Hi Yuyutsu,

You suggest that " .... most sexual activities are not entered into for the sake of pleasure ...."

Some maybe, but 'most' ? What, are we supposed to file a ten-page research report each time ?

And then Toni scaremongers us (well, half of us) with this alarming fact:

" .... Argonaut octopuses, whose 'penis arm' is detached during mating and kept by the female .... "

Now there's a sure-fire way to encourage young women into STEM courses, and I'm sure that many of them will be researching the DNA of Argonaut octopuses intensively from now on.

It gives new meaning to the terms 'in a relationship' or 'to cleave to each other as long as you both shall live.' Or 'partner'.

Joe

//And then Toni scaremongers us (well, half of us)//

The half us that are argonaut octopodes?

Yuyutsu:

"Your implicit assumption here is that pleasure is good and the greater the pleasure the better. I disagree with this assumption."

Why? Don't you ever choose what is pleasurable or do you deliberately always choose that which is not pleasurable?

"In my view, those who feel no sexual urges at all, who are not bothered and agitated by it like their poor mates, who remain composed and direct their time and energy into higher pursuits, have been dealt the best hand by nature."

Everyone has sexual urges. They may not act upon them but they have them. What makes them higher pursuits? The highest pursuit you can have is to live life to the full.

"The question is whether homosexuals mimic the heterosexuals or do they try to mimic love as well, only in a different way."

They do not need to mimic love because there is nothing stopping them from loving someone of the same sex. If they want the best possible sexual experience then they cannot have it - they can only try and mimic it.

"But it is relevant whether there is a designer whom one respects and wishes to serve. Having a blind/uncaring designer is indeed practically the same as having no designer at all."

Why would such a designer design a world where you are not meant to follow the designs?

Toni Lavis:

"There's only way you could speak with such authority and certainty..."

Not really because all you need to know is some basic physiology. It is not hard to work out where the nerves are in the human body which lead to pleasure and how the coming together of male and female sexual organs stimulate that pleasure in a way that is not possible in heterosexual behaviour. I have never tried childbirth either but I can know that it would be painful.

phanto,

You have not yet justified any of your claims. To dig your heels in now and simply repeat them is dishonest. Ignoring someone because they have you cornered may help you to maintain demonstrably false beliefs, but it looks desperate to everyone else.

runner,

This is sure to be a waste of time, but I’ll answer your question because there’s bound to be some other, slightly more rational, person wondering the same.

The reason those people can’t get married is because incestuous relationships are illegal. While most of the reasoning behind prohibiting incestuous relationships is now considered archaic and no longer relevant, such laws remain to protect the vulnerable. Wrongful life (to put it in legal terms) is another reason why such relationships are, and should remain, illegal. There is no rational non-religious argument against same-sex marriage, however. Phanto and ttbn have given it a good crack, but alas...

If such people were born that way, then they are an anomaly as we have evolved to feel repulsed by the idea of incest as a mechanism to prevent inbreeding. Even those who fantasise about incest don’t usually fantasise about themselves with their own family members.

Situations like that of the one in the article you linked to, however, are not uncommon, but seem to occur more frequently between brothers and sisters who meet for the first time as adults. The last I read, it is not fully understood why this happens. It’s possible that the love people naturally feel for their family members becomes a romantic one when it is not inhibited by the lack of sexual attraction that would normally result from people growing up together.

Perhaps, from your religious perspective, you might want to ask your god why he made us so that this happens so often?

Stay fabulous.

Yes but you know AJ I do not think I can go so far as to agree that we evolved to feel repulsed by incest.

I can agree that as a society we have a mature understanding that accepts the medical fact that incest produces a sharply higher risk of generating mutations in the offspring.

Whilst I do not know I am wondering whether or not historically that we learned that by repeated, unfortunate experience resulting in a number of offspring with genetic deformity.

Consequently, this understanding has permeated our social and religious laws in an attempt to minimise the likelihood of this reoccurring. Otherwise I would think that attraction to cousins at least is still not rare, but it is discouraged for this very important reason in most parts.

..

As for Runner I expect that he would point out that homosexuality was illegal not so long ago and that the medical justification for that is that bare back buggery brings with it AIDS and, Spiritually speaking, it brings with it something at least as ghastly.

..

As for Phanto and conducive, physiological conditions, whilst this is not an appropriate forum, it does bring to mind a desire to recount the "Erotic Tale of Nova Box and Quiver Dick."

DreamOn,

It’s been a while since I studied evolutionary psychology, and what I did study focused on criminal behaviour, so I could be wrong about incest-repulsion evolving as a mechanism to prevent inbreeding, but that’s what I remember.

You could be right about incest-repulsion resulting from us learning of the deleterious effects that inbreeding can produce. Social conditioning could be a factor too. From a legal perspective, however, incest became taboo when the virginity of daughters (who were once a valuable commodity in true traditional marriage) needed to be maintained to increase their value. So keeping brothers, fathers, and uncles away from them was important.

As for runner, yeah, there were a million potential responses from him that ran through my head with every sentence that I typed, but I don’t take him too seriously or worry much about what he says. I’d be a wreck if I did.