Your whole argument hinges on your belief that homosexuality is a behavior and not an innate characteristic. This is something that cannot be proven one way or another and to pretend it can be is dishonest.
it is very interesting that NO proof exists of anything inherited causing homosexual "urges"
There is no gene that causes someone to be left handed. Is that also just a behavior?
thousands have left the homosexual lifestyle through therapy
Conversion therapy is a joke. Without exception, every medical and scientific organization has condemned it as either ineffective or actually harmful. There may be some homosexuals who can act heterosexual (for a while or forever) but it doesn't change who they are.
This debate is being won by the advocates of gay marriage who are smart enough to appeal to the idea that homosexuality is "the way people are" rather than "what people do." I seem to remember a lot of racial predjudice in the 1960's that focused on "what they do", when it came to black people. That may have sparked some of the comparison. Even if there were solid evidence to support homosexuality as solely behavioral, there would still be a lot of support for the rights of gay people to behave as such. After all, religion is not innate, and our society values the toleration of different religious behaviors, even if some, like Wiccanism, or Islam, are very, very different from what most people in our society believe.
While I'm on the subject of religion, you can see in the gay marriage threads an awful lot of denouncement of gay marriage based on religious thought and belief. While I'm happy to say that I have engaged in discussions with a goodly number of people here at FR who have attempted to make points against gay marriage for reasons other than religious or traditional, it seems that those who use theological justifications are the only ones who get quoted in the news media. When GWB talks about using the Constitutional amendment process to "protect the sacrament of marriage," it makes a lot of people wonder why government is in the business of protecting sacraments.
Simply put, there are more people in the mushy middle who fear government being used to impose religious doctrines on people, than fear homosexuality. So far, reciting litanies of diseases has not convinced enough people to put homosexuality back in the closets of decades past.
The comparison, whether fair or not, between racial discrimination and marriage discrimination is being effectively made by those using it. If those who find the comparison unfair and inaccurate wish to win the battle, they'll need to change the messages they've been sending out. There's still a large group in the middle who are uncomfortable with gay marriage, and there is only a short window to convince them that their discomfort is well founded, or they will get over it. My guess is this window will be closed, nailed shut, and painted over by the time that there's a vote in Massachusetts in November, 2006 (at the earliest).
The more science studies homosexuality, the more we see the major factor determining homosexuality is environment. That's not a bold statement, it's what science continues to report.
We should heed the words of John Adams when he said:
"Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."As two of the three little pigs learned, we must build our house out of something solid. This was an important teaching of Jesus as well. He said it is foolish to build your house on sand, or to build your core position on something that is easily washed away. Instead, we should build our position on something solid, something which stands firm under scrutiny.
In regards to homosexuality and genetics, the work of homosexual activist Dr. Simon LeVay has often been used to support the idea that homosexuality is genetic, and his work is still quoted to this day. But what did LeVay really find? Here is what LeVay said of his own work in a March 1994 interview with Discover magazine:
"[His 1991 research] made the unassuming LeVay one of the most misunderstood men in America. "It's important to stress what I didn't find," he points out with the courtly patience of someone who long ago got used to waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. "I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are 'born that way,' the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain --INAH3 is less likely to be the sole gay nucleus of the brain than part of a chain of nuclei engaged in men and women's sexual behavior. My work is just a hint in that direction--a spur, I hope, to future work."Ten years later still nothing from LeVay or anybody else.
In 1973 the APA (American Psychiatric Association) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. According to LeVay, it wasn't science that propelled the APAs change, he said "Gay activism was clearly the force that propelled the APA to declassify homosexuality."
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer played a pivotal role in the above 1973 decision made by the APA. Spitzer used to believe homosexuals couldn't change but after studying the results of therapy he now believes homosexuals can change:
"I thought that homosexual behavior could be resisted--but that no one could really change their sexual orientation. I now believe that's untrue--some people can and do change."
Spitzer concluded with:
"the mental health professionals should stop moving in the direction of banning therapy that has, as a goal, a change in sexual orientation. Many patients, provided with informed consent about the possibility that they will be disappointed if the therapy does not succeed, can make a rational choice to work toward developing their heterosexual potential and minimizing their unwanted homosexual attractions."Just the facts.
One's sexual conduct is the product of free will and not an immutable, morally neutral characteristic like one's ethnicity or gender. Even if you could somehow prove that one's sexual orientation is genetically predetermined the capacity for free choice in terms of behavior still remains.
Only a complete nihilist would want to advocate the equality of all behaviors in the same way that we should affirm racial or gender equality.