Windshift, half of the people against homosexuality is basically afraid of the homosexuals. Homofobia is very widespread. Earlier in this thread I encountered someone saying they were afraid of the gay people to hit on them. Fear and ignorance is the main fuel for all hate in the world. But as I stated earlier, and you stated too, homosexuality is a natural thing, found in human society as well as in nature.
I understand the fact of it, and i disagree with homosexuality as a whole, but it's not like every gay guy/girl you see is about to start hitting on all the guys/girls he/she she's.
You can disagree with something without hating or being scared of it.
From the opening summary, which describes a group of men being divided into groups of homophobic and not based on their answers to a pre-screening questionnaire.
Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli.
There was also the other study that suggested that men generally tend to stare at other mens'* crotches, as opposed to women, who generally looked at their faces, lol.
I have to call into question the strength of evidence from the study you've listed millahnna, because I think the challenge that faces this kind of study now is acknowledging and somehow exploring the multifaceted nature of sexual response, physical, emotional and fantasy.
* Wow, a grammatical construction that really confuses me. Is that even right!?
* Wow, a grammatical construction that really confuses me. Is that even right!?
i didnt think this was possible for you strop on the guy looking at the crotch thing, ive never really found myself doing this, if i find myself attracted to another guy, i usually look at their face
I have to call into question the strength of evidence from the study you've listed millahnna, because I think the challenge that faces this kind of study now is acknowledging and somehow exploring the multifaceted nature of sexual response, physical, emotional and fantasy.
I don't disagree, and it's only one study with one small group of men. I just find it interesting as a basis for continuing to look at the phenom.
I think that the big issue here is gay marriage, is it not? The word marriage is defined as follows: the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc. (www.dictionary.com) So, to give homosexuals the right to marriage would mean that we change the entire definition of that word, and I am fine with that. I think that they will need to fight for their rights just like the blacks and women had to do, because their not the "ideal" christian white man. There is going to be a revolution for them in this country, just like in the cases of the blacks and women. Besides that, the constitution does declare that "all men are created equal." John Locke's theory, which is also in the Decoration of Independence, says that every person has god- given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As long I'm not getting hit on by guy after guy, then I am fine with it. Besides that, I believe that gays have done nothing to harm anyone else. Gays are the nicest people I have ever came across.
Okay, let's have a look at that link you provided us, millahnna. I will be quoting salient points from the paper (Adams et al., 1996) itself. Note that the paper itself was published over a decade ago and I'm not sure how things have progressed since then:
Only participants who reported exclusively hetero- sexual arousal and experiences (i.e., ls on both sections) were selected for participation.
This is the first feature- exclusion criteria. In the case of this study this would be perceived as a study strength due to reduced confound but since I struggle with the notion of defining gender orientation anyway...the potential implications would be something worth discussing at any rate.
The men were divided into two groups on the basis of their scores on the IHP: 0-50 = nonhomophobic men, n = 29, M = 30.48, SD = 14.70; 51-100 = homophobic men, n = 35, M = 80.40, SD = 13.2.
This split was necessary because of an inability to find an adequate number of exclusively heterosexual men who scored in the high-grade nonhomo- phobic range (0-25)
Bwahahahaha. Okay, more seriously, this is very important as it indicates the possibility of reporting bias due to demographic slant.
The correlation of erection and arousal to the homosexual video in the nonhomophobic group was significantly smaller (i.e., p < .05 or p < .01 in all comparisons) when compared to other correlations. The decreased consistency between erection and arousal may have been due to the smaller changes in penile responses in this group, making subjective estimates more ditficult.
Those p values indicate that there is a different pattern of trend in the behavior between the two groups as they are defined. The finding is weakened by difficulties encountered in defining the groups, however, but still does indicate some real difference, as mentioned in the discussion and conclusion. Speaking of which:
A major difficulty in this area of research is in defining and measuring homophobia...
That's the biggest weakness, and probably the reason for the above. I'd have liked to see the questionnaire itself. Particularly interesting is this, further on:
In our opinion, negative attitudes and cognitions toward homosexuality are probably not sufficient to warrant the label ofhomophobia
Because this happens to be contrary to common usages of the word "homophobic" in layman terms. This is important in interpreting and translating the results of the study.
Here's what it comes down to. (If your talking about in the U.S.) I think it should be allowed because that is the person's decision if they want that life style. In fact, it HAS to be allowed really. The biggest right and making of America is "for each individual to have the right believe in what they want to believe, to have freedom."
