Can I refer to Mrs Indy as your girlfriend?

Yawn...
I'm really not dying to start this debate again. We're never going to agree on this. Gay people don't seem to be satisfied with the label of civil union and I can understand why not. You don't agree with them. Ok...got it. Let's move on.

"Being gay is always a choice" or "Being gay is always inborn and immutable." Clearly neither of these statements would be correct for multiple choice test purposes and I suspect that neither of these choices is correct in the real world either.

For what percentage of gay people must gayness by immutable for you to believe that gay people deserve the right to marry? Just curious.

Immutability of sexual preference is just something I know based on the most basic common sense, which I've described. I think the burden is on the anti-gay marriage people to prove to me sexual preference is a choice. I don't need studies or percentages. I just know.

I think if two consenting adults are in romantic love and want to get married that's good enough for me in terms of proof of immutability as the record now stands. The romantic urge runs deep, and may be what makes all the blood sweat and tears worthwhile in the end. I think that is what they are.

Let me clarify. If it were not an immutable characteristic (which I can't fathom, like I can't fathom nothingness) I might support gay marriage for some of the public policy reasons stated here. But if it's not immutable it's not a civil rights issue and I become close to indifferent about the issue. If it's a choice, marriage is not foreclosed. They can marry someone of opposite gender. If it's a choice, I think there does exist a principled distinction on which to deny marriage to gays. Civil rights is about immutability.

You obviously haven't been reading the threads lately. Good luck getting some traction with that question.

Let me add, I think it's possible to play the socratic game on both sides endlessly. Sometimes you do have to say, "this is what I believe," and state your value. My value that supports gay rights is rooted in immutability and civil rights concepts. In my mind, this is essential for the gay rights movement to have legs. Kind of like Lincoln had to make the Civil War about emancipation of the slaves to get the public behind it. The majority of people in any place and time know what's right, despite the frequency of despotic leaders, maybe they always did. Convince me it's not a civil rights issue and I might just vote for Prop. 8. I'm close to indifferent and do get the religious point of view.

I guess I haven't been reading closely enough. The consensus here is immutability doesn't matter?

(I agree with 3D that pedophilia is a red herring becuase it involves children who lack ability to consent and are victims.)

Feel free to reframe my question. Help me to help YOU, 3D.

I am not sure we have a consensus. But we certainly don't have a consensus that immutability is irrelevant.

We have been rehashing the old "is gay a choice" question. And rehashing... and rehashing....

You know when creekster told you fuck off the other day? He had been reading one too many threads on this topic. It pushed him over the edge.

Of course. Only an idiot would compare homosexuality to pedophilia.

Gay behavior was historically viewed as an enigma, it wasn't understood, and wasn't discussed. When it became more apparent, it was considered not socially acceptable.

Other behaviors may be genetically linked and considered socially undesirable. Immutability alone does not normalize it.

If so, should we legitimize alcoholic behavior even by consenting adults?

I have compassion for those so oriented, and truly have no theological explanation for why nature creates such orientation, but the fact it exists does not make it beneficial for the species or the individual so conditioned.

I seem to recall trying to have this debate before. . . .

I did think of one way to "test" mutability, and sure enough, so had others:

http://worldpolicy.org/projects/glob...ent/twins.html

And here is one interpretation of this and similar data:

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=155