The Glade 4.0

1) While there is strong evidence indicating it is not a choice, it is not proven
2) Many so-called homosexuals are bisexual and can and do choose to engage only in heterosexual relationships because they themselves think homosexuality is wrong even though they have such attractions. The divide of "homosexual or heterosexual" is a false dichotomy.
3) Whether homosexuality is right or wrong is an unsubstantiated belief either way. The asserion that homosexuality is perfectly acceptable from a moral standpoint is just as subejctive as the viewpoint that it is not.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why do bisexuals choose to engage in same-sex relationships?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Being in any relationship is a choice.

What attracts one person to another is not.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

A person may have the desire to act on certain impulses (smoking, homosexuality, harming another person, "positive" things also). I don't think a person "chooses" to have any of these desires, they just do as part of their fallen human nature.

Any person can "choose" to act on those desires. Why they do or don't is up to them. The more one feeds those desires, the stronger they often become. If they choose to stiffle those desires (and feed other desires), then those desires can wilt away.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Exactly.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If you're attracted to the same sex, you're homosexual, regardless of whether or not you actually have sex with anyone. You would have to be some level of stupidly retarded to actually choose to be homosexual, considering how it does nothing but hurt you at pretty much every aspect of life.

The gay debate is probably the worst conservative hypocrisy in existence, to be honest. A conservative will tell you that every sex-related inclination except homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable, and pretty much the only reason homosexuality is a choice to them is it has to be to support their positions. For example, conservatives will tell you that pedophilia is not a choice, diagnosed pedophiles will always be pedophiles and they can't change it, and for this reason diagnosed pedophiles need to be locked up forever even if they've never harmed a child because they can never be trusted.

I'm sorry If I was unclear. Yes one has those thoughts and desires because you are born with a sin nature. Why some people's sin nature leads them to homosexuality and other to murder or to oogle women with nice breasts, is beyond me. However i'm not a Murderer or a fornicator unless I allow my mind to play with those urges or actually act on them.

Do I fail sometimes, even as one who trusts Christ as his savior. Certainly. However I get back up and go forward. Not because I'm trying to buy my way into heaven; I'm already going. It is because I want to be a witness and a testimony to those who have not.

The same Jesus I trust for my sin problems can help anyone with their sin problems if they desire.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

This is totally absurd. If you're attracted to the same sex, you may be heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual depending on how strong that attraction is in relation to your attraction to the opposite sex.

Talya is clearly not homosexual despite being attracted to the same sex. I don't see why it's so **** hard to understand that there is no hetero/homo dichotomy. Even homosexual people do this; despite loudly insisting they can't change what they're attracted to, many of them are all over bisexuals to "pick a side", or claiming they're "cheating", or they're "really just in the closet" or whatever.



Stop being ridiculous. First of all, a conservative may or may not say that. Second, pedophilia isn't "every sex-related inclination except homosexuality". Third, what makes a person a pedophile and what makes them homosexual is not necessarily the same process, and the two need not necessarily have any relationship in terms of their mutability.

That supposed hypocrisy is pretty weak in light of the way bisexuality just gets subsumed under anything to do with gay people (they just automatically put GLBT on every gay organization, and the 'T' has to do with a totally unrelated problem as well, and a very serious and stressful one at that) and bisexuals are so frequently told, essentially, that they're only valid as long as they're expressing same-sex attraction. Watch what happens some time if a bisexual person dating a person of the opposite sex shows up at some sort of gay pride event. There's a better-than-even chance they'll be greeted frostily at best.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And how one responds to a homosexual relationship is a choice, but how one feels about them is not.

Reaching personal judgment about such things is perfectly acceptable. Institutionalizing those judgments, less so.

Advocating a particular belief isn't illegal. Heck, NAMBLA, as disgusting as it is, isn't illegal. There are doctors who have advocated smoking, there are councilors who advocate for and against abortion, etc, etc, etc.

A public college should know better.

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2010- ... e-response



If those requirements aren't applied to all students, then it's discrimination.

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In time, this too shall pass.

This all raises some interesting questions, though. I want to preface this with a disclaimer: I'm just musing, here. I'm not trying to make any specific claims, and I'm not trying to claim that homosexuality or bisexuality are equivalent to anything else. I'm just exploring the intellectual terrain with some "what ifs" and trying to trace out the consequences of certain assumptions. That said:

Okay, let's take for this granted. Let's grant that people can control their actions (this whole forums is pretty much moot if we can't), but that the underlying attraction -- the sexuality itself, if you will -- cannot be controlled. That is, it is purely a function of nature or, at least, where nurture is concerned, the nurture aspect occurs at such an early point that a person isn't even cognizant of the nurture aspect, or cannot adequately conceptualize sexuality at that time such that they could be said to have a "choice" in the matter.

Now then, we as a society have decided that the practice of pedophilia is unacceptable; that is, we've made it illegal. Fair enough. I doubt many people (save and except NAMBLA, etc.) would argue that the law should be otherwise. This only concerns the practice, which we have granted is a controllable action.

But what do we make of the sexuality itself? If we have granted that the construct of homosexuality and bisexuality lay beyond the realm of choice, then there seems little reason to believe that any other sort of sexuality would be any different in that respect. We can just as easily argue that no rational person would choose to be attracted to children. Or, say, animals. This is even less socially acceptable than (homo|bi)sexuality in the abstract, and is certainly more problematic legally speaking. The latter is entirely legal in at least some portions of the U.S., and even where it is illegal, the laws are seldom enforced.

So what, then, should a psychiatrist or therapist do/say to a patient that admits to being a pedophile or zoophile(?) with respect to sexuality, but who is committed to not practicing it? Should the therapist inform the patient that their sexual impulses (not just acting upon them) are wrong/deviant? Should it be treated as a mental illness, and if so why? What is the distinction, psychologically, between these sexual impulses and any other?

If the distinction is purely that acting upon those impulses would in all cases be illegal? If so, this is problematic because this is not actually always the case. You might be surprised to learn that bestiality, for instance, isn't necessarily illegal -- at least, not in all U.S. locales. Animal cruelty typically is, but even so, this doesn't necessarily preclude all bestiality. There have been several high profile cases where the only charges that could be brought against someone caught in the act of bestiality were "criminal trespassing", or some other ancillary charge. However distasteful, repugnant, or immoral the acts might have been according to American social norms, it was deemed that -- objectively speaking -- there was nothing per se "cruel" or harmful to the animal. So, that argument doesn't seem quite sufficient, rationally.

A stronger argument could be made in the case of pedophilia, based not just on the illegality, but rather on the principle that the practice of pedophilia is always harmful (either psychologically or physically) to its objects. But even that argument isn't entirely clear, at least in the case of ephebophilia. Is a 21-year-old who finds him/herself attracted to 16-or-17-year-olds mentally ill? Acting on those impulses may be illegal in most places, but legal statutes aside, it's difficult to make a rational argument that a 21-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old would be psychologically damaging, but a 16-year-old having sex with a 17-year-old (or a 19-year-old having sex with an 80-year-old *shudder*) wouldn't.

In short, if we're examining "non-standard" sexuality in a vacuum -- just the sexuality itself apart from its practice -- what is the difference between them? That is, all other things being equal, is a non-practicing pedophile morally equivalent to a non-practicing homosexual? Do they have the same psychological status? I.e., is one a mental illness while the other is not?

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

There is a reason why treatment for pedophiles simply doesn't work, and the risk of the perpetrator reoffending is so incredibly high. As humans, sexuality is an integral part of who we are, and in fact, one of the primary parts of who we are. Natural selection favors reproduction, and therefore the sexual drive is generally the primary motivator in almost all creatures, and humans are no exception. Of course, humans don't consciously view sex as a primarily reproductive thing -- in general, we're not intending to have children most times we have sex, and certain sexual orientations are highly unlikely or impossible to conceive children, but that doesn't make the sexual motivation any less for those people. What percentage of human beings die of old age having remained a virgin, by choice, their entire lives? Very, very few. While being in a relationship is a choice, the sex drive is such a strong motivator that only one in several thousand willingly chooses to ignore it. Eventually nearly everyone acts on their sexual feelings.

So quite simply, the pedophile is almost guaranteed to offend. Since their "partners" are victims who cannot give consent, lacking an effective treatment, the pedophile really needs to be treated like the rabid dog that they are.



I won't debate bestiality. It's bizarre, but I'm not entirely convinced it should be considered criminal. Whatever turns your crank, I just don't want to see or hear about it.



Laws are different everywhere here, too. Until 4 years ago, the age of consent in Canada was 14. We recently raised that to 16, but your 21 year old having sex with a 16 year old is legal here. We have, as countries, arbitrarily picked ages at which we feel people should be considered capable of making these decisions (note that marriage at 13 was commonplace in England a few hundred years ago.) However, in most cases, a teenage girl sexually resembles a young woman, not a child. I'm not sure these instances have anything to do with sexual orientation. I wouldn't necessarily call such a person a pedophile. They committed rape (statutory, though it is,) but they are not necessarily attracted to kids.



The difference is, when the homosexual almost inevitably chooses to engage in a sexual relationship, they are partnering with a consenting adult who has also chosen this. The pedophile, when they almost inevitably choose to do the same, are victimizing an innocent child.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

For more fun in your ponderings, Stathol, try necrophilia instead of pedophilia. The object isn't harmed, physically or psychologically, in that case.


To be fair, marriages at the time were often (? always? not sure) arranged by their parents, so the 13 year olds weren't making the decisions even then.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Well, using your own analorgy, why would a rational person choose to start smoking?

If someone wants to have sex with my dessicated corpse, or use my femur as a dildo after I'm dead, more power to 'em.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

True. They were, however, getting knocked up by 30 year old men, probably without much choice in the matter. And we (people, I mean) thought this was perfectly fine.

All such morality is relative.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Funny I just read recidivicsm rates for pedophiles are actually around 20% although it stated in the report that its commonly mistakenly beleived to be very high.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Talya:

Well, what you've discussed above is largely (entirely?) about the practical ramifications of exercising various sexual impulses/orientations. I doubt you'll get any argument against the idea that practicing pedophilia is harmful to its victims and should be illegal. Ephebophilia, possibly some depending on the specifics. But what I was really interested in exploring is our attitudes about sexuality itself as it pertains to psychology and morality.

To put it more bluntly, is being sexually attracted to a child, a horse, or your neighbor's car in and of itself a mental illness? Is the attraction itself wrong, or only is it only wrong when it culminates in action?

Your point that treatments for pedophilia are rarely successful (at least in the long-run) is well-taken, and I wouldn't necessarily even disagree with your attitude of how they should be dealt with if they ever offend. But the fact that we can't effectively treat it doesn't preclude the possibility that it's a mental illness. There are plenty of conditions that we categorize as mental illness which we can't (at present) treat with an significant success. Take a guy like Charles Manson, for instance. He might be more evil than crazy, but even so, I think most people will concede that he does have some manner of screw loose. Sociopaths in general cannot be treated effectively, though there might be a rare odd exception. Yet we still consider the various sociopathic personality disorders to be a form of mental illness, whether acted upon or not.

As well, there are mental illnesses like narcissistic personality disorder which 1) we cannot treat effectively and 2) are nonviolent with respect to themselves and others. On the other hand, there are many cases where people act in consistently harmful or violent ways -- often with high recidivism -- and yet we don't attribute the behavior to mental illness (ex. repeated armed robbery offenders).

So on the whole, the fact that pedophilia is harmful to others if acted upon doesn't seem adequate to distinguish it as a mental illness or not.

Suppose that a therapist has a patient who's being treated for some unrelated reason -- let's say an anxiety disorder. In the course of treatment, the patient admits to having a sexual attraction to children, but denies having ever acted upon it. Perhaps they aren't even solely attracted to children, but also adults. Apparently this is sometimes the case.

The argument has been made that bisexuals, though attracted to both genders, can successfully choose to live out their life in a monogamous relationship with a single partner (thus of just one gender). If so, it stands to reason that at least some pedophiles may also be capable of not acting on this aspect of their sexuality.

So where does that leave the therapist? How they should handle this information? Should they identify it as a mental illness (whether or not it can be treated)? Would it be ethical to tell the patient that these impulses are in some fashion "wrong" or should be resisted, whether they act on them or not?

I'm trying to get to the crux of why some sexual impulses are deemed to be mental illnesses and others are not.

I thought about that. Under the right circumstances (well....not "right", but you know what I mean ) necrophilia isn't criminal, and it's difficult to claim a victim. At least, not if the perpetrator has legal possession of the body after death. Otherwise it could fall into the same category as vandalism, I guess.

WTB brain bleach after this thread.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

"Mental illness" is difficult to define in any situation, Stathol. We tend to use it to describe mental conditions that make it difficult or impossible for people to function as productive members of society, but how much of that is just "who the person is?" I mean, i procrastinate something fierce. It can cause problems for me. Is that a mental disorder or just a personality trait? Where is the dividing line?

The brain is a computer. The output it provides is a factor of its biological makeup, its existing programming (experiences), and the input it has just received. But we value variety...we don't want everyone's brain to be the same, that would be boring. So there's no "right" way for it to provide output. We occasionally decide certain ways are "wrong," but why do we do that? We have decided certain variances are acceptable, but some are not, and require treatment. Hell, what's the difference between "evil" and "sick?" I don't really know. In the end, I really think any "choice" is an illusion caused by our limited observational capability. If we really understood the human brain and its programming, and could completely map how one works, we'd see there isn't really any choice - We could predict with absolute certainty what someone would "choose" in any situation.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Best. typo. ever.

From what I'm seeing, that 20% is for pedophiles who receive treatment.

In general:

http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/Soff_recid.pdf

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In time, this too shall pass.

This is not really the point. The positive aspects of a same-sex relationship with a particular person may outweigh the societal costs of being in that relationship. The issue is in your scenario, the relationship decision was made based on an already-existing attraction to the same sex. When I'm talking about someone choosing to be gay, I'm talking about them choosing to be attracted to the same sex, which can't be based on any pre-existing attraction. Not only are the societal costs of this extensive, but it also severely limits your potential "options." There's a lot more straight people than gay people, after all.



Well, you've got me there. You're homosexual if you're attracted to the same sex and not attracted to the opposite sex.



Oh, pedophilia was just the example because it's the most well known. In my experience, far-right conservatives tend to have this attitude about any kind of "deviant" sexual behavior, including things like watching pornography. It's a pretty common belief amongst conservatives that even porn-watchers have a mental disorder or addiction and need to be placed in an AA-esque program for the rest of their lives in order to "fight" it.

I'm pretty convinced that "homosexuality is a choice" was just conservatives changing their rhetoric so they could continue to bend reality to fit their ideals. I mean liberals do this all the time, it's not so far-fetched for conservatives to do it too. Remember that homosexuality actually was classified as a mental disorder until about thirty years ago.

And get caught in that time frame.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The relative numbers have nothing to do with the issue.

The fact that bisexuals choose to engage in same-sex relationships establishes that a person might, indeed, choose to be gay. A bisexual person who never engages in same-sex relationships or sex will appear to others to be straight. They will never incur the societal costs of being gay. Yet bisexuals frequently do express their same-sex attraction despite these societal costs. This indicates strongly that societal pressure that makes the experience of being gay negative is outweighed by the satisfaction of engaging in same-sex behaviors. Societal costs come from behaviors, not from internal motivations that society doesn't see. When people who are attracted to both sexes choose the more costly behavior over the less, that indicates both that the costs of the behavior are not all that high and that it is not valid to claim being gay cannot be a choice because no one would ever choose it.



In some cases people do need help because they cannot control their spending money on porn. However, why you're arguing against the sort of extreme-hangup-conservative is beyond me. No one here has expressed that position.



If it were a mental disorder, that would make it much harder to call a choice. Taking it off that list weakens the argument that it's involuntary, it doesn't strengthen it.

The real fact of the matter, however, is that certain people do, in fact "choose to be gay."... "gay for the stay". They're easily identified because they reside in large groups wearing very similar clothing that has numbers all over it, in buildings with unusually large amounts of security, and with other individuals who wear uniforms and carry radios. They also seem to have an odd propensity for bad tattoos.

Homosexual activity occurs in these populations at VERY high rates simply because the opportunity for heterosexual activity is rare to nonexistant. Yet homosexuals are not, to my knowledge, any more likely to commit crimes than heterosexuals.

This indicates strongly that the need for sex of some kind, any kind, is much stronger than any actual preference, or possibly that the vast majority of people are actually bisexual to some degree or other, with the middle of the curve simply heavily weighted towards the hetero side. These people may not be changing their internal attractions, but their internal attractions don't seem to stop them from satisfying themselves.

This gives us good cause to wonder how many people really are "Gay" as opposed to simply bisexual with a strong same-sex preference.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Bingo. This one, right here.



I have consistently said few (if any) people are by nature 100% gay or straight. Everyone is at least a little bisexual, on a subconscious level, and experience and societal pressure pushes most people toward rejecting the desire that they perceive as abnormal. I do not care for the terms "gay" or "straight" when used to describe a person rather than their relationships/behavior. I believe using the terms this way is misleading.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

There is strong evidence that there is a biological impetus for homosexuality. Indicators are that stress on the mother while the child is in the womb may be a strong contributing factor. (among which is food shortage) That could suggest an evolutionary cause for Homosexuality, (less likely to reproduce and therefore reduce population growth in reaction to limited food supply)