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POPSHomosexual behavior due to genetics and environmental factors “Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 per cent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway.” For women, genetics explained roughly 18 per cent of the variation in same-sex behavior, non-shared environment roughly 64 per cent and shared factors, or the family environment, explained 16 per cent. The study shows that genetic influences are important but modest, and that non-shared environmental factors, which may include factors operating during fetal development, dominate.
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POPSJodie Comes Out Guess what conservative America? There are so many gays and lesbians in your own families. In fact, I doubt there's on American family today that doesn't count at least one gay or lesbian member somewhere in its ranks. Count them--and then love them. Isn't it totally un-Christ-like to turn against your own son or daughter, or brother or sister, just because he or she happens to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual? What difference does it make? He may be gay, but he's still your son. She may be a lesbian, but she's still your daughter. Sure, evangelical ministers and conservative politicians will continue to denounce homosexuality from the pulpit and urge parishioners to join them in denying equal rights to gays and lesbians. And some poor misguided souls will blindly agree. But their hate speech will eventually fail, as people realize those attacks are directed against the people they love the most, their family members.
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POPSGays Exist Quietly, In Iran "Shahin, 27, a chemist, has kept his gay life secret from his parents. “I don’t want to upset them,” he said. “Maybe they will consider me sick and feel sorry for me.”
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POPSEvolution:24 myths and misconceptions It doesn't matter if people do not understand evolution "Survival of the fittest" justifies "everyone for themselves" Evolution is limitlessly creative Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution Creationist myths: Evolution must be wrong because the Bible is inerrant Accepting evolution undermines morality Evolutionary theory leads to racism and genocide Religion and evolution are incompatible Half a wing is no use to anyone Evolutionary science is not predictive Evolution cannot be disproved so is not science Evolution is just so unlikely to produce complex life forms Evolution is an entirely random process Mutations can only destroy information, not create it Darwin is the ultimate authority on evolution The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex Yet more creationist misconceptions Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics
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POPSNo Gays in Iran… But Many Same-Sex Couples: US Professor
William O.Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has been conducting research in Iran for more than 30 years, and is a fluent speaker of Persian. "Active partners in Iran do not consider themselves to be “homosexual.” Indeed, it is a kind of macho boast in some circles that one has been an active partner with another male. Passive partners are denigrated and carry a life-long stigma if their sexual role is known, even after a single incident. They have been deflowered, as it were, in the same way that women might lose their virginity, and they are considered to be "xarob" or "destroyed." "In actual fact, many men are "versatile" in their sexual activity but if they are known to have relations with other men, they will always claim in public to be the active partner. Same-sex relations between females are undoubtedly practised, but this is the deepest secret in Iran, and rarely talked about at all."
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POPSGay? Who Cares? "For some of the pioneers from the edgy, embattled, ecstatic "good old days," this may be bittersweet. "But isn't that what everyone wanted 20 years ago?" Gates asks. "Just to be treated like everyone else?"
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POPS"Cynical Shyness": Violence of the Loner Don't know anything about this idea, but certainly would make sense if factored in with other markers of social inadequacy and emotional furnaces such as repressed homosexuality, sexual and social powerlessnes and so on. While the research is on the horrifying instances of killers, I wonder whether the "cynically shy" isolated loner is common to a less extreme defree degree in 'everyday' manifestations of hatred, malevolence, violent language and despair>
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POPSSexuality Bias Seen "Banks said she believed the rumors were started by other attorneys in the Grand Rapids office who eventually landed jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. She declined to identify them. Monday's report also said that Goodling used an Internet search that included the words "gay" and "homosexual" to screen candidates and their backgrounds." Well now! We used to play a game in school called "Gossip". We'd line up several people and start a sentence and everyone changed it a little while whispering into each other's ear. Of course it was unrecognizable at the end and we would all laugh. The point of the game was to show the social implications of pettiness. So why would anyone care about sexual orientation at the Justice Department in the first place? Ah, back to that wicked game of gossip and backstabbing to get ahead eh? No better way than to call them lesbians.
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POPSEvolution: 24 myths and misconceptions So here is New Scientist's guide to some of the most common myths and misconceptions about evolution.Everything is an adaptation produced by natural selection Natural selection is the only means of evolution Natural selection leads to ever-greater complexity Evolution produces creatures perfectly adapted to their environment Evolution always promotes the survival of species It doesn't matter if people do not understand evolution "Survival of the fittest" justifies "everyone for themselves" Evolution is limitlessly creative Evolution cannot explain traits such as homosexuality Creationism provides a coherent alternative to evolution
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POPSWhy Can't I Own a Canadian? I love satire directed at ignorant people, especially those with letters in front of their names that usually indicates intelligence.
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POPSNew Debate on 'Curing' Gays I think this represents a big changed in relatively little time. It wasn't so long ago that gays were reviled as "fags" or "queers" and homosexuality was considered and treated as a psychological disorder. No religious conservative--Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Muslim--would stand up in the pulpit today and declare that blacks are inferior human beings. And it's only a matter of time before they stop calling gays and lesbians inferior also. For the very same reason: it contradicts God's love for all creation.
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POPSAnti-Gay US Church Fined Where did it all go wrong? Seriously though, I simply couldn't live my life spending so much energy just being angry at other people... for WHATEVER reason!
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POPSIgnorance-only Sex Education It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together? - PZ
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POPSThe Gay Animal Kingdom Didn't god make these animals too? So much for the "abomination" theory. But then, which is true, real life facts, or a bible written by 1st century goat herders?
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POPSUN Confirms Iraqi Gay Killings Why do we hear nothing of this in the mainstream media? It appears as if differences are continuously dealt with in murderous ways. We keep hearing about and seeing reports of Iraqis killing other Iraqis. Mostly this violence is between tribes. But now we have blatant murder of ordinary Iraqis simply based on sexual orientation. Is this the Democracy we are trying to fortify and protect?
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POPSThe Right Was Right Now that the elections are over we can all focus on what really matters: calling each other names. This time around we have someone on the Right pretending to be someone on the Left and thence presenting the Democrat's "new manifesto" to Congress. I figured this would be pretty stupid... and it is. But it's so patently absurd that it actual moves into the realm of humour. Afterthought: It's either that or someone really on the Left making fun of people on the Right for their paranoia about what will happen when the "godless, heathen, french-hippie communists" take over. I didn't bother to do enough research. Either way, enjoy. Or don't.
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POPSYes, there really are gay animals From Salon magazine, 1999. Research into "alternative sexual behavior" among animals. Apparently, it's much more prevalent than you might think. So much for homosexuality being "unnatural."
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POPSSappho's poetry Her style was sensual and melodic; primarily songs of love, yearning, and reflection. Most commonly the target of her affections was female, often one of the many women sent to her for education in the arts. She nurtured these women, wrote poems of love and adoration to them, and when they eventually left the island to be married, she composed their wedding songs. That Sappho's poetry was not condemned in her time for its homoerotic content (though it was disparaged by scholars in later centuries) suggests that perhaps love between women was not persecuted then as it has been in more recent times. Especially in the last century, Sappho has become so synonymous with woman-love that two of the most popular words to describe female homosexuality--lesbian and sapphic have derived from her. Plato elevated her from the status of great lyric poet to one of the muses.
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POPSGay Guys Have All The Fun I highly doubt gays are more promiscuous than heteros. Gay or not, Enrique seems to be doing the rounds quite well with the ladies, without a need to *envy* gays. Fidelity is more a question of moral integrity, than of sexuality IMO.
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