Religion seeks to explain the unexplainable through faith. Science seeks to eplain the unexplainable through reason. Instead of answering the big questions of “Why?” with a simple “because.”

Google and other search engines only contain hits related to AIDS — after all, I’m not going to research all day to answer your question.

You’ll have to look in medical books and journals to find clear evidence of rectal and anal damage, infections, and of course tansmission of contagious diseases, including, of course, STD’s.

If you choose not to believe me, then call me names. It has been oh so effective in the past, for whatever your purposes might be.

I have a question for you — Were you challenging me, are you so incredibly naive as to believe that male homosexual sex is harmless to the passive partner?

That was obvious Frank. As it is here:

“Before HIV / AIDS was even known to exist, there were other diseases that were (are) associated with activity of homosexuals.”

Do you actually want to name some?

But I wonder…

Isn’t it just as likely that God created homosexuals to test everybody else’s capacity for love and acceptance?

I suppose it depends on whether you think God is Love, or God is the Old Testament Tyrant.

Mama BFB would be so proud…

You can also read the Bible to find out one particular society can deal with things right now.

Having said that, however, science and the scientific method are a much more reliable way of finding out about the origins and nature of the universe (us included) than trying to divine them from a cobbled-together re-re-re-re-translation of an incomplete set of scrolls and handed-down stories.

As to what causes homosexuality, the jury is very much out. From an evolutionary perspective, homosexuality would seem to work against propagation of species if it were to crowd out heterosexual mating, so it can’t be a really adaptive trait. (Keep in mind that according to ET the purpose of sex is to propagate genes, and the purpose of life is to support sex. Given the way humans tend to behave, this is actually plausible.)

If you assume that homosexuality is genetic, you’d have to factor that in when you try and explain why it keeps reoccurring in the gene pool instead of being permanently selected out the way other such traits are. Maybe it was a local adaptation (the way sickle-cell was against malaria); maybe the only thing that’s genetic is a sensitivity to some hormone or virus that changes the part of the brain involved in sexual response, and the relatively low occurrence (Frank_D’s figure of 2-3% is the one with the most evidentiary support) reflects the joint probability of (a) having that genetic makeup and (b) being exposed to factor X at just the right developmental point.

It’s not a simple picture at all. But you’re a lot more likely to find the answer scientifically than you are in the Bible. *That* you can read to see how one particular society dealt with it way back when.

At least my statement possessed more truth than his.

I am happy you took the time out to comment on my comment, and ignored everything else that was written on the thread.

And more importantly, you wrote a few dozen words without an obscenity or a profanity, and without calling me a name. I guess I’m getting better, eh?

What a come back Frank. If only those scientists had quit while they were ahead after discovering the true movements of the planets, that the world was round, the speed of light, microbes, vaccines, electricity, genetics, radioactivity, nuclear power, and the list goes on … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_experiments

History has shown that the closer science reaches the limits of human knowledge, Frank, the more it seems to always push those limits just a little further back.

Actually, no I don’t. I have read the Bible three times cover – to – cover. With a certain amount of repetition, it took me more than four years (approximately a chapter or more a day). I don’t even recall seeing that verse. I’m not ashamed that my eyes glazed over in the middle of Leviticus, and I was only reading it a chapter per day. Between the shellfish, and the cloven hooves, I wasn’t terribly excited. Who knew from four – legged winged creatures.

I don’t believe every word that’s in the Bible as literal truth? No. I don’t have to. I’m a Catholic. We have Papal Bulls and Encyclical to guide us. And, of course, which of those I obey or disobey is my business and God’s.

aside to tiponeill: You should be honest, and admit that you really have no idea how many people what he wrote. How could you possibly know?

Peter Farb’s Consuming Passions presents a number of theories, related to religious sanctions related to animals. He claims, for example, that the “sacred cow” of the Hindus is far more valuable alive, for calves and milk products, than it is butchered and eaten.

There are other (sometimes similar, sometimes not) relationships between dietary restrictions and various aspects of anthropology, as opposed to religion.

When meat was a regular part of our diets, eating fish and / or mac ‘n’ cheese on Friday’s was no big deal for us Cat’lics, but now meat is a little harder to get your hands on, that rule is gone.

The dietary laws are no way to judge the veracity of the Bible, and they are certainly no way to trust its usefulness (even though I still ain’t eating no dragonflies, or pigs’ feet)

If you know a little about the Shroud of Turin, you may know there that there are three schools of thought about it.

1) It is the real thing (it has been “proven real”)

2) It’s a fake.

3) It need not be proven — you just believe it.

Since leading Democrats can’t muzzle their mouths, we really do need an Office of Censorship. We had such an office in World War II, and no one seriously opposed it because we knew we had to control our rhetoric. “Loose lips sink ships” is as true today as it was then, and even more so because in the nuclear age, more is at stake. Now, unpatriotic Democrats don’t want any form of censorship, claiming the right to “free speech.” However, free speech should not lead to the deaths of Americans, but the Democrats want to get back into power, and hey, if it costs a few thousand American soldier’s lives to do so, then so be it.

They don’t really keep it a secret.

Yes, millenia of scholarly study have backed up several of the biblical accounts (archaeologists can prove that Jesus lived around 2000 years ago, and that a Noah-like figure did at his appropriate time as well) yet they cannot prove everything. There is no empirical evidence that says Moses ever existed. No historical record outside the Bible, no archaeological, no footprints in the sand, no “Moses wuz heer” graffiti, nothing.

I mentioned the four-legged winged creatures, and so did you, and neither of us could actually name a single one. Seriously, if you can, hit me. Pegasus? Griffon? Dragons? No such animal nor its remains have ever been found. But I’m sure you believe they must have existed (not just one species, but enough that the bible had to refer to them by a general description rather than by names) because the book says so. Yes, Darwin’s variations could theoretically account for such a thing (though I think there is actually biological precedent that says otherwise, but as I cannot prove this I will not say that as fact) but whereas the theory accounts for the possibility of their existence, nothing accounts for the fact of it.

Given then that the bible is not an entirely reliable record of fact, should we trust it even to give us Gods own opinion re: teh gay? And ought we also base public policy on such a record?

Certainly not enough to affect the world s reproductive rate. And, of course, gay children have straight parents, if memory serves.