response 276 of 404:

Nov 10 18:08 UTC 1998

There is a remote (?) possibility kenton is putting us all on. . . .

response 278 of 404:

Nov 10 23:43 UTC 1998

re #276: now *that* would be interesting

response 280 of 404:

Nov 11 00:26 UTC 1998

No, judging from the information and the rate that it continues to appear,
I'd say he's serious.

I think you said something at the beginning of this about being open minded,
didn't you? (or am I just imagining things) If that is so, why do you continue
to use words like "fag" and "pervert" etc when you know (at least I assume
you know) that they are offensive.  I hope you're not trying to convince us
to stop being gay/bi/lesbian or whatever.  A lot of the people who post on
this conf. have been the way they are most if not all their lives.

Homo- and bisexuals are people.  I agree that they shouldn't "rub it in
people's faces.  I'm not altogether fond of Hets who do that (and they do,
did you notice that?)  I think that one's sexual orientation should be kept
private, except in circustances such as these.  I don't mind discussing it
if people ask me about it.  I'm not ashamed to say I'm bisexual, even if I
haven't had any physical experience with a MOTSS.  If people asked me about
it, I would tell them flat out how I felt (in as far as I was able to do so)
Just as parentss are supposed to explain to interested children, how babies
come about.  I would try to be circumspect.

I think that, if hets want to have a het pride day, I would probably support
that, just as I'd support gay pride if they had a gay pride day here.  I think
that open-mindedness refers more to the acceptance of people regardless of
who they are or might be and regardless, further, of what they do or don't
do in the privacy of their homes or out in public for that matter.

I do have to agree that those who sleep around are worse, but more because
I think that people who do that, needlessly put themselves and others at risk
for dangerous, even fatal diseases.  

Jon has promised me he will get tested before we get married.  Just to be
safe, I may get tested myself.  I have a lot of respect for Jon because he
loved me enough to be up front with me about the experience he mentioned to
you and because he still loves me enough to get tested.

Maybe we should abandon this conversation and talk about something worthwhile
for a change.

response 282 of 404:

Nov 11 02:17 UTC 1998

Real or pseudo, kenton's a pretty interesting character.  He seems willing
to expose his views to an audience that does not agree with them, interested
in learning from their reaction, and good-humored in the face of a rather
hostile reception.  I suspect that many of "us" wouldn't fare as well in
his shoes.

response 284 of 404:

Nov 11 03:57 UTC 1998

To be "in his shoes" as i meant it would mean that you were alone in an
item where everyone else more-or-less held kenton's views, and felt free
to let your know how wrong you were....

response 286 of 404:

Nov 11 17:59 UTC 1998

Heh.  This item is amusing.  Amazingly, it hasn't turned into mnet yet :)

response 288 of 404:

Nov 11 19:45 UTC 1998

"perverted" means "abnormal"
Is homosexuality "abnormal"?
"abnormal" means "not normal."
Is heterosexuality normal?
"normal" means one of two things:
(a) the modal/medial behavior of an object within a particular group
(b) occurring naturally (plausibly) within an otherwise healthy member of a
species

(a) is easy to figure out. The mode of a group is the most frequently
occurring characteristic of that group; the median of a group is the
statistical average of a numerical characteristic. Short of Kinsey's numeric
scale of sexual experience, which has since changed into a scale of sexual
interest, it's difficult to determine a "median" of sexuality. All the same,
I'd wager that the median of sexual experience is around 1.5, mostly
heterosexual; the mode of sexual experience is certainly heterosexual, though
it's uncertain whether the mode of orientation is heterosexuality or
bisexuality... it certainly isn't homosexuality.

So from a statistical standpoint, homosexuality is abnormal.

(b) is the one people really spend all the time arguing about. One the one
side, same-sex behavior occurs in non-humans, and even non-primates, but it's
unclear whether this can be classed as "homosexual" in the same way that it's
unclear that human sexual terms at all can be applied to non-humans, since
they contain clusters of emotions as well as behavior. In my last post, I
point out that the APA doesn't consider homosexuality in and of itself a
mental illness, and there are plenty of humans who are practicing homosexuals
but who are not intherapy for any other reasons, so it appears that, on a
subjective level, homosexuality does, in fact, occur in otherwise healthy
members of the community.

Unfortunately, this is a subjective assessment. While not all homosexuals are
in therapy, incidence of mental and social dysfunction is clearly higher among
the hemosexual population than among the bi/heterosexual population (let me
make it clear that the bisexual population is a transient one, in that it
patterns like the heterosexual one in certain regards and like the homosexual
one on others). The standard -- and I think viable -- argument for this is
that what causes the mental and social dysfunction is not the homosexuality
per se, but societal lack of acceptance of it. 

So the preponderence of evidence in this matter says that homosexuality is
normal.

However, we still haven't looked in depth at the *opposite* issue... is
*homophobia* normal? 

Inasmuch as homophobia is a form of xenophobia -- fear of strangers, or people
who are different -- yes. A certain level of xenophobia is necessary from an
evolutionary standpoint. Inasmuch as my genes are attempting to find others
which will help them strengthen and propogate within the population, I should
be seeking out people of a similar genetic background, and avoiding people
who don't suit my genetic reproductive needs. Homophobia comes from the same
source that racism, sexism, etc., come from: an externaliztion of what is,
for almost all of us, an internal process: a drive to maximize our own genetic
effect on future generations.

Note that sexism is on the list. While our reproductive systems know that we
must mate with a member of the opposite sex in order to reproduce, our genetic
coding demands that we avoid the opposite sex as much as possible, if we wish
to propogate our own (obviously superior) genes.

These drives, as much as they occur within the brain, go on within the
"lizard" or "amphibian" brain... the oldest portion of our brain. We consider
it vulgar when people *who hold beliefs we don't* act on their inbred
xenophobia, and yet are generally unaware when we act on them ourselves.

Indeed, homosexuality is, in part, rooted in the same drive: Avoiding the
opposite gender. This xenophobic model not only predicts homophobia, it ALSO
predicts homosexuality *as a natural phenomenon*! It contains two main
directives:

(1) Seek those who are similar to you
(2) Avoid those who are dissimilar to you

Taking to its extreme, this xenophobia-driven genetics does NOT strengthen
the species, it ultimately destroys it. If everyone were homosexual, and
refused to even ACT bisexual, the species wouldn't survive long enough to
develop methods of artificial insemination (as a species, now, we are free
to become 100% homosexual, but old habits die hard). Even in a heterosexual
world, this xenophobia has led to inbreeding, which leads to increased birth
defects and decreased immunity. In order to prevent total genetic xenophobia,
genetic development has also evolved to FORCE members of a species to mate
with outsiders or risk annihilation.

Hence, on a genetic level, we must follow a balance between:
(a) Opposites attract
(b) birds of a feather flock together

We must include JUST ENOUGH foreign genetic material into our pool to maintain
health, but in the main, we must reinforce our own genetic make-up.

There it is, from my own spin on genetics. 

response 290 of 404:

Nov 12 00:21 UTC 1998

I don't believe I said or suggested that mean and median are the same. 
I suppose one might infer that from my using a non-integer for the Kinsey
scale, since it's generally presented as an integer scale, but I also use
half-points (that is, for me, the Kinsey scale runs 0, .5, 1, 1.5, 2, up to
6, as opposed to the more traditional 0, 1, 2, ... up to 6). (Statistical
medians always have to be one of the points on the scale; it can't be between
points on the scale. Means, being mathematical averages, can be between points
on the scale.)

response 292 of 404:

Nov 12 05:24 UTC 1998

Ah. Point taken. "Average" non-rigorously is ambiguous between mode, median,
and mean, but true, in statistics, it's typically synonymous with "mean."

Now that we've bored everyone else. =}

response 294 of 404:

Nov 12 12:00 UTC 1998

Hey, dammit, quit drifting!  This item is about perverts, and how they 
sometimes beat up gay people!

response 296 of 404:

Nov 12 17:05 UTC 1998

I read an amusing and highly biased article against Christianity in the paper
yesterday. Nice to know that Christians can be victims of rabid prejudice too.

response 298 of 404:

Nov 12 22:26 UTC 1998

In other words, perverts?