Who you're attracted to sexually is not a choice. Two things come to mind, I've noticed alot of women are late bloomers when it comes to understanding their sexuality, and I"m not saying this is the case with Nixon. But the other thing is--for alot of people who you are attracted to seems to fall on a spectrum.

The spectrum rule does not just apply to straightness and gayness but in everything. There are some men that are strictly only attracted to big boobs but most fall in the spectrum of things, big boobs, small boobs, medium ones just not extreme ones.

And look if I had a choice on my sexuality I'd be a lesbian. My mom always tells me what I need is a stay at home wife (jokingly of course). But I love men. I've always loved men and eating a pussy grosses me the fuck out.

I was reading through The Selfish Gene years ago and read that (to paraphrase) if we don't have a soul than we are really, really complex carbon based robots. Freewill is an illusion, but the fiction off freewill has utility in real life.

That being said, the "I was born this way" is a way destigmatize homosexuality. And many people who are gay report having feelings for the same gender at a very young age in the same way straight people may have a crush on their second grade teacher, for example. However, many does not mean all. It's obvious that Ms Nixon is bi, just as it should be self evident that her bisexuality has no bearing on her rights.

I thought all sexual/gender behavior was simply a social construct. Boys and girls behave differently because they are socialized to do so, we are born a blank slate, and are nothing more than what was written upon us by the Patriarchy. Now I find out that Gay people are born that way. Have they run this past the Feminists? Do straight white males get to claim we were born this way too?

"The big problem with lesbians is that they're taking two pussies off the market, and that's just not fair." ~Ralphie May, stand up comedian

I don't really give a shit one way or the other who somebody likes to get off with or how as long as they're adults. The Liberace/Richard Simmons gays do get on my nerves, but that is a personality clash, and they'd be just as annoying if they were just acting that way to get chicks.

The only area where I have issue with gay rights is on the marital issue, and that is from a purely practical standpoint with regard to the tax benefits that go with it.

Other than that, I doubt I can imagine myself wasting 10 minutes a year thinking about gay rights, let alone any time violating them. People that do, have way to much time on their hands, and to much empty space between their ears.

I don't remember choosing to be straight. I went from "girls are icky" to "girls are ok" to "holy cats, Batman!"

Technically, Nixon is not bisexual; she is ambisexual. As to choice versus orientation, the dogma of orientation is nothing more than a propaganda device to avoid responsibility for behavior. What used to be described as "sexual preference" became "orientation" as an excuse to claim a civil right for gayness.

"the tax benefits that go with it" We do this every time gay rights comes up. Being married has NO inherent tax benefits. Those are only if you have kids AND are in a low enough tax bracket. The only part of gay marriage that might affect any of the rest of us are social security survivor benefits. It will not affect medicaid payout to the indigent gays or the welfare benefits of broodmare lesbians. Those are all already there and are present regardless of orientation. Insurance maybe, but in places like mass (or the whole US) it would at best be even. A whole lot of gay and lesbian stay at home spouses would be on their spouses insurance and not eligible for the public dole.

On a side note people are really getting fuck shit crazy with the anti labeling thing. On one hand you have those people who feel that you can be a lesbian and still fuck men vs those that feel even fantasizing about men ever makes you a fraud. Everyone needs to chill the fuck out about it.

Sexuality has so many layers. I can get turned on by girl-on-girl porn (if it's done to my standard of "the right way"), but the idea of me personally getting it on with another woman...nope. When I was four and saw Steve Reeves as Hercules, I knew I wanted to marry him. (I have gotten the impression many gay men feel the same way.)

Discussions like this remind me of all the different kinds of vegetarianism. Layers again. Like Shrek and his onion.

On this point, I'm just glad I never had to deal with that confusion.

A friend of mine had the unfortunate experience of having a man decide he was gay after he had slept with her. He had been a virgin, and undecided up to that point. We had seen his collage of handsome catalog models, and I was pretty sure which way he was leaning, but my friend wanted to help him make up his mind. She succeeded. I think she's over her mortification by now.

Interesting this particular website spends a great deal of time discussing evolution and how it affects humanity. Oddly, the issue of whether homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end never seems to come up. I am truly curious to know putatively 10 percent of the population can be genetically homosexual since homosexuals are significantly less likely to reproduce. Granted homosexuals can still reproduce the old fashion way or by artificial insemination, but statistically I would think that is a small number.

One small point, Vlad marital status does affect Medicaid eligibility. I suspect you meant to say Medicare is not affected by marital status, and I don't know. People frequently confuse the two programs. One is welfare, the other is putatively an insurance program, but is increasingly being morphed into welfare.

I was married to a "late bloomer" for twelve years. After our youngest was born, it was as if a switch had been flipped. We're still sorting out the wreckage.

Being married has NO inherent tax benefits.

Aside from inheretence that is. Spouses dont have to pay a capital gains tax if their spouse dies and leaves money or property behind.

And there is the tax benift of not having to pay of thousands of dollars of lawyers fees(and the increased cost to cover the taxes they have to pay on the money they earn) to file the documents neccesarry to cobble together a frakenstien civil union

So thats right there would be two tax benifits marrige provides

>> I've always loved men and eating a pussy grosses me the fuck out.

I come for the topics, I stay for the conversation.

Interesting this particular website spends a great deal of time discussing evolution and how it affects humanity. Oddly, the issue of whether homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end never seems to come up.

I can think of several ways it isn't an evolutionary dead end.

1) Enough Gays are Bi that they end up passing on the gene through their M/F sex.

2) It is a recessive gene.

3) It is a gene passed on by the female and Gay females either still wanted children and therefore got married for that reason or they lived in a society where marriage was not optional and most of them ended up having children.

4) Society suppresses gayness and enough of them marry and have children to maintain the population. (Which means Gay Liberation, if it ends up liberating enough Gays early on before they reproduce, will wipe them out in a generation or two.)

5) It is a choice.

I must say I still don't understand why this is such a big deal. Who cares who consenting adults want to be with? I mean really, there are so many problems we are faced with, this is NOT one of them.

Just get the government out of the marriage business altogether and confer no special benefits to anyone based upon marital status.

Consenting adults have the right to contract marriage under whatever terms they please. And individuals and private organizations can choose to recognize, not recognize, approve, disapprove as they see fit.

"Oddly, the issue of whether homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end never seems to come up. I am truly curious to know putatively 10 percent of the population can be genetically homosexual since homosexuals are significantly less likely to reproduce."

Wow.

I'm surprised, but only a little, that you've never studied - or, even read the introduction of any good text about - biology.

Gender is not binary because that characteristic does not convey a survival trait.

People who shout, "There is no "gay" gene!" fail to note that there is no "straight" gene, either.

It is a survival trait to not be so "wired" that the lack of a suitable "opposite" results in despair to the point of suicide.

People insist on inventing things about the ways things are based on their own incomplete understanding. Here, the misconception is that evolution works to provide "perfect" design. Hell, no. Not only does it work, by culling features that do not convey a survival trait from a population, it only works that way.

Maybe I skipped something. Oh, yeah. Here it is.

"Just get the government out of the marriage business altogether and confer no special benefits to anyone based upon marital status. Consenting adults have the right to contract marriage under whatever terms they please."

Contradict yourself much? You just mentioned a contract. Without some public notice, it's not one.

Get this out of your head, that "government should have no say". Although you're probably mad at bureaucratic insensitivity to this or that whim (I call it a whim when the measures to make it come about are not seen), it remains that government will always have a vested interest in your social arrangements.

That word is "vested". Any tribe MUST determine the identity and role of its citizens, who then must pay for their rights by exercising the commensurate responsibilities.

If you think otherwise, just spend ten minutes in probate court with a case where inheritance is not obvious.

Hey! As a matter of fact, it is precisely because government is NOT involved in some cases that this is an issue: the "oh we hate him, he's gay, but he died and now we inherit rather than that fag he was living with" case.

I feel that claiming to be "born this way" devalues their arguments.

In the standard domestic abuse household, we expect the battered woman to leave. And hold her responsible for the choice she made to be with that abusive husband in the first place, and the damage she has caused to her children in creating that situation. We don't say things like, "She was born with that kind of personality," For many women that is true, but we expect them to change themselves anyway.

We can't one minute say that in one romantic situation that people should be responsible for their choices, and then in another say that genetically we have no choices. (In reality, it is both genetics and choice)

I'm not saying that it is right to deny them marriage. I'm saying that until gay people desiring to marry take responsibility for all of their actions their arguments sound similar to whining.

I think if there is a gene it's probably just a tendancy, epigenetics is probably involved in the expression of the gene, whether it's in utero horomone influence or something else.

In the standard domestic abuse household, we expect the battered woman to leave. And hold her responsible for the choice she made to be with that abusive husband in the first place, and the damage she has caused to her children in creating that situation. We don't say things like, "She was born with that kind of personality," For many women that is true, but we expect them to change themselves anyway.

What planet do you live on?

In the USA, Earth, the men almost always are the ones who leave the house while keeping the mortgage payments, and the system assumes all problems are caused by the male unless proven otherwise, and even then the woman usually keeps the house, the kids, and gets financial support. The only way the man gets the kids and house is if the wife died, and then he could still have relatives challenge it, take his kids, and the court will order him to pay the relatives to raise his kids after legally kidnapping them.

I have never encountered a M/F conflict where the standard solution was to expect the woman to change her behavior. I am not sure that is even legal in the US anymore.

"I'm saying that until gay people desiring to marry take responsibility for all of their actions their arguments sound similar to whining."

What?

When a gay couple decides to marry, they are taking responsibility!

Lotsa interesting back and forth on this... and I've gotten to tired to care... but one or two interesting things caught my eye:

"People who shout, "There is no "gay" gene!" fail to note that there is no "straight" gene, either." Raddy.

The entire DNA sequence IS a straight gene code. We are by nature required to have 2 genders to procreate, we don't simply divide like simpler animals do.

But that's procreation...

What humans do is far beyond procreation, which leads us to the more complex issues IMHO.

The other thing? Is the WORD marriage. This entire hangup is on that word [in whatever translation] Religions have used that word since before the written word... for thousands of years.
To say that idea is entrenched is understatement.

So, digging out that gnarled root, does what exactly?
Forces those religions to ACCEPT the other? It ain't gonna happen.

but if you take that WORD off of the whole question, how do they get to complain?

Your right that the govt has a vested interest in inheritance, and rights conveyance, and taxataion, sure. But none of those things is Marriage exactly. All the government cares about is the contract.

Many a martial art is actually about sidestepping the frontal assault.

So what is really important to LGBT's? having the ability to write the contracts, or to FORCE everyone to accept them?

One could already be done long ago, by getting the govt out of blessing marriages, and simply having ANY kind of coupling follow a simple set of rules about getting a contract. EVERYONE. Want to have your union blessed by the flying spaghetti monster? Fabu. What does that have to do with the government?

The acceptance? The more it is demanded the more certain groups will dig in, the more they will fight it, and you are giving them the perfect excuse to. They have THOUSANDS of years of precedence across all cultures of the world.

So?
Outflank. The issue eventually goes away, and really most everyone wins in that end.
Don;t break down the door if you can pick the lock.

Just get the government out of the marriage business altogether.... [...] Consenting adults have the right to contract marriage under whatever terms they please.

If you want that contract to be legally enforcable, you're gonna need the government to be involved (at least peripherally).

Societal arrangements that are legally binding (incorporations, wills, marriages, etc.) require government sanction and involvement.

Bisexual woman checking in here. I remember a movie with Cynthia Nixon and Melanie Mayron where Cynthia's character comes on to Melanie's character by kissing her on the shoulder. The scene was sweet and hot, and I remember seeing the look in Cynthia's eyes...I knew she was not "acting." She pinged my gaydar *hard*, as she had in previous work like "Little Darlings." I don't watch "Sex in the City", but from the little I've seen I haven't found her believable as a straight woman.

She only thinks she's choosing. In fact, I think she might actually be lesbian rather than bi and she's in denial. This statement by her is only feeding Dan Savage's belief that there is no such thing as bisexuality (he's at the forefront of a movement to get the bi and trans dropped from the LGBT movement for those who aren't aware--it's a hideously biased thing to do...scat fetish? A-Ok! Attracted to both genders or feel like you were born in the wrong body? Burn the witch!)

Nobody chooses who they are attracted to. I think most people have had the experience of liking someone as a friend, they look great on paper, but there's just no attraction, no matter how hard we try. So she didn't choose to be attracted to her current partner, who happens to be a woman. Why she is saying such weird and damaging things, I don't know. I'm disappointed in her.

My husband's uncle lived in China for several years. I asked him about the impact the one-child policy has had on life there, and he said there has been an unexpected but noteworthy rise in homosexuality among men.

Also, I am aware of a study awhile back in which rats in high-density populations showed a greater tendency toward homosexuality.

For all we know, homosexuality is an evolutionary response to an unhealthy population shift -- a matter of demographics. If it's actually a way of coping with too many people of one gender or too many people in general, it's not an evolutionary dead end at all.

Well, I do think that the genetic argument is something that, for practical-politics reasons, gays need to get off of. First of all, it isn't going to change the minds of the hard-core anti-gays, and it just confuses people who are on the fence. Second, there are all kinds of groups around these days who are trying to use "I was born this way" as a special pleading to justify all kind of demands and narcissistic behavior. So even if the claim is true, it does not carry moral authority; rather, it makes gays look like just another group whining for special privileges.

"I can get turned on by girl-on-girl porn (if it's done to my standard of "the right way")..."

I'll let you in on a secret. It's all over men's media these days that straight men are supposed to find girl-on-girl action hot. But it does nothing for me. I see it and I think "what's the big deal?"

"The entire DNA sequence IS a straight gene code. We are by nature required to have 2 genders to procreate, we don't simply divide like simpler animals do."

No, you're not reading - or perhaps, you're not applying what you've seen.

The DNA sequence - of which, oddly, you claim knowledge which the professionals do not - does NOT produce just one gender "female" and another gender, "male".

You obviously haven't followed the link I provided above.

deathbysnoosnoo , will you please link me to Dan Savage's statement professing to be "at the forefront of a movement to get the bi and trans dropped from the LGBT movement." I have read Dan Savage for a long time - he has never said this and yet people perpetuate that sentiment all the time.

So Raddy, can you point to any complex organism that DOESN'T procreate by a male and female getting together to form offspring? Isn't that that the end of the DNA sequence, to continue into another generation. The sequence has a consequence and that is it's expression.

And if the prevalence of gay men in China is due to the gender imbalence it IS an evolutionary dead end, BECAUSE they will not be passing on their genes... Which is the expression of evolution.

All of that brutal evolution aside, what IS different about today vs. 100 years ago, is that we are approaching a time when it becomes common for l/g/b couples to produce offspring by technological means (+adoption) and this may affect the path of evolution in an unexpected way... Maybe.
Hard to tell because in this evolutional experiment WE are the subjects. Only those long since will ever know what the changes mean... If anyone is still around to care.

"So Raddy, can you point to any complex organism that DOESN'T procreate by a male and female getting together to form offspring?"

NOT. THE. POINT. Not even close.

The POINT is that the existing human genome does NOT produce MALEs who are of ONE definition, nor does it produce FEMALEs who are of ONE definition.

This should be obvious to anyone who has completed a good high-school biology class - provided they let you think about people. That's often taboo.

The reproduction rate of humans is far above the fatality rate - for now. This hides the non-performers. It doesn't change their population as a percentage of the whole.

Clues should be obvious in our diversity of appearance, but people are flatly blind to other than the political implications of race.

Back to the point: reproduction DOES NOT result in 100% of the offspring being able to reproduce by the same means. This is totally independent of any opinions about "free will", "choice" or any other argument, even about what "gay" means. It isn't even confined to humanity.

Meanwhile, don't worry about current practice having fundamental effects on the human genome. You still have ten toes, and as many nerves in your feet as you have in your hands, despite having lost the need to feel tree limbs for soundness millennia ago.

> We have no reason whatsoever to deny gays
> marriage. It is disgusting that we do.

We don't. They can get married just like anyone else.

> I would have liked to be attracted to women,
> but I just never was.

Why on Earth would anyone ever say anything like that... Unless, y'know, their "positions" about such things were more for political posture rather than feelings?

> I come for the topics, I stay for the
> conversation.

!

Eh, you know Raddy- I get that super strong feeling we are talking past each other.
How's this for definition. One is: produces sperm. The other is: produces eggs, and incubates them within.
Let me know, for all our astonishing diversity, how it's more complex than that.

And if the prevalence of gay men in China is due to the gender imbalence it IS an evolutionary dead end, BECAUSE they will not be passing on their genes

Actually if it is due to gender imbalanced then it is an evolutionary pressure valve designed to keep the species from starving to death thru over grazing

Actually if it is due to gender imbalanced then it is an evolutionary pressure valve designed to keep the species from starving to death thru over grazing

Yes, exactly. Those men might not ever reproduce, but the increase in homosexuality could help the offspring of other men survive, thus protecting their population as a whole.

Human survival has never been about the survival of the individual. We've gotten as far as we have because we have survived as a whole. No single person's genetic contribution matters very much.

Human survival has never been about the survival of the individual. We've gotten as far as we have because we have survived as a whole. No single person's genetic contribution matters very much.

Yes, for most of our existence, the time we evolved to be what we are, we survived in packs no larger than 150. We did not individually survive, either we were part of a pack that survived or it didn't.

If homosexuality is an evolved characteristic, the thing to investigate is, what survival advantage did homosexual men and women add to the pack?

A second possibility is there were always homosexuals but they were rare until the advent of farming and larger scale social organization, and for some reason they had higher rates of reproductive success in either agrarian or urban culture.

~ ~ ~

However interesting that may be to anthropologists, the more important point is, they obviously exist and are citizens with equal rights. The only reason I can think of to deny them the same rights as everyone else to enter into a marriage contract is the Christian bias in all our laws and customs. We are supposed to be a nation without a state religion, with a government that is neutral on religious matters. Using Christian marriage rules and customs as the foundation for the marriage laws enforced by the government should be unconstitutional.

I would like to see the government get out of the business of deciding what can be in a marriage contract and simply do what it does in the case of other contracts, fairly decide disputes between parties when there is a disagreement worthy of court time.

"So Raddy, can you point to any complex organism that DOESN'T procreate by a male and female getting together to form offspring?"

I can point one out! READ ME.

There is a type of lizard that is a "lesbian" lizard. Two females get together and have the lesbian sex, and then one "clones" itself to reproduce. But but they gotta have the lesbian sex otherwise cloning doesnt seem to happen.

Wiki for the interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_whiptail

Wiki for the lazy:

""Despite being an all female species, the whiptail still engages in "mock mating" with other members of its own species, giving rise to the common nickname "lesbian lizards". A common theory is that this behavior stimulates ovulation, as those who do not "mate" do not lay eggs."

Nixon: And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me.

I think it's a choice if you're don't have a fundamental attraction toward either the opposite sex or the same sex, and I think some people lack that fundamental attraction to one sex or the other. They're attracted to people of the opposite sex and the same sex so they can choose.

I've always been sexually attracted to women and have no sexual interest in men so I can't just choose to be attracted to men. I could, of course, choose to sleep with a man but why do that when I'm not sexually attracted to them?

On the marriage issue, here's bit from a recent column by Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times:

Is there a way out of this mess?

Last week, a local politician pointed the way. Rep. Glenn Anderson, a state House Republican from Fall City, made the crucial point that's usually missing from the marriage debate. It ought to be front and center, but probably won't be, on Monday when the Legislature holds hearings about allowing gays to marry.

Anderson noted there are two kinds of marriage, with separate histories and rationales.

Civil marriage — a union licensed by government — is "to provide a neutral and secular foundation for social order and an orderly transfer of property rights for the collective good," Anderson said. That's it. It has nothing to do with God. Or even necessarily with love.

Religious marriage, though, is between you, your spouse and your church. It has little to do with the state. Nor the state with it.

"Civil same-sex marriage does not undermine the right of individuals to freely associate with religious organizations that seek to encourage traditional marriage values," Anderson wrote. "Neither does it obstruct the ability to practice the values of religious marriage."

Jesus Christ, we're still on this?

> Jesus Christ, we're still on this?

See also, Shiavo.

Americans love to count the angels on the head of a pin. Being both blessed and cute, we have time to pursue that measurement as an Olympic sport. I, personally, medalled in Barcellona. I try not to brag about it.

"Let me know, for all our astonishing diversity, how it's more complex than that."

What you are competely missing is that not all of those eggs which "hatch" are "male" or "female" by a definition which you are using - a colloquial, but wholly inaccurate idea that there is such a thing as binary gender.

Here's how it works, for real:

One generation procreates. Their progeny suffers or benefits from a wide range of differences in the reproductive cycle. They resemble, but are not identical to their parents, to differing degrees. Some are born with defects we clearly recognize as physical, with differing degrees of severity, fatal to merely odd. Some are born with features we find impossible to think about, such as androgen insensitivity or other diseases that will make it physically impossible to lead what the public thinks is a "normal" life - school, courtship, marriage, children, repeat.

While the physical manifestation of this diversity and inaccuracy of reproduction is easy to point to - and I have done so - it is still a person's natural tendency to adopt the "out of sight, out of mind" idea. Yet your internal structure is every bit as physical, and every bit a determinant of your abilities as what we can see. There is no question that drugs can radically alter mental and physical states, but, duh! - drugs work by physical laws and principles found in the human body in the first place!

The "odd" fraction of the population which does not reproduce conventionally has no genetic effect on the population, but it is sustained by the procreation of subsequent generations.

Now, there are actually people in the USA and elsewhere who want these people to "go away", to use the most ridiculous euphemism. Gee, there's a problem. You can't point at a person in the USA and deprive them of their rights without due process, AND there is a principle of "equal treatment before the law" that says the law can't favor one person vs. another.

Got an objection to that?

"Jesus Christ, we're still on this?"

When you see the problem solved, let me know.

AND there is a principle of "equal treatment before the law" that says the law can't favor one person vs. another. Got an objection to that?

Throughout American history, people have objected to that and, unfortunately, many people still do.

Good column by Frank Bruni in the New York Times: Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away