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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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What is the science related to homosexuality?

Twin studies demolish the whole "born this way" thing, and show that it's only "born half way there". Even less for lesbians.

The "scientific consensus" is very against conversion therapy, but the science itself is a similarly mixed bag as that on therapy for something like alcoholism. Few people go from alcoholics to never touching a drink again, and a lot of people end up "relatively unrecovered", but nonetheless therapy is considered "effective" for alcoholism because a good portion of people end up drinking less. The science on conversion therapy also shows some people showing complete success, and a lot showing meaningful-but-incomplete success, and also a lot of failure -- and a lot of the failure is in the over the top terrible attempts at therapy which would fail at any therapeutic target. Yet conversion therapy gets touted as not only "difficult and likely to fail" but blanket "ineffective" because "you can't change what you're born with" as if it's an immutable fact, even though the science flat out contradicts this.

The science also says that homosexual men are higher in narcissism, which isn't very flattering and people probably won't like to admit. And in diseases, which is sometimes admitted but often gets shoved away too.

There might be more, this is just what comes to mind off the top of my head. The point is that as a topic, this is not one where truth is welcome so the science regularly gets avoided or branded "not REAL science". Imagine a study comes out tomorrow showing that 80% of gay people left in charge of children rape them, and it's bombproof. Do you see people saying "Oh, shit, I guess we need to stop letting gays watch kids", or do you see people screeching and revolting against the potential truth being suggested? That's the test for whether people are actually doing science or science denial. If a new paper came out in physics suggesting perpetual motion was possible, and actually demonstrated it, physicists wouldn't screech they'd update.

Twin studies show that it is primarily not genetic which the "born this way" crowd hates to hear