I wonder if SpongeBob has ever visited the household of a non-custodial parent. These household are much more common than gay households. Estimates are that there are approx 150,000 children living in single parent households in the US, but 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father (ie 160 times greater)

The system of removing fathers from their children is now so efficient and permanent, that 40 percent of children who live apart from their natural father have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father's home.

So perhaps SpongeBob need not visit the household of a non-custodial father, as there is quite likely to be no children there.

The statistics in Australia are very similar in terms of %, and I think “Play School” wouldl be highly unlikely to visit the home of a non-custodial father in Australia.

Of course the system is so real, tragic, and abhorrent that few journalists would ever write about it. Someone might object.

Goodness me the GB are at it again rolling out their discredited "evidence" once again following their same dogmatic path ways. Remember the posting rules were put in because of your behavior on this site which is generally mirrored else where. Alsan the Nuclear family is a recent creation that’s is why it has it's name.
Don't cite the bible as the mould that families should be made in because it is to ambiguous demonstrated by the number of sects there are. But I’m a few of you GB will tell us the true meaning of the words. As for the so called “evidence” you cite just like your creationists is simply does not stand up to scrutiny. This has been gone over and over on many other threads on this site and countless others on the web. The GB’s need to shed their hatred and step into the light of the age of reason like the rest of us. Only then will you see how meaningless your life has been.

Aslan

My argument as to why my more tolerant society should be accepted as the norm is based on the ‘freedom’ that we recognise as the basis of a decent society. Your system does not allow me to live my lifestyle because your approbation renders it unacceptable and alienates those who practice it.

I certainly will demand that you intolerant, irrational bigots give me the same status and privileges as you have! The struggle to overcome intolerance and discrimination has been a feature of Western society. People fought for religious tolerance while you would have supported the Inquisition. People fought for civil rights, for women’s liberation while you would have believed that ‘blacks’ were not human and women were not as evolved as men. I am confident that the demand for more freedom and tolerance will not stop now.

I apologise for overestimating your ability to understand my analogy. Let me re-state it.

It is the conditions that create the bad behaviour in Indigenous people not the fact that they are Indigenous. It is the conditions - alienation, psychological problems based on widespread discrimination – that are risk factors for bad behaviour in homosexual people not the fact that they are homosexual.

Do you really not understand the difference between the nuclear family and the extended/tribal family, which is the ‘natural’ way for humans to raise children?

Your paper did not provide any ‘scientific’ evidence. You fail to understand that science requires more than making tenuous correlational links? Correlation does not mean ‘cause”. That is among the first things one learns in introductory statistics.

Furthermore, a ‘real’ scientific paper requires a hypothesis about what underlies the correlation. The paper you provided did not do that. It implied that homosexuality was the cause of very bad behaviour but did not present any explanation for this circumstance.

The DSM itself has nothing to do with science. Do you know nothing about this document? I suspect that soon your brand of intolerance will become a diagnostic category; one of the more intractable personality disorders.

Mollyduke,

For someone who disagrees so vehemently with Aslan, it is amusing that you claim to know his position on each issue you put forward.

You say: “My argument as to why my more tolerant society should be accepted as the norm is based on the ‘freedom’ that we recognise as the basis of a decent society.”
I’m sorry to say, but that is a weak argument. Whose opinion of 'decent' was that? And please note: 72% of Australians believe that there is something wrong with homosexuality (Australian Social Monitor, at: http://www.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/iaesrwww/sm/number13.html).

You seek to put the homosexual 'cause' in the same basket as those who fought for freedom from racism/sexism. Nice try, but the legitimacy here was that they were born that way. I’m sure that the Indigenous population wouldn't be too happy to hear that you're using them to further your political cause.

Human rights come as a result of unalterable characteristics- people CHOOSE the ‘alternative’ lifestyle of homosexuality. (I invite you to try and produce credible evidence that homosexuality is genetic- you won’t get very far!!). One cannot make that choice and then say, ‘Hang on, I want all the rights that heterosexuality brings!’ Choices have consequences.

I’m not sure how closely you read the paper that Aslan referred you to- or if you saw any of the 75 references, but it's definitely clear that it deals with MANY scientific studies (ie. Bearman & Bruckner, “Opposite-sex twins and adolescent same-sex attraction” American Journal of Sociology 107 (2002) 1179-1205). Perhaps you were too bent on maintaining your opinion, at the expense of the evidence.

Finally, you may have been interested in this part of the ‘Homosexuality’ Paper, seeing as you are so concerned about the effect of ‘discrimination’ (by the way- where were your ‘scientific’ references for YOUR claimed ‘risk factors’?). “The physical threat to homosexuals from same-sex domestic violence is more than twice as great as the physical threat they experience from ‘the outside..” Or better yet- just read all of the references under footnote 67- that might keep you busy for a while

Tammi said 72% of Australians believe that there is something wrong with homosexuality
A few years a similar survey would have shown racism was okay and before that slavery.
Tami went on to dribble ….
Human rights come as a result of unalterable characteristics- people CHOOSE the ‘alternative’ lifestyle of homosexuality. (I invite you to try and produce credible evidence that homosexuality is genetic- you won’t get very far!!). One cannot make that choice and then say, ‘Hang on, I want all the rights that heterosexuality brings!’ Choices have consequences. Can you demonstrate this? Can you show me the gene that makes us all heterosexual? You just have to look at the rest of the animal kingdom to see the your folly. Ask a farmer if he has even had a homosexual Ram. The link in question was to another GB site that like putting a link up to a creationist site to prove the world is only a few thousand years old. Get real. I’ve posted links to creditable sources that show these ideas for what they are and won’t bother to do it again. GB’s you guys are up there with the flat earthers and bigfoot hunters. Step into the light.

1940s America: Little violence, virtually no drug use, alcoholism was admittedly high, general faith in God.

2000s America: High levels of violence, rampant drug use, still high alcoholism, generally no faith in God.

If the Christian fundamentalists, whoever they might be, want to prevent a few bad taste cartoons in their fight to return America to a situation where a man, woman or child can walk down most neighbourhoods at night without fear of death; or into an American school knowing that the chances of a fellow student shooting them is virtually non-existent; or home to an intact family, with mum, dad and the kids, then KUDOS to them.

The description in the above paragraph I would call normal, but so many people have taken very strange situations and called them "normal", that no one really understands the concept of a normality that brings "peace on earth" any more. We crave peace, but at the same time desperately cry, "Not at the cost of my liberties to do what the hell I please."

Sponge Bob violence is nothing like the cartoon violence of yesteryear. Wile E. Coyote never gushed blood or entrails across the screen. Tom and Jerry did not visit homosexual farms.

If one wants to teach homosexual lifestyles, or graphic violence, or sex, then the place to do it is in the home, not on TV to be absorbed by the 3s to 7s who have not developed adult concepts of discernment and reality.

Furthermore, the old cartoons were not primarily aimed at children. They were usually shown as shorts before the grown ups' movies! Only when the big $$$s and invention of TV transpired did studios see the profit in risking the warping of tiny little minds.