Gays’ Historic Victory In Indian Court

An acquired sexual displacement syndrome aka: "fetish" of any description including GLBT, should never be punished by incarceration or humiliation, belittlement. Yet neither should they be touted as mainstream [via marriage or any other vehicle used to that end]. The fact that sexual displacement is acquired means that it is learned from an enviromental pressure. Mainstreaming a fetish will increase the practitioners thereof predictably in malleable social learners such as homo sapiens.

The all-or-nothing attitude of some fetish practitioners currently lobbying for normalcy by using marriage can be sympathized with, because everyone wants a fundamental part of themself to be "normal" and accepted. Yet not all behaviors are normal, nor should they be touted as acceptable. We don't allow felons to vote, even while the right to vote is sacred and universal. We don't do so because we don't want their mental state to affect the sculpture of our society. While fetishers aren't necessarily felonious, the principle of non-"infection" is the same when it comes to upholding their behavior as 'the example to strive for' [implied] by allowing them marriage. [the stamp of a normal human sexual relationship].

All relationships fall short in one way or another, but we must preserve the ideal or become like a ship without a rudder.

Just a couple of points...

["Every citizen has the right to lead a decent and moral life in society and the right would be violated if such behavior (gay sex) is legalized"]--Well it didn't say YOU HAVE to have gay sex. So live your moral life and don't have gay sex. Choice matters.

[”whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal should be punished"]--Uh, listen there are degrees of immorality. Heterosexuals and homosexuals having intercourse "against the order of nature" is JUST A LITTLE BIT different than humans having sex with an animals. I must ask, is there a new provision that upholds the criminalizing of bestiality, or is screwing the pooch now legal?

[Father Dominic Emmanuel added, ‘We are against legalizing (gay sex)… ]--Really?...and how many priests have you reported to the police for confessing to having gay sex week after week after week?? I guess secular law is for non-Catholics, or, would you expect us to believe that there are no gay priests in India?

Gay sex is not Normal and it is not Natural, but what is the harm? As long as there is consent among adults and children or mentally retarded people, (without the capacity to discriminate such things),are not involved then why criminalize same sex sexuality? Or even same sex marriage? We believe that seeking happiness is an inalienable right.

However social discrimination of same sex sexuality should not be criminalized either.

FT:
Gay sex not natural? Then explain why bonobos have gay sex in the wild?
Gay sex is not normal? Normal...now that is a dangerous word to toss around in the multi-cultural world that we live in.

But in general, I believe you are correct. There is no reason to criminal sex or marriage between consenting adults.

Silhouette-

I must say I am impressed. Though I disagree concerning same sex marriage since I don't believe that marriage is [the stamp of a normal human sexual relationship] any longer. With the advent of reliable contraception, heterosexual sexual relationships have been much more prolific out side of commitment.

shannonlee----because some bonobos choose too?

Sorry, you're going to have to do better than, "bonobos". Abnormal behavior is found in the animal world which makes it unnatural just as it does in the human world. Besides, I think it safe to say that you are not a bonobo.

There is no reason to be careful with fact.

The terms "natural" and "not natural" add little to a conversation about human behavior. They are mostly power words, words we use to beat down the other person's argument. Why do I say they are meaningless? Because there's no agreed meaning to them. Shannon can point out a thousand species which engage in gay sex and FT apparently will say that isn't what he means by natural. Then FT could come up with his own definition and we'd find few agree with it either. In the end, no headway is made.

pacatrue- incorrect. Never my intention to "beat down". Beat back maybe, but not "down".

What is the meaning of life? Aside from the various grandiose speculations what do we know? Well life exists, defends itself, procreates, and, evolves. You might say life is narcissistic being all about itself.

Life is in the business of existing by recreating itself and evolving itself for the betterment of itself. So the paramount meaning of life must be to exist forever by whatever means and possibly grow in numbers and/or mass. I don’t think it a stretch to assume that human life is any different than any other life in this. Therefore these must be the basic natural behavior of human beings as well. Which would be normal. Behavior contrary to the meaning of life must be unnatural and certainly abnormal…..at least from life’s point of view.

But, see Father_Time, I don't agree with your definition of "natural" here as a judgment on human behavior. Adding the word in didn't add anything to your argument, it just made it sound judgmental, because who wants to be "unnatural"?

Now, of course, you do provide a substantial argument that life has a purpose, which is to create more of itself, and so any actions which do not further that purpose of re-creation should not be engaged in. That's a fine argument, but labeling some of those actions as natural or unnatural doesn't add much.

To actually engage your argument, I disagree in a bunch of ways. First, it's not clear life does have a purpose, certainly not in the normative sense. Organisms as a whole do indeed try to procreate / re-create, but that's different from saying it is our purpose. Next up, even if animals do find procreation one of the most important things that they do, it doesn't mean all other actions are invalid, deserving of legal punishment as India seemed to believe until today. I honestly don't expect what I'm doing right now to ever be of much benefit to anyone, much less to the expansion of the human race, so by such logic, I should be locked up for typing away here. It's wholly unnatural.

But, you might say, being gay is different from that since it would seem to involve directly abstaining from activities which create more of us. Yes and no. Would bisexuality be okay with you, or how about if a gay person has 2.7 children, and then backs off that procreation thing for the rest of the time and spends it with someone they actually love, their duty to the species now handled? Do you really wish to go in these directions? Do we want to declare a straight person as unnatural who doesn't wish to have kids (You might; I wouldn't.) Of all the problems our species has, producing too few of us has never been a big one. Perhaps by having fewer children, we might actually have more resources for the children that are born. One could completely make up a case that having a minority of gay men and women is a great evolutionary boon for resource-depleted species because it guarantees a certain segment of the population who might work for the betterment of all and not just their own kids all the time. Ah-ha! By my made-up evolutionary story, a minority of gay people actually helps the species persist and expand. So now it's "natural".

We're just making up marginal evolutionary stories that tell us we are justified in believing what we already believe.

Um, your "made up" story is actually a theory that is growing in acceptance as they observe more and more species.

They are seeing that in social species non-procreative individuals (whether old/undesirable or those that refuse to copulate with the opposite sex) play a very critical role in group bonding and general success. Also there are observed "gay" animals -- often coupled -- that raise orphaned infants. The idea is that homosexual children are advantageous because they increase the success rate of the parents and community...which also could explain why there is a correlation between male homosexuality and birth order. By the time you get to the 4th or 5th son, the odds have gone up tremendously.

Thanks for the info, mikkel. I wish all my "bright ideas" found empirical support. So far, I seem to have lots of interesting ideas that don't pan out -- or so the results of my current research indicate.

Haha maybe you've found your true calling!

Incorrect again--pacatrue----[But, see Father_Time, I don't...]

One chooses to have unnatural sex or not. Either by discarding or accepting that it is unnatural. It is irrelevant whether or not they feel guilty about it. It is what they choose to do. I believe that they should have that free choice but it does not make it natural simply because they choose to do it. There is natural and there is man-made. There is normal and there is abnormal.

I did not say that gay sex should not be engaged because it is unnatural. I simply said that it was unnatural. By shear numbers, it is also abnormal. The choice is yours.

In reality what we are discussing here is politics. Politically, the gay rights movement wants to emulate and gain the same rights as the civil rights movement for racial equality based on, “gay people have no choice in what they are sexually”. I do not believe that is true. I believed that it is a learned behavior and therefore gay people have a choice. It may be that some have long made that choice and are firmly fitted into that cultural life, but none-the-less it was at some point a choice. Race never had that choice. In that context the gay rights movement is somewhat less legitimate and should NOT gain the same discriminatory protections as the racial civil rights movement.

In the end what I want from gay rights is the same as what I want from freedom of religion and that is freedom from religion.

Essentially if certain churches do not want to be forced by discrimination laws to marry same sex couples, then they should not have too. If the boy scouts do not accept those whom say they are gay, then they shouldn’t have too. If the military says they do not accept openly gay applicants, then they should not have too. If I choose to fire some guy because he came to work in pink high heels and lipstick, then I shouldn’t have to worry about a discrimination suit.

Do you understand my concerns? Do you see the open points for negotiation? Or do you insist on forcing your culture upon others whether they like it or not?

Father_time, incorrect again.

Sorry, couldn't resist emulating you. You tackle many issues in your comment, but I'll just go with two of them.

First up, you seem to seem to have adopted the idea that anything not done by the majority is therefore abnormal and, moreover, unnatural. If all you are saying is that some people engage in activities that others don't as a mathematical observation, then you are right. But clearly you aren't trying to just give estimates of the proportions of people who do stuff. You seem to think that we should judge people based upon this. But by the "only a minority do it" logic, we could declare every person in the world abnormal and unnatural. Left-handed people are unnatural. Redheads, blondes... unnatural. Since some 50%, or a bit more, of marriages end, apparently people who stay married are unnatural. People who live in Louisiana are abnormal Americans because most Americans don't live in Louisiana. Same for every state. The simple fact that a minority of people do something doesn't mean that it is unnatural -- unless again you are only gaging in statistical observations and don't think they mean anything more.

You're going to have to make more of an argument to go from statistical patterning to claims of morality. You've put forward an evolutionary one before, which I've argued against.

Your second point is the balance between freedom of and freedom from. Terribly difficult balance; we probably agree there. But it is a balance. I would agree with you that churches should not be forced to marry people they do not with to. My sister-in-law's church would not marry my brother to her because he's not Catholic. That's fine with me. But I'm not okay with a city officials saying he won't marry my brother because he's not Catholic, because they are city officials and have duties for all citizens.

There simply is no way for every person to only live in a world of their design. You seem to not want gay people around or their culture? (I'm not sure, but I think that's the idea. I'm also not sure what their culture is, as every gay friend I've ever had seemed to have a very similar culture to mine, but that's another discussion.) The problem is, of course, that gay people are people, too. And they get to live their lives.

You can marry the woman of your choice. A few friends of mine who happen to be women should be able to as well. If you can say they can't because that would be imposing my culture on you, then we can say that you cannot marry the woman you love for whatever reasons we have. Maybe she's white and you are black. Maybe she's too tall and I think men should always be taller.

I personally think I have no business telling you who you should marry, and, if you happen to marry a person I don't like and then I'm forced to see you at church or on TV or at work with that horrible woman, then that's just too bad for me. Because the freedom to marry someone is surely more important than any discomfort I have seeing you acting in a way I disagree with.

I'm not an expert on employment law, so I cannot have a debate for very long with you on this, but you seem to want to fire a man who wears lipstick and pink high heels. First of all, surely you know that very few gay men wear women's clothing, particularly at a place of employment. I've only been out of college for 15 years, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a man in women's clothing at any corporation I've worked at or any corporation I've visited, and I used to travel on training and consulting trips all around the nation. Many of the people I worked with were gay, but every single one came in clothes similar to everyone else. (Except for one guy a couple cubes down, who was always better dressed than me.) The only exceptions are genuinely transgendered people, and that's a whole 'nother issue, as they say. Regardless of how many times this actually occurs, firing someone for inappropriate dress could be legally acceptable for an employer.

What should not be acceptable is firing them for who they love. Do you wish to fire black men for dating white women? The only reasonable argument here, I would think, is to take a libertarian position, which is that you should be able to fire anyone for anything at all times. Fire 'em for being black; fire 'em for being tall; fire 'em for being female; whatever: employers can legally do whatever they want. That's a legitimate position that I understand. I disagree with it, but it makes some sense to me. However, it's hard to reconcile such a strong libertarian take with laws that forbid adults from engaging in certain relationships, legal or personal.

pacatrue-

You seem to think that you can legitimize as "Natural and Normal" that which has never been "Natural and Normal" and never will be "Natural and Normal".

You can bring up the Spatans and the Romans and whatever, but no matter what you say, you are a sub-culture and an extreme minority. The press you get far outweighs your political legitimacy. What you gain, you gain from the political generosity of the hetrosexual massive majority.

I am telling you that there is only so much they will give. If there is some future world you envision, such as Dr. Martin Luther King's discribed vision, then state it. Otherwise you offer nothing but a threat to force your sub-culture upon the majority.

Thanks for ignoring every point I made, Father_Time, and just repeating your own "normalcy" belief as if I have never spoken. Looks like the conversation is done.