German Catholic Bishops Declare Homosexuality to be "Normal"

The Reformation began in Germany in reaction to the corruption and lunacy of the Roman Catholic Church.  It ultimately forced the Church to change its ways in a number of ways. One thing that did not change was the Church's dogma on human sexuality which remained firmly back in the 12th century - where it has remained to the current day despite advances in medical and mental healthy knowledge.  As a result, gays have been persecuted and sex has remained for procreation only and should never be enjoyed. Now, a synod of German bishops is committed to “newly assessing” the universal Church’s teaching on homosexuality, sexual morality in general, and seemingly at long last bring the Church out of the 12th century. As one might expect, the shrieks and screams from right wing Catholic extremists who live to condemn others and preach a message of division is off the charts. A piece in the Catholic News Agency looks at the ongoing development.  Here are excerpts:

Munich, Germany, Dec 12, 2019 / 02:10 pm (CNA).- The German bishops’ conference has committed to “newly assessing” the universal Church’s teaching on homosexuality, sexual morality in general, as well as the sacraments of ordination and marriage. The commitment comes at the beginning of a controversial two-year “Synodal Process” by the German hierarchy.

Following consultations in Berlin last week, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the bishops agreed that homosexuality is a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

“Both belong to the normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be be changed with the help of a specific socialization”.

Koch went on to say that “developments” made possible by Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis’ exhortation of marriage and the family, the Church must consider the latest scientific and theological insights on human sexuality.

Archbishop Koch, together with diocesan bishops Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz, as well as several auxiliary bishops from the Faith and Family Commission of the bishops' conference consulted with a number of invited medical specialists, theologians and canon lawyers during the event.

Calling for a "solid discussion supported by human sciences and theology" Koch and Bode said that Amoris Laetitia already provides for noticeable "developments" of both Church doctrine and practice, adding that a sexual relationship for divorced and remarried couples after Amoris laetitia "was no longer always to be qualified as grave sin," and that wholesale “exclusion from the reception of the Eucharist" of such couples could no longer be justified.

Koch said that the "Synodal Process" should must begin from an "unbiased" position on the Church’s teaching and without fixed points of view, but rather an openness to taking into account “latest scientific insights”.

According to a press release issued by the bishops, there was also discussion on whether the prohibition of homosexual acts by the Church’s magisterium was "still up-to-date" – and whether artificial contraception should still be condemend by the Chuch for “both married and unmarried” couples.

The results of the “expert consultation” in Berlin will be fed in to the “Synodal Process” through the synodal forum on "Life in Successful Relationships - Living Love in Sexuality and Partnership", will begin its work in February 2020.

Coinciding with the opening of the Synodal Process, several diocesan and national Catholic associations funded by the German Church tax, or Kirchensteuer, have made public demands for changes to the Church’s teaching and practice on similar issues.

Calls for “reform” range from the blessing of homosexual unions to the priestly ordination of women, . . .

Half of Heterosexuals Carry the Gay Genes

Science continues to deliver bad news to gay hating Christofascists and Islamic extremists: half of the world's population carries the so-called gay genes and the prevalence of homosexuality has, therefore been stable through time.  The Bible thumpers and ISIS thugs deceive themselves if they believe that sexual orientation is a choice.  What's most delicious is that many of these hate-filled zealots - think Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham, North Carolina Republicans - are likely carrying the gay genes themselves.   May they all have gay children or grandchildren.  Science Daily has a report on the new findings on this reality.  Here are excerpts:

Around half of all heterosexual men and women potentially carry so-called homosexuality genes that are passed on from one generation to the next. This has helped homosexuality to be present among humans throughout history and in all cultures, even though homosexual men normally do not have many descendants who can directly inherit their genes. This idea is reported by Giorgi Chaladze of the Ilia State University in Georgia, and published in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. Chaladze used a computational model that, among others, includes aspects of heredity and the tendency of homosexual men to come from larger families.

Chaladze used an individual-based genetic model to explain the stable, yet persistent, occurrence of homosexuality within larger populations. He took into account findings from recent studies that show that homosexual men tend to come from larger families. These suggest that the genes responsible for homosexuality in men increase fecundity (the actual number of children someone has) among their female family members, who also carry the genes. Other reports also suggest that many heterosexual men are carriers of the genes that could predispose someone to homosexuality.

Based on Chaladze's calculations, male homosexuality is maintained in a population at low and stable frequencies if half of the men and roughly more than half of the women carry genes that predispose men to homosexuality.

"The trend of female family members of homosexual men to have more offspring can help explain the persistence of homosexuality, if we also consider that those males who have such genes are not always homosexuals," says Chaladze.

The possibility that many heterosexual men are carriers can also explain why estimates of the number of men who have reported any same-sex sexual behavior and same-sex sexual attraction are much higher than estimates of those who self-identify as homosexual or bisexual. According to Chaladze, non-homosexual male carriers might sometimes manifest interest in homosexual behavior without having a homosexual identity.

Nature’s Case for Same-Sex Marriage

One of the constant cries of the Christofascists is that gay sex and same sex romantic love are "unnatural" and against "natural law."  David George Haskell, a professor of biology at Sewanee, The University of the South, has an op-ed in the New York Times that debunks this myth used incessantly by the Bible beaters who prefer to cling to the writings of uneducated nomads rather than face the facts shown by science and modern knowledge.  The truth is that homosexuality and bi-sexuality are found all across nature.  It is only in man-made "natural law" first concocted in the Christian realm in the 13th century that homosexuality isn't normal.  Here are op-ed excerpts:

BIOLOGY has returned to the nation’s highest court. It’s not Darwin’s theory of evolution on the docket this time, but the nature of sex. Defenders of Proposition 8, California’s ban on gay marriage, base their case on what they call the “objective biological fact” that procreation is an exclusively heterosexual process. Citing the 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, they argue that marriage should be “founded in nature.”

References to biology coat these arguments with a gloss of scientific rigor. But before we write nature into law, let’s take a stroll outside the Supreme Court’s chambers and check those biological facts.

If these birds and bees were the first to teach us about sex, we’ve forgotten part of the lesson. Just as some species that are mostly hermaphroditic contain unisexual individuals, some insects and vertebrates cannot be simply called male or female. Human biology joins in this rejection of binary claims of male and female. 

Of course, sexuality is more than an arrangement of cells. Bonds form between sexual partners that help define the social structure of each species. What does nature on the Mall teach us about these relationships? Look, for instance, at the mallards paddling in the nearby reflecting pools. If they are like mallards elsewhere, then one in 10 of them engage in homosexual sex. 

Stepping from the northern border of the Mall into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, we come face-to-taxidermied-face with our great ape relatives. Before these apes were sequestered in museum cabinets, homosexual bonds were a natural part of their lives. This is especially true for our closest living cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees. 

The facts of biology plainly falsify the oft-repeated notion that homosexuality is unnatural. Every species has evolved its own sexual ecology, and so nature resists generalizations. Does humanity’s natural inheritance include homosexual bonds and behaviors? Certainly. This conclusion is reinforced by the growing evidence that our sexual orientation is influenced by both our genes and the environment that we experience in the womb. 

A wide, living rainbow arcs across the natural world. Diversity rules in sexuality, just as it does in the rest of biology. This natural variety does not provide ready-made moral guidance. But to claim that the only natural forms of sex and pair bonding occur between unambiguous males and females is to ignore the facts of human biology. Let those who wish for marriage to be “founded in nature” take note: the view outside the Supreme Court is full of life’s beautiful sexual variegation.

Haskell gives many other examples of bi-sexuality and homosexuality in the op-ed, but you get the point.  Like so much else that the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP claim, the claim that homosexuality is "unnatural" is a lie. 

A New Scientific Theory On Why Some People Are Gay

While the hate merchants of the Christian Right and the snake oil merchants of the reparative therapy crowd continue to fraudulently claim that homosexuality is a "choice" and that sexual orientation can be "changed," a new scientific study further supports the biological basis for homosexuality.  The gay haters can claim whatever they want to further their political agenda and/or line their own pockets by fleecing the gullible, but this scientific study further indicates that their mantra is nothing more than delusional religious based bullshit.  An article in U. S. News looks at the findings.  Here are some excerpts (some of the comments to the article underscore the rank ignorance and hate filled nature of many self-anointed "godly Christians"):

A group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuals get that trait from their opposite-sex parents: A lesbian will almost always get the trait from her father, while a gay man will get the trait from his mother

The hereditary link of homosexuality has long been established, but scientists knew it was not a strictly genetic link, because there are many pairs of identical twins who have differing sexualities. Scientists from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis say homosexuality seems to have an epigenetic, not a genetic link.

Long thought to have some sort of hereditary link, a group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuality is linked to epi-marks — extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed. These epi-marks are usually, but not always, "erased" between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren't erased — they're passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.

Rice and his team created a mathematical model that explains why homosexuality is passed through epi-marks, not genetics. Evolutionarily speaking, if homosexuality was solely a genetic trait, scientists would expect the trait to eventually disappear because homosexuals wouldn't be expected to reproduce. But because these epi-marks provide an evolutionary advantage for the parents of homosexuals: They protect fathers of homosexuals from underexposure to testosterone and mothers of homosexuals from overexposure to testosterone while they are in gestation.

"These epi-marks protect fathers and mothers from excess or underexposure to testosterone — when they carry over to opposite-sex offspring, it can cause the masculinization of females or the feminization of males," Rice says, which can lead to a child becoming gay. Rice notes that these markers are "highly variable" and that only strong epi-marks will result in a homosexual offspring.

"Most mainstream biologists have shied away from studying it because of the social stigma," he says. "It's been swept under the rug, people are still stuck on this idea that it's unnatural. Well there are many examples of homosexuality in nature, it's very common." Homosexual behavior has been observed in black swans, penguins, sheep, and other animals, he says.

The bottom line is that the knuckle draggers need to face the fact that God/nature makes some of us gay despite the ignorant writings of Neolithic nomads who were utterly ignorant of science and biology.   Clinging to Bible inerrancy is like shouting from the roof top that one is either a cretin or suffers from severe psychological disorder. 

Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why

Neuroscientist Simon LeVay (pictured at right) has written a new book entitled Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why which looks at the determinants of sexual orientation and yet again lays the foundation for sexual orientation being something largely determined be fore birth. The primary cause found to date - hormonal levels in the mid-point of fetal development - discussed in the book are consistent with a research scientist I once spoke with once in respect to my exposure to DES (diethylstilbestrol) while my mother was pregnant with me. DES exposure has been alleged by some to impact sexual orientation and/or other aspects of male children of mothers taking the drug. I have no symptoms of effects from such exposure, but it was something I wanted to learn more about. The researcher said point blank that while her research had found no proof that DES might cause homosexuality, it had convinced her that hormonal levels in the womb prior to birth did have a clear casual effect. Thus, no amount of praying or exorcisms can ever change one's sexual orientation regardless of the claims of fraudulent "ex-gay" ministries, reparative therapy advocates, and Christianists. The Globe and Mail has a review of Levay's new book and here are some highlights:
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Neuroscientist Simon LeVay has written an absolutely superb book, aimed at the general reader, discussing in detail what we now know. Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why should be on everyone’s reading list. Clearly the environment, culture, can be significant. Think of the Greeks and of the behaviours of people in prisons.
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More basically, however, it turns out that biology is the key. It is a matter of hormones, more specifically, of hormonal levels in the mid-point of fetal development and how they affect that part of the brain called the hypothalamus. To produce heterosexuals, distinctively different hormonal cocktails are needed for men and women. Homosexual orientation seems to be a matter of (in the case of males) the cocktails being more typical of those that produce heterosexual females. Conversely for women.
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Why exactly these atypical combinations should happen – and given that we are looking at around 5 per cent of the population, they are not rare – is still a matter of some debate. Gay orientations run in families. The genes are involved, but not that simply or inevitably.
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One thing LeVay stresses is that, although in some respects we can treat gay men and women as mirror images for causal factors, one should not assume that this is always the case. Indeed, we should not assume that all gay people of one sex are the same. For instance, there may well be significant differences in the factors making for rather dominant “butch” lesbians, as opposed to “femmes.”
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Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why is a very good book. It is clear and comprehensive, looking at the widest range of research, and very balanced. Read it, and then pass on its message to others.

Study Finds Gay Brains Resemble Those of Opposite Sex

As anyone who is gay will readily admit - except for those who allow religious brainwashing and fear to smother them in self-hate - sexual orientation is not a choice no matter what the Christianists and professional Christians claim. All legitimate medical and mental health associations accept this fact and despite their claims, the "ex-gay ministries" have no statistical data to back up their conversion claims. Indeed, all they have are ex-gays for pay like John Paulk or Michael Johnston who routinely seem to get themselves caught acting anything but "cured.

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"Now, yet another study - this time out of Sweden - appears to again confirm that sexual orientation has a biological basis. Which means that either God f*cked up in creating gays, or we are the way God intended us to be. And, if God is infallible as the Christianists claim, then they ought to embrace gays as God's purpose based creation. No doubt, our enemies will pretend this new study does not exist and continue their campaign of disingenuous lies. Here are some highlights about the new study via Pink News:

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Swedish scientists have suggested that brains of gay people may share similar physical attributes to those of the opposite sex. . . . In this study, Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström, of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, say they believe the brains of heterosexual men and lesbians are slightly asymmetric, with the right hemisphere larger than the left. However, the brains of gay men and straight women were found to be symmetrical.

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The study, which analysed the brains of 90 subjects through MRI and PET scans, also found that in connectivity of the amygdala (which is used for emotional learning), lesbians resemble straight men, and gay men resemble straight women.

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Last year, another study found that the brains of gay men and women have structural and functional differences from those of their straight counterparts. . . . They found that lesbians have a "male-like" proportion and distribution of grey matter in their brain when compared with heterosexual women.

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How one's brain is structured would seem to be anything but a "choice" to most rational people. But then, the anti-science and anti-knowledge Christianists are not what I'd call rational people under any definition of rational.