Foxy,

Religion or religious culture is passed from parent to child, so while not genetic the assertion of free choice is tenuous.

However, you feel religion needs no protection and so anyone is free to criticise and insult Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, aboriginal spiritualists etc and they must just suck it up?

foxy I think you've missed the point of my post. Let me try again, but this time I'll use an analogy:

Imagine there are two neighbours, Tom and Bob. Tom works night shifts and goes to sleep after 1:00 in the morning, Bob is a tradie and has early starts.
Bob has started to learn drums and every morning for the past week has been banging away at daybreak. Tom has had enough of this because it keeps waking in up in the middle of this sleep, so he goes over to Bob and asks him to stop. Bob replies: "It's my property I'm playing the drums on and I'm allowed to do whatever I want on MY property- so f@#$-off!".
So Tom says to himself that he's gonna get this bastard. And goes to Bunnings to buy to most powerful spotlight that he can and installs it on the side of his house, aimed over the fence directly at Bob's bedroom window. That night when he comes home at 1:30, he flicks the light on and off continuously for half an hour. Tom wakes up very pissed off and shouts to Tom to stop it, to which Tom replies "It's my property I'm shining the light from and I'm allowed to do whatever I want on MY property- so f@#$-off!"

So, do you see the point here?: Tom is using the EXACT same justification that Bob did. So if Bob wants Tom to accept his excuse for playing the drums then to remain consistent and not be a hypocrite he must put up with Tom's spotlight.

Similarly if you use the genetic predisposition argument to justification gay behaviour (eg: gays are born that way so gay sex is acceptable) then someone who is homophobic can use it as well AND to remain consistent you MUST accept their arguemnt (eg: homophobic people are born that way so homophobic tirades are acceptable). But worse, its not just homophobic behaviour you'll have to accept but ANY that have some genetic element, eg:male violence

-- continued below --

-- from above --

Now as I said at the end of the last post: a better way to decide whether an action should be acceptable or not is to concentrate on the consequences (positive and negative) of the action and not the cause. In the case of gay sex the consequences are almost non-existent to those not involved (although there is the fact that male gays have higher rates of AIDS/HIV than the general population and this has consequences that society bares, eg: increases in health care costs. But compared to costs that society pays for some other actions, eg: violent crime, the cost is probably negligible)

I've just finished reading the recent posts
from Canem Malum, Shadow Minister and Thinkabit and I
am truly impressed. You have all raised such valid
points. Thank You so much. There's a great deal to
think about. And I am grateful for the time and effort
that you've all taken to respond here and the points
that you have raised. It's made me look at things
from different perspectives.

There's nothing more that I can say - except once again -
Thank You.

cont'd ...

I have tried to present various points of view
to the best of my ability to broaden the
discussion. From my own personal perspective -
I would not dream of criticising anyone's
religious beliefs - unless they cause harm.
And I am a member of a religious institution.
I would find my life difficult - not to be.

Anyway, Thank You once again for your thoughts.
For me this discussion has now run its course.

The homosexual community is on a cleft stick here. On the one hand that want to perpetuate the story that its all decided by genetics and they don't choose their sexual preference.

But if that's the case then clearly science will eventually find the gene or genes that cause homosexuality and then....

Well for a start those of a certain faith will be gene testing everyone to see who has got the gene/s and then doing gravity experiments off 8 story buildings with them...http://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.explicit.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.Fij2OUlD5e-BRbzZQljRVwHaEL%26pid%3DApi&f=1

Whatismore, science somewhere will then develop a pre-natal test and abortions of prone fetus will become de rigeur in many (most?) parts of the world.

Personally I think the evidence for a gay gene/s is pretty low. But if there is one or a group then, once discovered, gay-ity will be eradicated pretty quickly.

So the QWERTY crowd may wish to think that they were just born that way but it may well be a case of 'careful what you wish for'.