That book is rather old (published 1994), and you seem to have left out bisexuals and the transgendered. A more recent report has somewhat higher numbers (around 1 in 28 for LGB, 1 in 26 for LGBT):
An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender. [...] Among adults who identify as LGB, bisexuals comprise a slight majority (1.8% compared to 1.7% who identify as lesbian or gay).
Note that the above measures how people identify themselves, which is an important distinction since...
Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as LGB. An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2%) report that they have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior and nearly 25.6 million Americans (11%) acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction.
[...] By way of comparison, these analyses suggest that the size of the LGBT community is roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey. The number of adults who have had same-sex sexual experiences is approximately equal to the population of Florida while those who have some same-sex attraction comprise more individuals than the population of Texas.
It should be noted that different surveys give remarkably different numbers. The link I gave discusses this in some detail. Also, I'm not sure if you're misquoting the survey you linked, but the numbers I've seen indicate that the "gayest" 5 large cities (San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) have around 10% LGBT people in the city itself, not the largest 5 cities (which are closer to 5%).
I'm essentially certain that you'll never convince me to be a young earth creationist, though I'm not interested in pursuing that line of thought right now anyway. I'll say I disagree with all the science you mentioned, and that I have difficulty using the word "science" to describe it since "science" usually implies that you don't know your conclusion when you start exploring, whereas as far as I'm aware young earth creationists start from the conclusion that the Bible is true. Still, thanks for mentioning your viewpoint, it's at least interesting to hear.
I'm very curious how you can take the Bible literally enough to believe in the existence of Adam and Eve, extreme longevity, and a 6000 year-old earth, while simultaneously saying
Yes the bible in the old testament probably had a law to stone them. And many nasty things have been done to them in the past because of the fear of the straight man e.g. Alan Turning in England.
The verse I quoted doesn't mince words: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." You don't seem to believe this line, "they must be put to death". Why? How can you believe other parts of your book (that to me are just as crazy) without believing this one? Doesn't that strike you as inconsistent, to selectively ignore things? Once in a while it's argued that, while the Leviticus law once applied, it no longer does--but then it used to be okay (and right!) to kill gay people, but it no longer is. That just trades one form of inconsistency with another, though.
As I see it, (a) either homosexuality really is so horrible it truly deserves the death penalty, or (b) I'm just a guy who likes guys instead of girls and the parts I quoted from the Bible are just plain wrong. I believe (b). I see no other, consistent options, and (a) completely contradicts my own experience, not to mention actually following it would create a worldwide genocide *far* larger than the Holocaust. As I said originally, I do not know how people who call themselves Christians can reconcile acceptance of homosexuality with the repeated, strong condemnation of it found in the Bible. I was completely unable to in my own case; I don't believe it can be done. The Bible has small pieces of very good advice, but most of it is, well, crap that should just be ignored. I think most Christians unthinkingly ignore the inconvenient parts of the Bible or don't think too hard about their real beliefs, which is hideously intellectually dishonest. What a grotesque way to deal with the world.
I want to be clear once more--you say, "And many nasty things have been done to them in the past", but persecution of homosexuals occurs every day. I saw an estimate that Iran has put to death around 4000 homosexuals in the last few decades. Being a prominent LGBT activist in some parts of the world can be very dangerous, to say nothing of the bullying a large fraction of even western gay kids go through. The problem is real and current, and the bits of the Bible I quoted are one of the root causes. You say "love the man"; that rings extremely hollow in the face of the ugly reality Christianity has helped create.
I would define natural as something which is designed for. and hence unnatural as something not designed.
Presumably, in your view God created me specially. He apparently designed me to be gay, since as far as I can tell I am innately gay (and in that sense I suppose my homosexuality is "natural" even with your definition). Around puberty when the other guys were becoming interested in girls I became interested in guys. I suspect genes conspired with conditions in my mom's womb to "flip a switch" an unusual way which only became apparent during adolescence. Why would God design me to be gay in light of the verses I quoted? It seems extremely cruel. The same argument can be made with "gay" replaced by "murderer", by the way. As far as I can tell the whole concept of being designed specially is flawed, but most people accept that conceit because of the comfort offered by believing in a benevolent all-powerful personal watchdog you can pray to and maybe get your wish from but who in any case makes everything work out for the best in your life, especially when it doesn't seem like it.
In my own view, evolution may be said to have designed a penis to fit in a vagina, but even supposing I wanted to use your definition of naturalness via design, that fact is not enough for me to call gay sex "unnatural" since the connotations of the word (bad; wrong; evil; confused; etc.) are so incorrect and inflammatory. The bits I quoted about sodomy being "unnatural" and a "perversion" have been used to justify the death penalty and murders. This is not an old, abstract issue either. From Wikipedia's Sodomy law article,
The precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law, but are typically understood by courts to include any sexual act deemed unnatural [emphasis in original]. [...] Sodomy laws can be found around the world. Today, consensual homosexual acts between adults are illegal in about 70 out of the 195 countries of the world (approximately 36%); in 40 of these, only male-male sex is outlawed.
...and a number of those countries have the death penalty or life in prison as penalties. Defending the term "unnatural" in this context is just not worth the awful cost.
When it comes to Humans, it was M & F, it wasn't M & M. The male loves the female. I am aware that gay people view what they do as part of themselves i.e "natural" to them, but feeling that way doesn't make it natural according to the design.
By "The male loves the female", are you implying that gay couples can't love one another? I'm not sure what the point of that sentence is. I hope the idea that gay couples can't love each other is as preposterous to you as it is to me.
I want to be clear that being gay isn't just about sex (and some gay men don't even like anal sex). I personally am looking for a long-term relationship with a man who ideally would be both my lover and best friend (and hot) (as far as I can tell, this is identical to most single heterosexuals' desires). Why a man instead of a woman? For one, I want physical affection in the relationship--yes, sex, but also simple things like kissing or cuddling without them being forced. I actually had a girlfriend for a large chunk of high school, and I don't want a relationship with such a complete lack of physical affection again when there's the simple alternative of being with a man instead. Some badly reasoned, vague, and contradictory text and cultural attitudes are irrelevant to me in this regard.
I'm reminded of a proverb, "A full person does not understand the needs of the hungry". You have a world where your desires for a woman to spend your life with (or the night with) are fully accepted. I do not. You're able to rationalize away my feelings, but only because you don't feel them yourself. If it helps, imagine a world where test tube babies a
I mean... if it were the same in terms of arousal effectiveness, I imagine radio porn would be rampant.
There's an interesting gender disparity here, actually. In outline form, (1) Men are usually very visual in terms of arousal, far moreso than women; (2) women tend to find arousal in personality traits and their own imaginations; (3) women don't care about porn nearly as much as men. Because of (1), radio porn probably wouldn't appeal to most men anyway. Because of (2), it would appeal to women, but because of (3), there's not a large market for it.
(1) Take advertisements (my view is US-centric; sorry). If they use sex appeal, the vast majority of the time they use sexy, scantily clad women. Shots with lots of cleavage predominate, with full-length leg shots and occasional (sometimes not-so-occasional) butt shots thrown in. Seeing a woman on TV in a tiny bikini is completely standard. Seeing a man in a speedo is rare and seeing him in less only happens on specialty shows that are probably trying to appeal to gay men (True Blood; QAF; Being Human; etc.). Usually men used for sex appeal on a general audience are shown from the abs up, probably since advertisers don't view it as worth upsetting people just to appeal a little more to women. The vast majority of magazines also feature sexy women on the cover.
(2) Female models usually wear a sort of serious frown. Male models often wear a great smile, presumably indicating how kind they are and how good their sense of humor is. A man in a tuxedo is a common cliche, presumably because it indicates wealth, style, etc. Even the "bad boy" stereotype is about personality traits and only peripherally looks. My local grocery store has a few shelves of romance novels. They're all for straight women. Yes, they have a hunky, scantily clad man on the front, but the vast majority of the experience in reading the book is purely in the woman's imagination. Men rarely read porn, though we certainly watch a lot of it. I remember reading an interview with an author of gay romances. He said his female audience had become larger than his male audience. Also, if you see a mismatched couple in terms of physical attractiveness, usually it's a hot woman with an ugly man (though I think this is also tied to income disparity).
[To be clear, the above is not to say that women don't like hot men. There's a lot of individual variation, and I'm obviously speaking in terms of general trends.]
(3) Playgirl's circulation has never approached Playboy's. Even then, from a 2003 interview, "Fifty percent of Playgirl's readership is [gay] male", and a more recent number I saw put it at 80%. Considering only ~3% of the population is composed of gay males and ~45% is straight females, the disparity is very large. A trans man I know (that is, female sex == genitalia, male gender == social identity) once mentioned to me how, after starting testosterone treatments, he understood men's "need" for porn. I imagine testosterone simply makes us far hornier.
(Sorry for such an offtopic post, but I don't find discussing this story worthwhile. It's almost entirely sensational--the article spends a lot of time saying how conflicting the reports are, so passing any judgement now is premature.)
An Italian article (Google translation) has slightly more detail. (Note that 'Ereditato' is mistranslated as 'Inherited'; I've replaced it below.)
To put an end I received today the resignation of spokesman for Opera, the physicist Antonio Ereditato. "There is no desire on my part of the controversy, I hope this concludes a phase," Ereditato told ANSA.
Some collaboration members have requested a motion for the resignation of Ereditato and in spite of the motion not passed, has created a rift inside. In light of this situation, Ereditato considered it appropriate to resign because the partnership was no longer manageable. "It 's been a very painful affair within the collaboration," said the director of the National Laboratories of Gran Sasso, Lucia Votano. "The motion presented by the researchers reflects the difference in judgment on the world in which the affair was conducted," he said. "It is now clear that there was error, it is understood that the measure was having problems and things are back," he added Votano. For now it's time to turn the page.
The Vice President of INFN, Antonio Masiero, Opera hopes that the collaboration will "unite us and new leadership in pursuing its primary objective specifically to observe the emergence of new types of neutrinos from the mu-type neutrinos from Cern" , ie the study of the phenomenon called neutrino oscillation.
Not much detail, unfortunately. Part of the group wanted him gone (for reasons unknown) and he wanted to end the controversy, so he stepped down.
That's kind of a silly statistic to use, since it's sensitive to population size. There are about 310 million Americans, and 1 year contains about 31 million seconds. You'd expect (roughly) 10 years of an average taxpayer's taxes to be spent every 1 second if revenues == expenditures, everything is inflation adjusted, and everyone pays taxes. If the country instead had only 31 million people you'd expect 1 year per second. The implied point--that government spending is out of control and/or hugely wasteful--depends crucially on factors not mentioned in that one-liner. Without further analysis all it does is illustrate how huge and unintuitive national scales are.
I wonder if the original quote is inflation adjusted. It would be an easy mistake to make to forget that today's dollars and dollars of the past aren't directly comparable and should not be aggregated naively. It would also account for a large part of the deviation between my very rough estimate and the quote (~1 lifetime's taxes / 4 seconds vs. 1 lifetime's taxes / <1 second).
We evolved in a different environment with vastly different social structures. Is it so hard to believe that in today's society legitimate mental problems are rampant? Just a few thousand years ago humans were living in small tribes, hunting or gathering for food, and sleeping in caves. Today our communities are gigantic and our social interactions are largely anonymous. Mental work has replaced most physical work in developed nations. At the same time people are living far longer and having fewer or no children, changing the family dynamic. We've also learned to manipulate our emotions through music, substances, and entertainment. Social standards have changed, too. I can no longer show anger by punching you without consequences.
With all of these huge recent changes in how we interact with each other and our world and in how we think, is it at all surprising that the kinks have yet to be worked out?
From conversations with my Mother in Law it would seem that my wife naturally do not like peppers. In that she at a very young age refused to eat them when everyone else around her liked them. I was simply using it as an example where a small subset of people naturally are disposed to dislike something that most everyone else likes.
I just wanted to mention that, in my own case at least, this is an excellent analogy. Sometime in middle school when puberty kicked in, my male friends started to get horny for girls. I never did; I got horny for guys. I remember a scrap of Playgirl blown into a yard that I got to see briefly at a friend's house. It... interested me, to say the least, though I was far too closeted to admit it to anyone. I hardly even let myself steal more than a glance, and taking it home was out of the question, though I surely wanted to do both. I tried to develop an interest in girls, but it never went anywhere. I was always a little worried about getting a boner in the locker room, though thankfully that never happened--I imagine I was too nervous and too good at repression. But in any case, at a very young age I found I liked something that everyone else around me felt the opposite about, just like your wife and peppers. (Oddly enough I don't really like peppers either:)
Oh, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but my post was a joke. I'm fully aware that the points I made are ridiculous, especially in the "offenders", "practice", and "gay for pay" cases. I also obviously twisted Paul's words in the Romans case. I thought the absurdity of my points together with the last line (which you quoted) would clearly flag the whole thing as a joke, but I was apparently too subtle and accidentally crossed the line into Poe's Law territory.
I am curious about your reasoning on a few points.
There isn't Male, Female, Gay, Les, there are only Male & Female
What does this mean? Gay men and lesbians certainly exist. Are you giving a pseudo-quote from Mark 10:6, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'" (or Genesis 1:27 which it's paraphrasing)? If so, why? Did God not create me, a gay man, too? Are my desires for men and lack of desire for women not His work, in your view? Paul would call me evil and my homosexuality the fruit of evil, though Jesus said not to judge others (presumably especially if you know next to nothing about them). How do you judge me?
For a gay man it's still an unnatural act even if he prefers & love doing it.
What do you define as a natural act? Our definitions appear to disagree wildly. Me having sex with a woman would be extraordinarily unnatural inasmuch as it is not in my nature to desire sexual relations with women whatsoever (if anything I desire having no sexual relations with women). I imagine you feel the same way about sex with men. Perhaps you have a sort of idealized view of nature that differs sharply from the actual world around us? If so, what is that view? How do you suppose appealing to that view will convince others who only care about the world as it exists of anything? Also, do you consider gay sex indecent? A perversion?
BTW, As a Christian, I love the gay man but I dont want him to butt fuck me. (Love the man, not the sin)
Is this at all relevant? I don't want to butt fuck you either, by the way. For one thing it would be non-consensual. From your post, I'm really not sensing that you have any love for me whatsoever. If you do, how do you show that love?
I am very surprise you can quote all these passages yet fail to understand that a gay man isn't a natural thing.
You almost certainly didn't read the last line of my post: "[On a serious note, I have no idea how some modern denominations rationalize away the above passages. I certainly wasn't able to without just calling the whole thing a load of crap.]". If you did read it, why would you think some words in a book I called "a load of crap" would convince me of anything that contradicts my own experience?
Actually the concept of an afterlife is extraordinarily vague throughout the Old Testament. Heaven and Hell aren't found until the New Testament. The OT generally promised blessings for good behavior (in this life) and curses for bad behavior (also in this life). You don't really find "He'll burn your ass" until the NT.
You mention, "Its important to note that the ten commandments are not part of Moses law's", though this is definitely false. For instance, the 613 commandments in Judaism attempt to collect all the commandments in the Law of Moses. On the version of this list I linked, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is included as number 482 ("Not to murder"). The Law of Moses refers to the first five books of the Bible--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The 10 Commandments appear both in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21.
You seem to be reading too far in to the first line you quoted from me ("That's just a test..."). I did not say that God does not value living morally ("That doesnt mean that morality is not important anymore"). I just said that faith is valued far more highly; it's certainly possible for God to value both highly. I was of course aware of the bit from James you quoted, though I actually view it as contradictory. The answer to the rhetorical question, "Can that faith save him?", would seem to be "Yes!" from the bits I quoted from Paul's letters even though James strongly implies "No." His point about demons believing in God is also quite damning to Paul's blanket statements about being saved by faith. Apparently only humans are saved by faith? And maybe works really are necessary even though Paul said they weren't? It's unclear. I never had these questions answered to my satisfaction when I considered myself a Christian, so I ignored them for the purposes of the above post.
The second line ("Making scientific evidence...") was actually supported by my James reference (so it was not "said without any backing whatsoever"). It doesn't seem like a large leap to go from "your faith will be tested to develop perseverance" to "scientific evidence contradicting your faith in young earth creationism is a test". To be clear, you say "the bible is not a scientific text and cannot be taken as such", and while I agree, the argument above assumed a young earth creationist view--that is, that the earth is ~6000 years old, Genesis is literally true, etc. [This view came from the post I was originally replying to.]
For the third line ("The science is wrong..."), I don't agree with your distinction. James may have been addressing a persecuted Christian community (which is actually quite unclear; that "letter" may not have been addressed to a specific community), but young earth creationists are also a persecuted Christian community anyway. My own post ridicules their views. The Luke reference was also quite general: in context it was spoken to all believers; making an exception for believers persecuted because of science and scientific evidence seems completely arbitrary.
Finally...
* "If you take your comment seriously you better try and make it look like one that actually is" -- I believe I dressed it up in the usual trappings of serious Biblical discussion with lots of scattered references. I could imagine a Christian making my same points (minus the joke at the very end) in all seriousness, either because they really believed it all or because they wanted to make fun of young earth creationists.
* "there is a big gap between christian faith and what you try to pass as a serious post" -- I don't really know what this means, sorry.
* "if your post tried to be critique of christianity it would have to go deeper to be considered serious" -- since your own critique is full of misunderstandings and mistakes (eg. the bit about the 10 Commandments; missing my James reference's relevance to one of my points; not knowing about the debate behind James' audience; not assuming a young earth creationist viewpoint), I'm not inclined to listen to you here; sorry.
* "if it was just a tasteless joke on the expense of christians and homosexuals well... you succeded." -- you may have a point in the Christian half of this sentence. Perhaps I
But I am serious! Gay butt sex between loving men is fine for Gentiles [== not(Jews)] post-Jesus. For while it is written in the Law of Moses that
If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
- Leviticus 20:13
it is also written in the New Testament that
...some...said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses."
[The council concluded] we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God [by requiring them to follow the whole Law of Moses]. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood."
- Acts 15:5, 19-20
Now sexual immorality is a rather vague phrase which I take to mean rape and generally non-consensual sex. You might be a little confused by the scattered references to homosexuality in Paul's letters which seem to imply that homosexuality is sexually immoral. However,
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders... will inherit the kingdom of God.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9
discusses homosexual offenders, that is, people who break the law. Since sodomy is not illegal in my country, we're fine there. Next,
For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders. The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality,..., or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God.
- 1 Timothy 1:9-11
Here one must practice homosexuality for it to be a sin. The people I was imagining weren't actively practicing their technique; they simply did what came naturally. Some translations don't even list sodomy/homosexuality here, so the interpretation is also debatable. Finally we have,
...God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
- Romans 1:26-27
This one is trickier to interpret correctly. What is an "indecent act" or a "natural relation"? For gay men, an indecent or unnatural act would be sex with a woman. The men under discussion were essentially going "gay for pay". Again, the men I was thinking about were completely gay for each other.
[On a serious note, I have no idea how some modern denominations rationalize away the above passages. I certainly wasn't able to without just calling the whole thing a load of crap.]
You say I cherry picked passages and bent their meaning. I disagree. You didn't provide a single specific charge for me to refute (eg. "I'm fairly sure that the galatians passage was about the old law of Moses" -- great; so how did I misrepresent that passage?), so I can't do more than disagree.
My post is both serious and not. Certainly the conclusion that God put dinosaur bones on earth to test Christian's faith sounds ridiculous, but how else would a young earth creationist explain them? Such people do get persecuted for their religious beliefs, by the way; I don't know what the point of most of your post is, but you seem to think my James and Luke passages weren't apt when they were.
That said, I feel compelled to tell you that your discussion skills leave me very disinclined to listen to you. You...
*...claimed the Law of Moses talks about "Things like feast, food laws, offerings and sacrifices." You left out the 10 Commandments, the death penalty for man-on-man sodomy, and many other important things. I fail to see the relevance of this line of discussion, but still, your statement was very misleading regardless.
*...insulted me by comparing my post to stuff from "fox news or/r/circlejerk" while simultaneously forgetting to tell me specifically what I did wrong.
*...brought up some irrelevant musings about faith and science.
*...perhaps didn't read my entire post, particularly the last line? [ *...have numerous grammatical and spelling issues. It's the internet, though, so that's not a big deal.]
That's just a test. God values faith very highly, far above living morally (which is impossible). Making scientific evidence which contradicts His word is just a way to solidify our faith.
The righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
- Romans 3:21
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."
Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.
- Galatians 3:10-11, 23-25
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
- James 1:2-3
The science is wrong. It's just a test. No matter what people say I will keep my faith. God told me to expect this in advance:
Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
- Luke 6:22
Now go away. I've got other things to think about:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
- Philippians 4:6-8
...like pure, lovely, honest gay butt sex between men who love each other.
The first "real-world" tricorder was developed by a Canadian company called the Vital Technologies Corporation in 1996. The scanner was called the TR-107 Mark 1; Vital Technologies sold 10,000 of them before going out of business in 1997. The TR-107 could scan EM radiation, temperature, and barometric pressure.
The TR-107 is properly referred to as a true "tricorder" due to a clause in Gene Roddenberry's contracts with Desilu/Paramount dating back to the time of the Original Series. The clause specified that if any company could find a way to make one of the fictional devices actually work, then they would have the right to use the name.
[I want to note the inner quote isn't sourced. Being fueled by the infinite energy and eye for minutiae of Star Trek fans, Memory Alpha is usually very reliable.]
I've seen other numbers indicating that your chances of being gay are drastically higher if you're highly intelligent: something like 2-3 times higher for the top few percent compared to average or dull people. (I saw those numbers in the context of an argument that highly intelligent people tend to display non-standard behavior of all kinds. Being night owls was another good example.) I have a pet theory that gay men tend to have a larger discrepancy than usual between low and high incomes weighted relative to population in each group with a particularly low low, though I've never researched it.
On the topic of gay guys behaving" gay", as far as I can tell that serves two purposes. It helps gay guys find each other (since the vast majority of guys are straight this can be helpful), and (the bigger reason) some people like identifying with gay culture for various reasons. I personally have never felt the need. A lot of guys prefer traditionally masculine men anyway.
For the most part they are living an above average standard of life, so they have money
Citation needed. The numbers I've seen indicate the opposite--that gay men earn significantly less than straight men which suggests a lower standard of living. A brief search for standard of living instead of earnings came up with nothing.
Actually the numbers I've seen indicate that gay men (research usually focuses on gay men for whatever reason instead of lesbians--I suppose lesbianism is a little less contentious?) actually earn significantly less than our non-gay counterparts. For instance, this analysis says
...same-sex behaving men experience a statistically and economically significant income penalty on the order of 23-30 percent
I'm not really sure what the cause is. Workplace discrimination? Less interest in careers, more interest in sex (dubious)? Less impetus to earn a lot to support your family? Less education partly because of crappy high school experiences? I dunno, I'm just guessing. The only targeted advertising I've gotten that comes to mind as relevant is for gay dating/hookup/porn sites and gay vacations--the vacations are the only pricey thing, and they're relatively rare. I don't think advertisers on the whole think I have money burning a hole in my pocket.
Apparently there's a movement to change the traditional lethal injection protocol to one which would leave the organs intact. Also, US executions by method since 1976: 1114 lethal injection, 157 electrocution, 11 gas chamber, 3 hanging, 3 firing squad.
Slashdot Mirror
That book is rather old (published 1994), and you seem to have left out bisexuals and the transgendered. A more recent report has somewhat higher numbers (around 1 in 28 for LGB, 1 in 26 for LGBT):
An estimated 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender. [...] Among adults who identify as LGB, bisexuals comprise a slight majority (1.8% compared to 1.7% who identify as lesbian or gay).
Note that the above measures how people identify themselves, which is an important distinction since...
Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as LGB. An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2%) report that they have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior and nearly 25.6 million Americans (11%) acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction.
[...] By way of comparison, these analyses suggest that the size of the LGBT community is roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey. The number of adults who have had same-sex sexual experiences is approximately equal to the population of Florida while those who have some same-sex attraction comprise more individuals than the population of Texas.
It should be noted that different surveys give remarkably different numbers. The link I gave discusses this in some detail. Also, I'm not sure if you're misquoting the survey you linked, but the numbers I've seen indicate that the "gayest" 5 large cities (San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) have around 10% LGBT people in the city itself, not the largest 5 cities (which are closer to 5%).
I'm essentially certain that you'll never convince me to be a young earth creationist, though I'm not interested in pursuing that line of thought right now anyway. I'll say I disagree with all the science you mentioned, and that I have difficulty using the word "science" to describe it since "science" usually implies that you don't know your conclusion when you start exploring, whereas as far as I'm aware young earth creationists start from the conclusion that the Bible is true. Still, thanks for mentioning your viewpoint, it's at least interesting to hear.
I'm very curious how you can take the Bible literally enough to believe in the existence of Adam and Eve, extreme longevity, and a 6000 year-old earth, while simultaneously saying
Yes the bible in the old testament probably had a law to stone them. And many nasty things have been done to them in the past because of the fear of the straight man e.g. Alan Turning in England.
The verse I quoted doesn't mince words: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." You don't seem to believe this line, "they must be put to death". Why? How can you believe other parts of your book (that to me are just as crazy) without believing this one? Doesn't that strike you as inconsistent, to selectively ignore things? Once in a while it's argued that, while the Leviticus law once applied, it no longer does--but then it used to be okay (and right!) to kill gay people, but it no longer is. That just trades one form of inconsistency with another, though.
As I see it, (a) either homosexuality really is so horrible it truly deserves the death penalty, or (b) I'm just a guy who likes guys instead of girls and the parts I quoted from the Bible are just plain wrong. I believe (b). I see no other, consistent options, and (a) completely contradicts my own experience, not to mention actually following it would create a worldwide genocide *far* larger than the Holocaust. As I said originally, I do not know how people who call themselves Christians can reconcile acceptance of homosexuality with the repeated, strong condemnation of it found in the Bible. I was completely unable to in my own case; I don't believe it can be done. The Bible has small pieces of very good advice, but most of it is, well, crap that should just be ignored. I think most Christians unthinkingly ignore the inconvenient parts of the Bible or don't think too hard about their real beliefs, which is hideously intellectually dishonest. What a grotesque way to deal with the world.
I want to be clear once more--you say, "And many nasty things have been done to them in the past", but persecution of homosexuals occurs every day. I saw an estimate that Iran has put to death around 4000 homosexuals in the last few decades. Being a prominent LGBT activist in some parts of the world can be very dangerous, to say nothing of the bullying a large fraction of even western gay kids go through. The problem is real and current, and the bits of the Bible I quoted are one of the root causes. You say "love the man"; that rings extremely hollow in the face of the ugly reality Christianity has helped create.
-200 rounds is even more secure.
Actually, they used infinitely complex encryption by employing ROT13 infinitely many times (...for even values of infinity).
Thanks for the respectful reply.
I would define natural as something which is designed for. and hence unnatural as something not designed.
Presumably, in your view God created me specially. He apparently designed me to be gay, since as far as I can tell I am innately gay (and in that sense I suppose my homosexuality is "natural" even with your definition). Around puberty when the other guys were becoming interested in girls I became interested in guys. I suspect genes conspired with conditions in my mom's womb to "flip a switch" an unusual way which only became apparent during adolescence. Why would God design me to be gay in light of the verses I quoted? It seems extremely cruel. The same argument can be made with "gay" replaced by "murderer", by the way. As far as I can tell the whole concept of being designed specially is flawed, but most people accept that conceit because of the comfort offered by believing in a benevolent all-powerful personal watchdog you can pray to and maybe get your wish from but who in any case makes everything work out for the best in your life, especially when it doesn't seem like it.
In my own view, evolution may be said to have designed a penis to fit in a vagina, but even supposing I wanted to use your definition of naturalness via design, that fact is not enough for me to call gay sex "unnatural" since the connotations of the word (bad; wrong; evil; confused; etc.) are so incorrect and inflammatory. The bits I quoted about sodomy being "unnatural" and a "perversion" have been used to justify the death penalty and murders. This is not an old, abstract issue either. From Wikipedia's Sodomy law article,
The precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law, but are typically understood by courts to include any sexual act deemed unnatural [emphasis in original]. [...] Sodomy laws can be found around the world. Today, consensual homosexual acts between adults are illegal in about 70 out of the 195 countries of the world (approximately 36%); in 40 of these, only male-male sex is outlawed.
...and a number of those countries have the death penalty or life in prison as penalties. Defending the term "unnatural" in this context is just not worth the awful cost.
When it comes to Humans, it was M & F, it wasn't M & M. The male loves the female. I am aware that gay people view what they do as part of themselves i.e "natural" to them, but feeling that way doesn't make it natural according to the design.
By "The male loves the female", are you implying that gay couples can't love one another? I'm not sure what the point of that sentence is. I hope the idea that gay couples can't love each other is as preposterous to you as it is to me.
I want to be clear that being gay isn't just about sex (and some gay men don't even like anal sex). I personally am looking for a long-term relationship with a man who ideally would be both my lover and best friend (and hot) (as far as I can tell, this is identical to most single heterosexuals' desires). Why a man instead of a woman? For one, I want physical affection in the relationship--yes, sex, but also simple things like kissing or cuddling without them being forced. I actually had a girlfriend for a large chunk of high school, and I don't want a relationship with such a complete lack of physical affection again when there's the simple alternative of being with a man instead. Some badly reasoned, vague, and contradictory text and cultural attitudes are irrelevant to me in this regard.
I'm reminded of a proverb, "A full person does not understand the needs of the hungry". You have a world where your desires for a woman to spend your life with (or the night with) are fully accepted. I do not. You're able to rationalize away my feelings, but only because you don't feel them yourself. If it helps, imagine a world where test tube babies a
I mean... if it were the same in terms of arousal effectiveness, I imagine radio porn would be rampant.
There's an interesting gender disparity here, actually. In outline form, (1) Men are usually very visual in terms of arousal, far moreso than women; (2) women tend to find arousal in personality traits and their own imaginations; (3) women don't care about porn nearly as much as men. Because of (1), radio porn probably wouldn't appeal to most men anyway. Because of (2), it would appeal to women, but because of (3), there's not a large market for it.
(1) Take advertisements (my view is US-centric; sorry). If they use sex appeal, the vast majority of the time they use sexy, scantily clad women. Shots with lots of cleavage predominate, with full-length leg shots and occasional (sometimes not-so-occasional) butt shots thrown in. Seeing a woman on TV in a tiny bikini is completely standard. Seeing a man in a speedo is rare and seeing him in less only happens on specialty shows that are probably trying to appeal to gay men (True Blood; QAF; Being Human; etc.). Usually men used for sex appeal on a general audience are shown from the abs up, probably since advertisers don't view it as worth upsetting people just to appeal a little more to women. The vast majority of magazines also feature sexy women on the cover.
(2) Female models usually wear a sort of serious frown. Male models often wear a great smile, presumably indicating how kind they are and how good their sense of humor is. A man in a tuxedo is a common cliche, presumably because it indicates wealth, style, etc. Even the "bad boy" stereotype is about personality traits and only peripherally looks. My local grocery store has a few shelves of romance novels. They're all for straight women. Yes, they have a hunky, scantily clad man on the front, but the vast majority of the experience in reading the book is purely in the woman's imagination. Men rarely read porn, though we certainly watch a lot of it. I remember reading an interview with an author of gay romances. He said his female audience had become larger than his male audience. Also, if you see a mismatched couple in terms of physical attractiveness, usually it's a hot woman with an ugly man (though I think this is also tied to income disparity).
[To be clear, the above is not to say that women don't like hot men. There's a lot of individual variation, and I'm obviously speaking in terms of general trends.]
(3) Playgirl's circulation has never approached Playboy's. Even then, from a 2003 interview, "Fifty percent of Playgirl's readership is [gay] male", and a more recent number I saw put it at 80%. Considering only ~3% of the population is composed of gay males and ~45% is straight females, the disparity is very large. A trans man I know (that is, female sex == genitalia, male gender == social identity) once mentioned to me how, after starting testosterone treatments, he understood men's "need" for porn. I imagine testosterone simply makes us far hornier.
(Sorry for such an offtopic post, but I don't find discussing this story worthwhile. It's almost entirely sensational--the article spends a lot of time saying how conflicting the reports are, so passing any judgement now is premature.)
An Italian article (Google translation) has slightly more detail. (Note that 'Ereditato' is mistranslated as 'Inherited'; I've replaced it below.)
To put an end I received today the resignation of spokesman for Opera, the physicist Antonio Ereditato. "There is no desire on my part of the controversy, I hope this concludes a phase," Ereditato told ANSA.
Some collaboration members have requested a motion for the resignation of Ereditato and in spite of the motion not passed, has created a rift inside. In light of this situation, Ereditato considered it appropriate to resign because the partnership was no longer manageable. "It 's been a very painful affair within the collaboration," said the director of the National Laboratories of Gran Sasso, Lucia Votano. "The motion presented by the researchers reflects the difference in judgment on the world in which the affair was conducted," he said. "It is now clear that there was error, it is understood that the measure was having problems and things are back," he added Votano. For now it's time to turn the page.
The Vice President of INFN, Antonio Masiero, Opera hopes that the collaboration will "unite us and new leadership in pursuing its primary objective specifically to observe the emergence of new types of neutrinos from the mu-type neutrinos from Cern" , ie the study of the phenomenon called neutrino oscillation.
Not much detail, unfortunately. Part of the group wanted him gone (for reasons unknown) and he wanted to end the controversy, so he stepped down.
That's kind of a silly statistic to use, since it's sensitive to population size. There are about 310 million Americans, and 1 year contains about 31 million seconds. You'd expect (roughly) 10 years of an average taxpayer's taxes to be spent every 1 second if revenues == expenditures, everything is inflation adjusted, and everyone pays taxes. If the country instead had only 31 million people you'd expect 1 year per second. The implied point--that government spending is out of control and/or hugely wasteful--depends crucially on factors not mentioned in that one-liner. Without further analysis all it does is illustrate how huge and unintuitive national scales are.
I wonder if the original quote is inflation adjusted. It would be an easy mistake to make to forget that today's dollars and dollars of the past aren't directly comparable and should not be aggregated naively. It would also account for a large part of the deviation between my very rough estimate and the quote (~1 lifetime's taxes / 4 seconds vs. 1 lifetime's taxes / <1 second).
We evolved in a different environment with vastly different social structures. Is it so hard to believe that in today's society legitimate mental problems are rampant? Just a few thousand years ago humans were living in small tribes, hunting or gathering for food, and sleeping in caves. Today our communities are gigantic and our social interactions are largely anonymous. Mental work has replaced most physical work in developed nations. At the same time people are living far longer and having fewer or no children, changing the family dynamic. We've also learned to manipulate our emotions through music, substances, and entertainment. Social standards have changed, too. I can no longer show anger by punching you without consequences.
With all of these huge recent changes in how we interact with each other and our world and in how we think, is it at all surprising that the kinks have yet to be worked out?
Ok, sounds good. I took "burn your ass" to imply a stay in Hell when that's not what you meant; oops.
Hah, thanks for the laugh and the correction ["(not bones, rocks shaped like bones)"].
From conversations with my Mother in Law it would seem that my wife naturally do not like peppers. In that she at a very young age refused to eat them when everyone else around her liked them. I was simply using it as an example where a small subset of people naturally are disposed to dislike something that most everyone else likes.
I just wanted to mention that, in my own case at least, this is an excellent analogy. Sometime in middle school when puberty kicked in, my male friends started to get horny for girls. I never did; I got horny for guys. I remember a scrap of Playgirl blown into a yard that I got to see briefly at a friend's house. It... interested me, to say the least, though I was far too closeted to admit it to anyone. I hardly even let myself steal more than a glance, and taking it home was out of the question, though I surely wanted to do both. I tried to develop an interest in girls, but it never went anywhere. I was always a little worried about getting a boner in the locker room, though thankfully that never happened--I imagine I was too nervous and too good at repression. But in any case, at a very young age I found I liked something that everyone else around me felt the opposite about, just like your wife and peppers. (Oddly enough I don't really like peppers either :)
Oh, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but my post was a joke. I'm fully aware that the points I made are ridiculous, especially in the "offenders", "practice", and "gay for pay" cases. I also obviously twisted Paul's words in the Romans case. I thought the absurdity of my points together with the last line (which you quoted) would clearly flag the whole thing as a joke, but I was apparently too subtle and accidentally crossed the line into Poe's Law territory.
I am curious about your reasoning on a few points.
There isn't Male, Female, Gay, Les, there are only Male & Female
What does this mean? Gay men and lesbians certainly exist. Are you giving a pseudo-quote from Mark 10:6, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'" (or Genesis 1:27 which it's paraphrasing)? If so, why? Did God not create me, a gay man, too? Are my desires for men and lack of desire for women not His work, in your view? Paul would call me evil and my homosexuality the fruit of evil, though Jesus said not to judge others (presumably especially if you know next to nothing about them). How do you judge me?
For a gay man it's still an unnatural act even if he prefers & love doing it.
What do you define as a natural act? Our definitions appear to disagree wildly. Me having sex with a woman would be extraordinarily unnatural inasmuch as it is not in my nature to desire sexual relations with women whatsoever (if anything I desire having no sexual relations with women). I imagine you feel the same way about sex with men. Perhaps you have a sort of idealized view of nature that differs sharply from the actual world around us? If so, what is that view? How do you suppose appealing to that view will convince others who only care about the world as it exists of anything? Also, do you consider gay sex indecent? A perversion?
BTW, As a Christian, I love the gay man but I dont want him to butt fuck me. (Love the man, not the sin)
Is this at all relevant? I don't want to butt fuck you either, by the way. For one thing it would be non-consensual. From your post, I'm really not sensing that you have any love for me whatsoever. If you do, how do you show that love?
I am very surprise you can quote all these passages yet fail to understand that a gay man isn't a natural thing.
You almost certainly didn't read the last line of my post: "[On a serious note, I have no idea how some modern denominations rationalize away the above passages. I certainly wasn't able to without just calling the whole thing a load of crap.]". If you did read it, why would you think some words in a book I called "a load of crap" would convince me of anything that contradicts my own experience?
Actually the concept of an afterlife is extraordinarily vague throughout the Old Testament. Heaven and Hell aren't found until the New Testament. The OT generally promised blessings for good behavior (in this life) and curses for bad behavior (also in this life). You don't really find "He'll burn your ass" until the NT.
Thank you for your apologies and specific points.
You mention, "Its important to note that the ten commandments are not part of Moses law's", though this is definitely false. For instance, the 613 commandments in Judaism attempt to collect all the commandments in the Law of Moses. On the version of this list I linked, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is included as number 482 ("Not to murder"). The Law of Moses refers to the first five books of the Bible--Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The 10 Commandments appear both in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21.
You seem to be reading too far in to the first line you quoted from me ("That's just a test..."). I did not say that God does not value living morally ("That doesnt mean that morality is not important anymore"). I just said that faith is valued far more highly; it's certainly possible for God to value both highly. I was of course aware of the bit from James you quoted, though I actually view it as contradictory. The answer to the rhetorical question, "Can that faith save him?", would seem to be "Yes!" from the bits I quoted from Paul's letters even though James strongly implies "No." His point about demons believing in God is also quite damning to Paul's blanket statements about being saved by faith. Apparently only humans are saved by faith? And maybe works really are necessary even though Paul said they weren't? It's unclear. I never had these questions answered to my satisfaction when I considered myself a Christian, so I ignored them for the purposes of the above post.
The second line ("Making scientific evidence...") was actually supported by my James reference (so it was not "said without any backing whatsoever"). It doesn't seem like a large leap to go from "your faith will be tested to develop perseverance" to "scientific evidence contradicting your faith in young earth creationism is a test". To be clear, you say "the bible is not a scientific text and cannot be taken as such", and while I agree, the argument above assumed a young earth creationist view--that is, that the earth is ~6000 years old, Genesis is literally true, etc. [This view came from the post I was originally replying to.]
For the third line ("The science is wrong..."), I don't agree with your distinction. James may have been addressing a persecuted Christian community (which is actually quite unclear; that "letter" may not have been addressed to a specific community), but young earth creationists are also a persecuted Christian community anyway. My own post ridicules their views. The Luke reference was also quite general: in context it was spoken to all believers; making an exception for believers persecuted because of science and scientific evidence seems completely arbitrary.
Finally...
* "If you take your comment seriously you better try and make it look like one that actually is" -- I believe I dressed it up in the usual trappings of serious Biblical discussion with lots of scattered references. I could imagine a Christian making my same points (minus the joke at the very end) in all seriousness, either because they really believed it all or because they wanted to make fun of young earth creationists.
* "there is a big gap between christian faith and what you try to pass as a serious post" -- I don't really know what this means, sorry.
* "if your post tried to be critique of christianity it would have to go deeper to be considered serious" -- since your own critique is full of misunderstandings and mistakes (eg. the bit about the 10 Commandments; missing my James reference's relevance to one of my points; not knowing about the debate behind James' audience; not assuming a young earth creationist viewpoint), I'm not inclined to listen to you here; sorry.
* "if it was just a tasteless joke on the expense of christians and homosexuals well... you succeded." -- you may have a point in the Christian half of this sentence. Perhaps I
But I am serious! Gay butt sex between loving men is fine for Gentiles [== not(Jews)] post-Jesus. For while it is written in the Law of Moses that
If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
- Leviticus 20:13
it is also written in the New Testament that
[The council concluded] we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God [by requiring them to follow the whole Law of Moses]. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood."
- Acts 15:5, 19-20
Now sexual immorality is a rather vague phrase which I take to mean rape and generally non-consensual sex. You might be a little confused by the scattered references to homosexuality in Paul's letters which seem to imply that homosexuality is sexually immoral. However,
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders ... will inherit the kingdom of God.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9
discusses homosexual offenders, that is, people who break the law. Since sodomy is not illegal in my country, we're fine there. Next,
For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders. The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, ..., or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God.
- 1 Timothy 1:9-11
Here one must practice homosexuality for it to be a sin. The people I was imagining weren't actively practicing their technique; they simply did what came naturally. Some translations don't even list sodomy/homosexuality here, so the interpretation is also debatable. Finally we have,
- Romans 1:26-27
This one is trickier to interpret correctly. What is an "indecent act" or a "natural relation"? For gay men, an indecent or unnatural act would be sex with a woman. The men under discussion were essentially going "gay for pay". Again, the men I was thinking about were completely gay for each other.
[On a serious note, I have no idea how some modern denominations rationalize away the above passages. I certainly wasn't able to without just calling the whole thing a load of crap.]
You say I cherry picked passages and bent their meaning. I disagree. You didn't provide a single specific charge for me to refute (eg. "I'm fairly sure that the galatians passage was about the old law of Moses" -- great; so how did I misrepresent that passage?), so I can't do more than disagree.
My post is both serious and not. Certainly the conclusion that God put dinosaur bones on earth to test Christian's faith sounds ridiculous, but how else would a young earth creationist explain them? Such people do get persecuted for their religious beliefs, by the way; I don't know what the point of most of your post is, but you seem to think my James and Luke passages weren't apt when they were.
That said, I feel compelled to tell you that your discussion skills leave me very disinclined to listen to you. You...
* ...claimed the Law of Moses talks about "Things like feast, food laws, offerings and sacrifices." You left out the 10 Commandments, the death penalty for man-on-man sodomy, and many other important things. I fail to see the relevance of this line of discussion, but still, your statement was very misleading regardless. ...insulted me by comparing my post to stuff from "fox news or /r/circlejerk" while simultaneously forgetting to tell me specifically what I did wrong. ...brought up some irrelevant musings about faith and science. ...perhaps didn't read my entire post, particularly the last line? ...have numerous grammatical and spelling issues. It's the internet, though, so that's not a big deal.]
*
*
*
[ *
That's just a test. God values faith very highly, far above living morally (which is impossible). Making scientific evidence which contradicts His word is just a way to solidify our faith.
The righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
- Romans 3:21
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."
Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.
- Galatians 3:10-11, 23-25
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
- James 1:2-3
The science is wrong. It's just a test. No matter what people say I will keep my faith. God told me to expect this in advance:
Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
- Luke 6:22
Now go away. I've got other things to think about:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
- Philippians 4:6-8
...like pure, lovely, honest gay butt sex between men who love each other.
Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki) says
The first "real-world" tricorder was developed by a Canadian company called the Vital Technologies Corporation in 1996. The scanner was called the TR-107 Mark 1; Vital Technologies sold 10,000 of them before going out of business in 1997. The TR-107 could scan EM radiation, temperature, and barometric pressure.
The TR-107 is properly referred to as a true "tricorder" due to a clause in Gene Roddenberry's contracts with Desilu/Paramount dating back to the time of the Original Series. The clause specified that if any company could find a way to make one of the fictional devices actually work, then they would have the right to use the name.
[I want to note the inner quote isn't sourced. Being fueled by the infinite energy and eye for minutiae of Star Trek fans, Memory Alpha is usually very reliable.]
I've seen other numbers indicating that your chances of being gay are drastically higher if you're highly intelligent: something like 2-3 times higher for the top few percent compared to average or dull people. (I saw those numbers in the context of an argument that highly intelligent people tend to display non-standard behavior of all kinds. Being night owls was another good example.) I have a pet theory that gay men tend to have a larger discrepancy than usual between low and high incomes weighted relative to population in each group with a particularly low low, though I've never researched it.
On the topic of gay guys behaving" gay", as far as I can tell that serves two purposes. It helps gay guys find each other (since the vast majority of guys are straight this can be helpful), and (the bigger reason) some people like identifying with gay culture for various reasons. I personally have never felt the need. A lot of guys prefer traditionally masculine men anyway.
For the most part they are living an above average standard of life, so they have money
Citation needed. The numbers I've seen indicate the opposite--that gay men earn significantly less than straight men which suggests a lower standard of living. A brief search for standard of living instead of earnings came up with nothing.
Actually the numbers I've seen indicate that gay men (research usually focuses on gay men for whatever reason instead of lesbians--I suppose lesbianism is a little less contentious?) actually earn significantly less than our non-gay counterparts. For instance, this analysis says
I'm not really sure what the cause is. Workplace discrimination? Less interest in careers, more interest in sex (dubious)? Less impetus to earn a lot to support your family? Less education partly because of crappy high school experiences? I dunno, I'm just guessing. The only targeted advertising I've gotten that comes to mind as relevant is for gay dating/hookup/porn sites and gay vacations--the vacations are the only pricey thing, and they're relatively rare. I don't think advertisers on the whole think I have money burning a hole in my pocket.
...or, "the label" refers to "an HTML5 project", instead of just "HTML5".
But if P != NP, how will we ever produce the certificate in time before the next ejection?
Apparently there's a movement to change the traditional lethal injection protocol to one which would leave the organs intact. Also, US executions by method since 1976: 1114 lethal injection, 157 electrocution, 11 gas chamber, 3 hanging, 3 firing squad.