Posted on 12/07/2004 6:56:46 AM PST by Laissez-faire capitalist
So, let's see, your countervailing argument is that a) the reviewer's mother lives with a woman, and b) that De Waal cautions against drawing inferences about humans.
Fascinating...do you now concede that bonobos engage in homosexual behavior which is not obviously abherrent? Can we move on to penguins, gulls, lemurs and geese now?
That would be true, if homosexuality mainfested like the veriform appendix, gradually observed to be fading out along our branch of life's family tree at the outer branches. However, that is not what we observe, what we observe, as per the first book I cited here, is that the strength of its manifestation varies up and down the tree: strong in some few bird species, moderate to non-existent in others, strong in lemur's, weak in gorillas, strong in our closest cousins, moderate-to-weak in us. It is one of many recessive survival strategies we keep in our toolbox for coping with a radical change in environment, & how strong it manifests just depends, it seems to me quite obviously, on how useful a tool for conserving resource advantages to one's self or one's closer relatives it is.
Bonobos our our closest cousins, and they are the champion flaming queers of our branch of the chordate tree. You have to fade clear back to lemurs to find it approaching that strength again. It is clearly skipping around, as you would expect of a useful recessive trait, not gradually fading.
No. In fact, bonobos probably prove my point more. They are near extinction, which means they are likely in behavior modes that can be considered "stress" modes. Would their sexual behaviors be the same if they were thriving across the entire African continent?
This is the problem with your entire circular argument. You see activity and presume it has some evolutionary value because it exists and must have been selected. Since evolutionary mechanisms are still not well understood you can't easily take into consideration whether the species is doing something that is about to have it selected out. For example, is the fact that bonobos are primarly ruled by the females to blame for their current population? If so, it would be a bad idea to use them to suggest that a matriarchal society is viable. On the other hand, the bonobos may be changing into a matriarchal society in response to their current situation which is about to cause them to flourish. In that case using bonobos to condemn matriarchy would be a bad idea.
Without discovering the cause we can draw no inferences from bonobos, which is what de Waal said. You draw the inferences from them anyway to support homosexual behavior which indicates that you are abusing his work for your own agenda-driven purposes.
Shalom.
I would also expect that of a damaging recessive trait, like insanity.
Shalom.
Ok, so paleontologists can determine the sexuality of creatures from fossils?
My eyebrow is really up on that one.
Shalom.
Indeed? Suppose I grant you that insanity is necessarily a genetically unredeemable trait; could you then explain, in that light, how such a trait could fade in and out repeatedly, rather than continuously fade from continuous disutility--as the veriform appendix appears to?
My eyebrow is really up on that one.
That's because you're about 3 decades out of date.
In modern days, paleontologists can line up family trees as to when they split off, due to the DNA mutational clock. lemurs split earlier than bonobos, and many other primates, who aren't flaming queers, split in between.
More wistful hogwash. Data is data, and Waal doesn't have a patent on his. Did the lemur researches and the goose researchers and the gull researchers also issue a samizdat forbidding the use of their data? If so, what court do you think it will be enforced in?
I'll repeat the question, since you seem to be indicating that you've absorbed at least some of this Waal cite. Are bonabos virtually 100% queer?
So.......have you changed over to my side of the argument: are you arguing that stress is the trigger for the genetic pre-disposition to homosexuality? If not, than I'll repeat a previously unanswered question: why does stress produce homosexuality, instead of, say, a desire to hibernate, or birdwatch, or pee in the food supply?
I have asked you to show me why my argument is circular, and you have not. I am dismissing this as noise.
You see activity and presume it has some evolutionary value because it exists and must have been selected.
huh. Why, yes, I do, until it is demonstrated otherwise. Not specifically, I don't think chess-playing, for example, is a particularly selected activity. But the underlying enzymatic and structural tendency that makes chessplaying fun, probably is, or was at one point.
Since evolutionary mechanisms are still not well understood you can't easily take into consideration whether the species is doing something that is about to have it selected out.
Like, homosexuality, for example? So the supposedly scientific claims that have been cited here in support of regarding homosexuality as a diseased or damaged condition are out of line?
I'm growing curious as to whose side of this argument you think you are on.
Just as, in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, it would be to suggest otherwise, eh?
As to your point about bonobos being on the brink of extinction due to their proclivities--all of our near relatives are on the brink of extinction, due to us directly competing with them for habitat. Yours is not a contention that can be easily supported--if it were, it would have to apply to the many species that are queer and aren't anywhere close to extinction--gulls come to mind.
If you do care about having any of your comments responded to, please repost as a single reply to a single post.
Shalom.
I was exposed to this silly paranoid fantasy of yours the last time we debated and I haven't retracted my contemptuous opinion of it. Mine is the normal and sensible practice seen all over the net for a decade. Your approach is unnecessarily obfuscatory and distracting. As if you think somehow that arguments all mixed together in one post of a thread somehow makes them weight more. If you wish to use this as an excuse to close off debate, help yourself--I think it's just jetting ink like a cuttlefish so that one can't quite make out that you're dodging for the exits.
Assuming this is a well-done study, how can you make a claim on margin error without even knowing the sample size?
I've read the published study report years ago; there's more information further down in the thread.
Think what you like. You should be able to guess how your opinion of me rates with me.
Merry Christmas.
Shalom.
PS. I might add that the study itself certainly never made these claims that the dissembling Australian doctor has extrapolated from a subset of their results. Had the study actually been designed so that conclusions might be drawn regarding the longitudinal retention of homosexual identity then it would surely have a more precise margin of error.
As it is, he went in and wrenched some selective figures out of a much broader study and used them for his purposes.
For gay men, it may be because they are femalephobic - in the real definition of "phobic", as in "fear of". Girls are a pretty scary thing to some adolescent boys, and rejection (rather actual or anticipated) by them can cause incredible anxiety.
Turn gay and you never have to prove your manhood. [flame suit ON]
The Animal Homosexuality Myth
http://www.narth.com/docs/animalmyth.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.