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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (139495)	2/19/2002 7:12:44 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>> homosexuals haven't been given choice in the matter. << let's explore that point. you say homosexuals don't make the choice to be homosexual. well let us first define what makes a homosexual a homosexual. we categorize homosexuals by their actions correct? not by their looks, their thoughts, passions, or urges--but by their actions. homosexuality is acting upon ones desire to have sexual relations with members of the same sex. i hope you will agree on this point. after all, fantasizing about murdering someone doesn't make you a murderer. fantasizing about raping someone doesn't make you a rapist. fantasizing about having sex with your secretary when you're married to someone else doesn't make you an adulterer. having the urge to haul off and hit your spouse because they make you so angry doesn't make you a batterer. therefore fantasizing about having sex with someone of the same sex doesn't make you a homosexual. only when you act upon those urges do you become those things. the point is bill, we all have passions and urges--some of them not so moral or noble. i would be willing to bet that if you anonymously asked 100 average people off the street whether or not they have ever had the thought, urge, or fantasy to have intimate relations with a member of the same sex, you would find that the number who replied yes would far outpace the number of people who referred to themselves as homosexual or who have actually carried out homosexual acts. you could replace homosexuality with any number of other acts and get similar results. i'm sure a number of people have fantasized about having extra-marital sexual relations, but for some reason or another didn't act on those thoughts. i'm sure a number of people have felt the urge or fantasized about having sex with minors--but didn't act upon it. like i said, you could replace just about any aberrant behavior and the results would hold. the urge to hit your spouse, the urge to steal something where you probably wouldn't get caught, etc. when you make the case that homosexuals aren't capable of controlling their passions when clearly people are confronted with need to control their passions every single day of their lives, you are walking down a slippery slope. if you want to make the case that homosexuals can't resist their urges because they are felt more frequently than the average person feels, i could reasonably argue that men are biologically programmed to be less capable than women to practice monogamy. so if we are going to be tolerant and accepting of homosexual behavior on the basis of an inability to control ones passions, why should it stop there? men should feel no shame and we should cease to stigmatize infidelity. after all, men aren't given a choice when it comes to being faithful to their wives. i guess just like homos, they can't help themselves. of course, that brings us to pedophiles. many of them will even freely admit that if you let them out of prison they will not be able to control their urges and they will re-offend at the first opportunity. sounds like pretty compelling evidence that pedophiles aren't given a choice as to their sexual urges either! so i guess that means society should be tolerant and accepting of not only homosexuals & adulterers, but pedophiles as well. some scientists have argued quite compellingly that the reason men show a far higher proclivity for crime than women (especially violent crime) do so because of their abundance of male hormones such as testosterone. well it's only fair that if everyone else gets to use the excuse of "i can't control my passions", that men get cut slack if they have a hormone imbalance and produce too much testosterone. might as well include women too. i can drown my five kids or kill my husband because my post-partum depression didn't give me any other choice. we all have passions and urges bill. we are bombarded with them all the time. we have a moral responsibility to exercise restraint and self-discipline to rein in and control those passions. homosexuals show a lack of ability to restrain their passions just as murderers, rapists, adulterers, pedophiles, liars, cheats, batterers, terrorists, drug addicts, gamblers, etc show a lack of ability to restrain their passions. most rational, reasonable people don't refer to those acts as just another form of "diversity". many of those acts would be referred to as a perversity. why should homosexuality be any different. being black, white, hispanic, asian, male, female, etc. are not behaviors and have nothing to do with controlling ones passions. that's why it is wrong to discriminate on that basis. you can have all the passion or urge in the world as a black person to wake up one morning as a white person, but it won't change a damn thing. it is out of your control. you can wake up one morning and choose not to act like a homosexual. people choose not to molest kids, people choose not to sleep with their secretary, people choose not to hit people when they get angry. people can choose not to act like a homosexual even if they have urges compelling them to do it.