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Old 11-09-2006, 12:36 AM   #133
Alex
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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Assuming that homosexuality is innate at birth (and I don't think it is, at least not for all homosexuals) then I think an interesting analogy would be congenital deafness.

It isn't a disease, but it is a defect (in the sense that it is well outside even a couple standard deviations form the human normal range). Technology is finally giving us ways to "cure" it but there are communities who strongly argue that there is nothing to cure. That they're fine the way they are.

But I agree with GD on a key point:

"Disease" and "defect" like "planet" and "moon" are social constructs without objective meaning. Society decides what is disease and while there is an obvious core, there is a fuzzy edge where over time things fall in and out of the category. 80 years ago alcoholism was a moral failing and now it is a disease. 80 years ago homosexuality was a disease and now it is a [moral failing | biochemical imperative]. Drug use has cycled through it several times in recent decades (for Nixon it was something to be treated, for Reagan it was something to be punished).

Personally, I don't care at more than an academic level why someone is gay because I don't really care that they are gay. However, if you're a Christian, it doesn't really take a lot of ingenuity to find biblical condemnation of homosexuality (this is one topic where I find the "progressive" interpretations more tortured than the "regressive" one). I'm reasonalbly comfortable with the idea that (if he was real) Jesus would not have approved of homosexuality (though that does not mean he would have approved of violence against or even ostracism of them). But then I don't believe he was anything more than a delusional preacher so it is equally easy for me to imagine he'd think Two and a Half Men is good TV, so that is a statement without much meat.
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