Santorum to kids of gay parents: You'd be better off with a dad in jail

[Free Palestine]

It's over.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Well, that was fun.

[Penelope]

It's over.

[Simfan34]

It's over.

[Free Palestine]

Seriously, I think this thread exacerbated my panic attack.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Seriously, I think this thread exacerbated my panic attack.

I'm sorry to hear that. You all right?

Well, it's over now. Time to go about my evening.

[Smash255]

I am sorry for rocking the boat. Let's go back to regular tuned programming where we do not try to figure out why there is animosity towards homosexuality among heterosexuals. We can also be so naive as to think homosexuality will ever be readily accepted into the mainstream the way that preferring Pepsi over Coke is. This will make us all feel better, and feeling good about ourselves is all that matters.

Its because of bigoted hyper religious ass hats like Santorum.

[Free Palestine]

Seriously, I think this thread exacerbated my panic attack.

I'm sorry to hear that. You all right?

Well, it's over now. Time to go about my evening.

I wasn't rolling around on the floor or anything.  But I was feeling like...well...my sig.  Now I just feel like I'm going to develop a stomach ulcer by the time I'm 30 and die by the time I'm 40.  And overall I have a feeling of malaise.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

If there's a good thread to sticky tonight, it's this.

[Keystone Phil]

Wait a damn minute! An eleven page argument about something related to Santorum and I haven't posted here once before this? There is something wrong with the Atlas Forum these days, my friends! Something very wrong.

[Simfan34]

Wait a damn minute! An eleven page argument about something related to Santorum and I haven't posted here once before this? There is something wrong with the Atlas Forum these days, my friends! Something very wrong.

FF, quite funny. Was wondering that myself.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Seriously, I think this thread exacerbated my panic attack.

I'm sorry to hear that. You all right?

Well, it's over now. Time to go about my evening.

I wasn't rolling around on the floor or anything.  But I was feeling like...well...my sig.  Now I just feel like I'm going to develop a stomach ulcer by the time I'm 30 and die by the time I'm 40.  And overall I have a feeling of malaise.

I know that feel.

[ilikeverin]

Will blacks and whites at some point silently agree that things worked a lot better for both sides when negroes stuck to the ghetto?

Seriously.

When did the ghetto become equivalent to San Franscisco, Los Angeles, and New York? Those cities have nice qualities.

Seriously, trying to make the differences between heterosexuals/heterosexuality and homosexuals/homosexuality into something akin to racial differences is never going to work. It's just not. If you don't believe me, go ask the vast majority of African-American Democrats.

You mean the ones who think homosexuality is a choice?

No, I mean the ones who do not care whether or not it is a choice, but see it as undesirable trait in their offspring by virtue of its incompatibility with the survival of their offspring. After all, when you get right down to it most heterosexuals have one basic desire: survival. This includes, of course, survival of their offspring. Biologically, they are never going to really accept something that threatens the survival of their offspring whether it be in the near or distant future.

So... homosexuality is bad for the survival of children... how, exactly?

Because children need to learn how to ostracise and bully weaker and different children to survive!!! It's about SURVIVAL PEOPLE!!!

Yes, forget all about progress and understanding.  We're all just animals hurr durr durr.

And I just want to bang my head against a wall every time someone talks about "instincts" and biological determinism.  Humans have this thing called a frontal lobe, people.  We might as well lobotomize ourselves if we're going to concern ourselves only with the survival of the species and all that jazz.

Biologically, there is no point to life except surviving and reproducing. We are really just animals who happen to have the gift (or curse, if you want to depress yourself) of thought.

If I had my way then posts containing large amounts of reductionist, pseudo-scientific and pseudo-evolutionary bollocks of the type displayed above would get the poster in question immediately banned...

I don't want to live on this planet anymore if people really believe that social darwinist, biologically deterministic, hippy-dippy "we're all just animals" f-cking bullsh-t.

I would just like to note that his position is not at all representative of evolutionary psychology, too, for so many reasons    I'm ashamed he tried to co-opt us, especially because he was just doing an awful, awful job.  I particularly enjoyed his assertions that "homosexuals never reproduce" and that "Darwin taught us that evolution is always about having offspring".

[Edu]

Don't know if Politico is trolling or not, but to say that gays had it better in the 70's and 80's is moronic.

And as far as I can see, gay people are getting more and more accepted every day, so I don't know where his pessimism comes from.
In my country, 20 years ago, gay marriage was basically unheard of and people would have been massively opposed to it, and in the media, homosexuality was treated as something that was wrong or something to make fun of. Nowadays, not only gay marriage is legal, but it enjoys widespread support and basically no one is calling for it's repeal, and in the media gays are shown in a more positive light than before.
And this is not only about gay marriage, simple acceptance of a gay person has progressed. In the 50's if someone came out as gay he would probably be institutionalized in some mental hospital, in 2011 it's not really a big deal and the guy or girl can still go ahead with his/her life.

So I don't really get what he's rambling about. And I'm not even going to touch that stuff about Social darwinism he was talking about earlier

[Free Palestine]

Seriously, I think this thread exacerbated my panic attack.

I'm sorry to hear that. You all right?

Well, it's over now. Time to go about my evening.

I wasn't rolling around on the floor or anything.  But I was feeling like...well...my sig.  Now I just feel like I'm going to develop a stomach ulcer by the time I'm 30 and die by the time I'm 40.  And overall I have a feeling of malaise.

I know that feel.

My father picked today to be an annoying twat for some reason.

[greenforest32]

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John Lewis - editorial October 2003...

FFing back in 1996 too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rj_mUhlYQ

[Politico]

Saying that homophobia is simply about people being afraid of things that are different is akin to George W. Bush's soundbites about "the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms" (Mind you, you will not find a bigger supporter of the war on terror on this board than I, but even I acknowledge that soundbite for what it is). It is a convenient, comforting thought, with some truth to it in some sense, but it ultimately prevents serious thought about the real foundation of the problem. I tried explaining what I think the real foundation of homophobia is. If somebody else wants to take our stab, feel free. If you wish to truly disprove my hypothesis, feel free to try to find parents anywhere on the planet who thought to themselves on the day their child was born, "Oh, I hope they are gay!"Or you can continue to believe a George W. Bush-style soundbite. Feel free to be and believe whatever you want to be and believe, of course.

[anvi]

Politico,

With regard to biology, it's manifestly clear that individuals in many animal species exhibit homosexual behavior, and such behavior does not prove to be detrimental to the survival of that species.  Furthermore, while life in the most general biological terms might be defined as the ability of an organism to convert matter into nutrients and energy and reproduce, that does not mean that every animal instinct is driven by or reducible to the desire to reproduce and perpetuate the species.  Just to use the simplest example, I'm pretty sure the human species could have survived had it not developed the ability to compose music, but the fact that we have developed that ability makes our lives a very great deal better than without it.

One of the things that makes what Santorum is reported to have implied in his talk yesterday so objectionable is that, while data does show that children have better outcomes in two-parent homes than in single-parent homes, that fact does not necessarily imply anything about the sexual orientation of the parents.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of adopted children in the U.S. are cared for by gay couples, and to claim that all of those children would be better off, and their emotional needs and needs for support better served, with one heterosexual parent separated from the family because of imprisonment than with two gay parents caring for them at home is wildly implausible.  It's also, based on everything else we know, also quite dismissive of the needs of the children in question.  Now, to be fair, the quote from the report at the beginning of the thread is isolated from the story's context, and so I don't know if Santorum actually said these things.  But if he did, in my view, they are quite wrong.

But, putting all that aside, I think the most important aspect of the conflict on this thread has to do with the issue that you seem to be confusing a descriptive stance with a prescriptive one.  If one were to merely assert that, in American society now, gay people are not fully accepted by straight people, that as a matter of mere description may well be true, and the huge cultural and political conflicts we are presently having over the rights of gay people may well serve as evidence of that.  But, on the basis of such a present fact, it does not follow that these circumstances will never change. Inductions about the future do not simply follow on the basis of present circumstances.  If you truly do favor the rights of gay people to live as they wish and be fully accepted by society for who they are and for their desire to be treated equally, you would not simply shrug your shoulders, say things will never change, accept their unjust treatment and suggest that they should seclude themselves to a select number of isolated cities.  You would, rather, admonish those who treated them unfairly and at least speak out on their behalf.  Fifty and sixty years ago, people such as Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King did not just resign themselves to the unjust segregation of African Americans and call for their return to Africa; they instead denounced injustice, inspired and led movements of resistance, and risked everything to transform our society.  A half century later, things are very far from perfect, and we still have quite a distance to go in establishing genuine racial equality of opportunity.  But, three years ago, an African-American candidate for the presidency of the United States received the votes of 70 million Americans, and even though he won only 43% of the white vote, that's a much bigger percentage than would have been received by an African American candidate for that office in the '50's or '60's.  That didn't happen because people resigned themselves to the impossibility of change.  The point is that describing a current situation and prescribing, or endorsing, it are two importantly different things.  Description is not prescription.  Saying that something is wrong should not lead one to argue that what is wrong ought to be perpetuated.   

[Gustaf]

Living in a society which has gone pretty far in tolerance I can say that it obviously isn't generally true that homosexuals can't be accepted in society. Sweden decriminalized homosexuality at about the same time as the US but today has gay marriage and being bigoted against gays is certainly more controversial than being gay.

[TheGlobalizer]

Living in a society which has gone pretty far in tolerance I can say that it obviously isn't generally true that homosexuals can't be accepted in society. Sweden decriminalized homosexuality at about the same time as the US but today has gay marriage and being bigoted against gays is certainly more controversial than being gay.

FWIW, I think the same is mostly true here in the US, except in rural areas.  I'd consider Santorum's views to be a rather extreme outlier, the more common concern that conservative heteros have is that gay marriage would somehow "spoil" hetero marriage, particularly when viewed through a religious prism.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Living in a society which has gone pretty far in tolerance I can say that it obviously isn't generally true that homosexuals can't be accepted in society. Sweden decriminalized homosexuality at about the same time as the US but today has gay marriage and being bigoted against gays is certainly more controversial than being gay.

FWIW, I think the same is mostly true here in the US, except in rural areas.  I'd consider Santorum's views to be a rather extreme outlier, the more common concern that conservative heteros have is that gay marriage would somehow "spoil" hetero marriage, particularly when viewed through a religious prism.

It's true even in some rural areas. There's a book called Another Country that's a very good survey of LGBT communities in the countryside, and while the penetration of acceptance into rural America is spotty and taking a long time, it's definitely present. Politico is right about one thing, which is that there are several urban areas, most of them but not all of them predominantly minority, that are more anti-gay than significant parts of the American hinterland by now.

[Politico]

Politico,

With regard to biology, it's manifestly clear that individuals in many animal species exhibit homosexual behavior, and such behavior does not prove to be detrimental to the survival of that species.

I am not disagreeing with this point. Such behavior is clearly not detrimental to the survival of that species, but clearly the genes of the animal that only engages in homosexual behavior are not going to survive. This is ultimately the foundation of homophobia. Heterosexual couples who choose to have children almost always do not want their offspring to end up being homosexual. Like I said, when children are born the parents say, "Oh, I hope they are gay!" about as often as they say, "Oh, I hope they are stupid!" Why is that? Because homosexuality is considered an unfavorable characteristic due to its adverse implications upon the survival of the genes of the aforementioned parents. This could not be more obvious when one considers how humans breed, and how completely incompatible homosexuality is with consistent breeding.

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Obviously the human race is largely driven by pleasure and pain, but now we're getting outside of the point: The most basic biological urge is to survive and reproduce. What happens to a species when it no longer wishes to survive, or is no longer capable of surviving? Clearly it goes extinct.

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I am describing the way things are, not the way things ought to be. Even in societies that serve homosexuals better with legislation than in America, there is still a heterosexual tendency to look upon homosexuality as not being a desirable trait. Whether or not those heterosexuals are willing to openly state that does not matter. Even in the Democratic Party alone there are PLENTY of folks who nod and smile when discussing homosexual rights with homosexuals, and then turn around and snicker about the aforementioned homosexuals after they are out of earshot. I know because I am a Democrat who has been in these type of situations in the past. In fact, the most homophobic comments I have ever heard were from African-American Democrats, completely blowing away any light comment that might occasionally come out of the mouth of some rather right-wing folks in the Republican Party that I know.

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I think it is naive to think that this is going to turn out well for homosexuals. They will never be satisfied because homosexuality and open homosexuals are never going to be accepted into the mainstream the way that African-Americans are today. Why? See the first paragraph in this post.

 

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I simply believe it is a better alternative than continuing on the current course. Like I have previously said, homosexuals are always treated like second-class except where they are most heavily concentrated. The conclusion: They should become more heavily concentrated in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York again.

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Personally, I think it is outrageous to compare what homosexuals go through with what African-Americans went through at one time. Again, were there ever homosexual slaves? No, of course not. Were there ever signs anywhere in America that said, "Homosexuals Cannot Be Served Here"? No, of course not. Homosexuals have always been a part of the mainstream of America since its inception (This is VERY different from homosexuality itself, which will never be in the mainstream for reasons I have already noted). The difference is that most of them kept their sexual identity private in the past, and many continue to do so today. African-Americans never had it that good. In fact, I would go so far as to say that homosexuals still have it better today than African-Americans do.

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Obviously I am not saying it ought to be perpetuated. I am just saying the way it is, and my belief that it is naive to think it will ever truly change. Homosexuality will never be mainstream because those who breed and wish to pass on their genes, the vast majority of people, see it as being a very negative trait in their offspring, their offspring's offspring, their offespring's offspring's offspring, etc.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Living in a society which has gone pretty far in tolerance I can say that it obviously isn't generally true that homosexuals can't be accepted in society. Sweden decriminalized homosexuality at about the same time as the US but today has gay marriage and being bigoted against gays is certainly more controversial than being gay.

Sweden didn't decriminalize homosexuality until 2003?

[CLARENCE 2015!]

Politico made it clear the prejudice he is describing is not his own view and he does have a point... most people my age and even my kids age especially her ein the South are very disturbed by homosexuality. Pointing out a prejudice does not make someone themselves prejudiced

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Politico made it clear the prejudice he is describing is not his own view and he does have a point... most people my age and even my kids age especially her ein the South are very disturbed by homosexuality. Pointing out a prejudice does not make someone themselves prejudiced

Now... here we have a nugget in here.

Equally, most people my age around here don't care about homosexuality... it's situational. And considering the tremendous shift in support of LGBT rights, it's fair to say that that shift will continue.