| All of them. |
so for you, only the act of sexual intercourse is sex? So oral sex isn’t sex in your opinion? Using toys with each other isn’t sex? Having an orgasm with another person isn’t sex? |
Correct. Those acts are no more sex than a man orgasming via nocturnal emission is sex or pouring a soda down my ear canal constitutes the act of drinking. |
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As someone who actually is gay, I spent a lot of time as a teenager scared and basically begging Gid to make me straight. Didn't work.
I don't claim to speak for God, but I was definitely born this way. I don't believe God would create something he hates. |
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There is a lot of research showing that gay men often have older brothers. This is true across cultures and religions. The theory is that the more boys a women has (including miscarried fetuses), the more likely her immune system is to attack a Y-protein that affects sexual preferences. Interesting stuff.
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I’ve also heard psychologists’ testimony that shows often times there is a bigger/stronger/overbearing older brother who essentially “bullies” his younger brother which further exacerbates his constitutional sensitivity and creates stronger attraction towards playing with girls. Additionally, when it comes to homosexual activity, there is almost always an older boy/man who initiates him into that world. What starts as a small inclination of nature becomes a full grown lifestyle after ~15-20 years. |
| OP, you include "nature" and "God" as two separate choices. How are you defining those terms? |
But some conservative Episcopalians think homosexuality is a sin and the institutional church used to think it was a sin. Thus, it seems that simply being Episcopalian is not reason for anyone not being anti-gay. |
are you saying that you don't see nature and god as being different from each other? Nature is naturally occurring and God is a supernatural being that some people believe in and others do not. |
I agree, but wondered what OP thought since several PPs seem to be considering nature and God to be the same thing. |
How do you figure that? Homosexuality and gender non-conforming individuals were known to exist in pre-colonial Americas. Plato and Aristotle have written about it. It has been written about and practiced in China, Japan, and India. Heck, there are (or were, pre-introduction to Christianity) entire cultures where homosexuality was the norm/celebrated, in the South Pacific Islands. |
For the purpose of the question, I would consider them to be the same thing in that it's innate/what you're born with, as opposed to being shaped due to life/culture/external influences. |
I’m speaking of Western civilization because that is the culture I, and presumably most of us, live in. Plato and Aristotle wrote about men who performed the homosexual act, but even back then, men were generally expected to marry women and rear children with them, and ultimately “grow up” out of the habit lest he be seen as effeminate in a highly martial (and at the time pagan, not Christian) culture. The identityas it exists today (out of the closet, so to speak) is very recent, in fact, homosexuality was not removed from the DSM-IV until circa the 1970s. |
Also how could an entire culture(s) exist where homosexuality is the norm? They’d literally cease to exist after a generation. In theory, bisexuality would be the norm there which speaks to another facet of nature—there is no “pure” homosexual. If you put a man and a woman alone in a room for long enough, nature will take over, even if they say they’re not sexually interested in the opposite sex. |
You made no such distinction. Your contention is that god made man and woman, created sex, yadda yadda, and that the gay identity is a modern cultural creation. Gay people have always existed, as far as we can tell, it's not a modern cultural creation. Just because they existed and were not reviled in places you're unfamiliar with, doesn't mean that they didn't exist, just that you didn't know about it, and therefore your contention that it's a modern cultural creation is incorrect. Men were expected to father children to carry on their lineage. It did not mean that they had to grow up, or otherwise stop being gay. In Greece specifically, many of the relationships were between older men, men presumably with families, and younger ones. |