Vault101 said:
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1. I think women being more prone to bisexuality is BS perpetuated by they fact men like "girl on girl" and that women are allowed by society to have more open and confortable freaindships
2. no one pretends to be gay just to gain sympathy
3. however little the population may or may not be if its too much for the poor straight people for the gays to marry, be treated like humans both IRL and in entertainment then....well really
People pretend to be anything to get sympathy, it's not something everyone does mind you, but as soon as you see a lot of positive attention being aimed at a group people will try and latch onto it. This is in part how the whole "Emo" thing became the joke that it is, people like that started to get a lot of attention and sympathy, next thing you knew everyone was publically wallowing in teen angst.
... and I'll be honest, one of the most reliable ways to get stuff off of people in an MMO is to pretend your gay as opposed to say pretending your a girl, largely because of the expectation that nobody does it. Wait for some bro-talk knocking gays, make some comments about how your gay and to leave you alone, get some responses "oh let me apologize for all the bigots" directed at you, and then go on with your "life story" about how your a barely legal young man seeking escapism because nobody understands you, especially your parents, who hate you not just because your gay but weak and effeminate looking. You'll be surprised how many friendly dudes come out of the woodwork to help you out after a while, the transferrable goods which can then be transferred to your account. I don't toy with people like that, but I've seen it run by aquaintences.
The point is anything that can be spun to an advantage or positive attention will be used.
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When it comes to the lesbian thing, it depends, as a straight guy who has been known to enjoy "lesbian" porn I have to admit I've had similar thoughts since there are a lot of people like me. At the same time though, I'm slow to dismiss it outright since some of my personal life experiences mean that I see a potential truth there. It's one of those cases where I think LGBT needs to be broken up into specific groups, with each thing evaluated on it's own, rather than being represented and evaluated as a group. To put things into perspective I don't think I've ever seen a study done focusing entirely on women, trying to determine how much of that might be true, since it seems like it could be plausible.
Of course one of the problems with any kind of social ruling in the US is that we don't have the tools needed to make informed decisions as I've mentioned before. Our current attitudes on civil liberties means that the government or other groups with the resources can't genuinely investigate or gather information from unaware people on a large scale, and then use that information publically towards setting policy. One of the big problems is that when studies have to be entirely voluntary you can't find out much about people when they think no one else is around, and that's when it matters, otherwise they are just going to tell you whatever happens to suit their agenda. Case in point let's say you have a girl who did a three way with her boyfriend and another girl both of them know, and then she had fun so when her boyfriend wasn't around she slept with this other girl a couple of times because "it's okay, my boyfriend already knows were intimate". She puts herself down as straight and says "well, I'm not a lez, I just got horny and it was better than just using a vibrator on my own, and I didn't want to cheat". Does she count as straight just because she identifies that way? Depending on the terms of the information gathering and it's voluntary nature you have to record her as she wants, not as you want, because otherwise she can withdraw her participation so to speak. Of course it depends on the study. This however goes into issues well beyond this. I mostly consider it a "maybe" I mentioned this kind of thing
for the sake of discussion since it comes up every once in a while in articles, but rarely gets much serious attention.
As far as gay marriage goes, my opposition there has little to do with my other thoughts on gay rights (which you are aware of I'm sure, but I'm more or less forbidden from speaking with complete freedom). As far as I'm concerned nothing prevents two adults from getting married, if two guys or girls want to exchange vows and rings, and the community accepts them as exclusive to each other, it's all good, and that's all that's needed. The issue is when it comes down to legal recognition of these marriages which comes with benefits like tax breaks. Tax breaks included based on the assumption that married couples will have children, and to lower expenses to encourage it. The reasons for this were never specified in the laws themselves because at the time the laws were written nobody thought it would ever need to be specified. Homosexuals are not going to have kids, no matter how much they might want to, the tax breaks become free money for all intents and purposes. When homosexuals adopt/take foster kids/whatever such arrangements usually come with money to help cover the expenses, indeed one of the most abused things out there is people adopting a bunch of kids, pocketing the money, and keeping them in squalid conditions. I also believe in general lines do need to be drawn, otherwise there is no point to having laws to limit behavior. Once you start establishing precedents that the government wlll recognize any marriage you open the door for people to marry their pets and stuff and claim benefits for it. That sounds insane, but consider even here on The Escapist we've had articles about people marrying video game characters and the like (as far as ceremonies and such go), if your removing the reason for the tax breaks and such and saying "hey they should apply to anyone who is married" and saying the government has no right to decide what marriages to recognize, all it takes is a decent lawyer and next thing you know your giving some guy a tax break because he decided to marry Tali from Mass Effect or something, and had a ceremony with a picture of her on a monitor. Everyone will do it to get the tax breaks so they lose any meaning. This sounds "insane" until you consider how the laws snowball, and how decades ago nobody would have considered gay marriage likely to be an issue.
Now to be fair with you, I once had some different attitudes about gay marriage, mainly because I agreed that a gay couple should say have the right to see each other in the hospital the way a husband or wife would in many cases, and things like that. The thing is though that policies changed and most hospitals now allow such visitations, and a lot of other policies changed as well. As a result the biggest defense for gay marriage no longer applies. Right now it seems to mostly be being fought about because it annoys straights and conservatives, and you know... who doesn't like tax breaks?
I also feel the government needs to be tightening up on marriage laws and such in general since we already have trouble with polygamist cults, and polygamous marriages coming into the country from elsewhere and so on. Basically the government needs to have more control, not less in this particular case, and while the gay issue is different, it represents precedent for the government being unable to discriminate in terms of who can get married and under what terms which will just make battles on other fronts more difficult. Rulings made here can be used in other cases. A lot of people don't pay as much attention to it because it's not a hot button liberal topic, but every once in a while you see exposes on Polygamist communes and how the older men chase the man children out as soon as they can to avoid competition for the women and all kinds of things. There have also been cases where people coming into the country from other nations have used loopholes to say have five or six wives and argue for preferential treatment to bring them all in, and things like that. Hence why I am a big supporter of the sanctity of the ruling that in a legal sense marriage is a union between one man and one woman. That definition gives the government plenty of leeway to go after a lot of problems, but as long as they are embattled over this garbage it's not going to happen.
What's more I really think this is an issue for states to decide, as I feel the people in each state have the right to decide what they want to live with. I do not think it's following the spirit of the laws for the federal government to act as it has been here, especially seeing as the attitudes of the founding fathers (the guys who wrote the things being used to crush state rights here) towards homosexuality were pretty well known given the morals of the time. I think the gay marriage thing is very dangerous right now because it's driving a wedge between the people and the government, it's not the sole cause, but in one way or another we have like 15 states in one form of rebellion against the federal government or another. You combine this issue with things like the legalization of illegal immigrants in the back yard of states where the majority of people don't want them, and it's just going to make things worse. People were watching the situation with Scotland not too long ago with interest because similar dialogues are already happening in the US. The union only works as long as the states feel it's in their best interests to remain part of it, and the federal authority comes from voluntary compliance. If a lot of these issues continue there is a decent chance we're going to get to the point where one or more states is just flat out going to say "no" and that's going to be a really, really, bad thing for the entire country. See, as easy as it is to hate/dismiss "Red States" understand that in those areas of the country your finding huge numbers of people who oppose a lot of these social agendas, and what's more are the ones who actually have to deal with the illegal Mexicans becoming legal and living in their back yard and stuff. Everyone suffers and becomes weaker if those states leave, but when your telling millions and millions of people to suck it up for your moral principles (which you do not have to deal with) it becomes an issue. A lot of people also tend to forget each state has it's own identity, history, and issues.. and the red states in many cases identify with it particularly strongly.
With gay rights, immigration, and other things my basic attitude is that the left wing needs to stop forcing things. Introduce the ideas, but you need to wait for time to pass and people's attitudes to change if they are going to, the people whose back yard it's going to happen in especially. Basically you need to hope people like me change our minds (my attitudes have waffled in the past) or establish an infrastructure and hope it changes generationally. Going state by state for example, it opens the door for the states that legalize gay marriage to set an example and create pressure for those that do not, and so on.
As I've said before, I don't expect a civil war tomorrow, but I think some serious cracks are showing and you have to be blind to miss them. We have governors in open defiance of the federal government and in some cases using federal resources (also in defiance of federal authority when they comply). It's not some big thing when it happens with just one state or is isolated incidents, but it's happening with a lot of places all at once, and it seems it's one thing after another. This is not the time to be trying to hammer in social reforms, especially not so many at once. Truthfully though I think illegal immigration is more likely to break things than gay rights. Simply put if Obama declares millions of people legal, and tells some of the states like Texas to accept all these new citizens in their back yard, I think there is a reasonable chance some of those states might just flat out refuse to recognize federal authority and start doing deportations (or worse) themselves. I could be wrong, but it could get very interesting. The gay marriage stuff is just continueing to pour gas into the fire.
That said we're likely to agree to disagree yet again. You won't see the connections I do, and that's fine. I tend to think in terms of the big picture and a few moves ahead a lot of the time.