Religion and LGBT people

[Esquilax]

If you're referring to the bi invisibility report, I responded by showing that the increase in self-identified gays of 1.5% was greater than the decrease of self-identifeid stragihts of .8%, refuting your position that the change was merely a matter of peer pressure on adolescents.

Please go back and read my initial response to that. It says it all.

I did not claim it's fact. I do claim that a peer-reviewed study should be given more weight than blogs and press releases.

And in doing so, you reveal you're not quite getting what peer review is. The initial review before publication is just the pregame show, at most; the real deal comes afterward, when the rest of the scientific community can dissect the results and uncover issues that might not have come to light in the initial testing. The community is its own fraud detector, here, and it will snap up any mistakes or errors very quickly, as it did in this case. The APA kind of does have a ton of credibility.

"Sole objection"? I don't object to them at all. I'm the one that brought them up. I noted myself that those studies indicate genetic predisposition. I don't "object" to the numbers not being enough. It's a clear observation which you refuse to concede due to your own bias.

How would one "concede" a point that he is making? The genetic predisposition thing has been my schtick from the beginning.

I also noted that other cultures have had very different notions of sexuality. THis went unchallenged.

Because it doesn't matter? How would cultural issues alter genetics?

Which question? If it's "When did I choose to be straight," I answered that twice IIRC. You guys just pretend I haven't answered it.

You cited studies in answer, sure. And we refuted them. That happened.

Yes, the study is clear and open about this. What's the point? They had to work with what was available.

That's not how research works. These guys weren't attached to Exodus at the hip; it would only have helped their credibility if they had reached out to some unbiased sample groups, or at the very least used potential candidates for the Exodus program, rather than using people already in it.

I'm not forgetting it. The study is clear and open about the numbers and the bias. Guess what - there aren't any unbiased groups attempting this. Again, they can only do research on what's available to research.

Again, avoiding bias is a huge, huge part of mainstream psychological research. And these guys intentionally limited their own pool of samples by staying at Exodus; that was absolutely not all there was to research.

The fact that the APA commented on the methodology of the study proves that it is biased, as it does not review methodology of every published study as a matter of course.

Or, to put it another way, why on earth would you hear about all the studies they reviewed and didn't find anything wrong with?

Oh please, you've had a problem for a long time now without my mentioning sin or morality in the slightest.

Which is why I ask at all. It occurs to me that I might be arguing where I don't need to. Consider it an ingrained response; after years of listening to religious types angling toward this "it's a choice!" canard in order to make me out to be sinful and evil, I'm automatically wary of anyone approaching the same argument.

Now, if you're actually trying to tell me that I'm sinful and my gay friends are too, then I'll fight you forever. But if you're just arguing for a more nuanced view, then I still might not agree with you, but it's definitely worth discussing, just assuming that you do it well, and I don't think you have been so far, really.

Of course, that's also assuming you aren't trying to foist a moral position here too.