Is homosexuality a mental illness?

[Moontanman]

Thats right on... i completely agree with that. thank you.

 

JRH, as inow pointed out in post #11 DoubleK was incorrect in some of his assertions and you evidently missed Inows post.

 

 

It's also worthy of note that primates and humans are the only creatures which mate for pleasure...(and there are no recorded incidences of primates performing homosexual acts) which means it is a condition only (in nature) isolated to humans - which tells me that other factors need to be considered...

 

 

Many animals have sex for fun, dolphins being one, dolphins will even attempt to have sexual contact with humans, wild benobo chimps are notorious for having homosexual sex as well as sex with their young for fun and as a social lubricant. A great many other animals engage in homosexual contact so while DoubleK got part of it correct his assertions as quoted above are incorrect...

[pioneer]

Science uses the animal standard to hep define natural human instinctive behavior. If we assume that is valid (for the sake of argument) the second logical aspect of the animal standard would be to define the natural limits of these animal behavior. For example, one may point to a lion gorging food. Using the animal standard one might argue gorging is natural, since we can show at least one animal species that does this. But the second half of the science standard should then say, although gorging can be shown to occur in nature and is therefore natural, even lions don't do this 24/7. Even with the gorging, the lion remains fit, because the gorging behavior has natural limits.

 

Relative to gay, one may show this in natural to many animals including apes. The next science question should be what are the natural limits? If we exceed these natural limits, even with the dynamics of a behavior defined as natural, one is not behaving naturally.

 

With gorging we can show animals do this. But we are hard pressed to find drastically overweight animals as a result of this behavior. There is a natural limit. With humans, we define this natural behavior, but the final human result does not coordinate with the natural; lacks the natural limitation. The question becomes, why doesn't science include the natural limits of animal behavior since this is being used as the gold standard for human behavior?

[iNow]

Wow. Somebody ^^ should teach themselves what a strawman is, and then look up the concept of a non-sequitur. The mind continues to boggle...

[Moontanman]

Science uses the animal standard to hep define natural human instinctive behavior. If we assume that is valid (for the sake of argument) the second logical aspect of the animal standard would be to define the natural limits of these animal behavior. For example, one may point to a lion gorging food. Using the animal standard one might argue gorging is natural, since we can show at least one animal species that does this. But the second half of the science standard should then say, although gorging can be shown to occur in nature and is therefore natural, even lions don't do this 24/7. Even with the gorging, the lion remains fit, because the gorging behavior has natural limits.

 

I'm trying to understand what this has to do with sex at all much less homosexuality, i am really trying....

 

Relative to gay, one may show this in natural to many animals including apes. The next science question should be what are the natural limits? If we exceed these natural limits, even with the dynamics of a behavior defined as natural, one is not behaving naturally.

 

 

If you define human behavior completely by the behavior of our closest relatives then having sex with children should be ok, what do you mean by natural limits? For this to make sense you have to define natural limits...

 

With gorging we can show animals do this. But we are hard pressed to find drastically overweight animals as a result of this behavior. There is a natural limit. With humans, we define this natural behavior, but the final human result does not coordinate with the natural; lacks the natural limitation. The question becomes, why doesn't science include the natural limits of animal behavior since this is being used as the gold standard for human behavior?

 

Over weight animals? Ever see a bear just before winter? Some human cultures being what westerners call obese is a good thing to be striven for, you are judging humans by western culture ideals which even western culture fails to achieve as a majority, if humans were wild and living in a cold climate i can see how storing body fat is a good thing since food is scarce in the winter or during the dry season or what ever. Since humans are not in their "natural" state and haven't been since we developed culture (I'm defining natural here as close to being the wild primitive state, in many ways humans are more like animals in captivity who also get fat) For humans in their natural being fat might have been a good thing, it's known that the primitive European cultures used obese depictions of women as talisman and are though to have worshiped a fat women as personifications of the earth goddess so the western idea that fat woman are somehow flawed is new human behavior not the natural state of humans... And I still don't see how this has anything to do with homosexuality....

[Sayonara]

Waiting for Pioneer to define the natural limits of gay.

 

And also to discover resource partitioning in ecological interactions.

[JN.]

We must, after saying homosexuality is or is not a mental illness, say what a illness is.

 

In my opinion, a disease is a condition of our body or mind that make us suffer or that can destroy us (and with "destroy" I mean kill us or making us incapable of living a life with quality).

 

Thinking about this definition, I think that homosexuality should not be considered to be a mental illness. Homosexuals do not have any physical problem, neither a psychological one, because homosexuality is not directly related with some cases of depression or suicide. Some people say homosexuals have a mental illness because we can see that the most part of teenagers who commit suicide are gay; however, their depression is derived from the social pressure, and not from their sexual orientation. To prove that this is a fact and not a theory developed to protect gay rights, we can - and we should - analyse how homosexuality is seen in other cultures.

 

For example, we can pick the Etoro tribe; homosexual behaviour (yeah, I know it's different from homosexuality...) is encouraged by the tribe, so the most probable to be seen is that gay teens and straight teens have not different suicide rates. It's pure speculation, because I don't know any data on this, but it would be an interesting thing to study.

 

And I know there are more tribes who encourage homosexuality and where heterosexuality is not the the rule. This should also prove that homosexuality is not dangerous to any society, because if it was, it would be avoid by all societies. 

 

 

 

 

*I don't know if I wrote the whole message without mistakes but, if I didn't, I would like to know! *

 

 

[PlutoXid3]

My friend is homosexual. I believe he wasn't born gay, but taught gay. It's a problem we still need to fix -- Me and my friends regularly talk about helping cure it, it's not an easy task due to the mass amounts of gay pride shows and people accepting it. It will become a problem in the future, I think it needs to be dealt with. It's obvious what causes it -- it's definitely not a gay gene. IMHO.

 

 

 

 

^PoX3.

[JN.]

My friend is homosexual. I believe he wasn't born gay, but taught gay. It's a problem we still need to fix -- Me and my friends regularly talk about helping cure it, it's not an easy task due to the mass amounts of gay pride shows and people accepting it. It will become a problem in the future, I think it needs to be dealt with. It's obvious what causes it -- it's definitely not a gay gene. IMHO.

 

 

 

 

^PoX3.

Why do you say your friend was taught to be gay? Although gay pride do exist, families do not encourage their children to be gay. In fact, families are always reproving all sexual orientations, except heterosexuality, of course. This should result in children "choosing" heterosexuality. However, there are gay children. Maybe this should be a fact against the nurture explanatory theory on homosexuality.

 

 

Why are you trying to "cure him"? Does he appears to be suffering? In affirmative case, maybe you should ask him what's making him suffering.

 

Why will homosexuality be a problem in the future? Do you think the number of gay people will overcome the number of straight people? I don't know what you think about this, but I think it's quite improbable.

 

 

[Moontanman]

My friend is homosexual. I believe he wasn't born gay, but taught gay. It's a problem we still need to fix -- Me and my friends regularly talk about helping cure it, it's not an easy task due to the mass amounts of gay pride shows and people accepting it. It will become a problem in the future, I think it needs to be dealt with. It's obvious what causes it -- it's definitely not a gay gene. IMHO.

 

 

 

 

^PoX3.

 

I genuinely hope that you can understand that if you have a friend who is gay the best thing you can do for him is be his friend. Being gay cannot be fixed, be his friend treat him like you would any other friend, support him when everyone else is rejecting him and to put it simply "Be a friend", not a judge of his behavior. Being gay cannot be fixed any more than being heterosexual can be fixed but you can hurt him terribly by trying to fix him....