14 posts tagged “gay”
This story is, undoubtedly, the craziest thing I have ever heard. At one point, the Air Force submitted a proposal to the Pentagon to make a bomb which would make enemy soldiers gay.
No, really.
Newsweek is running a piece on transsexuals this week--as a cover story,even! (My, the progress!)
You should all take 15 minutes to slack and go read this, a review of the worst toy ideas in recent history. It is written with what can only be called awesomeness. It even features a video:
Also, to those who have commented recently, I am sorry for being a jackass. I will respond soon. I swear. Once this damned thesis is dead and done with. Maybe I should get it a toy for the holidays....
Now go read that article! Shoo!
Update!
I have now responded to comments! The Internets have yet again foiled my plan to not do anything at school but work on school stuff. Damn you, Internets!
Now I'm going to have to go leave comments on other people's posts, for I have been terribly remiss in that department as well.
I've been meaning to post for some time about how great Randy seems to think he is. It all started here when he felt the need to point out how many comments his Vox blog has (1056, in case you were wondering--decidedly less than if I was allowed to comment there). Who does that? Especially when, as he says in the comments, he come up with the number by hand. Jeez.
And later, here, he tells us what a great artist he is (I disagree--his "art" looks more like doodles in the back of a 7th grade biology book to me). And then here he tells us that he is a "spiritual magnet":
If there is a witch (Wiccan or otherwise), vampire, punk anarchist, Marxist, New Age Spiritualist, Native American Shaman, telepath, gay psychic energy reader, smart aleck libertarian atheist, goddess worshiping vegan ... we are going to be friends by the end of our conversation.
It's just the way it is.
Did he actually proofread that and decide that it he was being "humble before Christ" when he wrote it? Whatever.
But then, today, the arrogance to top all arrogance. Randy claims that he has "been made the subject of a YouTube video" and posts a rather long, mostly incoherent retort to the claims made in the video. But here's the thing: the video isn't about Randy at all, it just uses a quote from Randy when he was a guest on the Adam Corolla Show (Randy talks about this experience here; be sure to "***Scroll down for updates***" where he decides he didn't actually say what he claims to have said).
The video is actually about whether or not Exodus and associated ministries support forcing gay kids into therapy for their dreaded "same-sex attraction." Fortunately, the awesomeness of Vox allows me to share this video with you. Behold:
Leave it to Randy to make it all about him.
Update!
Randy seems to have removed the post in question... Hmm... It still shows up over at the Exodus blog though.
LiveScience today has a great story about gay animals, complete with lots of juicy details and even a "Top 10" list of gay animals. The banner at the top of the list is priceless, and I couldn't help but reproduce it here.
Take that, naysayers of the naturalness of homosexuality! I think we are all now allowed to respond to someone who claims that homosexuality is unnatural with a sideways glance, a strong chortle, and an even stronger punch in the neck.
I've spent a lot of energy lately ripping into Randy Thomas, which is unfair, I suppose--unfair to the other ex-gays on Vox who need a ripping-into!
Take Mike Ensley, for example. (Why do these people use their full names on the Internet?? Haven't they been watching NBC catch predators????) Mike tells us in this post that he is upset because people have been "misrepresenting" Exodus. We're sorry about that, Mike, really. But nevermind, that isn't really the focus of the article.
The main thrust (sorry, couldn't help myself) of the post is that Mike believes gays exist:
I think these words [gay and homosexual] are largely understood in our culture to mean more than just a person’s attractions. The popular idea of what it is to be gay is not only to be attracted to the same sex, but to be made and meant for homosexual relationships, to be destined to find happiness and true love only there. It’s more than how you feel or what you do; it’s who you are. If that is what our society means when using this word, then no, I don’t believe anyone is truly gay.
Except, of course, that's what (almost) everyone outside of Exodus means when they say gay, including at least 99.8% of gay people, is exactly what Mike has just described he does not believe. Thanks for, uh, being totally clear there.
He goes on to state:
Other than the experience of these feelings [gay feelings], there is nothing else about those of us with SSA (biology, etc.) that would distinguish us from the rest of humanity. We aren’t a separate creature....
Mike is apparently trying to make my life easy, and has conveniently included the word "biology" in this sentence. Let's look at biology, shall we? There's one study here that straight and gay men's brains respond differently when exposed to testosterone (that's a male sex hormone, for those of you un-science types out there). Fortunately, the authors of this write up also addressed biology by name:
Sandra Witelson, an expert on brain anatomy and sexual orientation..., who was not part of the research team, said the findings clearly show a biological involvement in sexual orientation.
Or how about this study which describes a correlation between which X chromosome a woman's body has deactivated and how many gay sons she has? Or this one, where the change in a single gene is enough to make a female fruit fly court other females with the courtship ritual most often performed by males? Or what about this one, which showed systematic differences in brain structure in sheep that mate with their own sex? And then there's this one (slightly more technical, sorry), where men and women, gay and straight are shown to rate the attractiveness of faces similarly, but there are stark differences in the processing of value judgments of the faces based on orientation (i.e., male faces are given special recognition by straight women and gay men--maybe this explains why I have so much trouble remembering women's faces!). On the right-hand side of that page you'll notice 10 links to other articles about gays and biology not detailed here.
My current favorite, however, is this one. Scientists exposed folks to a nudie picture of either a male or a female which was obscured by random noise, and then displayed a second image (a pattern). Subjects were asked to determine the orientation (clockwise or counterclockwise, not gay or straight) of the pattern. Scores were higher when the pattern appeared in the same location on the screen as the erotic image had, which is essentially what the researchers had predicted--that although the image was not consciously registering, the brain still perceived it. What they had not anticipated, however, was that gay men did far better when the image was of a nude male, and straight men far better when the image was a nude female.
And so once again we've run headlong into the problem with ex-gay arguments: they just don't make a damned bit of sense, and apparently have no basis in reality whatsoever.
Update!
Maureen, in a comment on Mike's post, says what has to be one of the truest and most hilarious things ever said by their ilk: "I'm as bewildered by SSA as I am as to how the picture gets from Hollywood to my TV screen. Even pictures don't help." I guess Maureen doesn't know the power of gay pornography (note: link does not go to porn).
This short post by Randy Thomas is surely the most ridiculous thing I have ever read in my life. Mind you, he didn't say it, but that anyone would participate in such a thing--or repeat such nonsense on their blog--blows my mind. Who are these people?? Anti-discrimination laws violate their freedom of religion???
How high are you right now that you actually think that's true??
This is so typical of Christians seeming to think they can do whatever the hell they want because they are Christian, and no one else can do a fucking thing that they disagree with because it is "a sin." Get off your fucking high horse, already! Your ability to believe in things that are not true doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do.
Yeesh.
Hysterical Update!
Go read comment number 10 on that post. Go do it now.
Update the second!
G-A-Y takes a shot at the same event here.
Gerald Schoenewolf, a member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH)'s "Science" Advisory Committee (scare quotes mine), has long been outspoken on his views about the gays. (In case the name of the organization he works for isn't a tip off, his views are not very positive.) But he has recently, it seems, gone completely off the deep end by claiming that 1) slaves brought to the United States were somehow "better off" because "Africa was still primarily a jungle" and that the civil rights movement was ill-conceived, and 2) that people who support human rights are intellectually stalled and incapable of abstract thought.
A complete article about his essay which details his links to groups like Focus on the Family, as well as his comments about the essay subsequent to its posting at NARTH's website, can be found here; the article also contains a pdf of the essay, which no longer appears at NARTH's website. My favorite quote is:
'During the interview, Schoenewolf lambasted civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. "All such movements are destructive," he said. He also claimed the American Psychological Association, of which he is a member, "has been taken over by extremist gays."'
Yeesh. Sorry about your idiocy, dude.
