lazy i think, laziest chicken hawk i ever seen....

I waffle back and forth between their biology being so different they couldn't be infected and so lacking in antibodies to be eaten immediately...

There are gay people because reproduction is never perfect, mistakes happen on several levels, I don't like to equate homosexuality with birth defect due to the negative connotations but it is true that problems in the womb both genetic and hormonal can tweak sexuality to outside what the majority call normal. Humans are not only born with there sexuality someplace closer to homosexual than hetero sexual, most human sexuality falls some place along the curve between the two extremes. But it should be noted that not only are humans born with their sexuality skewed away from the opposite sex and toward the same sex it's also true that humans are born physically inter-sexed. Mistakes are made in reproduction and these mistakes can result in individuals that of indeterminate sex, this occurs one in 1500 births. I don't see why it's so difficult to see that people born homosexual might be the result of fetus development not going the direction it should have. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14459843 If babies are born with their sex organs physically between one sex or the other is it so difficult to believe that sexual desire cannot be affected in a similar way?

Even if you could make a case that such a weapon that targets specific groups of people was not racist it's usefulness would be limited unless you intended to kill everyone non combatants included and only if everyone you were fighting shared the same vulnerability which again would seem to indicate some sort of racial component. Despicable would seem to the best description of such a weapon, monstrous would be more accurate...

Again, vitalism was discredited more than a century ago, if they made bold assumptions with out a solid background maybe you could enlighten us as to what you mean by that? Possibly you could give us your definition of organic and inorganic substances? And a heads up on that under lying truth would be helpful as well.... As for solving life... what exactly do you mean by that? Life is not exactly mysterious, as far as I know life is a chemical reaction nothing more, if you have evidence it is more than a chemical reaction please show us your evidence of this.

Wouldn't that depend on your definition of good and bad in this context?

Hmmm, yes, Jessica Alba pretty much wins any contest... meow

Unless your war was racist in nature I can't see how this would be helpful....