Homosexuality likely has a biological cause. I’ve argued that the most likely kind of cause would be some pathogen – but finding any biological cause would be absolutely rife with implications.
With that knowledge, you could likely prevent homosexuality, and maybe remedy it.
So what would happen?
West Hunter 
See: Deaf Culture
Back in the day, prenatal rubella accounted for about half of congenital deafness. The rubella vaccination campaign in the 1970s ended that. I don’t see any move to bring back rubella.. deaf culture or no.
I was going to mention deaf culture as well, but to concur with your view. Deaf culture refers to the rubella vaccination campaign as “the genocide” or “the holocaust”, but that, as well as cochlear implants, is slowly ending the culture.
I suspect the same thing would happen with homosexuality. Most parents would actively seek to avoid gay children. The only real issue is whether lesbians and gays would try to choose to have gay children, which would presumably be tough to arrange.
I thought I remembered some asshole referring to rubella vaccination as genocide, but I couldn’t find a reference. If you can, I’d like to see it.
I may be crazy, but I think there would be a strong effort to ban any method of preventing homosexuality.
It might not be so tough to arrange if you knew the etiology.
I know nothing about the science, and will of course defer to you on that. But Down Syndrome and gender abortions are very common despite all sorts of disapproval, and I just can’t see the vast majority of parents choosing to risk homosexuality if they know there’s a way to avoid it. I’ll see if I can dig up the holocaust/genocide reference, but I’m certain I saw it back a decade or so, when I was reading up on the fuss over Sound and Fury (the documentary).
@gcochran9 “The rubella vaccination campaign in the 1970s ended that”
That was a global campaign. The “dehomonization vaccination” would not be a global campaign. In other words: Let’s say the USA would choose to NOT vaccinate, but China, Russia and India would choose to vaccinate then expect a flood of gay refugees from these countries to come to the USA (“gaysylum”).
USA would become maybe one of the gayest countries.
More to the point, you might find gay prospective parents supporting vaccination.
“I may be crazy, but I think there would be a strong effort to ban any method of preventing homosexuality. ”
Here in CA the legislature and governor happily and proudly passed a law forbidding clinicians from using “reparative therapy” on minors. True, the therapy is hocus pocus, claiming that a male is attracted to other males only because he is trying to “repair” the loss of masculinity because of rejection or perceived rejection by his father or because of an overprotective mother, but the new law had an injunction placed on it, ironically, by a three judge panel of the very liberal and sometimes outright looney 9th Circuit.
Take a look at the language of this paragraph in the CA Senate Bill 1172:
“The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) Being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming. The major professional associations of mental health practitioners and researchers in the United States have recognized this fact for nearly 40 years.”
from http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120SB1172
Not even a “disorder,” huh? I mean, if I have tendonitis of the elbow, it’s a disorder; if I’m myopic, it’s a disorder; if I have acid reflux after eating pepperoni pizza, chocolate, and other wonderful, tasty delights, it’s a disorder; if one of my fallopian tubes is blocked and getting pregnant is difficult, I have a disorder; similarly, if my ovaries are loaded with cysts and I can’t conceive, it’s a disorder…..but homosexuality? Nope. NOT a disorder according to our good legislators and governor. Homosexuality must not, in their eyes, interfere in any way with reproduction, huh? Or maybe reproduction is simply no biggie in their eyes. Yeah, just a messy old process, I guess.
Sure we could count on a strong effort to ban a method to prevent homosexuality – but how could it be stopped, especially if we are talking about preventing/treating a virus or infection of some sort?
You can’t have it both ways…there is widespread revulsion at the idea that any state should interfere with people’s reproductive choices.
And look at China’s war on baby girls…my guess is that the Chinese dislike their homosexuals more than they dislike their daughters…
Homosexuality is like daltonism not disorder but shit
erica, we need to ask: would the CA law have passed if the reparative therapies weren’t hocus-pocus?
The suicide rate of adolescent boys would fall by 70-80%.
I think it would depend on what precisely caused homosexuality, because that would affect how the efforts to eliminate the cause would be perceived. If (recognizing this as an an unlikely possibiilty) homosexuality resulted from a constellation of genes, it would be much easier for gay rights activists to protests methods to eliminated such genes as “eugenics” that if the cause were a pathogen of some sort.
Effective slogans will be coined, regardless of the facts. You can’t stop a good hack with anything short of a .44 Magnum. If we discover a pathogen cause, that pathogen will be called a symbiote. I’ve already heard this.
Let’s run with this. If the powers that be call it a symbiote, then efforts to combat it will be denounced not only as hate, but as environmental crimes. Lovely.
Going further, let’s suppose that pathogens explain other non-adaptive behavior or conditions. I’ve heard that obesity could be partially explained by gut flora (sorry, don’t have a link handy). There’s already a fat-acceptance movement. They can leverage the same language.
Suppose the geographical distribution of the hypothetical gay germ is non-uniform. Seems likely to me. In order to “enhance inter-species cooperation,” it could be introduced into places as a matter of public policy. Those who object would be called haters.
Most parents would remedy it, if only to increase their expected number of grandchildren. ‘Deaf culture’-like pleas would fall mostly on deaf ears.
yep. Lots of gum flapping out there saying they are opposed to genetic engineering. But give people an option and watch their “principles” become quickly forgotten. Right now gene therapy for breast cancer is being marketed by Genentech. The women whom have lost loved ones in their family and have this cloud over their head are not going to refuse this option, unless of course they are idiots. I have gay friends and typically they get their shit together but it’s tough during their teenage years. I’ll bet the overwhelming majority wouldn’t wish that on their own kids. Gay pride is cool. If people are gay they should stand up to assholes who think they are better than them. But gay arrogance, that puts them in the same category as the christian wackos who think homosexuality is a sin.
You have a pretty solid bet there.
No more “Bohemian Rhapsody”s.
Never cared for that band anyway.
With that knowledge, you could likely cause homosexuality, and maybe amplify it.
And do it to a clone of a celebrity – or publicly known and named geneticist – whose DNA you somehow acquire.
An overwheming % of parents would prevent it ASAP. Some wackos wouldn’t…and there are a fair number of wackos in the world, yet even most of them would.
As for a remedy for it? OMG, the gay lobby would freak. There is already one state, MA, I think, in which a state legislator tried to pass a bill that would prevent medical science from doing such a thing if a “cure” were found. It failed to pass, even in wacko MA.
Most likely, the remedy would be administered w/out fanfare in a doctor’s office with no one knowing otherwise unless of course K. Sebelius tried stopping it through Obamacare. Still, people would so want it they’d pay for it out of their pockets.
It would be interesting to see what the leftists would say. We know what they’d do–what everyone else would do.
I’m not so sure about that.
If there were a preventative – so that one’s children would almost definitely not be homosexual, most heterosexual leftists would use it, no matter what they said about it. Those feeling pangs of guilt would justify it as “saving their children from the cruelties of homophobia”.
You know how real-life liberals all move out of black neighborhoods and into safe, white neighborhoods whenever they can? How gentrified, liberal suburbs of Atlanta seceded so they wouldn’t have to share resources with the poor blacks via taxation? How white, suburban liberals wait until they’re married to start having kids? How they take every tax deduction they can and even use offshore banks when possible to reduce their share of the tax burden?
You can bet your sweet ass every white, bourgeois liberal woman would take the anti-gay vaccine during pregnancy if it existed. Liberals believe it’s very important for other people to live by their values, but never do so themselves.
I’m with you. I see parents settling the question quietly and decisively. The left would have to respect individual family choices. The right would “let the market decide”.
>i<So what would happen? Economic chaos in the prostitution industry. Increased demand and less competition (male prostitutes “were” more active). Prices would rocket. I also foresee scarcity prices paid in the hair dressing industry.
Since I am impotent and bald, I say: Go Greg Go!
I was working in drug discovery when the first “gay gene” report came out. If there is such a thing, it’s likely developmental. But still, my immediate thought was: if the gene product is functional in adults, let’s analog it!
My impulse was different from most of the respondents above. I thought: wouldn’t it be cool to have a drug you could take that would make you gay for a day?
It would not be for everyone, I guess, but I imagine it could be a popular party drug among the open-minded.
You don’t say.
There are several drugs that make you gay for a day. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine being one of the more prominent!
“I thought: wouldnāt it be cool to have a drug you could take that would make you gay for a day?”
Lolzzlolzzlolzz
HA!!! I’m not so sure. Consider that much of the public rejection of male homosexuals is reaction to perceived character traits associated with male homosexuality. How many of those would your party drug recreate?
What would happen? There would be a few more people in a slightly less interesting world.
I go a little further, imagining secondary and even tertiary consequences.
I’ll try. If your theory is right and we eradicate this gay germ, then homosexuality (at least male homosexuality) would be eradicated or nearly so. With homosexuality gone, then there would be little need for men to prove that they’re not homosexual. So behaviors that would get one called “gay” when done by men would start to come back in vogue.
When I visited Eastern Europe once, I noticed the frequency of men kissing each other on the cheek. Think of The Godfather. We could see a return of emotionally intense male friendships like those portrayed in classic literature.
That’s secondary; howzabout tertiary? With intense male friendships back in vogue, other forms of male bonding revive. Men’s clubs make a comeback. No, not strip clubs. Think of fraternal societies or those Ivy League final clubs. Lots of business deals would happen in those clubs. This time, they wouldn’t be limited to the upper class, there would be plenty of them for the proles.
Re: winestock’s answer, bit skeptical any real number of male-male close platonic relationships are prevented by men worrying they will be perceived to be gay. Like 0.5 – 1.0 of men are gay. And if a man has a relationship with a woman already, that is very strong evidence he isn’t gay.
As for secondary consequences – any alleles which confer fitness because they are protective from the gay germ’s effect rapidly lose their fitness advantage. These alleles may be associated with non-sexual qualities and behaviours we think of as straight, but which don’t of themselves confer and functional or fitness advantage for males.
Sorry, winestock, men’s clubs don’t exist because feminists have sued them out of existence, not because men don’t enjoy each other’s company. It has nothing to do with homosexuality. You’d have to end feminism for men to be allowed to fraternize with other men again.
Great i want to be heterosexual.My first job is to go to Russia to change my sex orientation because in Russia has no stupid human rights and fuck beautiful russian girls.
The Greek tyrants who forbid military training and required the city’s youth to be catamites would require mass shots of any gay germ. Post-60s Democrats ditto.
Assuming the culprit is a virus, I suspect that once infected, homosexuality is irreversible. Our best bet for now then would be a vaccine that prevents new infections. My fiancĆ©e is rather adamant about one concern should it be discovered that homosexuality is an infection: gays will be treated as pariahs. Imagine the idea going around that gays carry a disease that makes your children gay? She would not be surprised if there were calls to quarantine gays for the “good of society.”
I have to say I can’t put it past people. A lot depends on the mode of transmission.
One thing is certain there is no gay gene.
Literally speaking, this is true (just as there is no one gene for most traits). But in the case of homosexuality, even if it is caused by an infection, there could be a genetic susceptibility to the pathogen (weakened immune response, or perhaps the opposite reaction: a hey-wire immune response to the pathogen that results in damage to the sexual orientation circuits).
There have been suggestions that children are the most “homophobic.” Perhaps the method of transmission is simply being involved in boy-type rough play with homosexual males. That is, sexual activity is not needed. While I think that “homophobic” is a stupid word, the behavior of children in that regard might have a basis in selection.
Also, note that female homosexuality seems likely to have a different etiology.
It seems children are quite homophobic.
Male homosexuality is unrelated to female homosexuality (which is perhaps unrelated to female bisexuality). As such, they all may have different causes.
In any case, it’s highly unlikely that the infectious agent behind male homosexuality is spread by sexual contact. But it’s gotta be spread somehow…
“Perhaps the method of transmission is simply being involved in boy-type rough play with homosexual males. That is, sexual activity is not needed.”
The gender atypical play interests in some of these kids and the outright gender dysphoria of a smaller group are observed long before these children are placed in environments in which male rough and tumble play occurs, places like pre-school, school, or even neighborhood birthday parties. In fact, if there’s a father in the home or brothers (or even sisters) of a similar age, it’s probably noted then that many boys destined to be homosexual shy away from even a little pushing and shoving and from the more physical roughhousing that occurs when little kids get together. In short, by early toddlerhood many see behaviors, notice play interests that distinguish many of these kids from boys who will grow up to be straight. Even their speech, even the volume at which they speak, often contrasts with their straight male peers. So, no, I see no reason to believe the close encounters of “boy-type rough play” have anything to do with transmission. Further, there is no indication that sexual activity is needed.
I think Jayman has it right:
“Literally speaking, this is true (just as there is no one gene for most traits). But in the case of homosexuality, even if it is caused by an infection, there could be a genetic susceptibility to the pathogen (weakened immune response, or perhaps the opposite reaction: a hey-wire immune response to the pathogen that results in damage to the sexual orientation circuits).”
I don’t think we can ignore that there is some kind of familial connection in some cases. Perhaps the family members are carriers of some pathogen and perhaps babies and toddlers born into that nuclear or even extended family are especially susceptible to that virus.
Jayman said, “It seems children are quite homophobic.”
More specifically, boy children are quite that way. Anything smacking of girlish behavior is icky.
So, play around with this for a minute: if homoaversion (I agree with GC that “homophobic” is not an appropriate term) by male children is trait that has been selected for to protect the boy child from germ at a particular age, then look to girl children as the carriers of it, for it’s little girls that little boys do their best to escape from at a certain age.
Just a thought.
@erica:
“So, play around with this for a minute: if homoaversion (I agree with GC that āhomophobicā is not an appropriate term) by male children is trait that has been selected for to protect the boy child from germ at a particular age, then look to girl children as the carriers of it, for itās little girls that little boys do their best to escape from at a certain age.”
Indeed. Interesting.
Perhaps its true–girls do have the lurgi (I believe the disease is known as “cooties” in the states).
Gays are probably no more likely to infect you with homo-germs than people with congenital rubella syndrome are likely to infect you with rubella.
The low concordance rates between twins suggests that the pathogen is not contracted in-utero.
Cats are probably no more likely to infect you with Toxoplasmosis that people with congenital rubella …
Mosquitoes are probably no more likely …
You do know that it really depends on the actual mode of transmission and the actual pathogen, or are you just an idiot?
Gays usually act gay at an early age, and it’s rare to see a 30 year old dude suddenly turn gay, so apparently whatever gayifies you does it early. Not necessarily in utero, but early. It’s not out of the question that whatever pathogen does it hangs around in gay guys and infects other people decades later (hence the qualification “probably” in my original post), but I would think maybe somebody would have noticed it by now (hence the “not”).
Fourth doorman, toxoplasmosis is a little different from homosexuality, in that people get it and then behave differently at all ages. People come down with malaria and dengue fever all the time, at all ages. If I were as much of an asshole as you are, I would call you an idiot for not realizing that.
Indeed. You seem capable of some thoughts but are not able to understand the implications of your own thoughts. This suggests that once the switch is flipped, it is unlikely to be unflipped, and that there are critical stages where getting the pathogen will cause problems.
Tell me, oh wise and sagacious one, how many adults who get rubella become deaf? How many children?
Idiot.
However, you have provided an insight, even though you refuse to think. That insight is that since the switch does not seem to be able to be unflipped past some point, talk of a cure might simply be uninfomed. Of course, since sexual activity does not switch on until after puberty and human males are very strongly male-associating prior to puberty, we might simply be seeing a continuation of one behavior that except for the presence of the pathogen would have been switched off.
2 points:
1) liberals practice eugenics
http://www.iSteve.com/05JanA.htm#jodie.foster.eugenics
2) there is money being made by quacks practicing “reparative” therapy and it doens’t even work
3rd point
this excerpt is taken from an old piece but relevant to the discussion. Roger Gorski is with the UCLA David Geffen (lol) school of medicine in the neuroscience dept
http://www.susans.org/reference/gorskiin.html
Omni: How could your findings be applied to future sex-change operations? Gorski: “…suppose you’re a female in a body with a male brain, or you claim that’s how you feel. The current reconstruction of male genitalia is rather inefficient. It doesn’t work erection-wise. Should we then entertain the idea of changing the brain of that female who wants to be a male, into a female brain that doesn’t want to be a male”
I believe the answer to the points you raise falls more into the realm of economics rather than medicine. The market for reparative therapy evidences what people really want. Don’t confuse efforts to protect gay people from discrimination with any actual desire for more homosexual people. If reparative therapy actually worked, I doubt you’d see much objection to it. It would be a private affair for individuals and within families.
Homosexual brain is not female brain.For example Byne research,Lasco Swaab.Why transsexuals who feels like females and like womens have more masculine brain from homosexuals?There is no logic
I will add that should the world find out that homosexuality is caused by a virus, the backlash in the West will be one thing, but it’ll probably be nothing compared to what happens in the rest of world. There are a lot of groups that I can’t see losing much sleep over “doing what they have to do” to protect people from the gay germ…
If it comes down to a vaccination, how much sleep are you likely to lose?
I mentioned this scenario last year and some others in this thread have brought it up. If your gay germ theory is true, then some people will try to cause it rather than cure it. You confirmed it, saying that a friend of yours came up with a “gay Pearl Harbor” scenario.
I don’t think it likely that one nation would use it against another. It would be impossible to hide a large fraction of youth all of a sudden batting for the other team. It couldn’t be blamed on culture. Only a few nations would have the motive and means. And it would be remembered for generations. Any nation unleashing a gay germ would be begging for retaliation.
Much more likely would be the gay germ being used within a nation. I’ll explain the scenario again. Most of the population belongs to demographic group Alpha. Most prestige positions in society belong to members of demographic group Bravo. There is little love between Alpha and Bravo. Finally, Alpha has higher total fertility than Bravo. Bravo spreads the gay germ to Alpha and uses its domination of the media to blame Alpha for the decadence. Any members of Alpha who want to have a prestigious career have to go along with the narrative.
This is why I hope that the powers that be continue to ignore you until the chuckleheads get their comeuppance. Assuming your theory is true, we can then treat this thing like polio.
Off-Topic:Cochran what do you think abouth F-8 crusader and F-4 phantom.Who is better?And why F-8 crusader has more air to air victories in Vietnam war?
Somebody posted this earlier:
“My impulse was different from most of the respondents above. I thought: wouldnāt it be cool to have a drug you could take that would make you gay for a day?
It would not be for everyone, I guess, but I imagine it could be a popular party drug among the open-minded.”
You are right. Sometimes it can be quite fun. š
But if you’re a heterosexual male, you must be pretty creepy if you’ve ever entertained this notion. Perhaps we can find a cure for that, too.
“But if youāre a heterosexual male, you must be pretty creepy if youāve ever entertained this notion. ”
Thought the same thing–creeeeeepy, followed by, “The guy can’t actually be straight.”
Of course, there are plenty of people who think it fun to indulge in drugs at such parties, people who aren’t too bright about what’s dangerous to their health, and I can’t think of too many practices that are not just creepy but darned risky to one’s health than homosexual sex.
I’ve tested that hypothesis empirically, with a sufficient n to be statistically confident š
Speaking statistically again, homosexual sex is not particularly risky if you take well-understood precautions.
Speaking statistically again, homosexual sex is not particularly risky if you take well-understood precautions.”
Yeah, but the people who are “statistically” likely to engage in such behaviors are not those who take “precuations.”
Yeah, but the people who are āstatisticallyā likely to engage in such behaviors are not those who take āprecuations.ā
Bingo.
Like I always say, most people who engage in unprotected sex are fully aware of the consequences, but they do it anyway because it feels good, and for no other reason.
People already know that munching on junk food will make you a fatass, which in turn makes you unhealthy and sexually undesirable, and yet they do it anyway — so just what the hell is an “awareness campaign” supposed to achieve? You might as well train a monkey to teach astrophysics. Here we are in the year 2012, and gay men are just as carefree as they were in the Castro during the ’70s. The incidence of new HIV cases among gay men has gone _up_ since the 1990s, not down.
I imagine a lot of straight men would behave like this too, if only they were given the chance, but women simply won’t allow them. That explains part of the answer.
One person’s “creepy” is another person’s “intriguing.”
Maybe we can find a cure for being square? It’s 50% heritable, like most things, so…
Ah, one of “those people”–the ones who label sensical people as “square.” That seems to be a common fall back position today for all things, sadly.
I think of all those dead people, dead from AIDS (and now subject to antibiotic resistant gonorrhea as well as any number of enteric pathogens) who were anti-square, so hip were they. I think of all those people who love thinking they’re so cool and adventurous when they snort their lines. Or overdose….and die.
The “hip,” the “cool” usually destroy themselves, one way or the other.
@erica
Last I checked, at least 50% Stonewall rioters in 1969 have died from AIDS or drug abuse. That estimate is probably a floor, not a ceiling — plenty of those arrested were lesbians, and out of hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of participants, we’ve only found 20 confirmed survivors who are gay men.
Jesus, I think you might find a greater percentage of Normandy veterans lived to see the year 2000.
*50% of, Normandy veterans who
“Last I checked, at least 50% Stonewall rioters in 1969 have died from AIDS or drug
abuse.’
Astounding, and as you say, the behavior in the Castro looks much as it did back in the day. Then, there’s Fire Island.
There are probably zoophiles, pedophiles, necrophiles, etc. that think the same thing.
Maybe we can find a cure for mentally diseased people who make nonsensical claims about things being “square”.
The problem isn’t the biological basis for homosexuality, per se. The problem is that any sort of discovery would ostensibly prove that it is an aberration of developmental neurology, a deviation from what is healthy and proper, and of course, a outright mental disorder. As if the collective behavior of gay men weren’t proof of that, already! (But if flash mobs in Chicago, violent shooting sprees, addiction to petrol, and child molestation may be blamed on “discrimination”, so too can this.)
Like I posted earlier:
If schizophrenic people had a powerful, international lobby warning the world that paranoid delusions were healthy and morally neutral ā if telling schizophrenic people that the postman really _wasnāt_ plotting to murder them constituted āhate speechā ā if religious loons routinely targeted schizophrenic people for special moral opprobrium ā if they were unusually likely to be disowned by their closest relatives ā if academia and intellectuals worldwide campaigned for the public acceptance of erratic, violent behavior ā surely you would think schizophrenics would take umbrage at the mere assertion that something was wrong with their neutral circuitry?
Worse yet, it would inevitably lead to a mechanism for prophylaxis, if not an outright cure. Why don’t guess how many “tolerant” liberals would opt for a vaccine for their children? Trying to make it illegal is no solution, either. Expect to see a surge in medical tourism to China in the event of a universal ban.
If the germ theory of homosexuality ever percolates down to the average Joe, I can easily imagine some small town in Ohio passing an ordinance preventing people like me from entering within 1000 yards of a school or church. Think of how Ryan White was treated. No, it wasn’t fair, but that’s just how people would react.
*neural
“If the germ theory of homosexuality ever percolates down to the average Joe, I can easily imagine some small town in Ohio passing an ordinance preventing people like me from entering within 1000 yards of a school or church.”
It would surely depend on how much they knew about transmission.
You might be right, though. I recall the polio scare in the ’50s. I remember the lines to get the oral vaccine at the high school cafeteria in town.
However, you didn’t see that reaction to the discovery that cervical cancer is caused by HPV (it lacked much publicity) and that sex is the mode of transmission. Instead, you have among the far right the opposite reaction of not wanting their kids vaccinated for fear it will make them run out and have sex.
On the left, even feminists have not been as loud-mouthed about it as one would have expected. (Sandra Fluke seems more concerned about the cost of contraception and Sebelius/Obama more concerned about letting pregnant mothers abort healthy babies a mere few weeks/days from full-term delivery.)
@erica:
“However, you didnāt see that reaction to the discovery that cervical cancer is caused by HPV (it lacked much publicity) and that sex is the mode of transmission. Instead, you have among the far right the opposite reaction of not wanting their kids vaccinated for fear it will make them run out and have sex.”
Yeah, that’s true, and interesting. There’s a lot of people that still don’t know this.
I specifically referred to Ryan White for a reason. He was a kid with hemophilia who contracted AIDS via blood transfusion. When the news came out, Ryan was banned from school, he and his parents became the target of death threats, people shot bullets at his house, and his family had to deal with barrage after barrage of lawsuits. Even after his school was ordered by government injunction to re-admit him, Ryan was required to use separate bathrooms and eating utensils, barred from gym class, taunted daily by his peers, etc. It’s pretty ugly stuff.
In fact, there are similar stories about homophiliacs being treated like this everywhere in the United States — the last time I checked, over one half of them contracted HIV during the height of the AIDS pandemic.
Ugly stories like these go far in explaining why people are more tolerant of gays than they would be otherwise. They might excuse some of the dysfunctional behavior among gay men, but surely not all of it.
Either way, the gay community sure owes the world a big apology for killing all those innocent children. (Yes, I saying that gay men killed Ryan White!) First they killed each other, and then there was heavy collateral damage.
According to And the Band Played On by gay journalist Randy Shilts, ACT-UP threatened to compromise blood banks nationwide by donating HIV-infected blood if the government refused to increase its funding for HIV research. (Practicing homosexuals have been banned from donating blood for quite some time now, but who’s going to check? For a while, I was a member of a committee for an LGBT club at my University that successfully donated blood, just to make a political point. I left without saying a word.)
I never bothered to check to veracity of this story, but it is all too believable.
“If the germ theory of homosexuality ever percolates down to the average Joe, I can easily imagine some small town in Ohio passing an ordinance preventing people like me from entering within 1000 yards of a school or church. Think of how Ryan White was treated. No, it wasnāt fair, but thatās just how people would react.”
Exactly…
Free association isn’t unfair. Forced interaction is unfair.
Probably nothing would happen.
Pasteur’s theory of microbial infection was confirmed in the 19th century. Joseph Listerās British Medical Association presentation of antiseptic practice was in 1867.
It was clear then that the hubris of international transport of organic materials, including people, was a threat, yet international interconnectedness has been relentlessly promoted since then.
It’s unlikely that the current medical establishment is oblivious to this threat, but the political implications are such that if anyone did aggressively highlight the link between travelers, migrants, tourism, trade, etc. and it, they would realize almost instinctively that they were putting their careers at risk to even propose a research study into it.
And if any such threats were publicized by researchers, the spin doctors in the media would be burning the midnight oil to downplay its societal consequences, obscure the origins of such threats, and make sure that any evidence of ethno-specificity gets tainted with the āscientific racismā charge.
It wouldn’t be any different with homosexuality pathogens, would it?
I think it would strongly depend on what we were trying to do as a result of the discovery, and not the discovery itself. We need more detail on the action to guess at the public reaction.
Don’t Panic.Neuronal curcuits may be reversible: http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch/news-events/news-details/article/disorder-of-neuronal-circuits-in-autism-is-reversible/
Different patterns of achievement, for one. A lot of interesting work is done by gay males.
why do so many commentors assume the mode of transmission must be direct and/or sexual? In order to get narcolepsy must one have direct contact with a narcoleptic?
Hasn’t Cochran said before it could be a side effect? Most gay men will swear they were gay at a VERY young age – before toddler hood. Think about it.
Most people don’t remember much of anything before age 3. Even fewer remember anything before age two. I do, but my memory is better than average.
Anon,
I’m assuming your comment was general, and not referring to mine.
I’m speaking mostly of males having greater variance, and how gay males are vastly overrepresented in the upper ranks of stereotypically ‘feminine’ professions. This seems pretty far from issues about mode of transmission.
(As an aside, it seems extremely unlikely there’s one ‘gay germ’ pathogen that causes homosexuality. Given the infectious causation hypothesis is correct- which I think it certainly could be- it seems much more likely to be caused by an uncommon infection pattern of a common pathogen. If I recall correctly, GC has said as much elsewhere.)
Perhaps wishful thinking?
@erica:
“Perhaps the family members are carriers of some pathogen and perhaps babies and toddlers born into that nuclear or even extended family are especially susceptible to that virus.”
Unlikely, according to the twin studies I’ve seen. The impact of shared environment on homosexuality is zero, as it is for just about everything else.
It’s most likely a benign pathogen that is unusually common, but results in a profound disorder for a minority of infected people. Think shingles, poliomyelitis, mono, etc.
Ok but how pathogen theory explain female homosexuality?
Likely a different phenomenon entirely. However, it is possible that there is a pathogen behind female bisexuality.
“Unlikely, according to the twin studies Iāve seen. The impact of shared environment on homosexuality is zero, as it is for just about everything else.’
Just thinking aloud here…
Something has to account for the 20-30% concordance of MZ twins (okay, this could be because were both exposed to the same pathogen at the same time in neuro-development, making them susceptible to side effects of the pathogen, or as MZ twins, each has an immune systems that reacts a certain way to said pathogen), but hasn’t it been established there’s clustering of the trait in some families? You can talk to some gay men who’ve large extended families and who are convinced through their own interactions with those family members—father, grandfathers, uncles, great uncles, cousins, etc.– that they are the *only* gay member of the fairly recent generations and then you can talk to a gay guy who can name an uncle who never married and about whom the family whispered, a couple of cousins, etc. and even a brother.
Maybe a particular strain of a common pathogen, an unusual strain is involved?
Within family effects probably have nothing to do with it (because the shared environment component is 0). The apparent heritability may have something to do with inherited susceptibility or behaviors of that may make the individuals more likely to be exposed to the pathogen.
“Most people donāt remember much of anything before age 3. Even fewer remember anything before age two…”
Agreed. But mothers of discordant twin pairs will tell you they noticed a difference (in interests, etc) early on. A Boston Globe article talked about this…albeit, we are not talking large sample size http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/08/14/what_makes_people_gay/
@misdreavus
If shared placenta means shared infection, then the pathogen would have to attack post natal, possibly perinatal. When, in development, would you predict the proposed pathogen zaps those who succumb? Do you think there is a window when it must hit? (I can’t imagine it could happen post puberty)
It would be good if we had biographical details of some individuals who turned out to be gay.
Anecdotally, I know of an individual who turned out to be gay and saw him quite a lot since about age 7. Looking back, his behavior back then made sense when I heard that he was gay, but it is only an N of one. There would need to be lots more observations.
Also, it would be better if we knew more about the neural machinery involved in male sexuality. What we do know is that males are highly visual. Are male homosexuals also highly visual?
While I am aware about arguments for pathogens being the cause of male homosexuality, I still think there may be slight advantage for homosexuals. For last how-many-hundreds-years “dads”, those who were faithfull to one women, have more surviving children than “cads”. If someone has children only with one women, he spents all his resources on children of this women only, makin their chances of survival larger. OTOH, someone with unrestricted sexuality will diverse his resources amongst children of many woman, hence reducing each of children survival chances. If society forces males into marriages, and expects marriages resulting in children, then individual preferences of homosexuality SHOULD be advantageous, and homosexual males SHOULD have, IMHO, larger number of surviving children, at least in environments where resources are scarce (so, there should be more homosexuals in such environments).
Now, why I am wrong?
Gay men don’t reproduce now — by some estimates, most notably from a study in 1981, homosexuality reduces your reproductive fitness by four fifths.
Nor is there any reason to believe homosexuals were good at reproducing in historical times. They didn’t in early modern Europe, at least. By some estimates I have seen, roughly fifteen percent of men in northern Europe never married, and that percentage rises to twenty five percent in certain regions. Even fewer managed to reproduce. You think not being interested in chicks is going to improve your odds, under such circumstances?
Under malthusian circumstances, the problem with being a cad in a dad society is not having too many kids with too many women, but failing to provide adequately for the kids you already *have*. “Outside sex” shouldn’t even matter, as long as nobody forces you to pay any attention to your unknown bastard children. Extending your reasoning to its logical conclusion, I suppose not having any sex drive whatsoever should be the soundest reproductive strategy of all? Wtf?
Being a lecher might be bad, but you know what’s even worse? NOT wanting to sex your wife, in the unlikely event that you find one.
“I suppose not having any sex drive whatsoever should be the soundest reproductive strategy of all?”
No the soundest, but it does not necessarily be the disadvantage in _some_ environments. If there is high cultural pressure to have children (e.g. you are rich and your family pressures you into marrying and conceiving children), if the environment is very harsh, and providing the resources is of utter importance to children survival. If you can have sex and conceive children, then this is of no importance if you drive a pleasure from that.
Other than that, I agree with the rest of your and jaymans explanation.
Oh, and by the way, homosexuality is not any sort of adaptation whatsoever. According to the the best twin studies on record, the heritability of Kinsey scale scores is less than thirty percent. Some twin studies have failed to demonstrate *any* statistically significant difference in concordance rates between monozygotic and dizygotic twins.
Whatever is responsible for the vast majority of cases of homosexuality, it has to be some sort of environmental trigger. Genetic explanations are a complete non-starter.
Now you could reconcile these facts with the idea of homosexuality being an adaptation in a number of ways. One, heritability estimates for certain traits among domesticated organisms tend to be quite low. Peter Schƶnemann (arch-nemesis of Arthur Jensen) loved to point out that the narrow-sense heritability of phenotypes like milk yield was quite low among certain breeds of cattle — and this was supposed to demonstrate that twin studies consistently overestimate the genetic contribution to things like IQ and personality, or some nonsense. Cosma Shalizi has made remarks of a similar nature.
And yet we know that milk production has been selected for among cattle. This is because breeders have whittled away most of the additive genetic contribution to milk yield over thousands of years, allowing only the most productive cows to breed, and hence there is *little* phenotypic variation for that particular trait among high yielding breeds. (Narrow sense heritability estimates for traits that have not undergone intense selection, like horn length in those same breeds, are often higher, sometimes higher than 0.5.)
Now, pray tell, given the low heritability of sexual orientation, how the hell can homosexuality be any sort of adaptation whatsoever? That would be like both high milk yield *and* low milk yield being adaptations among the aforementioned cattle. If two percent of men suffered from excruciating pain during ejaculation, and hence bore few children; if the heritability of this trait were quite low, and identical twins were frequently discordant — what kind of a numbskull would assume this trait is an *adaptation*? How can the *opposite* of what is normal and beneficial be selected for?
There’s the other alternative. Assume that certain genes contribute to higher fitness, but mysteriously go wrong in a *totally* random manner for a minority of persons, contributing to lower overall fitness, thereby offsetting the balance. You know, like epigenetics.
Uh huh.
>homosexuality is not any sort of adaptation whatsoever.
It is for your enemies. And subordinates.
Darrington thought a lot of cultures had two stages of male sex life: 1st) training and homosexual; 2nd) career and heterosexual. Males are naturally expendable anyhow. I could see germs kicking in to extend the training period. I could see infecting my enemies with these germs so I get females and they stay punked out. (Or to seduce their kids, and bring dishonor on their family name: see: Reagan, Cheney: media coverage of their children).
I can’t see a totally germ-driven cause for homosexuality. Germ-enhanced? Sure.
I realize you were saying germs are more likely than genes. Makes sense. But de Toqueville’s line about flatterers in America being more common, since democracy provides suckup jobs for flatterers of the entire population instead of just for a king and a few aristos? Human relations, nanny state politics, advertising, public relations- I know gays who aren’t in that kind of job, but they are weird.
A significant percentage of both men and women did not marry back in the day. This would be where your homosexuals would be overrepresented.
Returning to Greg’s question, of what would happen if the pathogen is discovered. I can imagine a scenario where the knowledge would be considered evil and sinful, like evolution. The PC today seems to be that homosexuality is not a disease, it is a natural condition of man, and some say preferible and superior to straight normality. I’ve heard a lecture by a prominent “philosopher” stating that he wouldnt like to live in a world without diversity, a world without the symphonies of Beethoven the deaf, the paintings of XX the schizo, the “Howl” of Ginsburg the homosexual poet and so. I think he meant all that. What is sure is that Greg would enjoy the controversy.
You’re look at the discovery as if it were a political football. Instead, consider it as a “product”, one for which the public has demonstrated strong interest. Politics would not be the final word on how we exploit the newly discovered cause of homosexuality. Economics would.
I think the question is what would happen, where? The reaction in the pax kommisarum would be different than it would be elsewhere – although the kommisars themselves would have an interest in knowing for themselves.
It’s China where this kind of research is likely to happen.
Particularly so if there is a connection with West Africa (anecdata based personal opinion) then as the Chinese will have had zero immunity and a lot of exposure in recent decades then i’d expect an epidemic of homosexuality to start among the Chinese around about now-ish. So they’d have a major incentive to look into the germ theory.
I think the reaction among “normal” people would vary greatly with the cause. Homosexuals may not be the carrier.
Why autism is a disease but homosexuality is not a disease?
Not saying it isn’t. I’m saying the reaction will depend on who/what the carrier is. If the carrier was fathers who frequented prostitutes or cats or oranges then it’s not likely to cause a reaction against homosexuals.
Separately, if it is a pathogen and if the Chinese are likely to have a very low resistance to it and if it effects prepubescent boys then the opening up of China in recent decades, whatever the carrier is, is likely to have sparked a mini epidemic some 10-20 years ago which should be showing up now-ish.
1) Why the hell do you assume that the frequency of homosexuality is higher among west African descended populations? (prison data is absolutely not reliable, if that’s what you were thinking. Also, stop saying “anecdata”, it’s not a goddamn word.)
Moreover why would a higher frequency among west Africans prove that the pathogen originated in sub-Saharan Africa? If anything, you should expect it to have originated _elsewhere_.
3) Wrong about China.
4) You’ve said an incredibly stupid number of things on this subject not only in this thread, but in other threads as well — at one point, I reckon you alone were responsible for a fifth of the total comments. Truly a prolific career in self-effacing humiliation. Apparently there’s something about the topic of homosexuality that really gets your goat. May I ask what it is?
By the way, do you pitch or catch?
It’s not unreasonable to suppose a connection to Africa or to Africa via the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean civilizations and trade routes.
Africa has an environment that’s hospitable to pathogens generally. And much of Africa has a relatively polygamous social structure and certain permissive behavioral patterns that may be conducive to developing these kinds of pathogens.
Homosexuality does seem somewhat more common in blacks than whites, in the US. According to a Gallup survey from last fall. More common in low-income groups, too.
“3) wrong about China”
wrong that China would be comfortable conducting this kind of research or wrong that there might be a gay epidemic in China?
“Homosexuality does seem somewhat more common in blacks than whites, in the US. According to a Gallup survey from last fall. More common in low-income groups, too.”
I have absolutely no confidence in self reported data of this nature. That same Gallup survey has a margin of error of plus or minus one percent, with a confidence interval of 95 percent. Unless I am mistaken, that would mean nearly all the racial categories (just wtf is “Asian/pacific islander?) overlap.
Even if it were true, I have no reason that the patterns hold true transnationally.
Furthermore, LGBT refers to both men _and_ women. It is important to remember that these same polls state that bisexuals men are ubiquitous – – yet just where the hell_are_ they?
I’ve seen the same pattern in other studies, but I didn’t find the reference I was thinking of in a quick google. But you made me look, and for that you should be ashamed. Every time I dig into the literature on homosexuality, it makes me ashamed to be a human being.
Anyhow it might be higher in blacks, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I’ll ask those who might know.
There sure appear to be significant urban-rural differences, ones that depends on where you grew up, not just people moving to San Francisco. That’s true for schizophrenia, as well.
I’ve often heard people say that the frequency of homosexuality was the same everywhere and everywhen. I’m pretty sure that’s not true – it looks to be rare or nonexistent in most hunter-gatherers, but you have to wonder how anyone could know that, even if it were true. Time machine, probably.
*reason to expect
1) “Why the hell do you assume that the frequency of homosexuality is higher among west African descended populations”
I don’t. I think the barrier for non-homosexual same-sex behavior is lower.
3) We’ll see.
4) pfft
“Apparently thereās something about the topic of homosexuality that really gets your goat. May I ask what it is?”
Actually this bit is worth replying to. I’m not interested in the homosexuality aspect at all. I’m extremely interested in the pathogen idea because there’s a lot of overlap in compulsive sexual behavior and i wonder if this pathogen – through a mechanism of rewiring attraction and/or increasing compulsion, sex drive or whatever – might have a wider extension to rape, pedophilia and sexual crimes in general.
Greying Wanderer: “as the Chinese will have had zero immunity and a lot of exposure in recent decades then iād expect an epidemic of homosexuality to start among the Chinese around about now-ish. So theyād have a major incentive to look into the germ theory.”
Huh? Are you saying the Chinese don’t have male homosexuals ?
Check out any history of the art of the Chinese. For this easy reference, try Wiki on “homosexuality” and check out the illustration from the Qing Dynasty. The Far East has all kinds of art depicting not just man-on-man action but man-love/affection.
Why’s it so hard to believe the pathogen is common but that it has dire effects on fitness on only a subset of people? All kinds of pathogens seem to work that way.
Maybe the Chinese don’t give a damn about their homosexual males who don’t want to reproduce. After all, they have the one-child law for starters….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality –check out Qing Dynasty illustration
“Huh? Are you saying the Chinese donāt have male homosexuals ?”
No. I’m saying they don’t (or didn’t) have post-60s western or west african levels of promiscuity and i think the pathogen may somehow be connected to promiscuity – not necessarily directly.
“Whyās it so hard to believe the pathogen is common but that it has dire effects on fitness on only a subset of people? All kinds of pathogens seem to work that way.”
It’s not hard at all if the premise is homosexuals have always been 4% (or whatever it is) of the population. I’m just wondering what if it’s gone up and then taking that as a premise what might have caused it to go up?
There are two options for the causes of homosexuality:epigenetics or pathogen.If the first theory fails,Cochran is right.
Both Tennessee Williams and Andy Warhol suffered from childhood infections (diphtheria and Sydenham’s chorea, respectively).
I seem to remember reading somewhere that a good portion of women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome were homosexual– a disease that causes infrequent periods, infertility, and increased sensitivity to androgens. Wikipedia says it’s genetic– but what do they know?
RE: Sydemham’s chorea & Strep
Whoops, here’s the link to that video
Damn strep. Seems to be the cause of a lot of things.
Sorry, didn’t mean for the video to post twice. Just the link won’t post.
“Every time I dig into the literature on homosexuality, it makes me ashamed to be a human being.”
Oh if you feel ashamed, just imagine how I feel! š
According to the 2010 US Census, urbanization should predict the following trend: % homosexuality = asian > non-white hispanic > black > non-hispanic white.
If you consider racial demographics by percentage residing in inner cities, black > hispanic > asian > white.
I said that because it’s so utterly stupid.
Common sense actually tells us what will happen.
If its transmitted by pathogen, there will be vaccinations. No one sane will object to this as its only the same as giving people vaccinations against any other pathogen, though some radical homos will surely disapprove.
If there is a ‘gay gene’, or rather genes involved in homosexuality (the complexity of heredity is a technical subject the public misunderstands), there will be a genuine holocaust of pre-emptive execution even involving the ‘pro-life’ Christians who will pretend they had miscarriages. This will be morally repulsive, but then again all of society is repulsive, from pro-choice feminists and supporters of diversity to organised religion.
I suspect this was a troll post because you already know the answer like everyone else.
BTW thoughts on this?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130308111315.htm
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jpath/2011/128318/
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jpath/2011/128318/
from the abstract:
“Many genes have been implicated in schizophrenia as have viral prenatal or adult infections and toxoplasmosis or Lyme disease. Several autoantigens also target key pathology-related proteins. These factors are interrelated. Susceptibility genes encode for proteins homologous to those of the pathogens while the autoantigens are homologous to pathogens’ proteins, suggesting that the risk-promoting effects of genes and risk factors are conditional upon each other, and dependent upon protein matching between pathogen and susceptibility gene products.”
from the intro: “Schizophrenia has also been associated with prenatal complications including maternal rubella (German measles) [11], influenza [12, 13], Varicella zoster (chicken pox) [14], Herpes (HSV-2) [15], common cold infection with fever [16], or poliovirus infection [17] while in childhood or adulthood, coxsackie virus infection (in neonates [18]) or Lyme disease (vectored by the Ixodes tick and Borrelia Burgdorferri) or Toxoplasmosis have been reported as risk factors [19, 20] (see Table 1). The human endogenous retrovirus, HERV-W, has also been implicated in schizophrenia [21]. A number of schizophrenia-related genes are implicated in the life cycles of these pathogens, suggesting an interplay between genes and risk factors [22]. ”
______________________________________________________________________
Schiz, as we have named it, seems to be a disease that can be triggered by not one pathogen but by many, with individuals of one genetic profile susceptible to a particular pathogen trigger but not another.
Might homosexuality be triggered in the same way, different pathogens capable of acting on different susceptible individuals, all resulting in one same behavior — sexual diffidence or aversion to the opposite sex? Or, is it more likely to be the result of one pathogen trigger in particular?
Dr. Cochran, you’ve previously commented that you lean toward thinking it’s the same pathogen trigger in most homosexuals. Can you tell us why you think that more likely to be the case than several pathogens doing the same damage?
Well, it’s a good thing that Homosexuality has been removed from the DSM V then. Clearly, homosexuality cannot be a byproduct of a viral infection like schizophrenia.
In addition, it’s not like homosexuality is similar. The concordance between identical twins seems, different.
Schizophrenia that does not strike until later in life, or at least after the reproductive years, would seem likely to remain in the population.
It would seem that both males and females who can recognize individuals of the opposite sex with robust immune systems have a long-term advantage.
From schizophrenia.com I note this graph of age of onset:
.
There is a peak at around 22-25 years, and another, lower peak at around 35 years.
Homosexuality seems to hit much earlier than that.
Damn, the graph did not show:
http://schizophrenia.com/photos/szage.onset.gif
Kluver-Bucy Syndrome? Or any number of Darlington’s ‘diseases of docility’ having similar effects on aggression?
Gene theory is impossible.Identical twins have identical DNA 100%(not identical expressed)but identical alleles and identical genes for shure every human has 23000 genes,and only 20% were both homosexuals.Homosexual genes must be associated with testosterone or aromatase.But humans whit aromatase deficiency are heterosexuals so estradiol is not common determinant of human sexual orientation although extradiol is very important for brain masculinisation and primary important for brain defeminisation.In homosexual mens has no difference in androgen receptor(ar) compared to heterosexuals.Sex differences in androgen receptor are related to endocrine status rather than to sexual orientation or transsexuality.But transsexuality is explained by androgen receptor repeat length polymorphism research by Hare L. et al.But there was no such thing in homosexuals.And Bed nucleus of stria terminalis is testosterone dependent and this theory can explain perfectly why this nucleus has a smaller volume and cell numbers in transsexuals like female brain.But this was not observed in homosexual brains.And Phoenix research from 1959 shows that female monkeys treated whit testosterone prenatally have homosexual orientation.But most of womens whit CAH have heterosexual orientation.So homosexual brain are not female brain this is completely new brain structure.And Gavrilets Rice decided that the sensivity to testosterone is more important from itself testosterone.Ok but neural tissue comes from ectoderm.And Nervous System comes from neural plate and neural tube.but if these cells are whit methylated DNA from their mothers all neurones should be methylated and not react to testosterone like males.But what makes testosterone in human brain?Testosterone control apoptosis.How?Testosterone is associated with androgen receptor and androgen receptor interact whit other proteines.The difference between male and female brains is in the number of the neurones in sexual dimorphic regions in the brain.And number of the neurones determined how will contac neurones and neuronal pathways and….So the difference is in neuron numbers in the brain.And this difference comes from apoptosis induced by testosterone.So Phoenix create intersexual brain monkeys not homosexual.Ok but every neuron comes from neural plate if precursor neural cells are whit methylated(epi marks bullshit) DNA from mother they(neurons) must be not sensitive to testosterone(all of them).And they must die after apoptosis like in female brain and female number of the cells and female pathways and,,,,,BUT:Inah 3 in homosexuals have the same cell number like in heterosexual brain(W Byne),Bed nucleus of stria terminalis,SDN.So no apoptosis so androgen pathway work like in heterosexual brain.Suprachiasmatic nucleus is larger in homosexuals but Swaab treated rats whit aromatase blocker but mens whit aromatase deficiency are heterosexuals.And Swaab’s rats are bisexuals not homosexuals and his work show that neonatal period is more important from prenatal period.And i think cuz epigenetic theory will go in the toilet.And our alleles(if homosexuality is genetic)are the same in all our cells and all our cells are insensitive and we are not masculinise we must be hermaphrodites.The prenatal stress theory by Dorner is funy yes for shure but this theory is far from the truth.In prenatally stressed male rats SDN(sexual dimorphic nucleus) is decreased whit prenatal stress but in homosexuals SDN have the same cell number and volume like heterosexuals.So no prenatral stress.And maternal antibodies theory is so stupid that I do not want to comment on.In the final i want to say that I think like Cochran.
“Homosexual genes must be associated with testosterone or aromatase.”
I don’t see any grounds for that strong an assertion. Nobody is claiming homosexuals suffer from unusually low sex drive. Clearly some abnormal human sexual behaviors have their roots in an abnormal neurology: sadism, masochism, fetishism, etc. and I’m not sure that if these behaviors are the seemingly discrete final products of what is ultimately a very large multi-gene effect they’d be that easy to entirely eliminate from a population. Given its normal distribution, you can’t eliminate all people below a certain IQ level in a population for a very long though you may minimize their presence for quite a while with a change in the mean or the variance.
On the other hand, in something that might lend support to GC’s germ theory, Wikipedia’s article for “foot fetishism” does say this:
“Some researchers have hypothesized that foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. In one study, conducted by Dr. A James Giannini at Ohio State University an increased interest in feet as sexual objects was observed during the great gonorrhea epidemic of twelfth century Europe, and the syphilis epidemics of the 16th and 19th centuries in Europe. In the same study, the frequency of foot-fetish depictions in pornographic literature was measured over a 30 year interval. An exponential increase was noted during the period of the current AIDS epidemic. In these cases, sexual foot play was viewed as a safe-sex alternative. However, the researchers noted that these epidemics overlapped periods of relative female emancipation. Sexual focus on female feet was also hypothesized to have been a reflection of a more dominant posture of the woman in sexual-social relations. (The first surviving mention of foot fetish is by Bertold of Regensburg in 1220.”
Okay, it could just mean that times of looser sexual mores mean that certain formerly verboten topics get their place on the table. Then again, female emancipation might imply greater promiscuity and the transmission of more germs. The linked studies might be worth checking out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_fetishism
You don’t understand.Prenatal testosterone is important for brain masculinisation.If homosexual brain is insensitive to testosterone,it will not be masculinized.and brain masculinisation theory is the leading theory.we have to reject this theory
Hum, regarding the pathogen theory, you may be interested in the witch hunt occurring right now in Belgium: in an open letter against political correctness, the director of a well known Belgian organisation helping homeless and poor people used the idea [homosexuality is a sickness] as example of something that can not be said anymore, while also telling it was only an example and not a personal opinion…
Well, not carrefull enough, he lost one sponsor already and got burned in the medias. Had to retract his open letter and re-assert he did not think homosexuality is a disease, but the crowd has smelled blood and he will probably have to resign….
Dangerous theory the pathogen one, even if it is probably true (it’s the most cnvincing one I have heard till know, given the facts I know)….
But speaking the truth has never been a protection against witch hunt eh, probably it is even the best way to get burned for sure š
For those who can read french or it’s google translation, here is the story:
http://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_debat-sur-l-homosexualite-jusqu-ou-peut-on-aller?id=7944469
Truth will out, as they say. Any witch-hunts or PC attempts to suppress would be mere bumps in the road. Consider also that homosexual men themselves may want to know the facts of the matter even more than the gen-pop.
To The fourth doorman of the apocalypse.
Look at Dorner’s research Phoenix’s research.I say it has nothing to do between homosexuality and prenatal testosterone but gay movements argue the opposite.Androgen insensitivity syndrome has different forms,all forms is due to mutation.I did not say that testosterone production is stopped in the developing fetus of homosexual males.But Gavriliets and Rice say that epigenetics determined low sensitivity to testosterone in prenatal brain.And this defines incomplete brain masculinisation in homosexual brain.But most of womens whit CAH are heterosexuals.So I think there is no connection between prenatal testosterone and sexual orientation.So I think that the cause for homosexuality is a pathogen,because there is no other explanation.
@Erica
āSo, play around with this for a minute: if homoaversion (I agree with GC that āhomophobicā is not an appropriate term) by male children is trait that has been selected for to protect the boy child from germ at a particular age, then look to girl children as the carriers of it, for itās little girls that little boys do their best to escape from at a certain age.ā
If so a simple causation might be the breakdown of single sex schools? I wonder if there’s any correlations there?
Although having said that i have no idea how common single-sex schools used to be – maybe not very.
Eleanor MacCoby wrote about this in The Two Sexes, Growing up apart and coming together.
I think there is a simpler explanation. Even among chimps, juveniles segregate with males spending more time with other juvenile males and with adult males while females spend more time with their mothers and other adult females.
And, except for the rich, schools were not segregated.
“And, except for the rich, schools were not segregated.”
Yes, especially at the younger ages which is where it would be relevant.
Consider this shift: AIDS led to a massive reduction in male homosexuality. Inate? Maybe not so much. Says the New York Times, in a moment of absentmindedness.
Homosexual behavior is the norm in many premodern cultures. Try finding medieval love poetry from Persia about women, for example. Now, I wouldn’t say that bisexual pederasty (or homosexual behavior in prisons, navies, and boys’ schools) is the same as modern homosexuality, but you guys probably would. The point is that there may be 1-2% of the population that is “homosexual,” i.e., the effeminate guys you see with the “gay face,” and their homosexual behavior is likely the symptom or side effect of something else. But even if you cure this, you won’t get rid of homosexual behavior. Most homosexual behavior that takes place is not among the exclusive homos.
Blah Blah Blah.If prenatal testosterone is not connected whit homosexuality,your work is broken.
I’m not sure you guys even understand what homosexuality is historically. Define your terms. Are medieval Arabs, ancient Celts, and Richard Simmons all “homosexuals”?
Hey let’s find a biological or genetic cause for “violents,” men who engage in violence.
Not sure what your comment has to do with mine.
Have you considered that few really care about the actual homosexual activity but focus their condemnation more on the associated public behaviors – effeminacy, “gay face”, hypersensitivity in social situations, physical passivity, etc? Being homosexual is one thing. Acting gay is quite another.
violents?WTF bahahah.What is common between sexual orientation and violence.
Hey let’s find biological or genetic cause for the reason:why Americans hate Russians
Precisely my point…it’s a ridiculous suggestion.
I don’t think the people posting on this board have any idea how widespread homosexual behavior is in human history, or homosexual institutions. It’s about as commonplace as “violence,” and makes about as little sense to speak of all homosexual behavior as having a single cause. You guys have unknowingly bought the gay-rights propaganda that there is such a thing as “gay” and that everyone who engages in homo behavior is this identity “gay.” That’s absurd. Again, there may be 1-2% of the male population that would cover what you mean (the fem guys with gay face etc.) but the overwhelming majority of homosexual behavior doesn’t take place between them. If you don’t believe me, walk suggestively in a marketplace in Morocco and see how many of the men want to fuck you. Or go to prison.
You need to define your terms is all I’m saying. Maybe a pathogen (or a genetic cause or deformity) covers the 1-2% of obvious fags, but you’re not going to get rid of homo behavior any more than you’re going to get rid of nationalism or violence.
Hippo, your posts are among the most personally offensive writing I have seen in some time. There is no “gay-rights propaganda” effort to promote the idea that a gay identity exists. Your accusation is base and without merit.
You make the straw man argument that those promoting this alleged “agenda” state that anyone engaging in same-sex erotic behavior is “gay”, when that is simply not true. No one with any understanding or intelligence would make that claim; likewise no one on the side of the so-called “gay agenda” would do so.
You are obsessed with homosexuality, obviously, and have done a little reading, but you yet have a very limited grasp of the facts, and what knowledge you possess is distorted by a perverse hatred.
Hippo, I’ll reiterate, I believe you mistake the real focus of the search for a cause and subsequent preventative/cure for homosexuality. Take, for a moment, the POV of a parent facing a newly discovered gay son. What are their immediate fears? (Allow me to riff a little here.)
– I’ll be the laughing-stock of my peer-group for having such a disappointment.
– My son will be bullied and unable to defend himself for lack of natural aggression.
– My son will be isolated and friendless.
– My son might fall in with older gay undesirables and copy their habits.
– My son may turn to drugs and promiscuity.
– My son may face discrimination at work.
– My son will never build a normal family.
– My son will be alone and die alone.
– My son might consider suicide.
– My son might get AIDS and suffer an early, slow, painful, wasting, humiliating
death while I can only watch.
– My son will burn in hell for all eternity.
– My son will never give me a grandchild.
Do you see concerns for the child’s bedroom technique anywhere? That’s because the focus is not on male homosexual behaviors that we don’t see and which are, frankly, none of our business. The desire to identify the cause, develop a test, and effect a preventative/cure for male homosexuality is driven by a reaction to the behaviors that we do see in public – the gender-nonconformity, the hypersensitivity, the “gay-face”, the physical passivity, the punishment from other people. Seriously, if all gay men were robust, charismatic, assertive/aggressive warrior-types, I doubt we’d be having this discussion. It is because male homosexuality associates with so many negative personality traits and undesirable outcomes that its cause and prevention draws interest. If it were possible to develop a treatment for gay men that would eliminate all the negative (stereotypical) associates while leaving their sexuality in-tact, you’d see a lot of interest there too.
I know your comment is a year old, but you were replying to comments that were themselves a year old, so I guess I am OK:
I think a lot of people (maybe fewer than in the past, but still a lot) are grossed out by the act. If they heard about masculine men engaging in gay sex, the disgust might be mixed confusion/puzzlement due to modern preconceptions, but the disgust would still be there.
“Prevent”, “remedy” homosexuality? All of you appear to approach homosexuality as though it was a negative outcome, and yet your biases seem invisible to you. I see one of you writing that parents would, of COURSE, choose to have heterosexual children. Why? Do you not see the assumption here? Why should parents have a bias as to what the sexuality of their offspring should be? Isn’t that just as evil as eugenically choosing for a desired trait – curly eyes, blue hair, or freckled teeth?
Not invisible and, in my case at least, based on experience. I’m not sure where to begin. This is the sort of conversation we’d need to have over a beer … or several.
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Where you see horror, many would see hope. I think you underestimate the desire to fit-in.
Hello, I was trying to follow up on Deaf culture condemning the Rubella vaccine, but I couldn’t find any references for it apart from this blog. Any chance someone could point me in the right direction?
My hypothesis is that it is caused by modern DIET and STRESS. Below there are some facts that support this:
-The sexually dimorphic nucleus in the medial preoptic area regulates the thrusting movements during sex and it is on average smaller in homosexuals than heterosexuals. When it is lesioned, in some studies the animals become homosexual. Feminine homosexual males do not have the urge to thrust (bottoms).
-The nucleus is sensitive to testosterone from prenatal period till the end of puberty, and probably somewhat after puberty. In humans it is thought to get smaller in females from age 4. In males, it is probably kept from getting smaller by testosterone.
-High-sugar, high-fat diet has been associated with disturbed testosterone levels, either low or high.
-Stress has been associated with high-sugar, high-fat diet and with disturbed testosterone levels.
-Low testosterone levels contribute to feminine male homosexuality by affecting the nucleus, while high testosterone levels contribute to situational homosexuality in males and to homosexuality in females.
-The brain develops during sleep. Testosterone levels increase during sleep. The nucelus probably develops during the nocturnal erections, therefore sleep disturbances would affect its development.
-Castrated men and hormone treated transsexuals report a shift in sexual orientation.
-I propose that masturbation disrupts the work of the sexually dimorphic nucleus, because it circumvents the thrusting movements, thus makes the nucleus redundant and probably affects its development or functioning (especially during puberty when the brain is being sexually differentiated). Masturbation (but not partnered sex) is increased during stress. Psychiatrists of the 19-th century thought that masturbation causes homosexuality and the Native Americans have used it to make the mujerado (passive homosexuals)
Many studies done on testosterone levels in homosexuals show normal levels probably due to three factors: 1. They include in the sample the promiscuous homosexuals, whose homosexuality is rather the result of excessive masturbation. 2. They compare testosterone levels of homosexuals with contemporaneous males. There has been a global decrease in male fertility and probably in testosterone action or levels during the 20-th century. Today’s heterosexuals would be less so than their predecessors. They are closer to the homosexuality threshold 3. The studies probably do not measure testosterone levels during the night. If homosexuals sleep less than heterosexuals (a study shows this), they have lower testosterone levels during the night, when the brain develops.
The rest of the facts, that support the hypothesis, is epidemiological: higher homosexuality rates in cities, in modern societies, in overcrowded animals, in stressed animals, in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia etc.
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Off this implys the homosexuality is wrong. And it isn’t