Also, given your stance that "reproduction is the main purpose of every biological organism," wouldn't that also make an altruistic self-sacrifice a defect? Wouldn't that also make the desire to enter the clergy to serve a community a defect?
No, for the same reason that suicide is not a defect - it is a personal choice. A defect prevents you from making a personal choice. Your position is that a homosexual is unable to make the personal choice of reproduction due to "the way he is"; that makes homosexuality a defect. A cure is something that would remove the defect by restoring his choice to reproduce.
Your stance is not a scientific one. It is a moral one that is masquerading as a scientific one. In fact, it is clear you are approaching this whole conversation with extreme prejudice.
Actually it is the other way around: you are making the moral argument here. You are extremely prejudiced, but you do not see your own prejudice. You will not accept any argument that shows that homosexuality is not a normal behaviour because you believe that it is and that's that. I have presented my arguments, but you reject them merely because I'm "intolerant", not because of any rational objection you have to them.
The thing is, though, that the ONLY thing that I don't accept is your intolerance. If you still didn't approve of homosexuals, but gave them the right to live their own lives as they saw fit, I would have no gripe with you.
And in a typical liberal fashion you equate a refusal to accept homosexuality as normal to intolerance. And immediately you equate intolerance to genocide, or whatever it is you are imagining. If homosexuality can be cured, such a cure should be made available. I never said that we should round up homosexuals and apply this cure or kill them. That's just what you believe "intolerance" always leads to. I feel sorry for you and your life led in fear, ignorance, and prejudice that you can't see in yourself.
Ah, the truth emerges. I'm sorry, but I fail to see that these differences constitute "defects" that can be corrected. Until this attitude changes, it is obvious that any of these smaller details of scientific vs. non-scientific statements is completely and totally moot.
WTF? The discussion was on the subject of whether homosexuality could be cured, not the subject of whether such a cure is desirable. You are arguing the second point here while ignoring the first. I specifically did the opposite. If you dislike the term "defects", you can substitute "differences", and my argument still holds: wherever there is a defined difference, it is physically possible to eliminate it, and thus "cure" the condition.
it looks like there is a bit of bigotry and intolerance at the root of your arguments. You even go so far as to make the analogy of comparing homosexuality to AIDS.
If you insist that any discussion about a cure must start with acceptance of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, you're not going to get anywhere. The only reason to cure something is when it is a disease, and homosexuality most definitely is a disease: a mental illness. A comparison to AIDS was perhaps inappropriate, since that is caused by an infectious agent. A better comparison would be to schizophrenia. Both are disorders that interfere with a normal life. Homosexuality prevents the patient from having normal sexual and thus reproductive relations. Since reproduction is the main purpose of every biological organism, it definitely constitutes a defect, and makes homosexuality a serious disease that should be cured.
This, however, is a moral choice, just as is your acceptance of homosexuality as normal. Morals are relative to each person and are very deeply seated. Your "until this attitude changes" basically implies that your moral code is superiour to mine and that I am an evil person until I change mine to conform to yours. Looks like you're the bigot too, since you're always right and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.
have known (and still know) several people who are homosexual, and guess what? The quality of person seems to be a very, very good match to the range of people in the world. In other words, they are people.
So they are. Guess what: so are schizophrenics. So are most other people suffering from serious illnesses, like Alzheimer's disease. Saying that you are ill does not imply that you are a bad person.
Of course, there is also the question of whether homosexuality is biologically caused. Some would say that it is a matter of choice (which incidentally explains why SOCE is unable to cure gays: they don't want to be cured), in which case the argument would be that he who chooses the immoral action of having homosexual sex is indeed a bad person. You wouldn't want this to be true, would you? It would offend your liberal conditioning, so let's just drop it, shall we?
> especially given the fact that there IS evidence (although not conclusive) to the contrary?
There is no evidence to the contrary. There is only evidence that there were some individuals that were unable to change their sexual orientation through a particular method. The reasons for the failure were unspecified. From reading the SOCE article I get the impression that most quit because they simply don't want to continue. Barring the obvious reason of disliking the electric shock methods, for which I certainly don't blame them, other therapy methods seem to progress for a while until the patient voluntarily stops trying. None of this provides any evidence that orientation change is impossible, or even unlikely. It is merely evidence that the particular methods used are unable to create this change in a sufficently short period of time in volunteers.
> what clear evidence is there that you can change sexual orientation
There are the ex-gay groups, for example. On the wikipedia article there is a list of several people who claim to have achieved SOC. There is no explanation of how that happened, but as long as it did, it constitutes evidence that it can happen.
Secondly, just because there are methods that can not change sexual orientation, does not mean that there never will be. There obviously are mental or biological differences in the homosexual brain. Just like any other mental or physical problem, these defects can be corrected by adjusting the affected mental or physical structures to match those of a healthy brain. Perhaps this can be done by therapy, or drugs, or genetic modifications, but there is no doubt that a cure is possible in some form. Would you doubt that a cure for cancer or AIDS is possible just because we do not have one yet?
As a scientist myself, I would say that it looks like sexual orientation cannot be altered. Yes, this has not been proven absolutely, but it is the hypothesis that best fits the available data. So, I'm going to have to say that the claim that homosexuality can be changed is unscientific.
Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it is impossible. From the evidence you have cited it might be possible to conclude that the particular methods used in the studies cited are unlikely to cause a change in sexual orientation. (I actually happen to agree with that; electric shocks do not sound like a plausible cure for anything) However, that in no way rules out the existence of other methods that would work. Until you have some significant proof one way or the other, any hypothesis is fair play in science. As a scientist you ought to know that. Just because an idea is accepted by the mainstream, doesn't make it irrevocably true. Experimental evidence is the only arbiter of truth in science, and on this subject there isn't any and is not going to be due to the current policies.
"I'm Christian, and that's ok" shouldn't be offensive to anyone, even an atheist. "You are Christian, and need to be either cured or persecuted" is an offensive statement. Can you see the distinction?
No.
First of all, nobody said anything about persecution. Believing that homosexuality is a mental illness implies that it may be possible to cure it, and if so, this cure should be made available to anybody who needs it. But just as nobody suggests persecuting you for having diabetes or cancer or any other disease, persecution of homosexuals is not appropriate either.
Second, both statements are merely statements of someone's opinion. Taking offense at other people's opinions is something anybody is entitled to do in this country, but that does not in any way imply that I'm required to care about your offense at my opinions. After all, the offense is also your personal opinion. Personal opinions come from personal values. To say that some opinions are "legitimate" while others aren't is to imply the existence of a universal code of values that everyone must adhere to (or be persecuted, I suppose, if I apply your logic to your own beliefs). Catholicism proposes that there is a universal code of values and that it is defined by God. By supporting homosexuality, you are violating that code. Therefore, when you utter any opinions that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle choice, you are the one with illegitimate opinions. Or would you prefer to be a hypocrite and say that universal values are only universal when they are yours?
With your nick, you may also be interested to know that Pentadactyl is working just fine with Firefox 4, and will help you not see those weird new forward/reverse buttons ever again.
they banned the app because a large group of people was *legitimately* offended.
Oh, so an offense is only legitimate when you agree with it? Or is it only when it agrees with your political party's views? Or is it the number of people offended?
> 48% my ass, I doubt it's even near 20% nationally.
You need to get out more. I'm guessing that you regularly only read Slashdot and other left-biased sites, where most opinions conflicting with the current left-wing policy are modded down immediately. Consequently, you believe the number of people who have a worldview similar to your own is much greater than it really is. Of course, the same is true of people who watch Fox news or read www.freerepublic.com. The internet makes it easier than ever to stick to your own clique and pretend that your opinions are the majority. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't really know.
the vast majority of evidence on the topic supports the statement that homosexuality in a person cannot be altered.
That is not true. According to Wikipedia article on sexual orientation change efforts, "there are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent sexual orientation change efforts do or do not work to change a personâ(TM)s sexual orientation." Apparently that's because such studies are contrary to the official policy of the APA and other such organizations that homosexuality change efforts should not be permitted. Considering that this policy would greatly influence your ability to get funding for such a study, their nonexistence is unsurprizing. So claiming that homosexuality can be changed is not unscientific; it just isn't supported due to lack of evidence, and since we are not permitted to collect this evidence, that is not going to change anytime soon.
According to the latest Gallup poll on homosexuality, 48% of the US population believes that homosexuality is immoral. That's more than 44% who believe that doctor-assisted suicide is. Yeah, you could pander to homosexuals and remove the app, and then offend the other half of the country by thus giving implicit support to an activity they consider immoral. That's the problem with "offensive" censorship: everything offends someone. Once you start censoring, you can't really stop until you censor everything. Or, of course, Apple could assume that all iPhone users are left wing and the rest of the population's opinions do not matter, which seems to be what happened.
Correction: all people are generally uninterested in science and technology. Americans are no worse than the rest of the world. In those countries in Asia where most of those H1Bs come from people are not interested either; they are interested in passing the test and getting the job. Tech jobs pay more than sweatshops, there is a tradition for test taking (especially in China), and their parents make them. Once they pass the test and get the job, they stop caring and become just like everybody else.
What I'm seeing is folks (manager types ) using their iPhone as their business computer - eliminating the laptop and even their desktop.
You mean manager types actually use their laptop or even their desktop for something? Heck, let's take their iPhones away from them too; I bet everyone's productivity will soar.
we have already run into the limit on reasonable clock speeds several years ago. And despite this, the computer industry hasn't cataclysmically imploded.
All industries also have a very high limit on bullshit production. We're having plenty of growth in it right now.
This is like having three units of measurement for the weight of the pie, the weight of the pie you have eaten, and the weight you gain by eating the pie.
There are so many radiation units out there and people keep using them without regard to what they really mean. It's nice that you've got your Sieverts covered. Now you'll have to learn about Grays, Curies, Becquerels, Rads, Rems, and Roentgens. Here's a handy conversion chart.
frankly it was obvious almost from the time he could walk. His mannerisms, his voice, hell everything about him screamed "gay!"
So let me get this straight, this poor boy exhibited gender-inappropriate behaviour and you did nothing to correct it? Parenting is not just about things you do to a kid, it's also about the things you do not do. All kids act inappropriately now and then; when they do, they should be told to stop. A boy should be instructed how a male of the species is supposed to act - he has no gene for that. You did not, so he continued to act weirdly. Boys don't like boys who act weirdly and avoid them. A boy who grows up without having much contact with other boys will not experience any negative feedback about his behaviour and will continue becoming more and more different from them. Then he hits puberty and his alienation and mannerisms influence his sexual orientation. Good going, dad!
the punk said "I'd beat that boy straight!"
Yeah, as if brief violence could overturn 14 years of (unconscious) conditioning. It's like those "gay cure" groups who give gays electric shocks with gay porn. Sick and misguided...
Instead of trying to make everyone fit into your myopic world view, why not just treat them like people?
Yeah, why not? When a family member gets sick, do you just ostracise him? Do you insist that there is nothing wrong with him and ignore his problem? Or do you help him get well?
If your God is so petty and spiteful that they would condemn a decent person to some eternal suffering because of who they love and nothing else?
It is not whom they love, it's whom they have sex with. If he "loves" the wrong gender, at least he shouldn't have sex with it. It's not like it's hard. Getting laid is not something that just happens; it requires a great deal of hard work. If he dates women and with experience learns to enjoy sex with them, he won't be gay any more. Of course, nobody will help him do this, since the whole world seems to have declared that being gay is normal and nobody should dare correct this problem. Now that's tough breaks...
No author can be legally required to reveal the source code to something that they hold the copyright on, even if it is a derivative work of something that they do not. They can, however, be forced to cease distribution of the application if they do not.
Come on, enough of that already. Yes we know, and you're missing the point. "Reveal the source or stop selling your product" is like "your money or your life" - not much of a choice. Your company will go broke either way, so there is no practical difference.
According to the article glibc is not in violation because Linus explicitly blesses the stripped headers that it uses. Since I have not been personally blessed by Linus, I could be in violation if I distribute my libc (which I am not presently doing). I could, I suppose, argue that I am only copying declarations, but there are some gray areas like sigset #defines, for example, which have a behaviour dictated by the standard but are difficult to implement in any way other than what's already either in the kernel (using a single integral type) or in glibc itself (using an array to potentially support 1024 signals). I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Invent some other data structure to store signals in? Am I already "contaminated" because I saw those implementations first and am legally forbidden from writing any implementation at all? WTF else?
There is a quote from Linus in the article where he raves that including a kernel header does make the resultant program subject to the GPL. So, I wonder, if I want to write an app that writes to the framebuffer device and have to include linux/fb.h, does that mean I'm violating copyright? If I write a libc alternative that needs definitions from the kernel headers to work, am I violating copyright? 'Cause if I am, it's definitely time to ditch Linux and work on yet another OS... Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some benchmarks to prove it. Sparc gives 2-3 times less performance per core at much higher cost.
Whether you call it food or garbage, you still can make an island out of it. And I want one.
Let's start a nationwide campaign to improve the quality of our garbage! When you think of garbage - think of Akim!
No, for the same reason that suicide is not a defect - it is a personal choice. A defect prevents you from making a personal choice. Your position is that a homosexual is unable to make the personal choice of reproduction due to "the way he is"; that makes homosexuality a defect. A cure is something that would remove the defect by restoring his choice to reproduce.
Actually it is the other way around: you are making the moral argument here. You are extremely prejudiced, but you do not see your own prejudice. You will not accept any argument that shows that homosexuality is not a normal behaviour because you believe that it is and that's that. I have presented my arguments, but you reject them merely because I'm "intolerant", not because of any rational objection you have to them.
And in a typical liberal fashion you equate a refusal to accept homosexuality as normal to intolerance. And immediately you equate intolerance to genocide, or whatever it is you are imagining. If homosexuality can be cured, such a cure should be made available. I never said that we should round up homosexuals and apply this cure or kill them. That's just what you believe "intolerance" always leads to. I feel sorry for you and your life led in fear, ignorance, and prejudice that you can't see in yourself.
WTF? The discussion was on the subject of whether homosexuality could be cured, not the subject of whether such a cure is desirable. You are arguing the second point here while ignoring the first. I specifically did the opposite. If you dislike the term "defects", you can substitute "differences", and my argument still holds: wherever there is a defined difference, it is physically possible to eliminate it, and thus "cure" the condition.
If you insist that any discussion about a cure must start with acceptance of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, you're not going to get anywhere. The only reason to cure something is when it is a disease, and homosexuality most definitely is a disease: a mental illness. A comparison to AIDS was perhaps inappropriate, since that is caused by an infectious agent. A better comparison would be to schizophrenia. Both are disorders that interfere with a normal life. Homosexuality prevents the patient from having normal sexual and thus reproductive relations. Since reproduction is the main purpose of every biological organism, it definitely constitutes a defect, and makes homosexuality a serious disease that should be cured.
This, however, is a moral choice, just as is your acceptance of homosexuality as normal. Morals are relative to each person and are very deeply seated. Your "until this attitude changes" basically implies that your moral code is superiour to mine and that I am an evil person until I change mine to conform to yours. Looks like you're the bigot too, since you're always right and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.
So they are. Guess what: so are schizophrenics. So are most other people suffering from serious illnesses, like Alzheimer's disease. Saying that you are ill does not imply that you are a bad person.
Of course, there is also the question of whether homosexuality is biologically caused. Some would say that it is a matter of choice (which incidentally explains why SOCE is unable to cure gays: they don't want to be cured), in which case the argument would be that he who chooses the immoral action of having homosexual sex is indeed a bad person. You wouldn't want this to be true, would you? It would offend your liberal conditioning, so let's just drop it, shall we?
> especially given the fact that there IS evidence (although not conclusive) to the contrary?
There is no evidence to the contrary. There is only evidence that there were some individuals that were unable to change their sexual orientation through a particular method. The reasons for the failure were unspecified. From reading the SOCE article I get the impression that most quit because they simply don't want to continue. Barring the obvious reason of disliking the electric shock methods, for which I certainly don't blame them, other therapy methods seem to progress for a while until the patient voluntarily stops trying. None of this provides any evidence that orientation change is impossible, or even unlikely. It is merely evidence that the particular methods used are unable to create this change in a sufficently short period of time in volunteers.
> what clear evidence is there that you can change sexual orientation
There are the ex-gay groups, for example. On the wikipedia article there is a list of several people who claim to have achieved SOC. There is no explanation of how that happened, but as long as it did, it constitutes evidence that it can happen.
Secondly, just because there are methods that can not change sexual orientation, does not mean that there never will be. There obviously are mental or biological differences in the homosexual brain. Just like any other mental or physical problem, these defects can be corrected by adjusting the affected mental or physical structures to match those of a healthy brain. Perhaps this can be done by therapy, or drugs, or genetic modifications, but there is no doubt that a cure is possible in some form. Would you doubt that a cure for cancer or AIDS is possible just because we do not have one yet?
Just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it is impossible. From the evidence you have cited it might be possible to conclude that the particular methods used in the studies cited are unlikely to cause a change in sexual orientation. (I actually happen to agree with that; electric shocks do not sound like a plausible cure for anything) However, that in no way rules out the existence of other methods that would work. Until you have some significant proof one way or the other, any hypothesis is fair play in science. As a scientist you ought to know that. Just because an idea is accepted by the mainstream, doesn't make it irrevocably true. Experimental evidence is the only arbiter of truth in science, and on this subject there isn't any and is not going to be due to the current policies.
No.
First of all, nobody said anything about persecution. Believing that homosexuality is a mental illness implies that it may be possible to cure it, and if so, this cure should be made available to anybody who needs it. But just as nobody suggests persecuting you for having diabetes or cancer or any other disease, persecution of homosexuals is not appropriate either.
Second, both statements are merely statements of someone's opinion. Taking offense at other people's opinions is something anybody is entitled to do in this country, but that does not in any way imply that I'm required to care about your offense at my opinions. After all, the offense is also your personal opinion. Personal opinions come from personal values. To say that some opinions are "legitimate" while others aren't is to imply the existence of a universal code of values that everyone must adhere to (or be persecuted, I suppose, if I apply your logic to your own beliefs). Catholicism proposes that there is a universal code of values and that it is defined by God. By supporting homosexuality, you are violating that code. Therefore, when you utter any opinions that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle choice, you are the one with illegitimate opinions. Or would you prefer to be a hypocrite and say that universal values are only universal when they are yours?
With your nick, you may also be interested to know that Pentadactyl is working just fine with Firefox 4, and will help you not see those weird new forward/reverse buttons ever again.
Oh, so an offense is only legitimate when you agree with it? Or is it only when it agrees with your political party's views? Or is it the number of people offended?
> 48% my ass, I doubt it's even near 20% nationally.
You need to get out more. I'm guessing that you regularly only read Slashdot and other left-biased sites, where most opinions conflicting with the current left-wing policy are modded down immediately. Consequently, you believe the number of people who have a worldview similar to your own is much greater than it really is. Of course, the same is true of people who watch Fox news or read www.freerepublic.com. The internet makes it easier than ever to stick to your own clique and pretend that your opinions are the majority. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't really know.
That is not true. According to Wikipedia article on sexual orientation change efforts, "there are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent sexual orientation change efforts do or do not work to change a personâ(TM)s sexual orientation." Apparently that's because such studies are contrary to the official policy of the APA and other such organizations that homosexuality change efforts should not be permitted. Considering that this policy would greatly influence your ability to get funding for such a study, their nonexistence is unsurprizing. So claiming that homosexuality can be changed is not unscientific; it just isn't supported due to lack of evidence, and since we are not permitted to collect this evidence, that is not going to change anytime soon.
According to the latest Gallup poll on homosexuality, 48% of the US population believes that homosexuality is immoral. That's more than 44% who believe that doctor-assisted suicide is. Yeah, you could pander to homosexuals and remove the app, and then offend the other half of the country by thus giving implicit support to an activity they consider immoral. That's the problem with "offensive" censorship: everything offends someone. Once you start censoring, you can't really stop until you censor everything. Or, of course, Apple could assume that all iPhone users are left wing and the rest of the population's opinions do not matter, which seems to be what happened.
Correction: all people are generally uninterested in science and technology. Americans are no worse than the rest of the world. In those countries in Asia where most of those H1Bs come from people are not interested either; they are interested in passing the test and getting the job. Tech jobs pay more than sweatshops, there is a tradition for test taking (especially in China), and their parents make them. Once they pass the test and get the job, they stop caring and become just like everybody else.
You mean manager types actually use their laptop or even their desktop for something? Heck, let's take their iPhones away from them too; I bet everyone's productivity will soar.
All industries also have a very high limit on bullshit production. We're having plenty of growth in it right now.
That quote mentions programs that "use kernel services by normal system calls". Nothing is said about actually including kernel headers.
Since when is psychology a science?
This is like having three units of measurement for the weight of the pie, the weight of the pie you have eaten, and the weight you gain by eating the pie.
> unless you know of a higher court than the Supreme Court of the USofA
Yes, I wonder what God thinks about this whole issue.
There are so many radiation units out there and people keep using them without regard to what they really mean. It's nice that you've got your Sieverts covered. Now you'll have to learn about Grays, Curies, Becquerels, Rads, Rems, and Roentgens. Here's a handy conversion chart.
So let me get this straight, this poor boy exhibited gender-inappropriate behaviour and you did nothing to correct it? Parenting is not just about things you do to a kid, it's also about the things you do not do. All kids act inappropriately now and then; when they do, they should be told to stop. A boy should be instructed how a male of the species is supposed to act - he has no gene for that. You did not, so he continued to act weirdly. Boys don't like boys who act weirdly and avoid them. A boy who grows up without having much contact with other boys will not experience any negative feedback about his behaviour and will continue becoming more and more different from them. Then he hits puberty and his alienation and mannerisms influence his sexual orientation. Good going, dad!
Yeah, as if brief violence could overturn 14 years of (unconscious) conditioning. It's like those "gay cure" groups who give gays electric shocks with gay porn. Sick and misguided...
Yeah, why not? When a family member gets sick, do you just ostracise him? Do you insist that there is nothing wrong with him and ignore his problem? Or do you help him get well?
It is not whom they love, it's whom they have sex with. If he "loves" the wrong gender, at least he shouldn't have sex with it. It's not like it's hard. Getting laid is not something that just happens; it requires a great deal of hard work. If he dates women and with experience learns to enjoy sex with them, he won't be gay any more. Of course, nobody will help him do this, since the whole world seems to have declared that being gay is normal and nobody should dare correct this problem. Now that's tough breaks...
Come on, enough of that already. Yes we know, and you're missing the point. "Reveal the source or stop selling your product" is like "your money or your life" - not much of a choice. Your company will go broke either way, so there is no practical difference.
According to the article glibc is not in violation because Linus explicitly blesses the stripped headers that it uses. Since I have not been personally blessed by Linus, I could be in violation if I distribute my libc (which I am not presently doing). I could, I suppose, argue that I am only copying declarations, but there are some gray areas like sigset #defines, for example, which have a behaviour dictated by the standard but are difficult to implement in any way other than what's already either in the kernel (using a single integral type) or in glibc itself (using an array to potentially support 1024 signals). I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Invent some other data structure to store signals in? Am I already "contaminated" because I saw those implementations first and am legally forbidden from writing any implementation at all? WTF else?
There is a quote from Linus in the article where he raves that including a kernel header does make the resultant program subject to the GPL. So, I wonder, if I want to write an app that writes to the framebuffer device and have to include linux/fb.h, does that mean I'm violating copyright? If I write a libc alternative that needs definitions from the kernel headers to work, am I violating copyright? 'Cause if I am, it's definitely time to ditch Linux and work on yet another OS... Sigh.