Can the government compel you to provide someone a service against your will?

[rvg]

May I point out that homosexuality has also occured plenty in places where the tolerance with homosexuality is zero? As in, more consistant with your second statement than your first?

So does theft. And murder.

[Montmorency]

people acting against basic predispositions

Complementing them.

These indicate strong genetic influences on personal characteristics such as IQ, alcoholism, gender identity, and other traits.

These exactly support my arguments, which are rather far from tabula rasa. Read this again:

a private "humanity" unique to each individual that ought to be 'satisfied' in some way, that there's some core of selfhood beneath all the social conditioning and so on.

If you would defend your position on these very terms, then you are basically claiming that each individual human has some innate and fully-developed social characteristics before being exposed to social conditioning.

Think very carefully here, as if it turns out that each of us is missing something about the other then we'll just end up going in circles.

Again, it is plainly not, and is really just an extension of the evidence I gave above. As to why we should be heterosexual by nature, that is clear enough by looking at human reproduction throughout our history as a species. Homosexuality might make more sense in certain arrangements - for example in pack animals where only the alpha male/female reproduce, but not with human social arrangements.

It's not about "what makes sense", as evolution is arbitrary, not teleological. What you think we "should" be is totally irrelevant. If certain genetic features - including appropriate mutations - determine homosexuality, even congenital homosexuality, then that's going to repeat time and again throughout history regardless of whether or not the homosexuals reproduce. Homosexuality need not be heritable - polydactyly and cleft lip often aren't.

You seem happy to declare many things as "clearly false", providing no evidence in doing so - and, indeed, in the face of a whole lot of evidence to the contrary.

Your "evidence" is invalid.

First, homoeroticism is not equivalent to homosexuality. If it were, then by your "evidence" homosexuality would be at a historic low-point for a society.

Second, there is no correlation between homosexuality and abuse of children; homosexuals are not over-represented among molesters of the same sex, and they are not over-represented among children (now adults) who have been abused by members of the same sex.

For evidence toward predisposition, tendency, or outright determinism of sexuality:

We have the frequently-noted fact that children who grow up to be homosexuals will describe feeling such attractions even in pre-adolescence.

The neurophysiology in homosexuals is closer to the typical neurophysiology of the opposite sex than that of the same sex.

It is possible to induce homosexuality in other animal species through genetic manipulation.

Does society condition a baby to cry for its mother? And to stop when she cradles it? From birth, we can see that particular aspects of the most basic human relationships are instilled in us by nature.

Exactly.

If a boy was raised in isolation away from all humanity, and exposed to a female once he was a grown man, do you think he would just stand there unperturbed, since he lacks the social conditioning to be attracted to her? Heck, people knew where to put it before we had sex education.

Unless of course he happened to be homosexual. Don't beg the question.

Society plays its role but you are going way overboard here.

That's what I'm telling you.

[PanzerJaeger]

Panzer, my problem with what you are saying is that this divorcement of the act from the attraction is somewhat novel (at least in those cases where it serves no purpose beyond pleasure), and indeed seems to change the goalposts with what we understand by sexuality - and all this because a cursory glance at sexuality in past societies challenges your position.

How do your examples challenge my position? The gap that often exists between attraction and the sexual relationships in which we choose to engage is well documented and what I would think to be common knowledge. Western history is replete with men who have conformed to the social norm of a consenting, monogamous, heterosexual relationship with a woman within the same age cohort and race/ethnicity that results in children who have also pursued sexual interactions that deviate from that norm in private. Most people will conform to social norms regarding sexuality in public, but private sexual practices can vary dramatically based on attractions that are inherent to the individual.

I think it is difficult for straight people who fit neatly into the current social norm to understand how wrapped up sexuality is in social standing and the public self. Even in today's vastly more tolerant society, there is still incredible pressure to conform to the current norm in many families, social groups, workplaces and in society in general. And yet, inherent attraction is so strong that people act on it in the face of that pressure.

Consider my example of ancient Sparta, or modern Afghanistan/Central Asia, or the Ottoman Empire - while you assert that certain constraints might lead to people acting against basic predispositions; in all these examples, no such constraints exists - rather, homosexuality is something pursued in addition to heterosexual relationships. And, indeed, it occurs on such a scale relative to other societies, that we must conclude that society is what is conditioning these people to seek such relationships. Unless, of course, you were to argue that certain population groups had a genetic predisposition towards such behaviour - but I find that highly unlikely (although I would of course consider any evidence presented). Finally, in all these examples, attraction was central to the desire for the act, since it was entirely voluntary and served no purpose but pleasure, at least on the part of one partner.

Your line of reasoning is a bit murky, but it appears to rest on the above quote in bold. Can you support that with any actual data? I am not sure how one could make any points about the scale of comparative sexual practices in Sparta, for example, that are not firmly based in anecdote.

[Ironside]

So does theft. And murder.

Counterpoint A. Theft and murder either done out of desperation or for personal gain. So in the case of homosexuality it's done for personal gain (the prison situation might be done for both). How common is it for you to feel like you can gain something more through gay sex than normal sex?

Counterpoint B. There's a notable genetical component behind both theft and murder. There's a reason why psychopatic traits are way more common in prisoners (repeat offenders in particular) than in the general population.

Counterpoint C. This stuff isn't binary, but a sliding scale. So that means that a lot depends on cultural influence. Society tries to make it binary, but like gender identity/expression that's an incorrect simplified assumption.

[rvg]

Counterpoint A. Theft and murder either done out of desperation or for personal gain. So in the case of homosexuality it's done for personal gain (the prison situation might be done for both). How common is it for you to feel like you can gain something more through gay sex than normal sex?

Countercounterpoint A. What isn't done for personal gain? Just about anything anyone ever does is done for personal gain. As for gaining more through gay sex vs normal, no idea, ask a gay guy.

Counterpoint B. There's a notable genetical component behind both theft and murder. There's a reason why psychopatic traits are way more common in prisoners (repeat offenders in particular) than in the general population.

Countercounterpoint B. Aren't liberals (homosexuals in particular) shouting atop of their lungs about how being gay is not a choice, but rather something congenital?

Counterpoint C. This stuff isn't binary, but a sliding scale. So that means that a lot depends on cultural influence. Society tries to make it binary, but like gender identity/expression that's an incorrect simplified assumption.

Countercounterpoint C. Theoretically yes, but only theoretically. In reality most people strictly adhere to one style or the other, which why the society labels it as binary: for all practical purposes it is binary.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Atoms don't have morals. Therefore it is an emergent property of a complex ie multi molecular system. It is not a property of electromagnetics, gravity or nuclear forces.

Science does not speak to morality, therefore Science cannot make moral statements.

Who says Atom's don't have morals?

You have violated the bounds of Scientia - you argument is invalid.

Find a better one.

:(

[Papewaio]

Science does not speak to morality, therefore Science cannot make moral statements.

Who says Atom's don't have morals?

You have violated the bounds of Scientia - you argument is invalid.

Find a better one.

:(

You see boundaries based on your belief that some higher power has set out morality.

I see morality as out comes of empathy, memory, and other gregarious enhancing abilities that allow creatures to form large groups. All these can be hypothesized, tested and theorized.

Now maybe the higher power is using a transparent ruleset or an opaque one. You can still hypothesis and test. Even if the outcome is one that the system is unpredicatable. If predictions are possible then one can add in theories to.

[Montmorency]

Science does not speak to morality, therefore Science cannot make moral statements.

Good thing that's a factual, not a moral, statement then.

Who says Atom's don't have morals?

Atoms have no property called "morality", and you'll never show otherwise.

[Ironside]

Countercounterpoint A. What isn't done for personal gain? Just about anything anyone ever does is done for personal gain. As for gaining more through gay sex vs normal, no idea, ask a gay guy.

And they will say something about knowing that they were gay, even before puberty.

The difference is that you can understand the gain with someone stealing and some murders (well if you never in your life has had a theiving or murderous impulse, you might not understand it), even if you reject the idea for other reasons. Your first response here was "ask a gay".

Countercounterpoint B. Aren't liberals (homosexuals in particular) shouting atop of their lungs about how being gay is not a choice, but rather something congenital?

Yes, and people attracted to the same gender will have vastly higher correlation with expressing homosexual behavior. That attraction is not something they have a choise about, even if they have a choise about the expression. With that expression being a matter between two agreeing adults and normally harmless, it's no wonder that they're pushing it for being an accepted behavior, rather than tolerated.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. My point was that even things like theft and murder has a genetical component even if societal factors have most influence in that case.

Countercounterpoint C. Theoretically yes, but only theoretically. In reality most people strictly adhere to one style or the other, which why the society labels it as binary: for all practical purposes it is binary.

It's more a point towards Rhyfelwyr than you actually. What that means is that a society that accepts or encurages gay behavior will have more of it, if only because more people are getting closer to their "natural selves" to use his words.

Bisexuals often have a prefered gender even if they like both genders. That means with binary treatment, they'll try to stick with one gender.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You see boundaries based on your belief that some higher power has set out morality.

I see morality as out comes of empathy, memory, and other gregarious enhancing abilities that allow creatures to form large groups. All these can be hypothesized, tested and theorized.

Now maybe the higher power is using a transparent ruleset or an opaque one. You can still hypothesis and test. Even if the outcome is one that the system is unpredicatable. If predictions are possible then one can add in theories to.

I have [/i]never[/i] seen an effective Scientific test regarding morality, or anything relating to it. All such "experiments" have been malformed, failing to measure the thing they claim to be measuring.

Good thing that's a factual, not a moral, statement then.

You believe it is not a factual statement?

Atoms have no property called "morality", and you'll never show otherwise.

No, Atoms have no [i]quantifiable[/quote] property called morality. Whether they have a qualitative property, Science has never investigated.

[Montmorency]

You believe it is not a factual statement?

Oh, I see. I was referring to Pape's line, not yours, and unironically.

No, Atoms have no quantifiable property called morality. Whether they have a qualitative property, Science has never investigated.

Of course not.

1. How is [x] to be defined/characterized?

2. How is it to be tested for?

Before it can be enabled to deal with something, science must have these questions answered.

For morality as an atomic or fundamental property, these questions are not to be answered satisfactorily, and so there is not even any point considering whether there is some heretofore-unknown property called "morality". Science should not have truck with phantasms; from there whether you'd like to take an agnostic or an eliminative perspective is up to you - though the former assumes there would be no contradiction with existing knowledge.

Just for kicks:

Atoms have an intrinsic and unmodifiable property called "Criminality". This property correlates with another such called "Badness" 100% of the time.

One hypothesis is that the proportion of atoms with Criminality=Y in an organism will correlate directly with that organism's propensity to commit crimes.

Another hypothesis is that all individuals classified as "Negroid" will be found to be entirely composed of atoms with Criminality=Y.

We believe that a positive conclusion to these hypotheses would explain the ineluctable and prolific law-breaking behavior of the Negro.

I have [/i]never[/i] seen an effective Scientific test regarding morality, or anything relating to it. All such "experiments" have been malformed, failing to measure the thing they claim to be measuring.

It's fairly easy to find tests measuring "moral behavior", which is merely a certain kind of experimentally pre-defined behavior, call it whatever you like. Behavior is not difficult to quantify; what do you have against such tests?

[Rhyfelwyr]

How do your examples challenge my position? The gap that often exists between attraction and the sexual relationships in which we choose to engage is well documented and what I would think to be common knowledge. Western history is replete with men who have conformed to the social norm of a consenting, monogamous, heterosexual relationship with a woman within the same age cohort and race/ethnicity that results in children who have also pursued sexual interactions that deviate from that norm in private. Most people will conform to social norms regarding sexuality in public, but private sexual practices can vary dramatically based on attractions that are inherent to the individual.

I think it is difficult for straight people who fit neatly into the current social norm to understand how wrapped up sexuality is in social standing and the public self. Even in today's vastly more tolerant society, there is still incredible pressure to conform to the current norm in many families, social groups, workplaces and in society in general. And yet, inherent attraction is so strong that people act on it in the face of that pressure.

OK, so as we stand, I have suggested that naturally heterosexual people can engage in homosexual behaviour often occurs as a result of social conditions, and you have countered that naturally homosexual people engage in heterosexual behaviour as a result of social conditions. And I think we can accept that for these basic points, what each of us is saying is true.

But I think there is one core difference that prevents our comparisons from being analogous. The only socities where homosexuality has occured on a large scale (beyond a couple of percentage points of the population), are those in which homosexual relations are fostered by particularly artificial environments - whereas heterosexual relations remain the norm in the vast majority of human societies past and present, whether tolerant or intolerant of homosexuality.

While this could fit with what you are saying about the gap between attaction and sexual relationships, the problem for me with that argument is that in all these artificial environments with high levels of homosexual practice, the homosexual acts seem to be both voluntary, and entirely for pleasure (at least for one partner). The relationship between the attraction and the act seems to hold firm - so why don't we see such high levels of homosexuality in modern, open societies?

I accept that I am left with the problem of those few percentage points, but counter with the above question. I am not in this debate to say I have all the answers, I just think the water is far muddier than people make out.

Your line of reasoning is a bit murky, but it appears to rest on the above quote in bold. Can you support that with any actual data? I am not sure how one could make any points about the scale of comparative sexual practices in Sparta, for example, that are not firmly based in anecdote.

I thought that the examples I gave were commonly accepted. I'll be honest though, it's not the sort of topic I want to research on my computer. Sorry if that's a bit of a debate killer.

Think very carefully here, as if it turns out that each of us is missing something about the other then we'll just end up going in circles.:

Yeah, I think we need to clarify some things to make sure we know where each other is coming from. Now, from comments such as these:

Then there must be a misunderstanding. You seemed to be conceiving of a private "humanity" unique to each individual that ought to be 'satisfied' in some way, that there's some core of selfhood beneath all the social conditioning and so on.

That is clearly false. The social conditioning is the core.

Note that without society a human is nothing, so there's no point in this "true...individual" stuff.

I thought you were saying that an individual is no more than society conditions them to be - that they have no underlying "true" self, whether straight or gay in orientation.

Now from your last post in respose to me, I'm a bit confused since you seem to be saying something different. I'm not saying you are necessarily being inconsistent, we are maybe just looking at some concepts differently, I am maybe misunderstanding you. For example, do you think when I speak of our inherent humanity, that I a speaking of something somehow 'deeper' than what is expressed in us genetically?

[Montmorency]

I'm saying that it is inherent to human beings to have society and engage socially with other humans; it's a truism, really. What I saw you as doing was referring to some sort of pristine 'sub-social' human in your arguments as if it were an actual organism that can and does exist somehow. Even infants behave/engage socially.

So let's narrow it down to sexual orientation:

From your perspective, humans are born heterosexual and shift to homosexuality due to specific external influences. There is no gap between attraction and behavior.

From my perspective, sexual orientation is mostly congenital and not so fluid. There is a gap between attraction and behavior, and in either direction for the latter it is due to things like stigma, prestige, power...

[rvg]

And they will say something about knowing that they were gay, even before puberty.

And you know that how exactly?

The difference is that you can understand the gain with someone stealing and some murders (well if you never in your life has had a theiving or murderous impulse, you might not understand it), even if you reject the idea for other reasons. Your first response here was "ask a gay".

This makes no sense at all.

Yes, and people attracted to the same gender will have vastly higher correlation with expressing homosexual behavior. That attraction is not something they have a choise about, even if they have a choise about the expression. With that expression being a matter between two agreeing adults and normally harmless, it's no wonder that they're pushing it for being an accepted behavior, rather than tolerated.

They argue that it's not a choice.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. My point was that even things like theft and murder has a genetical component even if societal factors have most influence in that case.

Do you have any evidence of that?

It's more a point towards Rhyfelwyr than you actually. What that means is that a society that accepts or encurages gay behavior will have more of it, if only because more people are getting closer to their "natural selves" to use his words.

Why would any society want to encourage gay behavior?

Bisexuals often have a prefered gender even if they like both genders. That means with binary treatment, they'll try to stick with one gender.

Their behavior is binary. Their treatment is based on their behavior, not the other way around.

[Papewaio]

I have [/i]never[/i] seen an effective Scientific test regarding morality, or anything relating to it. All such "experiments" have been malformed, failing to measure the thing they claim to .

1) Lets assume first there is morality and it isn't another fable to comfort adults.

2) First you would define what it is and what are its features and sub components. For instance empathy, reciprocity, proportional response, delayed satisfaction, altruism etc. Pick the traits that you believe would make moral members of society and test for those traits.

If it is intrinsic to human genetic coding one would expect to see it a wide variety of societies.

So you could study this via anthropology, psychology, biology or neuroscience.

It could be that some of the traits are instinctual and others socially reinforced.

First though would be defining what is moral and then you could test it. If it is based on an untestable definition then one would need to do a meta study ie does every religion believe morals are from their unique god, pantheon, spaghetti monster. What is the shared beliefs. Are these shared with primitive societies, children raised by animals or animals themselves?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Trying to dismiss morality by using the scientific method is silly.

It's the same as trying to empirically determine human rights. They exist not because of nature, they exist because we (or God if you are religious) wills it ourselves. I don't care what nature has to say about who we are or how we "should" behave. We as humans do posses the ability to alter ourselves, and just as we can say that human rights are a clearly good notion to have, we can say the same with morality in general. Thus we live our lives under the notions of human rights and morality and we are better off believing in these "lies" than trying to take humanity back to the "natural" state of bonobos individual violence and group orgies.

[Papewaio]

One I'm not trying to dismiss it. I'm trying to get a definition for this thread to show which parts may or may not be able to be tested. I believe morality is a outcome of our ability to socialise. If we were all sociopaths with no memory we would not be able to form large societies of individuals. We might be able with pheromones, dictatatorships or other forms of manipulation form large groups.

Anyhow one only needs to look at the large number of laws we have, the need for police and the way our leaders from CEO, Politicians and Priests all exploit their positions of power to wonder how intrinsic morality is.

[a completely inoffensive name]

One I'm not trying to dismiss it. I'm trying to get a definition for this thread to show which parts may or may not be able to be tested. I believe morality is a outcome of our ability to socialise. If we were all sociopaths with no memory we would not be able to form large societies of individuals. We might be able with pheromones, dictatatorships or other forms of manipulation form large groups.

Anyhow one only needs to look at the large number of laws we have, the need for police and the way our leaders from CEO, Politicians and Priests all exploit their positions of power to wonder how intrinsic morality is.

Wasn't trying to respond to you in particular. Was mostly me venting because I have met plenty of people both online and in RL that bring up science where morality is concerned because to them not intrinsic and/or unnatural = lacking in value.

[Papewaio]

I believe that morality is something that is a combination of nature and nuture up there with gender defined role.

I think some of the sub components of it can be studied with current toolsets. Other parts are in the black box category and not yet able to be tested. I do think that some will have structures in the brain that will contribute. There will be a whole host of studies showing removal of parts of the brain causing changes in social patterns. I also think some of it will be learnt and/or redundant or if lost learnt from scratch as the brain will compensate to adapt to its environment.

[Montmorency]

not intrinsic and/or unnatural = lacking in value.

There's the rub, though, the strange sort of special pleading often invoked in defense of morality: if there is no value, then there is still value because , and if there's value my morals are spared.

But if there's no value, there's no need to return (or move) to any which conceivable state: that's the whole point.

Trying to dismiss morality by using the scientific method is silly.

It has nothing to do with science, not ultimately.

There will be a whole host of studies showing removal of parts of the brain causing changes in social patterns.

Interestingly enough, we no longer need to act invasively; we now have the ability to selectively (de)/activate individual circuits or cell-types by introducing mutations that produce sensitivity to target stimuli.

Although either way, it would be widely treated as unethical for scientists to 'lobotomize' people to test this and that. I'm sure we could block long-term memory entirely, or paint the world in hues of one's values, or shut off the self, consciousness as a whole...

It all depends on who's interested in the applications, I suppose.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm saying that it is inherent to human beings to have society and engage socially with other humans; it's a truism, really. What I saw you as doing was referring to some sort of pristine 'sub-social' human in your arguments as if it were an actual organism that can and does exist somehow. Even infants behave/engage socially.

I would say we have a 'sub-social' being, in the sense that while social relations are inherent to us and society is an extension of those; as society becomes increasingly removed from its organic origins and instead becomes stratified (eg maintaining the collective spirit as a whole, while subverting the individual to particular roles through inequality), codified (by law and custom, maintaining the social spirit in laws, while destroying the process by which it came to be expressed in society, and replacing a natural system with an arbitrary one), and inorganic (growing less from its roots as an expression of those social relations inherent to us, but rather by replecating itself based on the form it took through the previous stratification/codification), society becomes something of a will unto itself, a driving force in its own right - and wholly divorced from its roots.

It is at this point we can say that while society is natural to humans, the social roles it enforces on people can be anything but natural to the individual.

So let's narrow it down to sexual orientation:

From your perspective, humans are born heterosexual and shift to homosexuality due to specific external influences. There is no gap between attraction and behavior.

From my perspective, sexual orientation is mostly congenital and not so fluid. There is a gap between attraction and behavior, and in either direction for the latter it is due to things like stigma, prestige, power...

I wouldn't say there is no gap between attraction and behaviour - I acknowledged it in my last post. I just don't think that from a historical perspective, there is reason to believe it tells the whole story. Like I said, the problem I have with your position is that "stigma, prestige, power" are at best secondary to a voluntary and attraction-based pursuit of sex in socities where highly artificial conditions seem to make people pursue homosexual relations, in much higher numbers than they do even in free and tolerant societies.

It's the same as trying to empirically determine human rights. They exist not because of nature, they exist because we (or God if you are religious) wills it ourselves. I don't care what nature has to say about who we are or how we "should" behave. We as humans do posses the ability to alter ourselves, and just as we can say that human rights are a clearly good notion to have, we can say the same with morality in general. Thus we live our lives under the notions of human rights and morality and we are better off believing in these "lies" than trying to take humanity back to the "natural" state of bonobos individual violence and group orgies.

The problem then is that your concept of human rights and morality would lack legitimacy, and they would be very difficult to implement without it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The problem then is that your concept of human rights and morality would lack legitimacy, and they would be very difficult to implement without it.

I acknowledge that. Isn't that the entire reason we have so many ethical systems in the first place? People for millennium have tried to make a justification behind the morality to legitimize it?

[PanzerJaeger]

OK, so as we stand, I have suggested that naturally heterosexual people can engage in homosexual behaviour often occurs as a result of social conditions, and you have countered that naturally homosexual people engage in heterosexual behaviour as a result of social conditions. And I think we can accept that for these basic points, what each of us is saying is true.

But I think there is one core difference that prevents our comparisons from being analogous. The only socities where homosexuality has occured on a large scale (beyond a couple of percentage points of the population), are those in which homosexual relations are fostered by particularly artificial environments - whereas heterosexual relations remain the norm in the vast majority of human societies past and present, whether tolerant or intolerant of homosexuality.

While this could fit with what you are saying about the gap between attaction and sexual relationships, the problem for me with that argument is that in all these artificial environments with high levels of homosexual practice, the homosexual acts seem to be both voluntary, and entirely for pleasure (at least for one partner). The relationship between the attraction and the act seems to hold firm - so why don't we see such high levels of homosexuality in modern, open societies?

I accept that I am left with the problem of those few percentage points, but counter with the above question. I am not in this debate to say I have all the answers, I just think the water is far muddier than people make out.

I thought that the examples I gave were commonly accepted. I'll be honest though, it's not the sort of topic I want to research on my computer. Sorry if that's a bit of a debate killer.

I suppose we have reached an impasse, as I do not believe this can be verified with any degree of statistical certainty in the societies that you mentioned. We cannot even get a truly accurate gauge of the prevalence of homosexuality in our own society.

[Lemur]

We cannot even get a truly accurate gauge of the prevalence of homosexuality in our own society.

Don't know about accuracy, but a very large survey in 2011 found 1.7% of the U.S.A. population self-identifying as gay or lesbian, with another 1.8% (mostly women) self-identifying as bisexual. Quite a few of the respondents also described themselves as "closeted." Source.

From the article: "Higher numbers can be obtained when asking about lifetime sexual experiences, rather than identity. The Williams Institute found that, overall, an estimated 8.2 percent of the population had engaged in some form same-sex sexual activity. Put another way, 4.7 percent of the population had wandered across the line without coming to think of themselves as either gay or bisexual. Other studies suggest those individuals are, like the bisexuals, mainly women: The same CDC study that found only 1 percent of women identify as lesbian, for example, found that 13 percent of women reported a history of some form of sexual contact with other women."

-edit-

TL/DR: Best estimate is that approx 3.5% of the U.S.A. population self-identifies as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

[Montmorency]

I would say we have a 'sub-social' being, in the sense that while social relations are inherent to us and society is an extension of those; as society becomes increasingly removed from its organic origins and instead becomes stratified (eg maintaining the collective spirit as a whole, while subverting the individual to particular roles through inequality), codified (by law and custom, maintaining the social spirit in laws, while destroying the process by which it came to be expressed in society, and replacing a natural system with an arbitrary one), and inorganic (growing less from its roots as an expression of those social relations inherent to us, but rather by replecating itself based on the form it took through the previous stratification/codification), society becomes something of a will unto itself, a driving force in its own right - and wholly divorced from its roots.

It is at this point we can say that while society is natural to humans, the social roles it enforces on people can be anything but natural to the individual.

I simply cannot accept a distinction on those grounds.

highly artificial conditions

See above. This is tautological, as any conditions pertaining to humanity will be "artificial". Being more generous and taking "artificial" as - look, I'll just cut it short and say that societies have been "artificial" in your sense since at least the second generation of humans", if not even millenniums prior in pre-human hominids. Again, this is perfectly natural for humans.

make people pursue homosexual relations, in much higher numbers than they do even in free and tolerant societies.

The key behind your correlation is that modern, Western, "free and tolerant societies" do not tolerate the sexualization and the sexual "abuse" of children, which in the societies you mentioned was taken as a matter of course. Children are there for the pleasure of (male) adults, to obey them and to provide future insurance (as caretakers and continuation of lineage) in those societies. So this "homosexual behavior" - which, again, is better called "same-sex sexual activity", or else you run into equivocation - is just sybaritism, really, encouraged by...

attraction-based pursuit

That's just it - it's not attraction-based, it's pleasure-based and power-based. As MRD's Afghan put it, "kids are for fun, women are for kids'. It has nothing to do with attraction - though I'm sure 'ugly' boys are less desirable than 'pretty' ones - and everything to do with power imbalance in favor of adult males, and prestige attached to having boy-toys. If you ask why girls aren't used as commonly, well, think about it: in such societies, the girls are merely property of other adult males! Meanwhile, the existing culture makes it more likely for sons to think of such interactions as perfectly acceptable - and desirable - things, and for fathers to place little-to-no stigma on their own sons engaging in them, if they don't initiate for themselves...

Also keep in mind that homeless, parent-less boys tend to last longer on the streets than girls in a similar position - for obvious reasons. Boy-hookers can survive on the streets, more-or-less.

Another thing - in the societies you mentioned homosexuality between adults was an object of disgust and derision. Pederasty was not considered to be equivalent in them. What better way to get a power high than to sexually dominate (i.e. 'educate') a young boy, especially if it considered positive by the culture, and taking the honor of virginal females isn't?

Meanwhile, in Western society we look upon such things with horror and crack down hard on them; is it then so surprising that the vast majority of same-sex child abusers actually don't self-identify as homosexual?

Rape is about power, and pederasty is, even legally-speaking, rape.

Think on it.

[Myth]

This is obviously a case of hurt feelings. Nobody really cares abou the service in particular, but abut the way they refused.

"Hi, can you take our wedding photos?"

"When is the wedding, sir?"

"June the 19th."

"Oh, sorry, we're booked for that date."

"OK, thanks anyway"


versus:

"Hi, can you take our wedding photos?"

"We dun' take photos of f*g weddings, git of muh propurtee!"

I highly doubt this would have reached court if the photographers simply made up an excuse out of courtesy and kept their opinoins to themselves.

[Lemur]

This is obviously a case of hurt feelings.

Very few people sue when they think they've been treated well. Fact of life. Being a jerk substantially increases your litigation exposure.

I forget which hospital did the trial, but there was a temporary thing where administrators enacted a policy that all doctors say "please" and "thank you" to patients. Basic stuff, right? Lawsuits went down by a large, measurable amount.

Anyway, it's safe to bet that the photog was dickish about the whole thing. 'Cause people don't sue someone they think is nice (e.g., "Oh, I'm so happy for you two, but I'd be violating my religion if I did your pictures. However, I want you to know that God loves all his children, and I'm going to help you find a great replacement that works with your budget and schedule!" Hey presto—no lawsuit.)

[AntiDamascus]

I think the takeaway from all this is wedding planning bring out the worst in people.

[Lemur]

I think the takeaway from all this is wedding planning bring out the worst in people.

Video proof:

[Rhyfelwyr]

I suppose we have reached an impasse, as I do not believe this can be verified with any degree of statistical certainty in the societies that you mentioned. We cannot even get a truly accurate gauge of the prevalence of homosexuality in our own society.

Fair enough, it is a very difficult topic to get accurate statistics on.

I simply cannot accept a distinction on those grounds.

Well an explanation would have been nice, but even if you reject what I said above, here's another line of thought - consider the impact of external factors to humans and their society. For example, for most of our history as a species, our fundamental social relations were forged around life as hunter-gatherers, and all that that entailed. Our society was one that has limitations placed on it by external things like our environment, and our social relations were forged within that reality. Principles like patriarchy and hierarchy emerged in a world where circumstance limited population groups to around 150 or so.

Meanwhile, something external to this, like the development of agriculture (while the capacity to use the relevant tools is of course natural, the ability to use them to this end is external and circumstancial, and for those earliest farmers, entirely novel and alien to human life) meant that while we had the same inherent social relations, the world they were expressed in was fundamentally changed. Whereas patriarchy and hierarchy once maintained the natural family unit, they now maintained a system of injustic and inequality - relationships that were alien to the individual. Consider how natural law theorists of monarchy said that the position of the king as head of a nation, was an extension of the principle of the man and head of the household, and thus it was entirely natural for one man to be subject to another. Would you agree with this? For me, such as society maintains the natural social spirit, while subjecting the individual to the whole, and thus a life which is itself unnatural to them.

And while the restraints that a hunter-gatherer life placed on humanity could be said be to be external and therefore artificial, the thing is that this was the environment our social relations were built for, since it defined the period where we arose as a species.

Without these constraints, society may still be said to be a natural phenomenon - but having escaped it's bounds, it no longer maintains an order that is a natural expression of those social relations inherent in us. Indeed, it is thought that the rise of agriculture is what gave rise to instutionalised inequality - and thereafter, it was all downhill as society became less a natural order, and more an artificial monstrosity.

See above. This is tautological, as any conditions pertaining to humanity will be "artificial". Being more generous and taking "artificial" as - look, I'll just cut it short and say that societies have been "artificial" in your sense since at least the second generation of humans", if not even millenniums prior in pre-human hominids. Again, this is perfectly natural for humans.

If you take "artificial" as meaning "anything external to the individual", then of course everything is artificial. But this ignores the fact that humanity was forged in a particular environment with a particular way of life, and thus is intrinsically linked to them. Likewise, if you take "natural" to mean "anything and everything arising out of nature", then of course everything is natural. However, I think we all recognise the need for distinction, and that something can become sufficiently altered from its original form that it is deemed something different altogether.

For society, a watershed in this regard, is whether or not it continues to be expressed in the way it originally was. For society to be natural, it must be organic - it must be something that flows from all its inhabitants, and expresses those relations inherent to them, that we can see ingrained even in their genetic code (babies crying for mothers, formation of families etc). When this link becomes degraged, and society instead expresses something more arbitrary, a system of legal codes and customs etc, then the mode of expression has fundamentally changed, and society could be said to no longer be natural. Well, it remains natural in the sense that it arose from humans, but the social order it maintains is no longer something natural to humanity - it is not the way we are designed to live.

And on top of that, you have like I was saying above, the external influences as well.

**************

And as for the bit about what has caused various forms of homosexual relationships throughout history, I think power is only part of the story, but really we are all speculating. Although as you said yourself, some distinction between "ugly" and "pretty" remains, which demonstrates to me that attraction plays at least some role.

I would also point out that not all examples relate to pederastry and the like. In the Ottoman Empire, I think it involved fully grown males, likewise I remember an article (sorry I don't have it) in the BBC (IIRC) that was about how common homosexuality is in modern Pakistan - because it is so difficult for guys to access girls prior to marriage, they engage in homosexual behaviour, and families actually ignore it so long as the plan to marry a woman and have a family.

For me, there are just to many examples where sexuality seems to be circumstancial, and where attraction/pleasure (can you really separate the two?) seem to be the core motivation.