One in five young adult mormons self-identify as gay/Lesbian/Bisexual

[JustAnAustralian]

19 minutes ago, JAHS said:

"The study turned out to be fraudulent from the beginning. Attitudes change, yes, but as anyone who has knocked door-to-door will tell you, that almost never happens so quickly and easily. The study — which would have cost upwards of a million dollars in real life — never happened, with the UCLA graduate student actually drawing the numbers from an existing data set and convincing a respected researcher, Donald Green, that they reflected thousands of knocked doors. Green later said, “I am deeply embarrassed that I did not suspect and discover the fabrication of the survey data.”

That was an older study.

The problem pointed out with the new study is the small sample size for Gen-Z LDS

[smac97]

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/6/28/22554177/the-trouble-with-claiming-1-in-5-latter-day-saints-is-non-heterosexual-mormon-lgbtq

Quote

Opinion: The trouble with claiming 1 in 5 Latter-day Saints is nonheterosexual

By Jacob Hess  Jun 28, 2021, 10:00pm MDT

 

In 2014, a study appeared in the prestigious journal Science that made almost immediate waves in the national conversation with its conclusion that a mere 20-minute conversation with a gay canvasser telling a personal, heart-felt story led to persistent changes in attitudes — as confirmed by nine-month follow-ups.

When Jon Krosnick, a Stanford social psychologist, was contacted for comment, his response was, “Gee, that’s very surprising and doesn’t fit with a huge literature of evidence. It doesn’t sound plausible to me.”

Nonetheless, a feature piece ran in The New York Times the same week the study posted — the first of many similar commentaries. And the following spring, the radio program “This American Life” amplified these “groundbreaking” findings. Summarizing the cumulative effects of this single study, journalist Jesse Singal states, “It rerouted countless researchers’ agendas, inspired activists to change their approach to voter outreach, generated shifts in grant funding, and launched follow-up experiments.”

The only problem was this: The study turned out to be fraudulent from the beginning. Attitudes change, yes, but as anyone who has knocked door-to-door will tell you, that almost never happens so quickly and easily. The study — which would have cost upwards of a million dollars in real life — never happened, with the UCLA graduate student actually drawing the numbers from an existing data set and convincing a respected researcher, Donald Green, that they reflected thousands of knocked doors. Green later said, “I am deeply embarrassed that I did not suspect and discover the fabrication of the survey data.”

A scientific retraction and journalistic mea culpas soon followed. As Singal summarized, “(Michael) LaCour’s impossible-seeming results were treated as truth, in part because of the weight Green’s name carried, and in part, frankly, because people — researchers, journalists, activists — wanted to believe them. There was a snowball effect here: The more the study’s impact and influence grew, the greater the incentive to buy into the excitement.”

They wanted to believe them.

On a much smaller level, something similar happened last week. One college professor got excited about some new statistics about Latter-day Saints identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or other, and in partnership with a journalist colleague, couldn’t help but bring some immediate national attention to what they assumed was big news.

And what was that news?

First, most prior surveys — including one from this same duo — had found the percentage of Latter-day Saint millennials identifying as LGB+ around 10%, which tracks (as would be expected) with other Christian groups at about 12% nonheterosexual.

But this new survey — more than five years later — found double that number of Latter-day Saint millennials and Gen Zers reporting a nonheterosexual identity.

Second, while recent national Gallup polling had estimated the overall percentage of Gen Z folks not identifying as heterosexual at 21%, this professor’s analysis of the Nationscape numbers for Gen Z Latter-day Saints outside the West found the percentage of those identifying as nonheterosexual to be a whopping 35% (which is, to say, very surprising and highly unlikely for a more conservative religion). Indeed, another analyst I spoke with pointed out that this same dataset shows that in 11 states the proportion of Latter-day Saints reporting to be nonheterosexual was 50% or more.

 

This is precisely the moment at which these authors and others who shared the information might have paused, sought out some second opinions and considered whether anything else might be at play.

Instead, Jana Riess and Benjamin Knoll went to press, publishing a report in Religion News Service touting these striking findings from this “major national study.” Two days later, Professor Knoll was on the “Mormon Land” podcast with a vocal student in the LGBT community to “unpack the latest data.”

News of the study was retweeted and liked hundreds of times, including by respected academics, across the various social media platforms promoting the findings. Enthusiastic about the results, the student activist suggested on the podcast that the surprising findings were likely even lower than reality, speculating that gay Latter-day Saints were more like “1 in 4.”

Throughout this press coverage, the trustworthiness of the dataset was underscored by emphasizing its size, referring to it as “one of the largest studies of Mormons ever fielded in the United States” or, as the lead analyst put it, “the biggest sampling of Gen Zers I’m aware of” for Latter-day Saints.

Hard to dispute a study so large, right? Yet, it was apparent to others that something was very wrong with their conclusions. And after getting some feedback on ways their analysis was off, Riess and Knoll, to their credit, later retracted their 1 in 5 claim — which by now had already spread far and wide.

What was wrong with the data? While the total numbers surveyed were indeed large, including nearly 4,000 Latter-day Saints total, only small numbers of subgroups were represented. For instance, only a couple hundred Gen Z Latter-day Saints were in the dataset to represent the entire United States.

Furthermore, Nationscape data was never meant to be representative of Latter-day Saints or any other religion. Given the wide disparities between these findings and more representative surveys, it’s almost certain the process of selecting the sample overrepresented LGB+-identifying Latter-day Saints outside the West.

Kudos to Riess and Knoll for acknowledging some of this in an update at the top of the story, broaching the representation problem and clarifying the geographical disparities in the data. Given this, they admitted it was likely the true numbers were “around 7 to 9 percentage points lower” than initially reported.

It goes on...

[california boy]

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

No, I don't listen to podcasts as a matter of principle.

Well if you aren't really that interested in hearing about how the data was collected and what the author had to say about the study, then it is pretty pointless talking to you about the podcast isn't it.  

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I'm not certain, but I think you're asking if the Church should stop teaching basic Christian sexual mores, and my answer to that question (if I'm correct) is no. But as a member of the Church who has never married anyone of any sex, I have grown genuinely sick and weary of how you and others always frame this question: If there is 'no place' in the Church for people who aren't married to the opposite sex, then there is no place for me and millions of other members like me, and that's pure BS. Seriously, I'm sick of it to the point of frustration or anger or something I'd prefer not to experience. I know you think this line helps you score points or something, but it's simultaneously absurd and deeply offensive. Please stop pretending you get to speak for me.

We need to teach the truth. I know I've posted links before to very accessible digests of what we know academically, but it's clear you've never actually read or processed any of them, so let me do it again with some snippets and then beg you to read the rest for yourself.

I was referring to the podcast and what it had to say.  Obviously if you are unwilling to respond to what I wrote the post about, you are forced to guess what I was asking.  Which is probably why you now find yourself answering a question that has no bearing on issues thee podcast brought up.

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

From a book review published by OutHistory:

And here's the introduction to the BBC's 'The Invention of "Heterosexuality"':

Significantly, the breakdown of historically novel (fixed, gendered) sexual identities is happening everywhere in large part because they are so unnatural that they can't be sustained. From the same analysis above comes the following: 'a recent UK poll found that fewer than half of those aged 18-24 identify as “100% heterosexual"'. And to build on something I tried to indicate earlier regarding the false assumptions present in the very title of this thread: 'That isn’t to suggest a majority of those young respondents regularly practise bisexuality or homosexuality'. This is simply a return to something more normative historically.

And I know what I'm talking about. I completed my PhD in history at a university whose postgraduate history program at the time was ranked fifth globally. After completing, I was offered a position at the university in the same college I had belonged to as a student, comprised of historians, anthropologists, and linguists. What is expressed in this book review and this analysis is everyday stuff for every single academic I ever studied with or worked alongside. It's not controversial; it's consensus.

Significantly, our doctrines align perfectly with the academic consensus of historians, anthropologists and linguists -- as do prophetic statements such as when Elder Bednar said, somewhat infamously, 'There are no homosexual members of the Church. We are not defined by sexual attraction. We are not defined by sexual behavior'.

By the way, if this statement is true, then that means that there are also no heterosexual members of the Church, and that is definitely something that we can start teaching far, far better!

Since you are a renown historian, I am guessing that you know when Italy became a country.  For those that don't know, Italy has only been a country since June 2, 1946.  Does that mean there were no Italians until June 2, 1946?

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I have previously mentioned on this forum that I was repeatedly told in the MTC that if I didn't look on women with lust, then I wasn't a 'real man' (always followed up by the statement that if I looked twice, then I wasn't a real Saint). This is solid BS, and I knew it at the time, but I worried then and still worry now how many young men have been totally screwed up by messages like that, which aren't supported in any way by our doctrines.

A few years ago, we had a missionary in our ward who, during a service project, 'confessed' to me that he wasn't attracted to women. He was worried, of course, that this meant he was gay. I actually laughed out loud, assured him that he was completely normal, explained to him that, for example, my father had never been attracted to women either, and reminded him that someday he might find himself attracted in some way to a woman but that he didn't need to fret if that didn't or until that did happen. He has been happily married for the past two years or so. Without hearing the truth, who knows where he would have ended up!

I obviously have no idea whether your friend is gay or straight.  And I doubt you do either.   What I do know is that a lot of gay people marry someone of the opposite sex for various reasons.  A lot of those reasons often come from religious, family and social pressure to conform.  The vast majority of those marriages fail.  So if he is in fact gay and you are partially responsible for encouraging him to marry a woman, I hope you are also there to help him and his family with the mess that such failed marriages happen.  I know this through personal experience where others, including church leaders, promised me that everything would be ok if I just married a woman.  

Studies related to mixed marriages from Wikipedia.

Quote

 

Several surveys have been done on the topic of LGBT Mormons and opposite-sex marriages. A 1997 study by members of the BYU Family Studies Department found that of over 200 single LDS women of diverse ages polled, 33% would be willing to seriously date and consider marriage with a hypothetical LDS college grad who had been sexually active with other men 3 years ago.^[196] A 2015 study found that 51% of the 1,612 LGBT Mormon respondents who had entered a mixed-orientation marriage ended up divorcing,^{[197]:301[198]} and projected that 69% of all these marriages would ultimately end in divorce.^{[199]:108[200][201]} The study also found that engaging in mixed-orientation marriages and involvement in the LDS church were correlated with higher rates of depression and a lower quality of life for LGBT people.^[202]

 

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by california boy

[ksfisher]

20 hours ago, smac97 said:

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/6/28/22554177/the-trouble-with-claiming-1-in-5-latter-day-saints-is-non-heterosexual-mormon-lgbtq

It goes on...

From the article.  Talking about problems with the analysis:

...this professor’s analysis of the Nationscape numbers for Gen Z Latter-day Saints outside the West found the percentage of those identifying as nonheterosexual to be a whopping 35% (which is, to say, very surprising and highly unlikely for a more conservative religion). Indeed, another analyst I spoke with pointed out that this same dataset shows that in 11 states the proportion of Latter-day Saints reporting to be nonheterosexual was 50% or more.

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 hours ago, california boy said:

Since you are a renown historian ...

I am a historian of very little renown, to be honest. My PhD thesis has been downloaded just over 1,000 times and quoted in only a handful of significant publications. But that has no impact on the fact that I have spent much of my adult life studying under and then working with historians, anthropologists and linguists of much greater renown. They would be even less impressed by your false analogy to Italy than I am. Clearly, you still haven't processed anything I've posted about what these kinds of scholars know.

Quote

I obviously have no idea whether your friend is gay or straight.  And I doubt you do either.

I do. He's neither. Nor is he 'bisexual'. He's just himself, i.e. perfectly normal.

I understand the political utility of trying to keep forcing a fictional gay/straight divide on humankind, but it's already starting to unravel, and we may both live to see it completely self-deconstruct. From the BBC article that I linked to above:

Quote

Heterosexuality, argues Katz, “is invented within discourse as that which is outside discourse. It’s manufactured in a particular discourse as that which is universal… as that which is outside time.” That is, it’s a construction, but it pretends it isn’t. As any French philosopher or child with a Lego set will tell you, anything that’s been constructed can be deconstructed, as well. If heterosexuality didn’t exist in the past, then it doesn’t need to exist in the future.

I was recently caught off guard by Jane Ward, author of Not Gay, who, during an interview for a piece I wrote on sexual orientation, asked me to think about the future of sexuality. “What would it mean to think about people’s capacity to cultivate their own sexual desires, in the same way we might cultivate a taste for food?” Though some might be wary of allowing for the possibility of sexual fluidity, it’s important to realise that various Born This Way arguments aren’t accepted by the most recent science. Researchers aren’t sure what “causes” homosexuality, and they certainly reject any theories that posit a simple origin, such as a “gay gene” ...

Beyond Ward’s question is a subtle challenge: If we’re uncomfortable with considering whether and how much power we have over our sexualities, why might that be? Similarly, why might we be uncomfortable with challenging the belief that homosexuality, and by extension heterosexuality, are eternal truths of nature? ...

The line between heterosexuality and homosexuality isn’t just blurry, as some take Kinsey’s research to imply – it’s an invention, a myth, and an outdated one. Men and women will continue to have different-genital sex with each other until the human species is no more. But heterosexuality – as a social marker, as a way of life, as an identity – may well die out long before then.

I could be wrong, but I believe that Church leaders are well positioned for these developments. I'm less confident that many Church members and our critics are.

[Hamba Tuhan]

18 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

...this professor’s analysis of the Nationscape numbers for Gen Z Latter-day Saints outside the West found the percentage of those identifying as nonheterosexual to be a whopping 35% (which is, to say, very surprising and highly unlikely for a more conservative religion). Indeed, another analyst I spoke with pointed out that this same dataset shows that in 11 states the proportion of Latter-day Saints reporting to be nonheterosexual was 50% or more.

If these numbers are even close to accurate, I won't be surprised for two reasons: 1) This mirrors developments occurring throughout the Western world. 2) We shouldn't be surprised when those who are raised within a strong Latter-day Saint culture and belief system don't adopt worldly attitudes toward sex, including socially constructed sexual identities based on uncontrollable 'desire'.

[OGHoosier]

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Since you are a renown historian, I am guessing that you know when Italy became a country.  For those that don't know, Italy has only been a country since June 2, 1946.  Does that mean there were no Italians until June 2, 1946?

Depends on how you define "Italian." If you define Italian as a native of the Italian peninsula and culturally similar exclave areas (ie Sicily and Sardinia), then yes, there were Italians, but at that point the thing that defined them as Italians already existed and nothing changed in June 1946. However, if you define "Italian" as a citizen of the state of Italy, then no, there were unironically no Italians before June 1946. Either way, X does not exist before "the thing that defines X" both exists and is associated with X. Respectfully, I don't think this analogy backs up your argument. 

[ksfisher]

13 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

If these numbers are even close to accurate, I won't be surprised for two reasons: 1) This mirrors developments occurring throughout the Western world. 2) We shouldn't be surprised when those who are raised within a strong Latter-day Saint culture and belief system don't adopt worldly attitudes toward sex, including socially constructed sexual identities based on uncontrollable 'desire'.

The point of the article Smac linked to was that the analysis was flawed.  The quote that I pulled out highlights some of those flaws. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

21 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

The point of the article Smac linked to was that the analysis was flawed.  The quote that I pulled out highlights some of those flaws. 

I get that. I just think we wisely need to be prepared for increasing numbers of (primarily young) Latter-day Saints to realise that self-identifying as 'heterosexual' doesn't exactly sync up with their faith or experience. In the past, many people would have responded differently because of societal pressure not to be 'gay' either. As that pressure fades, reality takes over.

I have participated in a number of membership councils that involved violations of the Law of Chastity, at both the ward and the stake level. Every single one of them involved sins linked to heterosexuality.

Edited June 30, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[california boy]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Depends on how you define "Italian." If you define Italian as a native of the Italian peninsula and culturally similar exclave areas (ie Sicily and Sardinia), then yes, there were Italians, but at that point the thing that defined them as Italians already existed and nothing changed in June 1946. However, if you define "Italian" as a citizen of the state of Italy, then no, there were unironically no Italians before June 1946. Either way, X does not exist before "the thing that defines X" both exists and is associated with X. Respectfully, I don't think this analogy backs up your argument. 

You actually explained my point quite clearly.  There have always been gay people.  How we currently define them does not mean they didn't exist centuries before.

[Calm]

10 minutes ago, california boy said:

There have always been gay people.

Define “gay” and/or “gay people” in terms of what you mean by “always been” please to make sure we are talking about the same attributes. 

Edited June 30, 2021 by Calm

[OGHoosier]

45 minutes ago, california boy said:

You actually explained my point quite clearly.  There have always been gay people.  How we currently define them does not mean they didn't exist centuries before.

I'm not so confident that I did. Remember, @Hamba Tuhan is mostly talking about the genesis of fixed and gendered sexual identity here. His comments which you quote discuss the origin of heterosexuality as a concept - which according to our current concepts of sexuality was simply the assumed default. Not so - the concept didn't even exist until the twentieth century. Fixed and gendered sexual identity did not exist, only attraction did. In other words, the thing that defines X - X being alternatively homosexual or heterosexual - did not exist. Which, of course, means that homosexual and heterosexual did not exist. 

As best we can tell, there have always been same-sex and opposite-sex attractions. "Gay" and "straight" people, however, are a recent development. The phenomenon of fixed sexual identity based on one's gender is new and more vulnerable to critique than is often supposed. 

Edited June 30, 2021 by OGHoosier

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

As best we can tell, there have always been same-sex and opposite-sex attractions.

Actually, gendered attraction is an inherent part of the social construction and is as historically novel as the rest.

[OGHoosier]

1 minute ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Actually, gendered attraction is an inherent part of the social construction and is as historically novel as the rest.

Now that is interesting. I would think that there had been people who consistently identified whether they were attracted to one or the other. Does the literature contradict that?

[Hamba Tuhan]

18 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Now that is interesting. I would think that there had been people who consistently identified whether they were attracted to one or the other. Does the literature contradict that?

Yes.

[california boy]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

Define “gay” and/or “gay people” in terms of what you mean by “always been” please to make sure we are talking about the same attributes. 

What I mean is that there have always been people on this earth who were attracted to the same sex, and not really interested in a relationship with the opposite sex.  There has also been people who have married someone of the opposite sex for social, religious and cultural reasons but had little actual relationship with the person they are married to.  

A couple of summers ago, we were in Berlin and went to Potsdam.  This is where the kings built their big palaces.  One of the palaces was Frederick II of Prussia. While we were there, we learned about his life.  He was born in 1712.  He had his first boyfriend at age 16, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith. Once the king found out that it was not just a close relationship, but a sexual relationship, his father had Peter sent away to a post in the Netherlands and never allowed to return again.  A year later, Federick II had his second boyfriend,  Hans Hermann von Katte.  When his father, the king found out, he threatened to execute both of them and give his second son the throne.  In the end, the king spared his Frederick II life but, forced him to watch his boyfriend get beheaded.  His father then forced Frederick II to marry Elisabeth Christine.  He threatened suicide, but eventually went through with the marriage.  As soon as his father died, he sent his wife away banished her from the palace for the rest of her life and refused to visit her except once yearly on her birthday to make sure she was being taken care of..  In the mean time, he had a palace built where no women were every allowed to live.  This is the palace, which we visited.  It is small but quite stunning with beautiful grounds.  His whole life he refused to have sexual relations with any woman.  He named his brother Augustus William heir to the throne because he was unwilling to do what it took to produce an heir.

Frederick II is also known as the potato king.  This is because he introduced potatoes to his subjects.  But everyone was suspicious of eating them.  So he planted a big field full of potatoes but commanded that common people were not allowed to eat them.  The garden was not well guarded, and as soon as people thought they were forbidden from eating the, they would sneak into the garden and steal some.  By doing so, potatoes eventually became a stable crop that saved the country from starving.

In the 1700, there were no terms like gay or homosexual.  But when you learn about this kings life, it is pretty clear we would use the modern terms gay and homosexual in describing his orientation.

[Hamba Tuhan]

'To refer to Frederick as homosexual is fraught with terminological and methodological difficulties' (Bodie A. Ashton, 'Kingship, sexuality and courtly masculinity: Frederick the Great and Prussia on the cusp of modernity', ANU Historical Journal (2019), vol. 2, no. 1., p. 114).

[california boy]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

'To refer to Frederick as homosexual is fraught with terminological and methodological difficulties' (Bodie A. Ashton, 'Kingship, sexuality and courtly masculinity: Frederick the Great and Prussia on the cusp of modernity', ANU Historical Journal (2019), vol. 2, no. 1., p. 114).

I didn't find anything in the piece that disputes anything that I was told when visiting his palace, did you?

I am not arguing that terms have changed over time and completely agree that the terms homosexual and gay are modern terms.  But what is still the same is relations with the same sex.  Your article produces no evidence that he ever had sex with a woman, which is in line with what I was told while visiting the palace.

Edited June 30, 2021 by california boy

[SeekingUnderstanding]

15 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Yes.

Is it really your position that in historical times people did not exist that were exclusively sexually attracted to one gender? And this is widely accepted by historians? How on earth could anyone know this? It seems like an absurd claim on its face. 

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Is it really your position that in historical times people did not exist that were exclusively sexually attracted to one gender? And this is widely accepted by historians? How on earth could anyone know this? It seems like an absurd claim on its face. 

Fun fact:

In the 1901 edition of Dorland's medical dictionary heterosexuality was defined as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex” and in Merriam-Webster in 1923 it was defined as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex”. Quite different to how we use it now and prior to the 19th century it basically didn't exist at all.

Homosexuality and heterosexuality both showed up as concepts at the same time. The acts that we would define as homosexual or heterosexual have, of course, always been around. We have historic evidence of the former and our existence alone is proof the latter was happening. In the past there was a different paradigm. The distinction was defined as procreative or non-procreative and you get the story of Onan. Ironically the Christian and Jewish scriptures unfairly get most of the credit for this. On this board the argument that sex's primary purpose is at least to possibly be procreative pops up a lot as a reason for hetero sex to be superior over homo sex. Most historians say the credit for that line of thought goes more to the Stoics who believed strong passion and emotion was weakness and thought sex was only permissible if it was to reproduce. In other words to be endorsed sex had to serve a greater purpose than what was to them an offensive passion. Christianity adopted this philosophy though it was never wholly accepted.

This concept alone is a development. Humanity has an instinct to reproduce but often reproduction isn't in the mind of the participants involved at all. It is pleasure. Later we changed the paradigm to be primarily about erotic love.

With the erosion of religious norms the west culturally developed other norms to regulate behavior and rated said behaviors. A fornicator was bad (tut tut) but a sodomite was a moral degenerate (prison!). These classifications sprung up as people became more concentrated in cities and suburbs. In the past same sex behavior existed and was mostly viewed as sinful or criminal but was more easily regulated by small town social pressures and, while expressed more in cities, they were smaller then and easier to control. Now you had people surrounded by even more people they don't know and they can get away with much more so we divided heterosexuality and homosexuality out and declared one normal and one degeneracy. Ironically heterosexuality was taking its cues from Freud at the time meaning becoming heterosexual meant navigating the desire for incest, the desire to murder your same-sex parent, and fierce competition with your siblings. It is disturbing how that was accepted by so many as the norm and that people were all okay with that being the norm. Add in the weird obsession that doctors at the time had with insisting that women did not feel sexual pleasure at all and you got a lot of oddness. There were two other terms for sexual expression that popped up at the same time. Monosexual was used to describe masturbation and heterogenit which was basically bestiality. On a side-note maybe all the people who continually and habitually compare people who identify as homosexual to those who practice bestiality could use the other term with a similar ancestry and compare them instead to masturbators. I think the ensuing discussions might be less offensive, more productive, and possibly much more entertaining to read.

It has been pointed out that this shift from instinct to an emphasis on erotic love is also when Europeans of middle and lower classes started generally having more of a say in choosing their own spouses and marrying later. While erotic love wasn't new using it as the primary motivator for marriage or even as a requirement without which the marriage is a kind of sham was a game changer. In some cultures erotic love, while acknowledged to exist, was viewed as a weakness that got in the way of other duties and responsibilities. In others it was seen as nice to have or even a tool to use but the idea that you should marry someone you love was not nearly as ingrained in our culture like it is now.

Later when we started investigating both of the 'primary' sexualities and with homosexuality becoming more studied the Kinsey scale came out it was less clear what the true divide is between homosexuals and heterosexuals. It seems we split into groups primarily because there were two groups. Bisexuality reared its head and when evidence started popping up that a lot and possibly most males had some kind of homoerotic experience the dividing line started to get hazy. Wendell Ricketts did research into it and said: "“No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: 'heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.'”

The idea that it is inborn is liked by both sides for very different reasons though heterosexuals often allowed that distinction only to themselves while claiming homosexuals chose. How many people do you know who can tell you when they weighed the alternatives and decided they wanted to be straight? I am going to speak in generalities here. Older heterosexuals are often uncomfortable with homosexuality because they were culturally taught it was a threat to masculinity and to social order. Older homosexuals are wary of the idea that if homosexuality is not inborn and inflexible the persecution will return and their argument for equal rights would collapse. Neither is a good justification for it being the truth. Incidentally there is a lot of distrust of people who call themselves bisexual in both groups. They don't fit the social labels and the one they have taken up is relatively new and relatively undefined and often seems vaguely threatening. The younger generation is pushing back at this. When they reject the term heterosexual that doesn't always or even usually mean they are regularly engaged in homosexual or even bisexual activities. It could mean they are just open to whatever.

Some have argued that certain sexual tastes can even be cultivated and directed which is an interesting idea but a lot of people find it threatening as well but we see this happening in any case. Very few people in their 20s find a 60 year old sexually attractive but when many are 60 themselves that changes and it is not just resignation to age. It is also not a historical norm to always marry your own age. Studying the causes there might lead to some interesting insights into human desire and how it changes and possibly how it could be directed to change. While some think this is threatening it would be a huge help in the treatment of sexual desires that are unacceptable and/or predatory such as pedophilia, dangerous fetishes, and the like.  

All that does not mean that Frederick II or California Boy could choose to enjoy heterosexual relations if they would just grit their teeth and try harder. The behavior exists outside of the cultural paradigm but if you dropped Frederick II into the modern western world he would probably be naturally drawn to the homosexual label and some of the things attached to it. If Don Juan were real and dropped into our culture same thing and he would probably identify as heterosexual. While sexuality can be fluid we really don't know how to control it.

The point of the distinction in terms of the future is that these sexualities may drop away. You have younger people who are primarily attracted to one gender but accept the possibility that they might be attracted to an exception or group and there is a greater willingness to experiment. In the future the sexualities we use today may become anachronisms. There could be entirely new sexualities that jump in to replace what we currently have based on criteria we would find absurd or offensive. So if you dropped Frederick II or California Boy or Nehor or Don Juan into a post-sexuality future we might not pick up any explicit identity from our desires at all. The same thing if we were teleported into the past.

 

I am not at all qualified to levy a moral judgement of any of these possibilities or on what happened or what will happen. Assuming humanity somehow reached the end of our grasp of sexuality with the paradigm of Freud seems incredibly optimistic. On a more religious note this is a fallen world so everything is prone to corruption. The sexuality of the exalted may be equally as absurd to us as marriage without love or some post-sexuality future seems to us now. If I may pervert and paraphrase the words of the prophet: "Fasten your seat belts and take your vitamins"

 

Edit: In hindsight how the hell did this post make it past the filter? 

Edited July 1, 2021 by The Nehor

[kllindley]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Fun fact:

In the 1901 edition of Dorland's medical dictionary heterosexuality was defined as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex” and in Merriam-Webster in 1923 it was defined as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex”. Quite different to how we use it now and prior to the 19th century it basically didn't exist at all.

Homosexuality and heterosexuality both showed up as concepts at the same time. The acts that we would define as homosexual or heterosexual have, of course, always been around. We have historic evidence of the former and our existence alone is proof the latter was happening. In the past there was a different paradigm. The distinction was defined as procreative or non-procreative and you get the story of Onan. Ironically the Christian and Jewish scriptures unfairly get most of the credit for this. On this board the argument that sex's primary purpose is at least to possibly be procreative pops up a lot as a reason for hetero sex to be superior over homo sex. Most historians say the credit for that line of thought goes more to the Stoics who believed strong passion and emotion was weakness and thought sex was only permissible if it was to reproduce. In other words to be endorsed sex had to serve a greater purpose than what was to them an offensive passion. Christianity adopted this philosophy though it was never wholly accepted.

This concept alone is a development. Humanity has an instinct to reproduce but often reproduction isn't in the mind of the participants involved at all. It is pleasure. Later we changed the paradigm to be primarily about erotic love.

With the erosion of religious norms the west culturally developed other norms to regulate behavior and rated said behaviors. A fornicator was bad (tut tut) but a sodomite was a moral degenerate (prison!). These classifications sprung up as people became more concentrated in cities and suburbs. In the past same sex behavior existed and was mostly viewed as sinful or criminal but was more easily regulated by small town social pressures and, while expressed more in cities, they were smaller then and easier to control. Now you had people surrounded by even more people they don't know and they can get away with much more so we divided heterosexuality and homosexuality out and declared one normal and one degeneracy. Ironically heterosexuality was taking its cues from Freud at the time meaning becoming heterosexual meant navigating the desire for incest, the desire to murder your same-sex parent, and fierce competition with your siblings. It is disturbing how that was accepted by so many as the norm and that people were all okay with that being the norm. Add in the weird obsession that doctors at the time had with insisting that women did not feel sexual pleasure at all and you got a lot of oddness. There were two other terms for sexual expression that popped up at the same time. Monosexual was used to describe masturbation and heterogenit which was basically bestiality. On a side-note maybe all the people who continually and habitually compare people who identify as homosexual to those who practice bestiality could use the other term with a similar ancestry and compare them instead to masturbators. I think the ensuing discussions might be less offensive, more productive, and possibly much more entertaining to read.

It has been pointed out that this shift from instinct to an emphasis on erotic love is also when Europeans of middle and lower classes started generally having more of a say in choosing their own spouses and marrying later. While erotic love wasn't new using it as the primary motivator for marriage or even as a requirement without which the marriage is a kind of sham was a game changer. In some cultures erotic love, while acknowledged to exist, was viewed as a weakness that got in the way of other duties and responsibilities. In others it was seen as nice to have or even a tool to use but the idea that you should marry someone you love was not nearly as ingrained in our culture like it is now.

Later when we started investigating both of the 'primary' sexualities and with homosexuality becoming more studied the Kinsey scale came out it was less clear what the true divide is between homosexuals and heterosexuals. It seems we split into groups primarily because there were two groups. Bisexuality reared its head and when evidence started popping up that a lot and possibly most males had some kind of homoerotic experience the dividing line started to get hazy. Wendell Ricketts did research into it and said: "“No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: 'heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.'”

The idea that it is inborn is liked by both sides for very different reasons though heterosexuals often allowed that distinction only to themselves while claiming homosexuals chose. How many people do you know who can tell you when they weighed the alternatives and decided they wanted to be straight? I am going to speak in generalities here. Older heterosexuals are often uncomfortable with homosexuality because they were culturally taught it was a threat to masculinity and to social order. Older homosexuals are wary of the idea that if homosexuality is not inborn and inflexible the persecution will return and their argument for equal rights would collapse. Neither is a good justification for it being the truth. Incidentally there is a lot of distrust of people who call themselves bisexual in both groups. They don't fit the social labels and the one they have taken up is relatively new and relatively undefined and often seems vaguely threatening. The younger generation is pushing back at this. When they reject the term heterosexual that doesn't always or even usually mean they are regularly engaged in homosexual or even bisexual activities. It could mean they are just open to whatever.

Some have argued that certain sexual tastes can even be cultivated and directed which is an interesting idea but a lot of people find it threatening as well but we see this happening in any case. Very few people in their 20s find a 60 year old sexually attractive but when many are 60 themselves that changes and it is not just resignation to age. It is also not a historical norm to always marry your own age. Studying the causes there might lead to some interesting insights into human desire and how it changes and possibly how it could be directed to change. While some think this is threatening it would be a huge help in the treatment of sexual desires that are unacceptable and/or predatory such as pedophilia, dangerous fetishes, and the like.  

All that does not mean that Frederick II or California Boy could choose to enjoy heterosexual relations if they would just grit their teeth and try harder. The behavior exists outside of the cultural paradigm but if you dropped Frederick II into the modern western world he would probably be naturally drawn to the homosexual label and some of the things attached to it. If Don Juan were real and dropped into our culture same thing and he would probably identify as heterosexual. While sexuality can be fluid we really don't know how to control it.

The point of the distinction in terms of the future is that these sexualities may drop away. You have younger people who are primarily attracted to one gender but accept the possibility that they might be attracted to an exception or group and there is a greater willingness to experiment. In the future the sexualities we use today may become anachronisms. There could be entirely new sexualities that jump in to replace what we currently have based on criteria we would find absurd or offensive. So if you dropped Frederick II or California Boy or Nehor or Don Juan into a post-sexuality future we might not pick up any explicit identity from our desires at all. The same thing if we were teleported into the past.

 

I am not at all qualified to levy a moral judgement of any of these possibilities or on what happened or what will happen. Assuming humanity somehow reached the end of our grasp of sexuality with the paradigm of Freud seems incredibly optimistic. On a more religious note this is a fallen world so everything is prone to corruption. The sexuality of the exalted may be equally as absurd to us as marriage without love or some post-sexuality future seems to us now. If I may pervert and paraphrase the words of the prophet: "Fasten your seat belts and take your vitamins"

 

Edit: In hindsight how the hell did this post make it past the filter? 

Very well written! I may not completely agree with everything you've written, but overall super insightful. 

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, kllindley said:

Very well written! I may not completely agree with everything you've written, but overall super insightful. 

I don't agree with all of it myself. I mean, I think it is factual. I don't necessarily think their predicted future is inevitable. I was more attempting to communicate the current general consensus in an understandable way. I had to read a lot before I grasped what the difference would be in identifying as heterosexual (or homosexual) and what it was like before the terms existed and there was no label. It is pretty vast when I try to explore it mentally.

The one thing I don't really like but that is because I am a child of my generation is the idea of marriage without erotic love. On a lark after I wrote that I looked up Paul's admonition for husband and wives to love each other to see which word for love he used. Spoiler: It wasn't Eros. It was Agape so he was saying to love them with charity not with passion. I suspect if Paul teleported through time and I was to ask him if it was more important to be married to another Christian or more important for both parties to experience Eros for each other he would suspect me of being dimwitted and say that the former is obviously more important. I don't know his view obviously but he may have considered Eros irrelevant or even a hindrance to duty. Compared to how we view it today that is quite a gap.

People will marry outside their faith out of desire for each other even if they believe the faith gap could cause problems or naively assume love will conquer all. If two people of our faith both married and were open that they felt no real desire for each other outside of basic lust but were dedicated to loving each other charitably and thought the other person was a good partner and would make a good parent there would be a lot of people asking them questions worried about that marriage being a mistake.

 

That was kind of dull. Have one of my favorite critiques of vaguely misogynistic wedding culture:

[california boy]

15 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Fun fact:

In the 1901 edition of Dorland's medical dictionary heterosexuality was defined as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex” and in Merriam-Webster in 1923 it was defined as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex”. Quite different to how we use it now and prior to the 19th century it basically didn't exist at all.

Homosexuality and heterosexuality both showed up as concepts at the same time. The acts that we would define as homosexual or heterosexual have, of course, always been around. We have historic evidence of the former and our existence alone is proof the latter was happening. In the past there was a different paradigm. The distinction was defined as procreative or non-procreative and you get the story of Onan. Ironically the Christian and Jewish scriptures unfairly get most of the credit for this. On this board the argument that sex's primary purpose is at least to possibly be procreative pops up a lot as a reason for hetero sex to be superior over homo sex. Most historians say the credit for that line of thought goes more to the Stoics who believed strong passion and emotion was weakness and thought sex was only permissible if it was to reproduce. In other words to be endorsed sex had to serve a greater purpose than what was to them an offensive passion. Christianity adopted this philosophy though it was never wholly accepted.

This concept alone is a development. Humanity has an instinct to reproduce but often reproduction isn't in the mind of the participants involved at all. It is pleasure. Later we changed the paradigm to be primarily about erotic love.

With the erosion of religious norms the west culturally developed other norms to regulate behavior and rated said behaviors. A fornicator was bad (tut tut) but a sodomite was a moral degenerate (prison!). These classifications sprung up as people became more concentrated in cities and suburbs. In the past same sex behavior existed and was mostly viewed as sinful or criminal but was more easily regulated by small town social pressures and, while expressed more in cities, they were smaller then and easier to control. Now you had people surrounded by even more people they don't know and they can get away with much more so we divided heterosexuality and homosexuality out and declared one normal and one degeneracy. Ironically heterosexuality was taking its cues from Freud at the time meaning becoming heterosexual meant navigating the desire for incest, the desire to murder your same-sex parent, and fierce competition with your siblings. It is disturbing how that was accepted by so many as the norm and that people were all okay with that being the norm. Add in the weird obsession that doctors at the time had with insisting that women did not feel sexual pleasure at all and you got a lot of oddness. There were two other terms for sexual expression that popped up at the same time. Monosexual was used to describe masturbation and heterogenit which was basically bestiality. On a side-note maybe all the people who continually and habitually compare people who identify as homosexual to those who practice bestiality could use the other term with a similar ancestry and compare them instead to masturbators. I think the ensuing discussions might be less offensive, more productive, and possibly much more entertaining to read.

It has been pointed out that this shift from instinct to an emphasis on erotic love is also when Europeans of middle and lower classes started generally having more of a say in choosing their own spouses and marrying later. While erotic love wasn't new using it as the primary motivator for marriage or even as a requirement without which the marriage is a kind of sham was a game changer. In some cultures erotic love, while acknowledged to exist, was viewed as a weakness that got in the way of other duties and responsibilities. In others it was seen as nice to have or even a tool to use but the idea that you should marry someone you love was not nearly as ingrained in our culture like it is now.

Later when we started investigating both of the 'primary' sexualities and with homosexuality becoming more studied the Kinsey scale came out it was less clear what the true divide is between homosexuals and heterosexuals. It seems we split into groups primarily because there were two groups. Bisexuality reared its head and when evidence started popping up that a lot and possibly most males had some kind of homoerotic experience the dividing line started to get hazy. Wendell Ricketts did research into it and said: "“No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: 'heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.'”

The idea that it is inborn is liked by both sides for very different reasons though heterosexuals often allowed that distinction only to themselves while claiming homosexuals chose. How many people do you know who can tell you when they weighed the alternatives and decided they wanted to be straight? I am going to speak in generalities here. Older heterosexuals are often uncomfortable with homosexuality because they were culturally taught it was a threat to masculinity and to social order. Older homosexuals are wary of the idea that if homosexuality is not inborn and inflexible the persecution will return and their argument for equal rights would collapse. Neither is a good justification for it being the truth. Incidentally there is a lot of distrust of people who call themselves bisexual in both groups. They don't fit the social labels and the one they have taken up is relatively new and relatively undefined and often seems vaguely threatening. The younger generation is pushing back at this. When they reject the term heterosexual that doesn't always or even usually mean they are regularly engaged in homosexual or even bisexual activities. It could mean they are just open to whatever.

Some have argued that certain sexual tastes can even be cultivated and directed which is an interesting idea but a lot of people find it threatening as well but we see this happening in any case. Very few people in their 20s find a 60 year old sexually attractive but when many are 60 themselves that changes and it is not just resignation to age. It is also not a historical norm to always marry your own age. Studying the causes there might lead to some interesting insights into human desire and how it changes and possibly how it could be directed to change. While some think this is threatening it would be a huge help in the treatment of sexual desires that are unacceptable and/or predatory such as pedophilia, dangerous fetishes, and the like.  

All that does not mean that Frederick II or California Boy could choose to enjoy heterosexual relations if they would just grit their teeth and try harder. The behavior exists outside of the cultural paradigm but if you dropped Frederick II into the modern western world he would probably be naturally drawn to the homosexual label and some of the things attached to it. If Don Juan were real and dropped into our culture same thing and he would probably identify as heterosexual. While sexuality can be fluid we really don't know how to control it.

The point of the distinction in terms of the future is that these sexualities may drop away. You have younger people who are primarily attracted to one gender but accept the possibility that they might be attracted to an exception or group and there is a greater willingness to experiment. In the future the sexualities we use today may become anachronisms. There could be entirely new sexualities that jump in to replace what we currently have based on criteria we would find absurd or offensive. So if you dropped Frederick II or California Boy or Nehor or Don Juan into a post-sexuality future we might not pick up any explicit identity from our desires at all. The same thing if we were teleported into the past.

 

I am not at all qualified to levy a moral judgement of any of these possibilities or on what happened or what will happen. Assuming humanity somehow reached the end of our grasp of sexuality with the paradigm of Freud seems incredibly optimistic. On a more religious note this is a fallen world so everything is prone to corruption. The sexuality of the exalted may be equally as absurd to us as marriage without love or some post-sexuality future seems to us now. If I may pervert and paraphrase the words of the prophet: "Fasten your seat belts and take your vitamins"

 

Edit: In hindsight how the hell did this post make it past the filter? 

Really a well written and thoughtful post.  Thanks for taking the time to talk about something that often only gets drive by canned answers.

[let’s roll]

After reading The Nehor’s last two posts on this thread I started wondering whether I enjoy him more when he’s in provocateur mode or illuminator mode.  I’m just happy that we’ll likely continue to see him in both modes.

Thanks to you, The Nehor, for all your contributions on this board.

[Hamba Tuhan]

20 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I don't agree with all of it myself. I mean, I think it is factual.

Exactly! That's exactly how dominant discourses work. They make it very difficult to even form thoughts outside of the bounds they set for us, and those bounds feel so natural and therefore universal.

For example, regarding the question directed to me above about gendered attraction, the concept of sexual attraction itself is a recent social construct. And even when we can identify reasonable analogues across time (history) and space (anthropology), the reality is that gender is not a necessary element. Attractions have, in fact, been socially constructed around age, status, and even 'race'.

The end result is that many people -- again, across both time and space -- would have no clue what we mean by the phrase 'sexual attraction', and even if we could explain it to their satisfaction, they may well not understand what role gender plays in it (beyond, of course, the biological necessity of procreation requiring opposing genitals).

Previously I've given many examples of how sexuality was constructed in many Melanesian societies right up to the 1980s, with initiated males as 'givers of seed' and post-pubescent females as well as uninitiated males as 'receivers of seed'. Western anthropologists and Christian missionaries certainly tried to force these societies into some kind of familiar paradigm, but the reality is that these men simply had no concept of 'sexual attraction' that they could have gendered, and their behaviour clearly wasn't gendered either. And for what it's worth, the emotional bonds that developed between a boy and his older 'mentors' were lifelong, even after he was initiated and obtained a wife or wives.

In the nation where I live, it was quite common in some traditional societies for parents to marry off their daughters to adult men before the girls had reached puberty. Intercourse was, however, forbidden until a wife reached menarche, so it was the responsibility of an older brother or male cousin to assume her role as the husband's sexual partner until that time. Again, these people had no category of 'sexual attraction', and clearly gender was an issue only in the sense of procreation potential.

I could go on and on.

Imagine for a moment if Melanesian seafarers had colonised the world instead of Europeans. We would have an entire sociological/psychological literature shoring up the obviously natural categories of 'giver of seed' and 'receiver of seed', and Melanesian anthropologists would be showing up to try to figure out why some of us have such hangups about the gender of our sexual partners.