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

[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".

[ilikeverin]

Again, an individual who only engages in homosexual behavior is not going to pass on their genes. Biologically, it is perceived as being about as favorable towards reproduction as being impotent. Heterosexual couples who have children do not want their children or their children's children, or their children's, children's, children to NOT continue the process. Whether they consciously recognize this or not is irrelevant; that is how it is. The survival of the genes is paramount. Obviously homosexuality is seen as a threat to the continuation of the process. This is ultimately the foundation of homophobia, IMHO.

Again, and again, and again, you launch these streams of absolute inanity.  I ask you: do you have any idea how evolution works?  Let me help you.  I'm going to give you some keywords that you should look up, and I'll even link you to the Wikipedia articles for them.  They are: sex-limited (and its umbrella category, polyphenism); pleiotropy; epistasis; and, perhaps most importantly of all for this particular discussion (and to contradict your point that evolution is ALL ABOUT HAVING CHILDREN), inclusive fitness.  You're right; good job.  There's not much of a consensus right now what the genetic cause of homosexuality is.  But there are plenty of ways to develop an explanation which directly contradict your ludicrous falsehoods about what the "purpose" of evolution is.

[ilikeverin]

Again, an individual who only engages in homosexual behavior is not going to pass on their genes. Biologically, it is perceived as being about as favorable towards reproduction as being impotent. Heterosexual couples who have children do not want their children or their children's children, or their children's, children's, children to NOT continue the process. Whether they consciously recognize this or not is irrelevant; that is how it is. The survival of the genes is paramount. Obviously homosexuality is seen as a threat to the continuation of the process. This is ultimately the foundation of homophobia, IMHO.

Again, and again, and again, you launch these streams of absolute inanity.  I ask you: do you have any idea how evolution works?  Let me help you.  I'm going to give you some keywords that you should look up, and I'll even link you to the Wikipedia articles for them.  They are: sex-limited (and its umbrella category, polyphenism); pleiotropy; epistasis; and, perhaps most importantly of all for this particular discussion (and to contradict your point that evolution is ALL ABOUT HAVING CHILDREN), inclusive fitness.  You're right; good job.  There's not much of a consensus right now what the genetic cause of homosexuality is.  But there are plenty of ways to develop an explanation which directly contradict your ludicrous falsehoods about what the "purpose" of evolution is.

Nobody wants to get inundated with biology 101. It is enough to say that, from a strictly biological standpoint, life is about surviving and reproducing. Even viruses, which are not life in the strictest sense, adhere to this. Adhering to "survive and reproduce" is necessary for genes to survive, or a species for that matter, and even then it's not necessarily enough. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Let's not attempt to use weapons of mass destruction to divert attention away from what we were discussing: The foundation of homophobia.

NOBODY on here has even proposed an alternative hypothesis to what I have suggested as being the foundation of homophobia. Do you really just gobble up a George W. Bush-style soundbite that "THEY JUST SCARED OF WHAT DIFFERENT!"?

Why do you suppose people have children? And why do you suppose people want their children to have children? And why do you suppose people want to stay alive (i.e., survive), not die?

Oh, for God's sake, now you've completely misinterpreted what I'm saying.  I'm not saying that evolutionary psychology is hokum; that's Gully/Al/FallenMorgan's job.  It's likely that, in the main, people want to have children because the genes that predispose one to want to have children are perpetuated more readily than genes that don't.  I'm saying that homosexuality likely has a perfectly normal evolutionary foundation, thereby rendering your argument (that homosexuality is somehow hated because gays are defying the "natural inclination" to have children) ridiculous.

Perhaps people are gay because the genes that code for homosexuality only lead to homosexuality in certain combinations, while other combinations of similar genes lead to more copies of those genes being passed on (I know one recent theory of the evolutionary psychological origins of homosexuality posits that male homosexuality exists because genes that code for male homosexuality may lead to increased fertility when they exist in females); perhaps people are gay because the genes that lead to homosexuality are sex-specific, thereby allowing those genes to be passed on by members of the opposite sex (see also: hemophilia); and, like I mentioned as most important because most evolutionary psychological theories focus on it, perhaps people are gay because people who are gay can assist their siblings and other relatives in having more children or more children who live to reproductive age themselves who might have gay genes, thereby allowing for it to be passed on.

If you would like to make an actually reasonable argument for the idea that homophobia has been selected for, well, be my guest.  The idea isn't inherently stupid, but suffers some basic flaws; while homosexuality is seen across pretty much every culture, for example, homophobia is not.  Personally, I'd favor an explanation that treats homophobia as yet another example of an intergroup bias (yes, homophobes are just scared of what's different, just like racists and misogynists are, because members of excluded groups are in the "out-group" and are therefore undesirable).  But, given how superficially you're treating the idea of evolution right now, such that even a "Biology 101" standpoint bores you, I doubt you could formulate a coherent story.  You're why evolutionary psychologists can't go anywhere nice anymore