the mountain can only be destroyed when you change it's its label — rodrigo

Hmmmm, not so fast. I can label you "dead", but my act of labeling you dead has no consequence for you. You can relabel Denali and call it a hill, but it will remain a mountain. Denali will cease to be a mountain when it isn't a mountain any more. There were once mountains where there are now none--those mountains were destroyed.

at what point does destruction of the mountain take place — rodrigo

Construction and destruction are both processes, not events. The Himalayan Mountains are being both constructed and destructed at the same time. Plate tectonics is shoving India into Asia, causing the up-lift producing what we call the Himalayas. At the same time glaciers, wind, rain, the freeze/thaw cycle, gravity, and so forth are all grinding the mountains down. The Himalayan Mountains will have been destroyed when destruction exceeds construction for a long time and they are not there any more, some many millions of years from now.

the unmanifested , the space that allows the manifested to rise and fall does not operate under the time and space construct of our minds ....which is why you will never be able to rationalize the concept of god ..... the mind is too limited — rodrigo

What the hell does that mean?

If the mind is so limited, how do you know what does and does not operate under "the time and space construct of our minds"? Can the mind know what it can not know?

Please Note: You are not under attack, rodrigo. Relax. I'm just suggesting that you have may inadvertently written something nonsensical. Philosophizing often produces nonsensical statements. Welcome to the club. Literally, welcome to The Philosophy Forum, a place where many nonsensical statements are made, discovered, and outed--much to the annoyance, pain, and agony of the authors.

Apart from our own direct experience and existence that doesn't leave much for discussion. — Mr Bee

Whadahyahmean, it doesn't leave much room for discussion? Our own direct experiences and existence are all we've ever had. Out of that comes the direct experience of thinking about our direct experiences and existence, science, arts, literature, government, The Philosophy Forum, etc. What else would there be? Concerts and lectures from heaven?

so I can't really say what I think about death from a personal level — Mr Bee

Oh... I'm pretty sure you'll think of something once the Grim Reaper appears. As they say, there are no neutrals about death in front of the firing squad or in hospice. You'll either be for it or against it--probably against, with the firing squad, all for it if you are dying in hospice.

Well, the universe seems to recycle stuff, for sure -- and if you want to extend that to the recycling of being, go right ahead. Though there is nothing more convincing about reincarnation than the idea of nothing following death, or the idea that we are transported to heaven. Everything in the category of "do we exist after death?", "does God exist?", "what happened before the Big Bang? or even "will I be alive and well 1 year from now?" are all unknowable. That which we have no knowledge of we should just shut up about. There are plenty of other things that are knowable and about which we can do something.

EDIT: I don't mean the above to be a terminating response. If I find reincarnation depressing, that need not stop you from being enthusiastic about it. Being reincarnated as a slime mold was just not a good thing, back 5862 tears ago, and I still resent it.

If I understand it correctly (I may not) nothing is destroyed. Matter can be turned into energy and energy can be turned into matter. Form, however, as you noted with ice, is mutable.

When your body becomes too disorganized to function (as a result of disease, age, or injury) you die. The inordinately complex arrangement of matter and energy which composes your brain collapses. "You" cease to exist. The body which was once identified as "you" is gradually transformed into water, carbon dioxide, minerals, and so on, and is recycled back into the planet from which your material being was put together.

As far as I can tell, our existential being comes to a final end when we die. Some people think the cosmos makes arrangements for our existential being to continue on in some form -- as an angel, a damned spirit, as another animal (reincarnation), as a ghost, and so forth. Take your pick.

Some people find some satisfaction in knowing that they continue to exist as an infinitesimally tiny portion of the sum total of all matter and energy. Some people publish books, make works of art, design and build structures, etc. which they consider their "ongoing legacy". "They exist in their work". And living things reproduce, contributing something of their existence to future life. This sort of after-life doesn't usually last very long, either. Most of our 'works' are plowed under or forgotten pretty quickly. The folks who invented plastics and plutonium will see their progeny last for geological ages.

"Sic transit gloria mundi" describes our transient situation: "Thus passes the glory of the world."

I asked them to define homosexuality - what "gay" is. They couldn't do it, and they acknowledged that it couldn't be done. That is, is there a sine qua non either of being or not being gay, or with respect to any aspect of sexuality? — tim wood

I find that ridiculous, as, I can say with confidence, would many others, whether gay, straight, or other. Clearly there is meaning enough to come up with at least a working definition. — Sapientia

The professional social workers were, most likely, "over-thinking" the question, but what is the cause, motivation, or source of "over-thinking"? One source is over-exposure to social theory (soctheo) which, for various reasons, seeks to undermine systems of oppression which, some theorists think, depends on rigid definitions. So, race and gender (two faves of the soctheo types) come in for major dithering operations which fuzz up everything until they can't see anything clearly.

So, male, masculine, men, boys; female, feminine, women, girls; blacks, whites, germans, french, welsh, scot, etc. are all found to be insubstantial in all ways, as are gay and straight. The only thing clear to soctheos is that most people are oppressed by white males, and that point they can analyze with self-declared clarity and certainty (which they do over and over again).

So, how does one "identify" as a homosexual / gay person? Is it possible? Sure, it's possible. For the individual, there is first self-identity: "I know I am gay". They know what they feel (affective axis) and what they think (cognitive axis). They know what gives them an instant hard on, and what doesn't (physical axis). Gay men know they are gay because they fantasize about male bodies and having sex with other men. Gay men have, and like to have sex with other men (performative axis). Gay men may preferentially socialize with other gay men (social axis).

Straight men differ from gay men in how they self-identify, what they feel, what they think bout, what turns them on, how they perform sex, and who and how they socialize. They will be oriented towards heterosexuality.

Do some straight, heterosexual men resemble gay men? Sure -- and visa versa. Some men are bisexual -- they respond sexually to both men and women (usually not equally). That some men are bisexual doesn't invalidate the straight-gay dichotomy that most people experience, since most people are not, in the long run, bisexual. (A gay man having sex with a woman a few times doesn't make him bisexual or straight, anymore than a straight man having sex with another man a few times makes him bisexual or gay.)

What about stereotypical gay behavior, like "swishy" "faggoty" talking and walking? Like dressing up in women's clothes and (usually caricaturing some) women's behavior? Are these stereotypes an essential part of gay identity? No. Well done swish and drag are learned behaviors that require practice. Some men can do backward somersaults in high heels and plant without so much as a wobble. Most people (male or female) can not. Gays have subtle methods of signaling (like eye contact and other secret methods) but sometimes subtleness is just too limited. A faggoty walk is a much more efficient broadcast. They weren't born knowing how to do that.

What about the more feminine gender roles (apart from sex) that some gay men assume; is that an essential part of gayness? No. Sometimes boys are partial to feminine activities because the are excluded from typical male activities by other boys or men. Sometimes feminine activities (like cooking is in traditional families) were more interesting than masculine activities (like auto repair, mowing the lawn, etc.). Many gay men perform jobs which are either typically male gender-identified or are more gender-neutral--like white collar work. Some gay men are interior decorators, hair dressers, or social workers but one is far more likely to come across gay computer programmers, businessmen, technicians, and the like in groups of gay men.

The next thing you know, he'll be burning his bra. Mark my words. — Sapientia

Something to look forward to in this drab, wretched world.

It's sad, for sure, but Agustino isn't American, German, or Francois. He's not British, Finnish, Swedish, Norskish, Danish, Dutchish, Swissish, Polish, Spanish, etc. Maybe Bulgarian, Rumanian, Moldovian, Ukranian, Byelorussian, but not Italian.

The Right To Property is the Right To Theft — Agustino

May we expect you to begin quoting Proudhon now--Property is Theft?

The Decalogue has no positive content but is merely negative. — Agustino

Well, 4 and 5 are positive:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Is Heschell or Agnon who calls the sabbath "a cathedral in time"?
Honor your father and your mother.

Do you find the prohibition on murder and adultery (adultery! Agustino) to be negative? I would think you would consider those positive. I John 5:3 says "His commandments are not burdensome". Ar you finding the Big Ten to be something of a pain?

marriage results from the free surrender by both sexes of their personality — Hegel

Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Hegel did this? What did Mrs. Hegel say? "Don't believe everything my husband says."

Are you ready to surrender your personality? If so, please do so at our earliest convenience.

The Right To Free Speech is the Right To Lie — Agustino

That's why the Supreme Court interprets the law for everyday cases so that "Fire!" in a movie theater is not Free Speech. The Founding Fathers were actually quite forward thinking on that front. — schopenhauer1

Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a theater and causing a panic are the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. — Schenck v. United States

Thought you'd want to know.

If I was in charge, adultery would be illegal, punished with several years in prison for both involved. I see no problem with this at all, quite the contrary, they are the very demands of justice. — Agustino

What I find troubling about your valuation of the relationship which you think adultery violates is that it is too close to the idea of ownership and theft, where the partners are in possession of each other and adultery amounts to a theft. Your view emphasizes the contractual aspects of formal marriage rather than relationship.

One of the 'planks' in the original gay liberation platform was an understanding that a committed relationship is maintained by the desire of the partners to remain in that relationship, not by an externally enforceable contract, namely marriage; and that a commitment to one person as the most important person in the other's life isn't dissolved by having sex with somebody else. What would dissolve it is making commitments to other people that they are the most important person in one's life.

Granted, this was/is aspirational, and the drive for total respectability that led the gay movement to seek official marriage is altogether in the opposite direction.

None the less, many gay relationships were founded on the principle of mutual commitment - with no added legal enforcement, and last/lasted for life. These relationships seem to be a lot like most long term relationships -- not perpetual bliss, but a working through of ordinary problems as they arise.

A lot of gay men enter into relationships the same way straights enter relationships. Regardless of professions of trust, lust, and love no major commitment is made and at some point the couple go there separate ways. That it didn't work out is not tragic and may not even be unfortunate.

What is more unfortunate for gays and straights alike is when a long-term relationship with mutual commitments breaks up 25 or 30 years later. Chances are the cause of long-term relationships breaking up is the withering of interest, emotional elasticity, and things like mental illness, alcohol or drug addictions... stuff like that, rather than one partner having "adulterous" sex with somebody else.

Just some additional details, Jake:

Military planners underestimated the damage that nuclear weapons would do. Daniel Ellsberg [he Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner] documents how these planners had calculated damage on the basis of megatons of explosive power, but had not taken into account the resulting firestorms that the hot blasts would cause. The damage becomes far greater and, in addition to radioactive fallout, there would be enough dust and soot blasted into the upper atmosphere to trigger--not global warming, but global cooling. It isn't that we would enter an ice age, but 7-10 degrees of cooling would be intensely disruptive and the consequences would last for several decades. Crop failures would be very severe.

The problem of excreted medical compounds was probably unforeseen and unavoidable. But the chemical industry--like most industries--has externalized the costs and harms of production. The by-products of manufacturing chlorofluorocarbons that made things like more efficient air conditioning, Teflon, and fire retardants possible were, for the most part, dumped into the environment. These various chemicals deplete ozone and in humans have several negative effects such as immune system suppression.

Capitalism (in any form) pretty much requires continual expansion. This has led to maximum expansion of extractive and manufacturing industries across the board, along with continual expansion of consumption -- and then consequent waste products (sewage, garbage, spoiled environments, etc.).

Yes, the odds are against us. "Paying the piper" is way overdue, and the natural bill collectors are out and active.

Will AI take all or most of jobs? — Posty McPostface

Of course. We're screwed.

First, what are you classifying as "artificial intelligence"? Is Google's speech-to-text service artificial intelligence? How about their search algorithms? How would I know the machine that took my job was an artificial intelligence?

Second, computers (intelligent or not), automation, and mechanization already have taken a lot of people's jobs. But it depends on how much it costs. Most recycling facilities employ some people to pull out unacceptable material from the stream. People are still better and cheaper at this than machines -- though machines do perform a lot of the sorting.

A machine capable of picking only ripe raspberries one at a time would probably cost more than a Mexican. If an AI machine was rented from IBM, it might be cheaper to keep one's white color workers. Probably not, but it would depend on costs.

A lot of laboratory work is performed by machines. Machines have gradually been taking the place of medical technologists for 3 or 4 decades.

The Internet operates as a librarian, audio visual resource person, teacher, porn dealer, newspaper delivery boy (without the boy), etc.

There are many things that are impossible for a non-human to do, such as creative work. — Waya

Well, I suppose an AI will have difficulty plumbing the depth of human despair, so I wouldn't expect a novel-writing AI to do a good job writing the Great American AI Novel about all the people it displaced from their jobs. Besides which, the AI probably doesn't give a rats ass, anyway.

On the other hand, if a machine is really intelligent, why couldn't it be creative too? Can a human be be intelligent without creativity?

A good share of what people do isn't going to require the IBM JumboTron AI machine, anyway. Ordinary stupid desktop computers have replaced lots of human jobs. Their work here is not finished.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not on the AI side. Except that I think a lot of jobs people do are so gawd-awful tedious, stupid, and boring that a machine really should be doing them.

A balance to be sure of productivity, consumption, and amusements, if at all possible.

We have the ability to turn an ordinary activity into a folly, from betting on a horse to bankrupting ourselves at gambling; from smoking a joint or snorting a bit of dope to destroying our health with drug addiction and so on. Actually, most of us steer well clear of folly in most areas. When we don't steer clear our behavior becomes quite problematic. Video games played obsessively or chatrooms, texting, and Facebook attended with an OCD intensity are problems of the persons more than problems of the gadgets, though the gadgets aid and abet the obsessive.

Whether someone dabbles with stuff that is a waste of time, or submerges themselves in it with abandon depends on their personality. Some people are (practically) fated to become addicted. It isn't their fault to be so fated; it may be there fault, to some degree, to not guard against addiction once they know they are liable to be hooked.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum. Great topic.

We human beings are simply not emotionally and cognitively configured to manage the consequences of having powerful knowledge over the long run. We can recognize the need for long-term management (running into the scores of years, into centuries, and then many thousands of years) but we are very poor at even conceiving how to put very long term plans into effect. Religious organizations have managed to look after saints bones and sacred texts for a little over 2000 years. That's the best we have done.

Let me take a different example: Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, but 15 years would pass before a strain and a method was found to manufacture it in large quantities. In his Nobel Prize speech, Fleming explained that bacterial resistance to penicillin was unavoidable, but that it could be delayed by using enough penicillin for long enough.

The discovery of penicillin, streptomycin, aureomycin, and a few dozen more antibiotics was a tremendous thing--extremely valuable knowledge. Seventy-five years later we are finding that some pathogenic bacteria (causing TB, gonorrhea, and all sorts of other infections) are emerging which are pretty much resistant to all of the antibiotics.

Perhaps this would have happened anyway--later or sooner--but certain people ignored Fleming's warning. Among them, companies producing antibiotics to feed to beef, pork, and chickens to get them to grow faster; doctors who prescribed antibiotics for diseases for viral diseases (like colds, influenza for which they were irrelevant; patients who received the proper dose and instructions for bacterial infections but only took part of the Rx, as soon as symptoms went away. Countries which sell antibiotics over the counter, leading to widespread under-dosing or inappropriate use.

Our management of antibiotic knowledge has gone the way of most other powerful knowledge.

Consequently, we have wasted the long-term value of antibiotics. We are stuck with thousands of nuclear weapons and nuclear waste dumps. Virtually indestructible plastics are messing up life in the oceans, we are immersed in a soup of hormone-like chemicals; we flush tons of pharmaceuticals into rivers every day (in urine, feces, and to get rid of pills), and on and on and on.

Well, yes. But, fascism is national socialism. So, logical conclusion? Maybe, maybe not. — Posty McPostface

Fascism = national socialism in Germany, but not in France, Italy, Ireland, the US, etc.

How can fascism not be the same thing in different countries?

Fascism isn't an ideology, it's a method first. The fascism of the US (embodied in the KKK) was quite different than it's manifestation in Italy or Spain, Ireland or France. "Uniforms" (brown shirts, black shirts, blue shirts, white robes...), antagonisms highlighted by deteriorating conditions (extreme social upheaval, for instance, pauperization (during the Great Depression), and the like; a search for a strong leader (Grand Imperial Wizard, Fuhrer, Emperor, some "Maximum Leader" etc.). Intense (usually fatherland) nationalism is usually a part of it. Prioritizing anti-semitism isn't essential (the KKK was against blacks, Catholics, and Jews, among others) but sometimes is. Fascism usually requires disorder to come into existence -- before it can even use the disorder.

The Nazi's were "national socialists" because the small weak party that Hitler took over in 1922 was the "National Socialists" and by that, the previous founders didn't mean "fascist". The Nazis weren't very good socialists -- a matter of internal dissent. Unlike Communists, fascists don't have a clear ideology. Whether steel was produced by Krupp and Thyssen or The People's Steel Plant #10 didn't make any difference to the Nazis. It did to the communists--they expropriated the expropriators.

The Nazis, like most of the fascist groups, were not really "mass movements" either. The only vote the Nazis won was in Schlesweg-Holstein, just south of Denmark. They won because the Nazis promised stable price supported prices during the agricultural depression in the 20s (caused by a glut of world-wide production). They won by something like 51% to 49%. The Nazis put on huge mass rallies in Nuremberg and elsewhere, to which they charged admission -- gate receipts were an important piece of party income before they gained state power. But those were staged--not ground-up demonstrations.

Fascism could happen here, but it is highly unlikely that it will look like German, Italian, or Japanese fascism. It will be "our fascism". Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America. pub. 2004 imagines American fascism.

I have no experience playing video games. I can not judge whether they are a waste of, or a productive use of time. I have heard from others (you, for instance) that they are addictive. They probably are, but many experiences are structured to keep us coming back for more.

Video games, board games, exciting novels, horror movies, love stories -- all kinds of inexpensive entertainment furnish brief but intense emotional moments that we want more of. It strikes me that there is nothing unique about video games. Further, some people have always spent way too much time reading, and not doing much else. Or watching television for long periods of time.

Of course people waste time rather than using their time productively. If we lived in a much poorer economy where continual effort was needed to obtain the basic necessities and meager pleasures, we wouldn't be playing video games all day. We wouldn't watch television for 8 hours a day, stay up very late reading sci-fi novels, and so on. We would work all day and go to bed early.

People with hard-driving ethical systems tend to work more, produce more, give more, serve others more, and in general be "more productive". Of course we should all work harder for the common good and naturally we don't. Nothing new about that.

It's violence in defense of property that I focused on and I argued that national defense is on behalf of property rather than life — frank

I agree with you that the value of life is greater than the value of property. It is always wrong for a government (like your local city police force or state National Guard) to kill looters. Nothing in a Walmart, K-Mart, Sears, Macy's, Nordstroms, Target, Bloomingdales, Penneys, 7-11, or Family Dollar is worth more than the life of the guy carting it away.

I would agree with you, up to a point, that national defense, or war, is fought to get property. The Germans certainly wanted property in WWII -- Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Baltic States, Byelorussia, Ukraine, western Russia, France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and more -- but they also wanted to get rid of life. For instance, the Nazi's targeted the intellectual resources of Poland -- it's leadership, academics, military personnel, etc. The same policy was carried out in the eastward march across the USSR: find, identify, and immediately execute the leadership personnel of the region. The Nazi's loathed more than just Jews: they also planned on getting rid of the slavs -- through starvation and bullets.

The westward expansion of the United States was about land, of course, but also about eliminating resistance from the inhabitants in place. That's why so many buffalo were killed and left to rot during the later stages of the expansion -- it was to starve the Plains Indians. Or we shot them.

I'm not Catholic (never was) and for the most part don't have deep resentments toward the Catholic Church. The religious body that I find more disappointing is the Methodist Church. It's just that the Catholic church is such a large sprawling organization and depending on which bishop, which priest, which parish council, which day, which issue, and so on, a Catholic can feel quite happy or quite alienated.

You know, during the decade of 1960-70 and years following, most churches - Catholic and mainline Protestant - hemorrhaged members. Tens of millions of people left and never returned. The religious left their orders in droves. Apparently millions of Christians decided that the gap between "the church" and "the world" had grown too wide. One can ask, "To what extent have the Catholic and Protestant churches found a way to address the world people are living in?" Homosexuality is just one of numerous issues where one has to conclude that they aren't making much progress.

We can say "by secular standards the church is wrong" and that will be true in some cases. It's better to say "by religious standards the church is wrong". The Lutherans, Presbyterians, Church of Christ, Episcopalians, et al have found ways to resolve the inclusion of homosexuals without losing their souls. (Of course, on a lot of other issues, like "the church as real estate operation" most churches haven't even acknowledged that the problem exists.) Most churches would not not want to give too much to ease the suffering of the poor, because... they have all these other expenses. Etc. Etc.

The Minneapolis St. Paul Archdiocese declared bankruptcy last year after a large cluster of lawsuits relating to priestly sex abuse. Priests are, of course, fallible and bad things can happen--but that isn't why the Church was sued for so much and lost its case. It was like the Nixon Administration -- it wasn't the Watergate burglary that wrecked the administration, it was the cover-up. Same here. Years of covering up, years of lying, resisting, denying, obstructing investigations, etc--right up to the day they admitted it was all true. Yes -- the priest fucked the boy, we knew about it, we protected the priest for 30 years, and we did everything we could in the last 10 years to prevent the court and investigators from finding the truth.

THAT is just a prime example of the attitude and approach that has alienated so many members for decades.

There is no position that one can take in human affairs that will always guarantee a verdict of "Not Guilty" or "Not Immoral".

In 1964 when I turned 18 I registered as a conscientious objector with my draft board. They didn't act upon it, and when I reported for my physical I didn't pass. That was a long time ago. It has been easy to maintain a pacifist stance when unjustifiable wars like Vietnam, Iraq, et al have been the rule.

I can't find a way to justify not resisting the Axis Powers in WWII. Self-interest dictated that we resist--and protecting one's self is supposed to be moral. But the Allied Powers were not moral, either.

Japan and Germany had designs for reordering the world in their interests. European and American powers had been doing that very thing for several centuries, of course, and we all thought it was a good thing. I'm sure Germans and Japanese felt the same. We were all guilty.

But what would the justification be that would make it moral to just resign the game and say, "Ok. Herr Hitler; it's your turn to run the world; just send a list of requirements for your management of our affairs. We'll round up a few million more Jews for you, so you won't have to do that. Anybody else you want to get rid of... Communists? Jehovah's Witnesses? Criminals? Blacks? Homosexuals? Slavs? Retarded? Hey, we've got them all here You'll be busy!"

On the other hand, the negotiations with Iran (assuming that everybody was being honest) were the sort of thing the world should do: derail the development of powerful weapons that facilitates naked aggression. All of the negotiations in the Middle East that have delayed the definitive war of resolution between Israel and the Arab states has been worthwhile. Trying to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons was worthwhile; alas, the effort failed. Peace and Reconciliation in South Africa and in a few other places has been a highly beneficial thing, even if it didn't resolve all problems.

So, sometimes nations do things that keep its people in the "moral" column. As often as not, national policies commit citizens to the resolution of problems which may engage them in acts that will be judged immoral -- after the fact. What is one to do--flee to another country? How would that save one from all moral dilemmas?

I disagree that your rigid formula, pacifism or immorality.

Is it unnatural? Is that a step up from intrinsically disordered?

I don't really give a rat's ass what the pope and bishops think, but I have no doubt that "intrinsically disordered" is a judgement upon my person. Evidence for "judgement", if it was needed, is that the Vatican has forbidden Catholic organizations from allowing Dignity use of its facilities (this action by a previous pope). Further, priests are not to say Mass with the group. Dignity is the gay Catholic advocacy group. They've been around since the early 1970s and have chapters across the US.

To be fair, the Roman Catholic catechism also immediately state "They must be welcomed with respect, compassion and gentleness. We will at all cost avoid toward them any unjust discrimination. These individuals are called to realize God's will in their lives, and if they are Christian, to bond with the suffering of the sacrifice of the Lord on the cross through the difficulties they can encounter because of their condition". — Akanthinos

And yet the Catholic Church has been one of the larger crosses gay Catholics have had to bear. So, it sounds like pious bullshit.

Granted: Unlike in the early 1970s, most openly gay Catholics find there are plenty of friendly parishes. That doesn't mean all are. As far as blessing gay relationships or being an openly gay seminarian, one can pretty well forget it.

The Roman Catholic catechism calls homosexuality "intrinsically disordered". In pastoral letters, the bishops may say that homosexuals are "persons of sacred worth" etc. -- and good for them. I would be more interested in their letters if they said homosexual intercourse was actually good, and drop the "intrinsically disordered" plank in their platform.

Catholics aren't alone in this. Methodists are having a hard time with homosexuality too, as are various denominations more conservative than Methodists.

Bear in mind I wasn't setting these two swans up as the model of all creation to follow. They are, after all, just 2 birds. I certainly don't think that procreation is the sole arbiter of evolutionary sufficiency. A society is made up of many parts: a number of very important parts have nothing to do with reproduction.

Sorry that happened to you. I know of other such cases; and some who received lobotomies (back in the late 1940s, 50s).

You didn't like the black swan story? It's from Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (Stonewall Inn Editions) authored by Bruce Bagemihl. Conrad Lorenz, in his Year of the Graylag Geese, also noted that there were homosexual goose couples (they didn't steal eggs, they just went through the motions).

The outstanding part of the black swan story, I thought, was stealing eggs and hatching them.

An entire society sitting around debating if you are a mistake or not, all your life over and over. It never ends. No wonder homosexual youths have a higher suicide rate. — Jeremiah

When I was growing up gay we were considered mentally ill and worse. What one did then and what one does now is ignore as much of the negative cultural assault as one can. Later on when one is a bit more independent and secure, one can start attacking the negative notions and rejecting them.

They use to leave children behind when it became too much of a burden. I would assume they also left the old behind. — Jeremiah

We were hunter/gatherers for a few hundred thousand years before we invented agriculture and urbanity. How do we know that H/Gs left their children and the old behind when they became too much of a burden? What was "too much of a burden"? Do we have any evidence?

People make a lot of claims about H/Gs; some of the claims are based on modern H/G society; there are some claims that can be made on the basis of archeology. A lot of it seems purely speculative.

H/G children would be less productive when they are very young, but would soon be old enough to forage and perform some tasks. Their greater value comes when the adults start to age, and need youthful hunters and tribal defenders.

If you ask me, we'd be much better off if more people were gay. — Jeremiah

Yeah, well, I'll drink to that.

I mean, "homosexuality is contrary to evolution". Do you really need a deep critical philology to figure out he's just inserting a more hip word in " X is contrary to the will of God"?

Beside being entirely wrong, besides, since we already have working models showing how homosexuality could be considered an evolutional advantage. — Akanthinos

Troll or not, there are many people who have difficulty getting their heads around the idea of homosexuality being advantageous in an evolutionary sense. I am one.

For instance, these two male black swans hooking up, building a nest, and then stealing fertile eggs from straight black swans which they then hatch and raise the chicks. Fascinating -- but is it an evolutionary advantage or just something that happens? In their case, two male swans carry a lot of social weight in the flock, and their borrowed chicks tend to do quite well. But then, everything else being equal, most swans do a pretty good job of hatching their eggs.

And what about the wild sex lives of our primate relatives, the Bonobos. They make a gay orgy look pedestrian. Maybe Bonobos demonstrate a method for resolving the logjam in Congress. Here's an image to get out of your head as quickly as possible: Mitch McConnell trying to fuck Nancy Pelosi as a means of negotiating immigration reform.

all that I can mean is that "he" sincerely self-identifies as gay, — tim wood

And why isn't that sufficient? Claiming to be gay in 2018 does not confer many advantages in life. There are plenty of places where it can get one killed. When we were both young men, back in the ancient post-stonewall world of the 1970s it was even less of an advantage (if it wasn't a definite risk) but still, a lot of gay men announced to the world "I am gay". I never heard anybody say, "Oh, you are just saying that to be outrageous." (Lady, if I wanted to be outrageous, I could tell you stories that would curl your hair.)

Now, not everybody's self identification is straight forward, so to speak. Laud Humphreys published Tea Room Trade in 1971, about. it was based on his PhD dissertation. Humphreys investigated what sexual activities went on in the St. Louis, Mo. public toilets in parks. Quite a bit, actually. The book recounts how encounters are managed. In order to find out more about these guys (without asking them straight out) he kept a list of the license plates of the men who parked near the toilets and whom he observed having sex with other men. He then tracked down the addresses associated with the licenses, and then arranged bogus survey interviews at the homes of the men. (Like, a company was doing a survey of planned appliance purchases -- that sort of thing.) From these surveys he obtained the demographic information.***

Many of the guys turned out to be married men living in suburbs, many with children.

IF you asked these men whether they were homosexual, they almost certainly would have said "NO" in emphatic terms. Were they gay or were they straight? Maybe they were gay, but in that time and in that place could not find a way to be openly gay. Maybe they were bisexual, and marriage gave them convenient cover. None the less, they often engaged in homosexual activity. My guess is that they did not think of themselves as gay, but liked getting head (or as they got older, giving head). Otherwise they were typical men who worked for a living and supported their families.

***Humphrey's research methods caused a fire storm of controversy. He would never be able to get away with that sort of immensely useful research today.

The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century, Jun 1, 2018 by Jim Elledge tells an older story of how men in late 19th and early 20th century expressed homosexuality. Fascinating history.

"Prove it!" How would you go about that? — tim wood

Your assuming my lovely young heterosexual niece isn't actually a lesbian. How do you know she's straight? How would you find out? Maybe the lesbian and gay guy are going to marry for political convenience and appearances. It has been done, after all (not often, but...)

Anyway... IF I really wanted to prove it, I could hire a private investigator to follow him around and observe whether he ever frequented homosexual hangouts (bars, baths, parks, etc.), whether he had friends who could be determined to be gay, and whether is internet and cell phone usage showed gay interests. This would involve very intrusive snooping, but it could be done.

OR I could ask a suave, observant gay male to follow this alleged fag around and cruise him (make his sexual interest subtly knowable), chat him up, etc. and observe whether there was any response. If there was, he could move to the next phase and see whether the niece's boyfriend could be gotten into bed (or a stall, or alley, or... what have you).

OR he could also be interrogated more... forcefully, shall we say to see what beans he would spill.

Finally, we asked him, and he said "not gay". Leave it at that. Gaydar doesn't have 100% accuracy.

The point is, the question is, is there any boundary one side of which is heterosexual, the other homosexual? I personally think there is no such boundary, that no such boundary exists, the conventional "boundaries" being mere social fictions. — tim wood

It will be difficult for you to accept a definition of homosexuality if you think "whatever homosexuality is has no boundaries other than 'mere social fictions'". Consistent strong physical sexual arousal, vivid fantasies, longing, desire, and so on isn't a 'social fiction' for me. It's been an integral part of my personality for as long as I can remember. The men I have met whose physical and emotional beings are homosexual aren't social fictions either. (I don't consider sexual orientation a social construct. Constructionists think they are; essentialists think they are inborn, biologically based.)

Kinsey supposed that most people were heterosexual and a relatively small number were homosexual. Between those two groups were people whose orientation was bisexual--attracted in varying degrees to both males and females. (There has always been a background nattering of doubt about whether bisexuals really exist, or whether they are really just confused homosexuals.) As far as I can tell, there really are bisexuals. There really are heterosexuals, and there really are homosexuals. The boundaries would fall between #0 and #1, and between #5 and #6. Bisexuals would be #2 - #5. Bear in mind, Kinsey's chart doesn't reflect population size at all. Most people are heterosexual (and nothing else), some people are bisexual (and nothing else), and some people are homosexual (and nothing else).

The group which may seem to have boundary problems is bisexual, because they vary from "mostly heterosexual" to "mostly homosexual" and the difference between a #3 and a #4, for instance, is arbitrary.

Tim: Are you a heterosexual? If you are heterosexual, is there any doubt in your mind about what that means?

why would anyone care what some others are consenting to and doing amongst themselves, as long as it does not impact me? — jajsfaye

Because human behavior is so interesting. You could be straight as the day is long, and still find it interesting what kind of lives homosexuals lead. And in reverse, gay people find the various doings of heterosexuals to be interesting as well.

Anyway, do you have a good definition of homosexuality? — tim wood

I pretty much restrict myself to talking about gay men, on this topic. Lesbians tend to be very touchy about men theorizing about lesbianism.

Alfred Kinsey set up a scale, 0-6, 0 = exclusively heterosexual, 6 = exclusively homosexual. The scale can be applied to both what one actually does sexually, and what one fantasizes about doing, or would like to do sexually. So, one definition of 'homosexual' would be "a person whose behavior and fantasies are exclusively focused on other persons of the same sex". They are 6 and 6. A heterosexual would be 0 and 0. In most surveys that I have seen, less than 3% of the population fits that definition of homosexual.



The significance of rating fantasies and behavior is that people who are discordant (fantasize about homosexual sex but behave heterosexually) are conflicted, and might benefit from resolving the difference between what they think about and what they do.

I define homosexuality as concordant behavior, fantasy, and cognition focused on same-sex activity and relationships and (more broadly) the cultural life of a would-be community of such people. "Homosexuals engage in and fantasize about same-sex activity. They also think about life from the perspective of being 'homosexual'." Statistically, homosexuality deviates from the overwhelming norm of heterosexuality. — Bitter Crank

I consider men who want to marry other men, father or adopt and raise children, to be seduced or deluded by "assimilationist" propaganda which sees the road to respectability looking a lot like the typical heterosexual family.

There seems to be a lot of crazy behavior going around, lately. However, people rarely come up with entirely novel ways of being assholes, so I would expect thoughtful people from any age could think of equally appalling behavior as vindictive vengeful valkyries.

A woman is crossing the street and is struck by a car. Her back is quite severely injured. Her doctors tell her that she may walk again, but only after years of arduous and painful physical therapy.

The driver of the car could give her a sum of money, but the driver can not help her perform the difficult and distressing physical therapy. She may receive a disability payment, but neither the insurance company nor the government disability program can ease the distress of the painful therapy. Friends can visit and chat, but they can not step in to do her therapy for her.

Even though she was not at fault, the woman must entirely bear the suffering of learning to walk again.

Does this parable apply to groups who have been injured by the policies of others?

I've been out with groups of men and women to bars and clubs and people just socialize and drink and no one goes home with anyone. — Maw

Tragic, just tragic. Very sad.

Yes, but why is sexual satisfaction such a scarce commodity? Isn't it precisely because it's not really possible to achieve sexual satisfaction through promiscuity — Agustino

You have this bizarre bourgeois/religious notion that sex is valuable only if it is experienced as seldom as possible. It's a delusion that your lobbyists have promulgated far and wide.

The Romans had a phrase. To rule over the plebs, give them bread and circuses — Agustino

The Plebs had a phrase, "You had better give us bread and circuses if you want to keep your heads, because maintaining your idle privileges would otherwise be an intolerable inconvenience, and we would do away with the lot of you!"

If we did an experiment, and Brad Pitt walked up — Agustino

Actually Brad Pitt did walk up and offer me a BJ. I took him up on the offer, of course -- I have nothing against promiscuous sex. We went into a convenient back alley. It was OK, but I thought he lacked a certain commitment to the role. Anyway, he doesn't seem to be all that bright. Here's a picture I took of him trying to figure out how many fingers he has. He kept losing count.

I don't buy that. It is sufficient to give a cursory glance to Hollywood and pop culture to see that sexual promiscuity is marketed and advertised like crazy. To say that you are not experiencing moral depravity in America because of sex seems hardly conceivable. All the daily sex scandals with celebrities, etc. — Agustino

But pop culture and Hollywood are only several threads in a skein of influences. Peers, family, church, school, work, "public opinion", the press, etc. all add numerous additional threads to the skein of influence on individual behavior.

"Celebrities" are in many cases nothing more than circus acts. 99% of the population can tell the difference between a clown and any given member of the audience,

The secret about advertising with sex is this: Sex is bait only as long as sex isn't too available. The tension between "X is a sexy product; buy it and you'll be sexy too" plays against the backdrop of social restriction on sex. (Yes, you think there are no restrictions on sexual behavior in American -- but it is not so.)

Selling cars with fried chicken and french fries wouldn't work very well in the US because there is so much fried chicken available. Sex still works for selling products because actual sexual satisfaction is still a scarce commodity.

The sub-set of the typical American who actually try to have carefree unlimited sex is a very frustrated group.