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[Truean]

the champion of your misery is being held up as the ideal to lead and save us all...? Yeah.... I vented and got a little pissed on the Internets.... How would you deal with it?

and what do you mean by that?

Santorum is championing (successfully running for office on) my misery (bigotry), calling it morality, and being moved to lead this nation by popular vote (people loving him).... People think he can save our messed up country, because he has found the problem--gays--and the solution--making us illegal and removing us from society as much as he can so we don't ruin it anymore. We gays are responsible for every problem.... Everyone who likes him enough to vote for him is saying he should lead as President, because he knows how to save us and it's by screwing the gays, who ruined us. Literally, listen to the man speak or click on any of the links recently posted here about his views.

We are both attorneys:
Some points are best made by contrast. He calls it Justice and people love it. I devoted my life to actual Justice and people hate me for it. He spews pure, malicious hatred as morality; people applaud. I fight off police brutality and constitutional abuses with nothing but my wits; people sneer or don't care. They call him the one who will return America to family values. They call me a crook while I run myself ragged keeping them out of jail and oppression as best I can by myself.

People hear him talk and want to make him President, because what he says is hatred "moral." He wants to enshrine in law his bigotry morality to prolong my misery and produce more of it. An immoral thing like me deserves it, because just by being gay, I've done so much damage to society.... People like me are the reason the American Family and Nation have fallen apart, and the reason why God doesn't talk to us anymore....

If he could hear me talk, he would ignore me, no matter what I say, how I say it, or how right I am. I could say all the words to prove why he shouldn't ruin my life, that I am not the cause of all this nation's ills, that I have never harmed anyone. I could explain in perfect detail why he shouldn't effectively exile me from society. I could say all the right things, at exactly the right times, in all the right ways, for all the right reasons, for all the right results, with all the right evidence, to all the right people, being as right as humanly possible, but it means nothing to him and we both know why.... The people who support him, call this "consistency." It's called bigotry and never giving me a chance.... And the people who support him, would love him for it, because he'd never compromise his "values...."

My reaction should be calm and rational and never showing a loss of composure. I should just sit tight and watch my life further unwind. It's only what I'd be asking for, and I'd be just fine until he decides I'm out of time. It's only what I would've waited for.... It's only what people want to elect him for....

Imagine someone had ruined most of your life and wanted to totally ruin the rest of it even though you'd done nothing wrong. As justification for ruining your life, that someone has blamed every problem the whole country faces on you and people like you even though it's all completely bullshit. That someone says the way to save the country is to ruin you and he means it. Now imagine that rather than tell him not to ruin your life, people thought him ruining your life was such a great idea that they wanted to elect him President of the United States, because he is such a moral man....

"the champion of [my] misery is being held up as the ideal to lead and save us all...?"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that doesn't even begin to get into "save us all" in the religious sense of the word, which with Santorum, certainly applies.... Don't worry, we gays are to blame for that too....

[Tellemurius]

You know this sounds vaguely familiar.

[Heron TSG]

From what I've seen, the recent leaders or near-leaders have been from fringe groups that keep rising to the top because everyone else at the top keeps shooting their mouths off. Santorum's in the process of doing this as I type, I'm sure. The only people running who haven't really done this (yet) are Romney, who is apparently smart enough to keep his mouth shut, and Paul, who everyone already knows is crazy.

[Pnx]

We are both attorneys:
Some points are best made by contrast. He calls it Justice and people love it. I devoted my life to actual Justice and people hate me for it. He spews pure, malicious hatred as morality; people applaud. I fight off police brutality and constitutional abuses with nothing but my wits; people sneer or don't care. They call him the one who will return America to family values. They call me a crook while I run myself ragged keeping them out of jail and oppression as best I can by myself.

Truan, there are plenty of people out here who have the exact opposite reaction.

Santorum is a crazed reactionary, even if the conservative party is crazy enough to put him up to run for president he's not going to win the election, there's just going to be too much opposition to his policies.

[Urist Imiknorris]

If Santorum wins the nomination, there will be "Anyone But Santorum" voters coming out of the woodwork in no time. If his hate speech wins him a spot in the race it will cost him the actual race.

[G-Flex]

Sorry, wasn't implying that sexuality comes from genes and only genes.  I wanted to see the evidence that supports the apparent widespread conclusion that it has nothing to do with genes and why I should feel awful for even considering the thought. *headswish*

That's not what you actually said. You said "based on genes alone", not "nothing to do with genes". There's a big difference there.

I'm curious why it's a fact that human sexuality is complicated.  Did I miss a memo or something?  Got evidence of that, or should I be taking that on faith also to support your claim?

Sexual orientation itself is more complicated than people seem to give credit for. The idea that it's strictly binary/ternary is kind of ridiculous, and even our notion of sexual orientation can't be taken for granted. People are attracted to different genders and traits to varying degrees, depending on the individual. I suppose this on its own doesn't completely disqualify the idea of genetic determinism, though.

Evidence besides "it's obvious to everyone I've talked to whose sexuality apparently changed over time"?  How about a peer-reviewed study about a few hundred individuals whose sexuality changed?  And how are we defining sexuality in this case?  Are we talking fetishes, or radical changes in sexual orientation?

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much research in that area. Some government agencies seem at least open to the idea, though. Beyond that, no, I don't have anything except anecdotal evidence that, while sufficiently convincing to me, can't be expected to be taken as scientifically valid by others. There might be scholarly articles or something somewhere, but I don't have the time right now to look, and I wouldn't be able to get the full text of them anyway.

Oh yes.  And thanks for taking my sentence out of context and using it to insult me.  I figured you would understand that when I said "stroke" in the next few sentences, you would understand that I meant the changes in the brain that can occur after a stroke.  Certain regions dying off and new connections being made quickly and all that.  Resulting in say, a change of sexual orientation.  I'm trying to have a civil discussion here, don't tempt me into insulting you back.

Sorry, I just get a little weird when people talk about the structure of the brain influencing personality or other mental aspects of a person, because it usually comes off as kind of tautological, what with those things and the brain being, well, mostly the same thing.

[Andir]

Sorry, wasn't implying that sexuality comes from genes and only genes.  I wanted to see the evidence that supports the apparent widespread conclusion that it has nothing to do with genes and why I should feel awful for even considering the thought. *headswish*

That's not what you actually said. You said "based on genes alone", not "nothing to do with genes". There's a big difference there.

So, obviously we should lambaste the person and not let them recount and/or clarify... we should take what they said in error as the stance they are taking and base our argument off that, because humans don't make mistakes.

[Truean]

http://news.yahoo.com/gingrich-black-people-paychecks-not-food-aid-234405279.html

Speaking of politicians "not being bigoted," Gingrich said he'd say Black people should demand paychecks instead of food stamps in front of the NAACP if it invited him to speak on said topic. There has been and will probably never be such an invitation.... I wonder why....

So it's perfectly cool to imply that black people do demand food stamps and should instead stop being lazy/content with that and work.... ? Food stamp use is up in the US for EVERYONE because there are no damn jobs but kudos on the "White man's burden" there Newt. Good job singling out the black people. You're not trying to be racist, you're just trying to help the black people not be lazy food stamp users, right? Again, we have another person who is running for president with bigotry, lovely....

So for those of you keeping score at home. Gingrich thinks that especially the black poor are lazy and that black people DON"T demand jobs and are content with demanding food stamps/don't want to work. As the superior white male, he'd like them to invite him over to encourage them to stop being so damn lazy and demand jobs instead of demanding food stamps....

Because naturally, they need his freaking encouragement, do not currently demand jobs, and need to start demanding jobs.... That's not racist; that's not racist at all.... Holy shit, really man? That's perfectly acceptable from someone running for President.... Shit.

[Leafsnail]

Wouldn't natural selection remove the gay gene from the pool?

Possible reasons why it wouldn't:
1. There are a lot of different genes that contribute to homosexality to different degrees.  It might be that having some of these genes is beneficial to passing on your genes (and the fact that some people get a lot of these genes and end up not reproducing doesn't outweigh this).
2. It's beneficial to have some homosexuals in a population.  See group selection - as long as you're still helping your immediate family, you're helping your genes.  Maybe having some people who aren't bringing up children and who bring back food anyway is useful.

Because genes work by interacting with their environment. There is, quite literally, NOTHING about human physiology or psychology that occurs due to "genes alone".

I'd say this is an overgeneralisation - the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntingdon's Disease are pretty much completely deterministic.  But yeah, it's true for a lot of things.

[ChairmanPoo]

I don't think either of them has a 100% penetrance. It depends on the particulars. Not all Huntington's and CF mutations are the same, either, which is another factor to bear in mind.

[GlyphGryph]

The overriding factors in this case being any environmental factors likely to stop those genes from expressing themselves would have the side effect of stopping other crucial genes from expressing themselves, likely causing death of the organism.

But more seriously,  a cystic fibrosis gene is easily overwhelmed by its environment - this is why you only need a single working copy of the gene to pretty much completely nullify it's effect. As long as SOMETHING is producing the correct proteins, the gene accomplishes nothing.

But you are correct, I suppose - genes that produce toxins or cell-damaging proteins and haven't been successfully relegated by other genes to some strand of junk DNA somewhere are pretty much deterministically guaranteed to fuck you up. I concede the point.

[scriver]

Wouldn't natural selection remove the gay gene from the pool?

Possible reasons why it wouldn't:
1. There are a lot of different genes that contribute to homosexality to different degrees.  It might be that having some of these genes is beneficial to passing on your genes (and the fact that some people get a lot of these genes and end up not reproducing doesn't outweigh this).
2. It's beneficial to have some homosexuals in a population.  See group selection - as long as you're still helping your immediate family, you're helping your genes.  Maybe having some people who aren't bringing up children and who bring back food anyway is useful.

Or you could just go to the simplest answer; Being gay doesn't stop you from having kids.

[GlyphGryph]

Extremely true and a particularly great point.

[Leafsnail]

...Yeah, that's actually almost certainly it.

[DJ]

It makes it less likely, though. Which means these genes would get outcompeted in the long run.