Ray,
may I ask you for one more explication? What is the nature of this vulgar
history? I note your point about 'wounded', and am asking what the 'wound' has
to do with the 'vulgar' history itself. Do you mean a history of the harm
society has inflicted upon itself?
Cheers,
Lawry
The Gospel according to Saint Thomas has a
homosexual bent to Jesus and no one knew anything about those female Baal
altars in the Israeli homes, since the bible mentions nothing of
it. Contemporary archeology turned them up. Today Lillith is
a character on a TV show but everyone knows Abraham and Isaac. You
are referring to official histories but the men have been the writers and
controllers of that. The same is true of the heterosexual
population. This has been gone over before and I've made my point
except for one last thing. There are always three histories going
at once in Western Society. The official polite history, the
common agreement history and the vulgar history. Vulgar coming
from the same root that vulva, vulgate, etc. meaning wound.
Valhalla is even a derivitive "Hall of the
Wounded." The Vulgar is usually the most
complete while the common is the contemporary acceptable. The
Polite is the one that carries forward in sacred and academic texts until
someone finds an altar to Baal Ashtoreth in a middle class first century group
of homes. That changes things and gets us back to the
wound. In this society the most wounded of the day are called
"Gay" and that should say something in itself.
I won't comment any more on
this.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 7:52
AM
Subject: [Futurework] Gay at
birth?
Before anybody attempts to shoot me down by
quoting the article in today's New York Times, all I would say is
that I agree with the writer, Nicholas Kristof. There are two few studies
involving too small a number of experimental subjects to make any sort of
judgement yet. And, as he also writes, there's a great deal of emotional
capital tied up in this matter of proving a genetic link and experimenter
bias is likely to be very high in this particular sort of
investigation. However, if there were a specific linkage I would have
thought that something definite would have been found by now -- and this
would be able to be confirmed very readily.
For my part, I'm prepared
to say that the degree of homosexuality we see around us today is probably
far greater than at any time in history and this bespeaks something very
unusual, such as high stress. (Or it could be the large amount of artificial
contraceptive hormones that are being dispensed into our sewage systems and
some from thence into our drinking water. This is certainly becoming a
serious matter in England where many fish are found to be changing into
females.) Anyway, for the time being, homosexuality is certainly hardly
mentioned in the literature, apart from being mentioned in a few individual
cases such as Michael Angelo, Alexander the Great, etc.
Keith
Hudson <<<< GAY AT BIRTH?
Nicholas D.
Kristof
Some people say we should settle gay rights disputes on the
basis of the Old Testament. I say we should rely on blinking
patterns.
In case you've misplaced your latest copy of Behavioral
Neuroscience, there's a fascinating article about how people blink. It turns
out that when males and females are exposed to a loud noise, they blink in
somewhat different ways --except that lesbians appear to blink like men, not
like women.
The study (peer-reviewed but based on a small sample) is
the latest in a growing scientific literature suggesting that sexual
preferences may be not simply a matter of personal preference but part of
our ingrained biology. Indeed, some geneticists believe that sexual
orientation in men (though not women) may be determined in part by markers
in the Xq28 chromosomal region.
One needs to be wary of these kinds
of studies, partly because researchers drawn toward this field may have
subconscious biases of their own. Moreover, many of the studies on the
biological basis of homosexuality are flawed by small numbers or by the
difficulty of finding valid random samples of gays and
heterosexuals.
Still, while the data has problems, it is piling up --
there are at least seven studies on twins. If there is a genetic component
to homosexuality, one would expect identical twins to share sexual
orientation more than fraternal twins, and that is indeed the case. An
identical twin of a gay person is about twice as likely to be gay as a
fraternal twin would be.
Earlier this year, the journal
Personality and Individual Differences published an exhaustive review
of the literature entitled "Born Gay?" After reviewing the twin studies, it
concluded that 50 to 60 percent of sexual orientation might be
genetic.
Many studies also suggest that sexual orientation may be
linked to differences in brain anatomy. Compared with straight men, gay men
appear to have a larger suprachiasmatic nucleus, a part of the brain that
affects behavior, and some studies show most gay men have a larger isthmus
of the corpus callosum -- which may also be true of left-handed people. And
that's intriguing because gays are 39 percent more likely to be left-handed
than straight people.
Now look at your fingers. Men typically have a
ring finger that is longer than the index finger, while in women the two are
about the same length. However, two studies have suggested that lesbians
have finger-length ratios that are more like those of men than of
women.
Studies suggest that ring-finger length has to do with the
level of androgens in the womb, and that may help explain another puzzle of
homosexuality a male is more likely to be gay if he has older brothers. It
doesn't matter if he has older sisters, but for each older brother he is
about 33 percent more likely to be gay. Some scientists speculate that a
woman's body adjusts the androgen level in her womb as she has more sons,
and that the androgens interact with genes to produce
homosexuality.
O.K., these theories are potentially junk science
until the studies are replicated with much larger numbers. But we also
shouldn't ignore the accumulating evidence.
"There is now very strong
evidence from almost two decades of `biobehavioral' research that human
sexual orientation is predominantly biologically determined," said Qazi
Rahman, the University of London researcher who led the blinking study. Many
others don't go that far, but accept that there is probably some biological
component.
Gays themselves are divided. Some welcome these studies
because they confirm their own feeling that sexual orientation is more than
a whim. Others fret that the implication is that homosexuals are abnormal or
defective -- and that future genetic screening will eliminate people like
them.
For me the implication, if these studies are to believed, is
different It is that something is defective not in gays, but in
discrimination against them.
A basic principle of our social covenant
is that we do not discriminate against people on the basis of circumstances
that they cannot choose, like race, sex and disability. If sexual
orientation belongs on that list (with the caveat that the evidence is still
murky), then should we still prohibit gay marriage and bar gays from serving
openly in the armed forces?
Can we countenance discrimination against
people for something so basic as how they blink -- or whom they
love? New York Times -- 25 October 2003
Keith
Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>,
<www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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