LOOK: Large Study Finds 'Pretty Good Indication' Of Genetic Link To HomosexualityAnd they seem to have found an evolutionary case that supports same-sex relationships and marriage, even finding them advantageous.
Progesterone is also known as a “social” hormone – it is produced mainly in the ovaries in women and in the adrenal glands in men, and encourages a person to engage with others in a positive way.Fleischman adds that "the research suggests that having exclusively heterosexual thoughts is a disadvantage – it’s better to be a little bit attracted to the opposite sex."
They asked a group of participants questions such as "The idea of kissing a person of the same sex is sexually arousing to me," and: "If someone of the same sex made a pass at me I would be disgusted”. They compared the answers to the level of progesterone in the blood.
The results, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, show that the people with higher levels of the hormone are indeed more inclined to have homoerotic thoughts.
Heterosexual men and women, for example, were more open to the idea of engaging in homosexual behaviour when progesterone was high. Men also produced more of the hormone and felt more homosexual if they were reminded of a societal need to be friendly with other males.
The Constitution is not a math problem, but numbers can play a role in the Supreme Court’s calculations. When the court struck down bans on interracial marriage in 1967, such unions were still illegal in 16 states. When the court struck down laws making gay sex a crime in 2003, 13 states still had anti-sodomy measures. Should the court take up the question of same-sex marriage this term or next, as it seems likely to, the unions will be against the law in no more than 15 states. “The coincidence is hard to miss,” said Susan Sommer, a lawyer with Lambda Legal who has been litigating same-sex marriage cases for more than a decade. In a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear a same-sex marriage case from Ohio, lawyers for several couples recited the history and pushed the comparison. “The current landscape for marriage recognition for same-sex couples,” the brief said, “looks much the same as it did in 1967 for interracial couples and in 2003 for same-sex intimate partners.”The above-linked article notes that it was largely state legislatures, not courts, that had whittled down the number of bans on interracial marriage by the time the Supreme Court acted.
It is difficult to overstate the potential impact of Gushee’s defection. His Christian ethics textbook, “Kingdom Ethics,” co-authored with the late Glen Stassen, is widely respected and was named a 2004 Christianity Today book of the year. He serves as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a coalition of 15 theological schools, 150 ministries, and 1,800 Baptist churches nationwide.
While other pro-LGBT Christian activists — including Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network and Matthew Vines, author of “God and the Gay Christian” — have been dismissed in some circles as wet-behind-the-ears youngsters without formal theological training, Gushee, 52, is a scholar with impeccable credentials. He can add intellectual heft to what has largely been a youth-led movement, and is not someone who can be easily dismissed.Gushee summarizes his approach to the issue this way:
Since the 1960s, when the gay rights movement began in America, Christians and their leaders have struggled to figure out how to respond to the growing tolerance of same-sex relationships. Most in Christianity have responded by offering endless debates over how to interpret that handful of biblical passages. Books erupted. Congregations fought. Denominations split.
For me, the answer to this debate has become simple: There is a sexual-minority population of about 5 percent of the human family that has received contempt and discrimination for centuries. In Christendom, the sexual ethics based in those biblical passages metastasized into a hardened attitude against sexual- and gender-identity minorities, bristling with bullying and violence. This contempt is in the name of God, the most powerful kind there is in the world. I now believe that the traditional interpretation of the most cited passages is questionable and that all that parsing of Greek verbs has distracted attention from the primary moral obligation taught by Jesus — to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially our most vulnerable neighbors. I also now believe that while any progress toward more humane treatment of LGBT people is good progress, we need to reconsider the entire body of biblical interpretation and tradition related to this issue.
Put simply, it finally became clear to me that I must side with those who were being treated with contempt, just as I hope I would have sided with Jews in the Nazi era and with African Americans during the civil rights years.
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Developing a Healthy Body Image | November 24, 2014
Because the modern obsession with impossibly perfect body images
has taught so many people to hate their bodies to a pathological degree,
we’ve come to identify all positive body images as psychologically
healthy, and all negative body images as psychologically sick. . . From
the Buddha’s perspective, though, this attitude is radically deluded.
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "Under Your Skin" |
