Owlish Mutterings

I don't know whether you were born gay or it was a choice created by society, conditions around you, etc. But I don't think the answer to the how question matters particularly. You are not infringing on my life, liberty, or property and therefore, in my belief system, you are free to continue doing what pleases you.

Oh, and I'd say that the "breakdown" of marriage has at least as much to do with the fact that we now live to be 75 or 80, on average, as the other things that Thomas discusses. A significant number (I don't remember, now, the exact statistic) of divorces are between people around the age of 40. When the average life expectancy was 45, give or take, divorce at 40 wasn't going to happen. When, at 40, you look at the person next to you and realize not getting divorced means another 35-40 years with someone you don't get along with anymore ........

Also, thought you might like Keep the Guns in the Closet, not the Gays.

Oddly enough, I was born left-handed. And incidentally, a few days ago I offered my take on marriage.

Oh yeah, thanks for the mention.

I tend to find Nature vs Nurture arguments a little simplistic, which is why I like the left handed vs right handed metaphor - we used to force lefties to write with their left hand, and it didn't work so well.

I had remembered Instapundit's post from the time, but I don't think I read yours then. Are all the comments gone?

I always wondered what it was like to throw a rock into a hornet's nest.

The environment in which we live, at least here in America, has been shaped and molded rather than something naturally occurring. I give token tolerance to anyone who has expressed a belief contrary to my own or those of my church, such tolerance should not be construed as acceptance. I admit that my core beliefs are considerably more “conservative”, if such can cover the many acceptable life styles which are lawful in our country. It is not my purpose to condemn or criticize; simply put, my intention was to remind those involved in this particular discussion, something which was started by Brad the Unrepentant Individual’s article when he commented about the “right to be happy” and going on to say that such a society would be more efficient. At one time the definition of happiness included different parameters, more closely in tune with Christian values as opposed to the worldly concepts of hedonism.

Thank you for entering the discussion.

Oh, and on marriage, sex, relationships, etc: it's changed a lot recently- aging, birth control, survival post-partum, fertilization techniques, women's improved economic independence- these and probably others have changed it. Plus, it's not like it remained exactly the same in the 2000 years previous.

So, I really don't think gay marriage is going to cause the downfall of Western Civilization.

The other thought is, what happens if we succeed in extending our lifespan to 500-1000 years?

One last thing: if my environment caused me to be gay, it happened way before puberty.

...if my environment caused me to be gay, it happened way before puberty.

I'd put the blame squarely on Global Warming™. :P

ROFL. Yes, Global warming.

And Stern, I don't insist on acceptance. And assuming you're a devout member of your church, I'm not expecting to get it. And that's ok. There are points where we agree politically, which is the whole point to the group.

Owlish wrote: "I had remembered Instapundit's post from the time, but I don't think I read yours then. Are all the comments gone?"

Sadly, all of the comments were on blog*spot. Have you ever tried to import comments from blog*spot? Too bad really, because the debate got, as you might imagine, very intense.

I think it's time for me to post on something controversial like that again, I haven't really ticked people off in a while!

I figured that was what happened. Fortunately for me, [sort of] I never got enough traffic to get many comments while on blogspot. And I'm not shutting it down, both to have a backup site and to keep someone else from taking it.

Yeah, I never figured on a spammer taking the site. And decided that cowperthwaite.blogspot.com was unique enough to me that no other blogger was likely to use it. Silly me