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For one example, my understanding is that the median male homosexual does not practice monogamy and is not interested in raising children. Is your understanding otherwise?
That has more to do with the fact that they’re men than the fact that they’re gay. Male homosexuality is simply male sexuality that doesn’t have to deal with women. How many straight men would practice monogamy if they could have unlimited sex on demand simply by going on an app?
Despite that, there’s still a sizeable proportion of gay men that choose monogamy and raising children, hence the demand for gay marriage and surrogacy.
How do we reconcile the concept of the Patriarchy with evident longstanding social norms of enforced monogamy?
I'm also a man. My "love for my partner" is founded on monogamy and raising children. I agree that "male sexuality that doesn't have to deal with women" is probably a pretty good explanation for many of the features of male homosexual norms that we can observe. But the fact remains that my relationship with my partner is in fact built around "dealing with women", and one woman in particular, and that as a consequence their "love for their partner" and mine do not appear to be the same sort of thing at all.
What proportion? 51%? 25%? 10%? 5%? less?
I would contend that the previous effort was to try to create the impression that monogamy and raising children, among other signifiers of "normality", were in fact 50%+. That this was only achievable by lying shamelessly is my point.
How do you mean? Traditional monogamy is very advantageous for average men, who might not be able to get a partner in a polygamous society where the richest/highest status men have multiple wives.
I’m bisexual and if your love for your partner is founded on monogamy and raising children, then fair, it’s not the same as mine. Mine is founded on deep affection for my partner, feeling like an “us” like we’re together through thick and thin, feeling comfortable revealing our most intimate parts to each other. Deeply caring for them even if they become ill, even if we never have children together (although that would sadden me), even if we agree to have an open relationship (although I’m personally more monogamous, it might change say, 5y+ into a relationship).
According to this survey, 53% of gay men were in a relationship, and 14% of gay men were in a strictly monogamous relationship. I don’t see why the numbers matter, even if there was only a single homosexual couple out there we should still accept them.
That’s not what I personally heard, the messaging I got was that it’s fine for gay men to have relationships and to raise children together.
Gay men have been having anonymous promiscuous sex even in the most repressive societies. What would you gain by removing the social acceptance of homosexual relationships and gay marriage?
Why have wives at all? Prostitution is the oldest profession, after all, and is another example of pursuing male sexuality "without having to deal with women". And yet, monogamy.
...My point is that large portions of the male population have, for a long time and across a wide area, not optimized for maximizing sexual expression "without having to deal with women." This makes them notably distinct from male homosexual behavior, at least in our present context.
My love for my partner does not begin and end with monogamy and raising children. Rather, monogamy and raising children are two emergent properties of our love. I likewise feel "deep affection" for my partner, am "committed to them through thick and thin", and "feel comfortable revealing our most intimate parts to each other". But these are just words, and I did not use them because I am not confident that they convey the essence. Caring for them if they become ill is more concrete. Continuing the relationship even if we never have children would likewise be more concrete, but my wife's desire for children is considerable, and I went into the marriage with the full understanding that if we could not have them ourselves that we would adopt or foster. But then:
We are committed to not changing in this way. We are committed to working, daily, to ensure that this does not happen, to binding our future selves to our present decisions. And again, it seems to me that there is a fundamental difference here. I think we would each agree that sex is not a small part of a relationship, but it is obvious that we do not agree about what sex is, how it works, or what consequences flow from it. I intend to be married to my wife for as long as we both shall live, to cleave to her and to no other. My community has an abundance of couples who have been married 30, 40, 50 years, and more whose marriages were ended only by death. Is that the sort of relationship you believe you have? Is it the sort of marriage common within your dunbar number?
The numbers matter because we are, necessarily, speaking in generalities. The gay community is not typified by two men in a committed long-term relationship. It is typified by, to put it mildly, extreme promiscuity and a degree of sexual license that would horrify the average American if they were aware of it. That is why so much effort was expended to ensure that the average American would instead form the belief that Homosexual relationships were functionally identical to straight ones, when this is in fact not true.
I would agree that to the extent that homosexual relationships conform to my understanding of what a good relationship is, my objections to them decrease.
Yes, in a context where "relationship" is assumed to be, at worst, serial monogamy. The large majority of gay men are not participating in this sort of relationship, and likewise (mercifully) are not raising children.
And Christians have continued practicing Christianity in even the most repressive societies. It is becoming increasingly clear which of these is preferred, and by who.
What do they and their supporters gain by removing the social acceptance of Christianity? I was all for tolerance, when I still believed that tolerance was a moral precept. Now that I understand that it is not, and now that I understand that many of them very clearly believe that coexistence is neither desirable nor possible, it seems proper that I and people like me should organize to better preserve our values and interests. Part of that is acquiring and communicating a clear understanding of who is across the table from us. To bring this back to the comment that brought me into this discussion:
"Love" is underdefined.
No, they probably are not.
This may be true for specific individual queer people. It is certainly not true of the ideological movement claiming to speak for them. That ideology has moved past toleration to approval, and past approval to attempting to force participation.
Again, the ideological movement very clearly prioritizes "shoving it in our faces" at every possible opportunity.
Speaking in generalities, no, "they" do not. Gay sexuality bears little to no resemblance to straight sexuality, in practices or in consequences.
This one is the real kicker, and where much of the debate centers. Let us say, at least, that they are very, very interested in securing and exercising as much control over children's education and understanding of sexuality as possible, and that the more kids begin identifying and acting in LGBT ways, the happier the movement is, without apparent limit or restraint.
What is your position on HBD in general, and the genetic basis of IQ in particular?
From the study that was linked in the article you linked:
We can get into the weeds over what exactly "8 to 25% of variation" means -- how many recalcitrant homosexuals should we expect to find in a given population, how easy is it to change one's sexual orientation or set someone on a different path of development via environmental factors -- but nonetheless, the paper states plainly that there is a genetic component. (The introduction to the paper also makes no mention of epigenetic factors or the pre-natal uterine environment, both of which could conceivably contribute to someone being "born that way" despite not being part of the genome proper.)
The article you directly linked states:
but this is just a caricature of the hereditarian position. There's a genetic component to IQ too, but no one thinks that you can predict someone's IQ just from genetics either (environmental factors can easily lower it).
I'm always surprised at the number of people who take a staunchly "realist" position on the biological reality of sex and race differences, but who stubbornly refuse to believe that homosexuality is anything but a matter of political propaganda and personal choice. I think there's a clear ideological motivation at work, stemming from the hope that we could eradicate homosexuality if we simply got the LGBT propaganda out of schools (much like how leftists think we could close the black-white achievement gap if we simply devised the proper education program; both projects are futile).
Look at it this way: there's a stunningly diverse range of maladies that the human body and brain can be afflicted with. People can be born without eyes and limbs, they can be born sterile, they can be born with profound mental retardation; is it that much of a stretch to think that a male could be born liking other males too? A healthy, properly functioning human is heterosexual; but there's always a possibility that an organism can simply go wrong and start functioning improperly.
I take it as evident that IQ is pretty clearly heritable. I strongly disagree with what I understand of the rest of the HBD complex, starting with the idea that human value clearly scales with intelligence.
Let's leave homosexuality aside, and look at something else. Let's try alcoholism.
It's pretty clear to me that alcoholism is at least partially genetic: there seem to be people who are predisposed to addictive behavior in general, and to alcoholism in particular. I'm given to understand that the body's reaction to alcohol consumption likewise varies widely, and it seems logical that on a purely physiological level, alcohol would hit some people harder than others, and that this variance in the experience would lead to variance in the formation of addiction.
Do people choose to be alcoholic? In some sense, yes; if you don't ever drink you'll never get addicted, and in most cases some other person is not tying them down and pouring vodka down their neck against their will. The one alcoholic I've known personally told me straight-up when they started drinking that they were looking for a new addiction. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that many, probably most, maybe all, understand on some level that the alcohol is bad for them and wish they could escape it, and likewise it seems probable that if they really understood the visceral reality of where it would lead, they would not have started drinking.
Can people choose not to be alcoholic? Again, in some sense, yes: each subsequent drink is chosen, and they can choose not to. Can we "treat" them such that they are cured of alcoholism? Yet again, in some sense yes: we can strap them down until they detox, and then keep them strapped down until the low levels of habit are broken. We could even keep them confined away from alcohol forever. We can give them drugs that make them violently ill if they imbibe, and so on, and so on. But the deeper reality is that no, we can't cure alcoholism the way we cure bacterial infections, because the defect is in the person's own will. "Choosing" not to be alcoholic appears to be very, very hard, and "cures" for alcoholism appear to be limited in efficacy, and stand or fall on the subsequent choices and circumstances of the alcoholic themselves.
It would probably not be good for alcoholics if we created and enforced a broad social meme-plex that alcoholism was a valid identity, generated large amounts of propaganda about how drunk driving was cool and totally safe, and about how being drunk all the time was a totally valid lifestyle, and anyone who disagreed was just a bigot, and any harmful behaviors by the drunks were really the fault of the people who refused to love and accept and support their true drunken nature, or of society for not accommodating them sufficiently.
I don't like alcohol. I've personally watched it destroy someone I loved very deeply. I don't drink. I don't encourage others to drink, and while I tolerate others drinking around me in moderation, I would not participate in serious alcohol culture in any form. I don't campaign for prohibition because we've tried it and there seem to have been significant downsides, and despite some skepticism over the nature and accuracy of the assessment of those downsides, I generally come down on "it isn't worth it." And yet if prohibition were on the ballot tomorrow, I would probably vote for it, because I think our current system is far too tolerant of a serious danger.
Does this seem to be an unreasonable position to take toward alcohol? If prohibition were on the ballot, would you say that I am "hoping to eradicate drunkenness", as though an act of congress could undo the laws of chemistry governing fermentation and the features of human nature that cause us to be naturally drawn to getting fucked up on giggle-water? I don't know how to fix drunkenness. I do know that it is, in and of itself, a problem, and that its problematic nature is part of reality, not simply a perspective that can be mediated away by sufficient social engineering.
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There’s an obvious objection to homosexuality being mostly genetic, and that’s that we should expect at least some selection against it.
Now obviously gays reproduce less- even closeted gays married to women probably have less sex with their wives means fewer babies at the margins- but also homosexuality is a terrible health decision which should also be selected against and the tendency of homosexuals to get STD’s would also reduce their wives’ fertility if closeted.
In a Malthusian environment where total population is near the carrying capacity, this is no longer quite true.
For one, a child with a few gay uncles contributing to his caloric surplus might greatly increase his chance of success in excess of the success lost by those uncles not having kids of their own. From the grandparents' perspective (which is the correct one!) this is a win.
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You could make the same argument about Down's Syndrome and cystic fibrosis. But they still keep happening. (Note that I also pointed out that "biological basis" is not equivalent to "simple heritable Mendelian trait" -- one hypothesis is that the level of testosterone that a fetus is exposed to in the womb has an impact on sexual orientation, for example.)
I'm saying that homosexuality should be thought of as an illness, a disorder of the reproductive system. Congenital defects that impact the reproductive system are well-documented (e.g. various types of intersex conditions). Disadvantageous traits are selected against, sure, but evolution can't insulate us from all possible illness. Things still break down and go wrong.
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Homosexuality is not a health decision, sodomy is.
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Just like when it's a Matriarchy; the only difference is which gender gets the better deal by default in the divorce (if it's a Patriarchy, the man comes out ahead, vice versa for women under Matriarchy).
Yes, marriage is the oldest and most respected form of professional agreement: sex for resources. Some people do describe that as love, and I have no reason to believe they are not telling the truth. It is the optimal arrangement for some, likely most, people- and this is how negotiations between husband and wife should function provided both are conducting themselves with the proper amount of self-interest.
The ultimate problem with gay couples is that no such agreement can exist due to them both being the gender that provides resources. Naturally, they cannot be strongly bound to each other. Lesbians have that problem as well- they both have a surplus of sex, so how will they obtain resources? And don't get me started on the people who forsake their natural strengths to the point they cut them off.
All of those relationships can't produce children while still qualifying as monogamy, since sex is when you implant, or run the risk of implanting, one participant's sperm into the other's egg. So, if the sperm or egg come from outside the relationship that means, on its face, it is not monogamous (and claims that it remains so are a farce).
No- in the context of "marriage" I think they're very similar. Lesbian "marriages" are less stable than straight ones due to lack of resources and initiative, whereas gay "marriages" are more stable than straight ones due to more of those things- proving that at the end of the day, it is the resources and the proper management thereof that keeps the family together.
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