Ah, now I see it. I think the worst part about activists is how oddly disingenuous they are, not in the sense that they want to kill homosexuals but in the cognitive dissonance sense. When you bring up that homosexuality is an aberration these followers of darwin call you bigots even though according to evolution only those traits which are passed on survive and since homosexuality and basic biology tells us that homosexuals don't have the means to pass on their traits well it's a wonder their heads remain intact.
Even worse is when they say stupid crap like "how do we know it isn't natural and heterosexuality is the aberration" how about the 100s of millions of years of evolutionary history you purport to believe in! And if you mention the fact that the concept of "sexual identity" is a recent concept they don't pay attention.
As far as I'm concerned homosexuality is about as natural as aspergers or autism (and no I don't subscribe to junk myths about vaccines they just happen as an overexpresion, I guess, of certain human attributes)
Go to the website www.liberallogic101.com. Scroll down to "Smokers rights..." and that's the poster. They also have another poster thingamajig called "The Liberal Evolutionist..." about 2 or 3 posters earlier.
You know, gays may have a greater chance of contracting STDs due to that annoying "promiscuity culture", but I seriously doubt that can account completely for the shorter average life expectancy. People actually do get murdered for "deviant behavior" (whereas smoking used to be something that "everybody did").
You realize it would take a literal open culture of mass homicide to statistically affect average lifespan in that fashion. But, alas for the would-be gay martyr movement, no gay-killing hunting sprees have been declared...
Leaving aside some of the things that have happened down here? Nah, it doesn't take nearly that much. After all, a few gay teenagers get killed and the average life span drops by several years, just because of how young they were when they were murdered. It's not as bad for the average as a zero, no, but since a zero is impossible in this case...
You would have to ask yourself - How did the few gay teenagers get killed?
If they got killed by jealous boyfriends, then you can't make the argument that the shortened lifespan is due to anti-gay bigotry.
If they committed suicide... See below the discussion on how gays seem to be the only subgroup that has a serious problem with suicide that they blame on other people not approving of them enough.
The main thing supporting your argument would be, in effect, the Hate Crime... the heterosexual killing a homosexual because he's a homosexual and that offends the heterosexual. So does that happen often enough to shorten the gay lifespan significantly above other groups?
A while back, I did a bunch of calculations with the FBI Hate Crime statistics in which I took into account the number of victims in certain subgroups compared to the subgroup population. I did this because (for instance) it's meaningless to claim that anti-Hispanic sentiment is more dangerous than anti-bisexual if there are 500 Hispanic-victim crimes out of forty million Hispanics and 5 bisexual-victim crimes out of 10 bisexuals. See? Anyways... This is what I came up with:
By far the most persecuted according to victim population percentage was the Jews. Head and shoulders above the rest. Sky-high.
Second place: Black male.
A close third place: Gay male.
Now if hatred and bigotry was significantly shortening the average lifespan of gays through violence, wouldn't you expect to see a more significant shortening of the average lifespan of American Jews?
And yet Jews in the U.S. have a higher life expectancy than the general population. Blacks linger behind, but not astonishingly. The life expectancy of gays, however, is significantly lower... as in, they suffer more than twice the drop of years as the blacks.
If this discrepancy was explained by hate crime violence, then gays would be first place, not third... and I must note that third place goes to *male gays*... lesbians and bisexuals are much, much further down the list, behind several racial groups and religious groups.
Before AIDS was fully understood, it was called GRIDS, for Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome. Reason: even liberal sex-ed classes are pretty much forced to admit (unless they deliberately lie) that anal sex is one of the most convenient vectors for ANY kind of STD, worse than sharing dirty needles in a crackhouse. And yes, this was data taken from a "Condom Club" meeting to encourage "safer sex"
Me, I tend to think of a penis in the same terms one may think of a FIREARM and condoms and other contraceptives the same way I think of various safety devices; they WILL fail.
To add to tomyironmane's excellent point, there is an actual set of physical symptoms that doctors used to refer to as "gay bowel syndrome" until they were told that they couldn't because it was bigoted.
The muscle that controls the anal tract is a smooth muscle, a round band sort of like a simple elastic. It isn't like other muscles. If you overstretch one of your muscles, it tears, and then it heals pretty normally within a few days to a few weeks. However, a smooth muscle rarely heals properly if it is ever torn.
Another smooth muscle is the cervix, the band of muscle at the end of the uterus that closes during pregnancy and dilates during labor. It not only dilates, but effaces (thins out), which is necessary to birth the baby without causing permanent trauma to the muscle. In many forms of abortion, the cervix is forced, resulting in a tear bad enough to require stitches in 12-25% of cases depending on the study. (Not a lot of data here.) If the cervix is torn, it will not heal properly and will no longer hold the uterus closed in subsequent pregnancies. As a result, the woman is diagnosed with "incompetent cervix", a situation that results in repeated miscarriages as the cervix is unable to 'hold the pregnancy in'.
Something similar happens to the anal tract if the muscle is damaged, only, well, it isn't a pregnancy that the muscle is meant to hold in. Let's just say that the result is... unfortunate.
The diseases (including but not by any means limited to AIDS) are transmitted mostly by anal intercourse (the anal tract is alkaline, which encourages the growth of virii, unlike the vaginal tract, which is acidic) *and* via the oral-fecal route, which is exactly as disgusting as it sounds. However, there is also an entire set of medical conditions linked to damage done to the anal tract itself.
On top of all of that, gays are also more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, engage in drug and alcohol use, and generally make choices that shorten their own lifespan... and these lifestyle choices are pervasive in the culture even in the countries where homosexual behavior has been fully and utterly accepted for over a decade.
As far as the whole "more likely to have mental illness" thing, that, unfortunately, can be at least partially caused by religious-fundamentalist parents...
Let's just say that my mate and my cub (2 separate people) come from religious fundamentalist houses, and both have been abused for either being gay or being furry (or both). I would rather not go into the details...
(Please note that I'm using the current Pop Culture term for 'religious fundamentalism', and that I do not believe that a firm adherence to the Bible is a bad thing; rather, I think that their parents, in both cases, *selectively* enforced the Bible in an unreasonably strict manner, ignoring the protections it grants to children, as well as the assertions to forgive and love)
That implies that the overwhelming bulk of parents of gay children are your 'pop culture fundamentalism' and that only they are abusive in nature. Given that a large chunk of the populace is a variety of Christian denominations, alternative religions, or atheists. Yet this stat does not change in cities, countries, and states that are supposedly 'more enlightened'. California, Mass, Canada, Finland, France, and others this stat remains stalwart. Not to mention gay parents have been convicted as well on all the same charges and faults in criminal courts from child abuse to child neglect. So, abusive parents are not confined to 'straight religious fundamentalists'.
I've often heard it described that gays who suffer these increased mental issues are because they are not accepted. That their sexuality is always in questions therefore they form these issues. Yet, multiethnic couples often suffer the same ridicule but not the same increased mental problems. Nationalities that suffer rivalries. A giant host of behaviors that one society rejects, yet the individuals remain intact. What then, makes homosexuality different and that their refused acceptance makes them 'have issues' while a black woman and white man married in an area that is still plagued by racism don't?
Probably the maturity of the individual in question.
When someone in engaging in inter-racial relationships, they're typically, well, adults. They don't encounter the racism and discrimination directed against their relationship until they're old enough to "handle it".
Meanwhile, someone who is gay might be more prone to encounter bias and discrimination directed at them personally starting at a much earlier age; early to mid teens, while they are still developing mentally.
Could the age at which the discrimination is encountered affect the likelihood is a person "having issues"?
Although I did not end up in an interracial marriage (well, technically, theoretically, it really depends on your definition of "race"), I started preferring black men to white men when I was a teenager. Got my share of disapproving looks over it whenever I was engaging in 'boy talk' with the other girls. But I didn't care. It didn't bother me.
There was something deep inside me that just plain knew that there was nothing wrong with it whatsoever, and so nothing anybody said was enough to upset me.
Might I suggest that there is a slight difference in receiving "disapproving looks" while discussing a specific topic of conversation with friends, and getting "disapproving looks" from everyone around you...at all times...?
Never understood that. I mean, do they get the word GAY tattooed across their forehead or something? Couldn't picture it... A gay man walks into deli and orders a sandwich, and the owner says, "Sorry, we don't serve your kind"? Or a gay man walks into a bar with a girl and the tender says "Is that your girlfriend?" and he says, "Nope, it's my sister!" and the tender gives him a disapproving look?
I mean, if he's got a bra in his hand and is trying to enter the women's changing room, then he might get some disapproving looks. (That isn't technically 'gay' anyways, that's 'transgender'.) But how do all these other people around me manage to take one look at some random fellow wandering down the street and immediately know that he's gay and it's time to pull out the Disapproving Looks as they pass?
Or is it more that gays think they see disapproving looks in everybody they meet?
Or is it more that gays think they see disapproving looks in everybody they meet?
That's probably the bigger part of it. And does tie into the prevalence of anxiety disorders among gays.
If someone is gay, or at least feels that they are more attracted to their own gender than the other, they don't have to come out to still hear their friends and coworkers, and even complete strangers, go on about how "unnatural" or "weird" or "disgusting" gay people are. Sure, there would be no direct remarks being made about that specific individual, but it would still be clear to them what others would think of them if they did come out. If they heard similar remarks and comments from those they knew often enough, they might very well begin to immediately attribute those biases to strangers they've never met or spoken with before, based merely on past encounters.
And yet that doesn't seem to happen to any of a number of other groups of people who undergo the same process throughout their entire lifetimes... like Christians from churches that might be labeled fundamentalist, or homeschoolers, or Jews, or people who "should have been aborted" due to having certain congenital diseases, or having been conceived to a teenager out of wedlock, or being the fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh child in the family...
Do you know what it's like growing up hearing people describe your exact birth situation and going on and on about how such babies should be aborted instead? I already know they're not knowingly talking about *me*. But...
...See, I know that it's not wrong for me to have been born. So when they go on like this, I know it's their problem and not mine. Sure, I get affronted, but it doesn't drive me into a depression, an anxiety disorder, drug and alcohol use, or promiscuous anal-oral sex.
As a Christian, I was 13 the first time an atheist told me that I should be taken away from my parents because they were brainwashing me. As a homeschooled kid, though I heard questions of my parents' competency sooner and more often. It was early in the movement and my parents had plans and precautions just in case someone *did* try to take me.
As a near descendant of a Jew, I was maybe 8, if that, when my mother showed me a picture of a swastika and warned me that, if I saw it spraypainted anywhere, I should leave the area at once and inform a trusted adult. She didn't explain why, and she didn't have to... somehow, I could sense an inexplicable, strange menace emanating from the very shape of it.
As a person whose manner of conception is one of the biggest reasons why pro-choicers and pro-abortion'ers counsel abortion, I heard that one, well... It took me until I was maybe 14 before I counted the number of months between my parents' wedding and my birth. So I didn't understand that pro-choicers were talking (unknowingly) about me until I was a teenager. That was about the time, though, when the sex ed came in strong, so I got to hear that particular message a *lot*. It's a curious feeling.
(By the way, I was born roughly around the Roe vs. Wade period, but abortion had been legalized in my state years earlier. My father deserves lots of kudos, btw, for standing staunchly against the option when it was recommended to him.)
I was a first baby, so I didn't have to deal with the flak about being part of a large family until I was maybe about 14 or so and my third sibling arrived.
But then again, isn't the time of sexual awakening - roughly 10-14 - about the time when gays become aware that they are, well, gay? If you're feeling targeted by comments about gays when you're five years old, then there is something wrong with you.
...And yet, despite belonging to several of these groups, I've managed to escape the pit into which so many gays fall. And so has the general population of each of the groups to which I belong.
But then again, isn't the time of sexual awakening - roughly 10-14 - about the time when gays become aware that they are, well, gay?
Exactly. If you're raised in an atmosphere that observes a certain attribute as being "wrong" or "immoral", and even come to believe that yourself; how badly will it mess with you to learn later that you in fact have that attribute? Especially if it is not an attribute you feel you have conscious control over?
To make you're experiences more analogous to what a gay person can end up going through: Imagine that you were of jewish decent, growing up in a neo-nazi household, without knowing that you were jewish. Raised learning about how jews were "responsible for all the evil in the world" until you were about 15, and then learning about your true heritage. Suddenly, you're "responsible for all the evil in the world". How well will that sit with you for the next few years?
I presume that in all of your own instances that you at least had your family to fall back on for moral support? I doubt your parents were atheists, or neo-nazis, or pro-abortion? Thus they would have been there throughout your childhood to reinforce your own personal feelings?
Now, not only take that support away, but in fact add your parents and close family to those on the other side telling you you're wrong.
How well can the average person be expected to cope then?
Yet still implies that is the only means which that happens. Lets take a page out of the book from above. I knew two people that were simply nerds in a town that at that age of thirty years ago didn't take kindly to video game players and nerds. These two kids were ridiculed, and by their own parents. I watched one of the kid get screamed at by his father because he thought baseball was boring. Both of these kids received physical violence from other students. They were attacked by individuals and groups at different points in their life for their choice in hobbies and studies. Best part yet? This back then and now is still not at all exclusive. Geeks, nerds, and others received no small amount of teasing and attacks.
I can pick another topic, and another, and another. They can't be hideable like race, they can be hideable, they can be hated by parents, and a plethora of other similar points. You're still going out of your way to somehow make their specific issues unique when it is not. Especially when you factor in that some schools now will suspend kids faster for picking on a gay kid, than picking on a nerd, or a male gymnist, someone for their religion and it doesn't change the stat, or larger volumes of parents declaring they'll be okay if their kid is gay and supported by their parents sometimes with glee that they could show how sophisticated and accepting parents they are.
But it all boils down, millions of straight kids get a lot of similar treatment, without people making excuses for them.
Plus millions of straight kids adapt to the notion that it's perfectly fine for them to like and do the things that they're being ostracized for. Interesting, isn't it?
I've got an interesting example that most people won't know unless they listen regularly enough to the show. Rush Limbaugh's own father did not support him in his broadcast endeavors. Limbaugh Sr. thought his son was being very foolish by not finishing college. Even when Rush really began to hit his stride, popularity-speaking, his father didn't approve. It wasn't until years and years after he became a top name in radio and conservatism that his father would finally acknowledge that perhaps it was possible to succeed without a degree.
I believe that the difference is that these geeks, nerds, people like Rush, and everyone else who picks a lifestyle mocked by media, acquaintances, teachers, friends, and even family, are in harmony with their own minds, bodies, and souls. Which makes me question even further the Rightness and Purity and Excellence of homosexual behavior and its true effects on the human being who engages in it...
According to a handy dandy poster I've been examining lately, this is known as "special pleading". We were not talking about parents. We were talking about general society. You're moving the goalposts in your zeal to blame anyone who doesn't applaud gay sex for the troubles of those who engage in it. The reality is a fair bit more complicated and nuanced.
The notion that enough parents hate gays to account for the increased mental illness - in Holland, no less, where their own researchers didn't expect the results - is addressed above.
If the situation were reversed, I can't help but feel you'd be arguing the opposite. As it is, I'd MUCH rather be bullied at an age when I'm more equipped to handle it than as a small child with no filters or logic to rebutt the person making the claims.
I have found that the only way to have filters and logic, as you put it, in order to cope with bullying, is to grow them. this seems to be a process that is fairly independent of age, as I have seen all ages of people who are fairly thin skinned, and it took me a good long while to develop my own "filters and logic" (read: snarky comments, strategy, and witty repartee) to deal with this kind of verbal and social abuse.
In fact, it occurs to me that one of the effects of modern society as it is, happens to be to not just curb the damaging aspects of interacting with people who disagree with you, but, for certain socially acceptable political viewpoints, to squash EVERYONE who may disagree with you. This is why forcing liberal and socialist viewpoints down everyone's captive children is now "education" and disagreeing with the political officer's assessment of the situation is "hate speech" and "bullying" ... Consider THAt next time someone tries to get you to support an anti-bullying measure.
I've noticed that, and it also makes me wonder about the general mental health of people who follow those viewpoints. I have reason to posit that what makes them so much more fragile to criticism than anybody else is a deep-down feeling that what they are trying so hard to believe *is* actually wrong.
When you are convinced in your own mind and heart, it's not easy to beat you down. It's possible, but it's not easy. You would have to have people specifically targeting *you* over an extended period of time, to the point where you are going to break.
However, when you are not convinced in your own mind and heart, the slightest little criticism, even when it isn't aimed anywhere near you, stings terribly and provokes an angry reaction. The only way you can make yourself feel the slightest bit secure in your situation is to shut down anything that might trigger your own defenses, and I call them 'defenses' for a good reason.
I know this isn't a logical proof, but it's good enough for me... when I come across people who can't take the slightest bit of criticism of anything that reminds them of their lifestyle, no matter how oblique, without lashing out and trying to silence everyone through government fiat, I have to wonder whether they are really trying to silence me...
...or that little part of themselves that won't agree with them.
Mayhaps that is the case, but I think it might also have to do with the inflated place "self esteem" occupies in today's theories of education. Everything must surrender to protect the child's precious "self esteem." Right and wrong, correct and incorrect... Where it used to be that if you were smart, SOMEONE would recognize innate talent and hard work, now, doing so would "injure the self esteem" of the muscle-brained dolts who would otherwise at least give him SOME kind of respect.
Thus, disagreeing with this kind of person is injurious to their precious puffed self esteem, and with little substance under that fluff, it gets ugly fast. They might be WRONG, and that's MEEEEAN to tell someone that they're WRONG. Thus a minor question becomes a frothing "incident" because the questionER won't back down and the questionEE has a long and expensive education carefully training him in all the best ways NOT TO THINK, and that anyone who dares to not understand the dogma is a nasty stupid worthless useless person, a dirty RED who must be crushed.
Educators should remember that the prisons are stuffed FULL of people who have a wonderfully healthy self esteem and very few redeeming qualities to base that on. And that "flyover country" is full of people whose rebellious, insurrectionist educators actually taught to think.
We had a guy in our unit for a number of years. Wasn't anything that really stood out about him. Just another "one of the guys". Now, despite official policy to the contrary, there is a generally high amount of...(I don't want to say "homophobia", but it you can see it from there) among your average soldier, so...yeah. Jokes would be told, opinions would be heard, and personal views expressed; few, if any, positive. He would even join in from time to time.
Come to find out, after nearly three years, that this soldier was gay. No one suspected. But for him to have heard that sort of talk for three years? Let me put it this way: he has appeared in at least one..."film"(hence how he was found out), and is still very vehement that he "doesn't like guys that way". So, despite being "out", he's somehow still "in", at least when he runs into people in the unit.
I can only imagine the sorts of mood and anxiety disorders he's developing as a result...
Or is it more of a factor of feeling the need to announce "I'm out, I'm here, I'm proud, and there's nothing you can do about it!" to everybody they meet? Because I thought only the activist crowd did that.
"That implies that the overwhelming bulk of parents of gay children are your 'pop culture fundamentalism' and that only they are abusive in nature."
Actually, he avoided a blanket statement nicely. He's referencing that he knows two people who were abused (important word, that) for not matching up to their parents' expectations in one area.
And, to be honest, he's right (as far as he goes). Some people, even now, use the Bible to justify actions it was never meant to justify, and so enforce the stereotype of the Fundamentalist; the Bible-thumping abuser who hates, reviles and wishes to destroy everyone that isn't just like him. It's wrong, of course, and real fundamentalists are almost never like that... but yes, there really are people that will still try to beat the homosexuality out of a child, quoting "spare the rod" and "as the twig is bent" the whole time.
He didn't avoid it at all. He gave it as a means to explain the stat. That would have to happen in the bulk of millions for it to make any sizeable amount to make a difference. That still boils down to a gross generalization. He did cite that he knew to people, but extrapolated that this was a deciding factor in the stat that has to make true impact.
It also implies that abusive parents of fanatical nature are only harmful to homosexual children which is also the biggest load there ever was. Harmful parents are harmful to their spawn through and through. If a couple incorrectly uses the Bible to justify teaching their children jews should die. Then that harms their children's upbringing regardless of they are gay or straight. That's the bigger lynchpin of this debate right there. People are acting as if gays are exclusively damaged by people not accepting them. Ignoring race, nationality, religion, even choice of activities entirely unsexual related can have all the same ridicule.
Looked up some figures on the NIH website regarding drug use and sexual orientation(who knew they actually tracked that stuff?), and it looks like drug use doesn't have an obvious link to orientation. What I did find was that people tended to favor certain drugs depending on orientation. A gay man is more likely to do meth or cocaine, while a straight man is more likely to use shrooms and LSD. What's interesting is that gay women do seem to be more likely to use drugs than straight women. But for men, it's a pretty even match.
I would also submit that "mental illness" is a hazy term to use. Homosexuality itself was labeled one for quite a while, and a few might argue that it still is. Does depression count as a "mental illness"? I mean, that can easily be attributed to the social bias and discrimination that exists against gays. It doesn't have to be violent, or even overt bias in order to be noticed. If someone sensed that people acted significantly distant around them specifically, they might easily fall into a depressed state.
Please note my reply to Maulkin, as you also seemed to have missed the part near the end of this previous post about how the link to mental illness persists even in countries where the homosexual lifestyle has been particularly well tolerated for over a decade. I left a link to one of the studies there, and you may find it interesting.
"Homosexuality itself was labeled one for quite a while, and a few might argue that it still is."
...I wonder why?
Could it be, perhaps, that it is a deviant and detrimental behavior? That's typically the first warning sign that someone is mentally ill. If they behave oddly, and are putting themselves or others in harms way with their odd behavior, that's very nearly of the dictionary definition of "mad".
Could it also be, perhaps, that according to the evolutionary theories that those who endorse the gay movement typically ascribe to, it is impossible for such behavior to have developed as a beneficial trait, and thus by necessity, MUST be the result of damage caused or mutation occurred in one generation, making it an aberration, i.e. an illness.
That said, we've now come to the point where it's no longer even socially acceptable to call that particular spade a spade, and more than this, it has become a social imperative to encourage developing children to pursue such madness wholeheartedly whenever they feel the slightest deviant impulse (and with hormones flowing, deviant impulses are far from uncommon), thus fomenting the illness.
In short, we're teaching the next generation that if it feels good, that's WHO YOU ARE. We're trapping those with feelings they're having trouble controlling by saying it's their destiny to pursue those feelings, because they're born that way.
This, more than anything, contributes to the depression and anxiety among gays.
Notice how they point out that it's a model; this supposed cause for homosexuality is nothing but hypothetical, by their own admission. It's simply the only idea they could come up with to make the data fit their premise (that homosexuality is genetically derived).
Introduce even the possibility of another premise, and it falls apart.
But that's neither here nor there, because even limited to their own model, it's so extremely full of holes as to be laughable. Firstly, it provides no benefit, despite how they try to spin it; it simply makes the observation that when women have a lot of children, the chances are higher that some of the males will be(come) homosexual. Gee, what a find. Second, it only takes males into account. Kind of a big deal.
And frankly, high fertility rates in women is linked to a lot of different defects in the children. This is nothing new.
So essentially, they've found data that can be used to support any and all of the different, opposing premises surrounding the whole concept. That's not terribly useful or revealing.
Speaking as someone with Asperger's Syndrome, I'll agree with you about how unnatural it is. I myself am really freaking WEIRD.
Seriously though, there's something every Asperger's individual I've ever met has in common, without exception. My Mother has this hypothesis that Asperger's Syndrome isn't technically a neurological condition strictly speaking, it's a gastrointestinal disorder, that causes poor nutrient absorption during critical nerve and brain tissue growth as a baby.
Now, what causes the gastrointestinal disorder is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's vaccines, given how the disorder occurs before any vaccinations do.
rhjunior
Even worse is when they say stupid crap like "how do we know it isn't natural and heterosexuality is the aberration" how about the 100s of millions of years of evolutionary history you purport to believe in! And if you mention the fact that the concept of "sexual identity" is a recent concept they don't pay attention.
As far as I'm concerned homosexuality is about as natural as aspergers or autism (and no I don't subscribe to junk myths about vaccines they just happen as an overexpresion, I guess, of certain human attributes)
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You know, gays may have a greater chance of contracting STDs due to that annoying "promiscuity culture", but I seriously doubt that can account completely for the shorter average life expectancy. People actually do get murdered for "deviant behavior" (whereas smoking used to be something that "everybody did").
If they got killed by jealous boyfriends, then you can't make the argument that the shortened lifespan is due to anti-gay bigotry.
If they committed suicide... See below the discussion on how gays seem to be the only subgroup that has a serious problem with suicide that they blame on other people not approving of them enough.
The main thing supporting your argument would be, in effect, the Hate Crime... the heterosexual killing a homosexual because he's a homosexual and that offends the heterosexual. So does that happen often enough to shorten the gay lifespan significantly above other groups?
A while back, I did a bunch of calculations with the FBI Hate Crime statistics in which I took into account the number of victims in certain subgroups compared to the subgroup population. I did this because (for instance) it's meaningless to claim that anti-Hispanic sentiment is more dangerous than anti-bisexual if there are 500 Hispanic-victim crimes out of forty million Hispanics and 5 bisexual-victim crimes out of 10 bisexuals. See? Anyways... This is what I came up with:
By far the most persecuted according to victim population percentage was the Jews. Head and shoulders above the rest. Sky-high.
Second place: Black male.
A close third place: Gay male.
Now if hatred and bigotry was significantly shortening the average lifespan of gays through violence, wouldn't you expect to see a more significant shortening of the average lifespan of American Jews?
And yet Jews in the U.S. have a higher life expectancy than the general population. Blacks linger behind, but not astonishingly. The life expectancy of gays, however, is significantly lower... as in, they suffer more than twice the drop of years as the blacks.
If this discrepancy was explained by hate crime violence, then gays would be first place, not third... and I must note that third place goes to *male gays*... lesbians and bisexuals are much, much further down the list, behind several racial groups and religious groups.
Me, I tend to think of a penis in the same terms one may think of a FIREARM and condoms and other contraceptives the same way I think of various safety devices; they WILL fail.
The muscle that controls the anal tract is a smooth muscle, a round band sort of like a simple elastic. It isn't like other muscles. If you overstretch one of your muscles, it tears, and then it heals pretty normally within a few days to a few weeks. However, a smooth muscle rarely heals properly if it is ever torn.
Another smooth muscle is the cervix, the band of muscle at the end of the uterus that closes during pregnancy and dilates during labor. It not only dilates, but effaces (thins out), which is necessary to birth the baby without causing permanent trauma to the muscle. In many forms of abortion, the cervix is forced, resulting in a tear bad enough to require stitches in 12-25% of cases depending on the study. (Not a lot of data here.) If the cervix is torn, it will not heal properly and will no longer hold the uterus closed in subsequent pregnancies. As a result, the woman is diagnosed with "incompetent cervix", a situation that results in repeated miscarriages as the cervix is unable to 'hold the pregnancy in'.
Something similar happens to the anal tract if the muscle is damaged, only, well, it isn't a pregnancy that the muscle is meant to hold in. Let's just say that the result is... unfortunate.
The diseases (including but not by any means limited to AIDS) are transmitted mostly by anal intercourse (the anal tract is alkaline, which encourages the growth of virii, unlike the vaginal tract, which is acidic) *and* via the oral-fecal route, which is exactly as disgusting as it sounds. However, there is also an entire set of medical conditions linked to damage done to the anal tract itself.
On top of all of that, gays are also more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, engage in drug and alcohol use, and generally make choices that shorten their own lifespan... and these lifestyle choices are pervasive in the culture even in the countries where homosexual behavior has been fully and utterly accepted for over a decade.
Let's just say that my mate and my cub (2 separate people) come from religious fundamentalist houses, and both have been abused for either being gay or being furry (or both). I would rather not go into the details...
(Please note that I'm using the current Pop Culture term for 'religious fundamentalism', and that I do not believe that a firm adherence to the Bible is a bad thing; rather, I think that their parents, in both cases, *selectively* enforced the Bible in an unreasonably strict manner, ignoring the protections it grants to children, as well as the assertions to forgive and love)
I've often heard it described that gays who suffer these increased mental issues are because they are not accepted. That their sexuality is always in questions therefore they form these issues. Yet, multiethnic couples often suffer the same ridicule but not the same increased mental problems. Nationalities that suffer rivalries. A giant host of behaviors that one society rejects, yet the individuals remain intact. What then, makes homosexuality different and that their refused acceptance makes them 'have issues' while a black woman and white man married in an area that is still plagued by racism don't?
When someone in engaging in inter-racial relationships, they're typically, well, adults. They don't encounter the racism and discrimination directed against their relationship until they're old enough to "handle it".
Meanwhile, someone who is gay might be more prone to encounter bias and discrimination directed at them personally starting at a much earlier age; early to mid teens, while they are still developing mentally.
Could the age at which the discrimination is encountered affect the likelihood is a person "having issues"?
There was something deep inside me that just plain knew that there was nothing wrong with it whatsoever, and so nothing anybody said was enough to upset me.
I mean, if he's got a bra in his hand and is trying to enter the women's changing room, then he might get some disapproving looks. (That isn't technically 'gay' anyways, that's 'transgender'.) But how do all these other people around me manage to take one look at some random fellow wandering down the street and immediately know that he's gay and it's time to pull out the Disapproving Looks as they pass?
Or is it more that gays think they see disapproving looks in everybody they meet?
That's probably the bigger part of it. And does tie into the prevalence of anxiety disorders among gays.
If someone is gay, or at least feels that they are more attracted to their own gender than the other, they don't have to come out to still hear their friends and coworkers, and even complete strangers, go on about how "unnatural" or "weird" or "disgusting" gay people are. Sure, there would be no direct remarks being made about that specific individual, but it would still be clear to them what others would think of them if they did come out. If they heard similar remarks and comments from those they knew often enough, they might very well begin to immediately attribute those biases to strangers they've never met or spoken with before, based merely on past encounters.
Do you know what it's like growing up hearing people describe your exact birth situation and going on and on about how such babies should be aborted instead? I already know they're not knowingly talking about *me*. But...
...See, I know that it's not wrong for me to have been born. So when they go on like this, I know it's their problem and not mine. Sure, I get affronted, but it doesn't drive me into a depression, an anxiety disorder, drug and alcohol use, or promiscuous anal-oral sex.
As a Christian, I was 13 the first time an atheist told me that I should be taken away from my parents because they were brainwashing me. As a homeschooled kid, though I heard questions of my parents' competency sooner and more often. It was early in the movement and my parents had plans and precautions just in case someone *did* try to take me.
As a near descendant of a Jew, I was maybe 8, if that, when my mother showed me a picture of a swastika and warned me that, if I saw it spraypainted anywhere, I should leave the area at once and inform a trusted adult. She didn't explain why, and she didn't have to... somehow, I could sense an inexplicable, strange menace emanating from the very shape of it.
As a person whose manner of conception is one of the biggest reasons why pro-choicers and pro-abortion'ers counsel abortion, I heard that one, well... It took me until I was maybe 14 before I counted the number of months between my parents' wedding and my birth. So I didn't understand that pro-choicers were talking (unknowingly) about me until I was a teenager. That was about the time, though, when the sex ed came in strong, so I got to hear that particular message a *lot*. It's a curious feeling.
(By the way, I was born roughly around the Roe vs. Wade period, but abortion had been legalized in my state years earlier. My father deserves lots of kudos, btw, for standing staunchly against the option when it was recommended to him.)
I was a first baby, so I didn't have to deal with the flak about being part of a large family until I was maybe about 14 or so and my third sibling arrived.
But then again, isn't the time of sexual awakening - roughly 10-14 - about the time when gays become aware that they are, well, gay? If you're feeling targeted by comments about gays when you're five years old, then there is something wrong with you.
...And yet, despite belonging to several of these groups, I've managed to escape the pit into which so many gays fall. And so has the general population of each of the groups to which I belong.
Exactly. If you're raised in an atmosphere that observes a certain attribute as being "wrong" or "immoral", and even come to believe that yourself; how badly will it mess with you to learn later that you in fact have that attribute? Especially if it is not an attribute you feel you have conscious control over?
To make you're experiences more analogous to what a gay person can end up going through: Imagine that you were of jewish decent, growing up in a neo-nazi household, without knowing that you were jewish. Raised learning about how jews were "responsible for all the evil in the world" until you were about 15, and then learning about your true heritage. Suddenly, you're "responsible for all the evil in the world". How well will that sit with you for the next few years?
I presume that in all of your own instances that you at least had your family to fall back on for moral support? I doubt your parents were atheists, or neo-nazis, or pro-abortion? Thus they would have been there throughout your childhood to reinforce your own personal feelings?
Now, not only take that support away, but in fact add your parents and close family to those on the other side telling you you're wrong.
How well can the average person be expected to cope then?
I can pick another topic, and another, and another. They can't be hideable like race, they can be hideable, they can be hated by parents, and a plethora of other similar points. You're still going out of your way to somehow make their specific issues unique when it is not. Especially when you factor in that some schools now will suspend kids faster for picking on a gay kid, than picking on a nerd, or a male gymnist, someone for their religion and it doesn't change the stat, or larger volumes of parents declaring they'll be okay if their kid is gay and supported by their parents sometimes with glee that they could show how sophisticated and accepting parents they are.
But it all boils down, millions of straight kids get a lot of similar treatment, without people making excuses for them.
I've got an interesting example that most people won't know unless they listen regularly enough to the show. Rush Limbaugh's own father did not support him in his broadcast endeavors. Limbaugh Sr. thought his son was being very foolish by not finishing college. Even when Rush really began to hit his stride, popularity-speaking, his father didn't approve. It wasn't until years and years after he became a top name in radio and conservatism that his father would finally acknowledge that perhaps it was possible to succeed without a degree.
I believe that the difference is that these geeks, nerds, people like Rush, and everyone else who picks a lifestyle mocked by media, acquaintances, teachers, friends, and even family, are in harmony with their own minds, bodies, and souls. Which makes me question even further the Rightness and Purity and Excellence of homosexual behavior and its true effects on the human being who engages in it...
The notion that enough parents hate gays to account for the increased mental illness - in Holland, no less, where their own researchers didn't expect the results - is addressed above.
In fact, it occurs to me that one of the effects of modern society as it is, happens to be to not just curb the damaging aspects of interacting with people who disagree with you, but, for certain socially acceptable political viewpoints, to squash EVERYONE who may disagree with you. This is why forcing liberal and socialist viewpoints down everyone's captive children is now "education" and disagreeing with the political officer's assessment of the situation is "hate speech" and "bullying" ... Consider THAt next time someone tries to get you to support an anti-bullying measure.
When you are convinced in your own mind and heart, it's not easy to beat you down. It's possible, but it's not easy. You would have to have people specifically targeting *you* over an extended period of time, to the point where you are going to break.
However, when you are not convinced in your own mind and heart, the slightest little criticism, even when it isn't aimed anywhere near you, stings terribly and provokes an angry reaction. The only way you can make yourself feel the slightest bit secure in your situation is to shut down anything that might trigger your own defenses, and I call them 'defenses' for a good reason.
I know this isn't a logical proof, but it's good enough for me... when I come across people who can't take the slightest bit of criticism of anything that reminds them of their lifestyle, no matter how oblique, without lashing out and trying to silence everyone through government fiat, I have to wonder whether they are really trying to silence me...
...or that little part of themselves that won't agree with them.
Thus, disagreeing with this kind of person is injurious to their precious puffed self esteem, and with little substance under that fluff, it gets ugly fast. They might be WRONG, and that's MEEEEAN to tell someone that they're WRONG. Thus a minor question becomes a frothing "incident" because the questionER won't back down and the questionEE has a long and expensive education carefully training him in all the best ways NOT TO THINK, and that anyone who dares to not understand the dogma is a nasty stupid worthless useless person, a dirty RED who must be crushed.
Educators should remember that the prisons are stuffed FULL of people who have a wonderfully healthy self esteem and very few redeeming qualities to base that on. And that "flyover country" is full of people whose rebellious, insurrectionist educators actually taught to think.
We had a guy in our unit for a number of years. Wasn't anything that really stood out about him. Just another "one of the guys". Now, despite official policy to the contrary, there is a generally high amount of...(I don't want to say "homophobia", but it you can see it from there) among your average soldier, so...yeah. Jokes would be told, opinions would be heard, and personal views expressed; few, if any, positive. He would even join in from time to time.
Come to find out, after nearly three years, that this soldier was gay. No one suspected. But for him to have heard that sort of talk for three years? Let me put it this way: he has appeared in at least one..."film"(hence how he was found out), and is still very vehement that he "doesn't like guys that way". So, despite being "out", he's somehow still "in", at least when he runs into people in the unit.
I can only imagine the sorts of mood and anxiety disorders he's developing as a result...
Actually, he avoided a blanket statement nicely. He's referencing that he knows two people who were abused (important word, that) for not matching up to their parents' expectations in one area.
And, to be honest, he's right (as far as he goes). Some people, even now, use the Bible to justify actions it was never meant to justify, and so enforce the stereotype of the Fundamentalist; the Bible-thumping abuser who hates, reviles and wishes to destroy everyone that isn't just like him. It's wrong, of course, and real fundamentalists are almost never like that... but yes, there really are people that will still try to beat the homosexuality out of a child, quoting "spare the rod" and "as the twig is bent" the whole time.
It also implies that abusive parents of fanatical nature are only harmful to homosexual children which is also the biggest load there ever was. Harmful parents are harmful to their spawn through and through. If a couple incorrectly uses the Bible to justify teaching their children jews should die. Then that harms their children's upbringing regardless of they are gay or straight. That's the bigger lynchpin of this debate right there. People are acting as if gays are exclusively damaged by people not accepting them. Ignoring race, nationality, religion, even choice of activities entirely unsexual related can have all the same ridicule.
I would also submit that "mental illness" is a hazy term to use. Homosexuality itself was labeled one for quite a while, and a few might argue that it still is. Does depression count as a "mental illness"? I mean, that can easily be attributed to the social bias and discrimination that exists against gays. It doesn't have to be violent, or even overt bias in order to be noticed. If someone sensed that people acted significantly distant around them specifically, they might easily fall into a depressed state.
...I wonder why?
Could it be, perhaps, that it is a deviant and detrimental behavior? That's typically the first warning sign that someone is mentally ill. If they behave oddly, and are putting themselves or others in harms way with their odd behavior, that's very nearly of the dictionary definition of "mad".
Could it also be, perhaps, that according to the evolutionary theories that those who endorse the gay movement typically ascribe to, it is impossible for such behavior to have developed as a beneficial trait, and thus by necessity, MUST be the result of damage caused or mutation occurred in one generation, making it an aberration, i.e. an illness.
That said, we've now come to the point where it's no longer even socially acceptable to call that particular spade a spade, and more than this, it has become a social imperative to encourage developing children to pursue such madness wholeheartedly whenever they feel the slightest deviant impulse (and with hormones flowing, deviant impulses are far from uncommon), thus fomenting the illness.
In short, we're teaching the next generation that if it feels good, that's WHO YOU ARE. We're trapping those with feelings they're having trouble controlling by saying it's their destiny to pursue those feelings, because they're born that way.
This, more than anything, contributes to the depression and anxiety among gays.
-Kire Du'Hai
Introduce even the possibility of another premise, and it falls apart.
But that's neither here nor there, because even limited to their own model, it's so extremely full of holes as to be laughable. Firstly, it provides no benefit, despite how they try to spin it; it simply makes the observation that when women have a lot of children, the chances are higher that some of the males will be(come) homosexual. Gee, what a find. Second, it only takes males into account. Kind of a big deal.
And frankly, high fertility rates in women is linked to a lot of different defects in the children. This is nothing new.
So essentially, they've found data that can be used to support any and all of the different, opposing premises surrounding the whole concept. That's not terribly useful or revealing.
-Kire Du'Hai
Seriously though, there's something every Asperger's individual I've ever met has in common, without exception. My Mother has this hypothesis that Asperger's Syndrome isn't technically a neurological condition strictly speaking, it's a gastrointestinal disorder, that causes poor nutrient absorption during critical nerve and brain tissue growth as a baby.
Now, what causes the gastrointestinal disorder is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's vaccines, given how the disorder occurs before any vaccinations do.