Evolutionary advantage of homosexuality: Super Uncles

[Eddie Teach]

Just seems odd to pretend the child is his brother's kid. But I guess they need a workaround if they want to protect women while simultaneously denying them any rights.

[Malthus]

Just seems odd to pretend the child is his brother's kid. But I guess they need a workaround if they want to protect women while simultaneously denying them any rights.

Exactly.

Plus, a levirate marriage has the advantage that the child, though adopted, has a heritage as close as humanly possible to that the dead brother's kid would otherwise have had.

[Malthus]

I am very disappointed in you people.  A reference is made to the Monty Python classic hit "Every Sperm Is Sacred" and nobody posts a picture, a link or even a witty comment.  All you do is argue about the specifics of ancient Jewish inheritance law and whether it is prohibited to wank.

Thank God Chicago had an earthquake.  At least that thread as a chance at some entertainment value.

Internet Rule #103: in any place where a Monty Python reference is possible, one can safely 'read in' that all possible such references, pictures, jokes and witty comments have in fact been made, without the necessity of wasting scarce electrons by actually making them. 

[DontSayBanana]

The concept of Christians being "against" wanking is as much a misinterpretation as the "Onanism" misinterpretation.  The beef that Christians have is that they maintain it's impossible to masturbate without fantasizing, and that most likely is the situation where you're fantasizing about someone you're not married to.  It's less to do with Onanism than it is to do with fornication.  In theory, if you're wanking to your wife, it's all good.

[Malthus]

The concept of Christians being "against" wanking is as much a misinterpretation as the "Onanism" misinterpretation.  The beef that Christians have is that they maintain it's impossible to masturbate without fantasizing, and that most likely is the situation where you're fantasizing about someone you're not married to.  It's less to do with Onanism than it is to do with fornication.  In theory, if you're wanking to your wife, it's all good.

I take it then that you disagree with Pope John Paul II's interpretation:

Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholic Church teaches emphatically that the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its primary purpose of procreation and secondary purpose of unification of the husband and wife within the sacrament marriage.[4] In addition, the Church teaches that all other sexual activity—including masturbation, homosexual acts, acts of sodomy, and sex outside of or before marriage (fornication), and the use of any form of contraception or birth control besides Natural Family Planning—is gravely disordered, as it frustrates the natural order, purpose, and ends of sexuality.[5]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists masturbation as one of the "Offenses Against Chastity:"

By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved." To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.[6]

Pope John Paul II, in his book Theology of the Body, coined the expression, "the nuptial meaning of the body" to describe this divine intention physically expressed in the body.[7] His elucidation of human sexuality is that to fulfill its sacred character, sexual expression must be a complete act of mutual self-giving only possible between a married couple open to the conception of a new child.

Although "t is said that psychology and sociology show that [masturbation] is a normal phenomenon of sexual development, especially among the young," this does not change the fact that it "is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act" and "that, whatever the motive for acting this way, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty outside normal conjugal relations essentially contradicts the finality of the faculty. For it lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes 'the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love.'"[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_on_masturbation#Roman_Catholicism

Point is that sex = only good if it is "open to procreation". There is nothing here about it being bad because of fantasy. I'd certainly be interested to see a source that said Catholicism officially welcomes married folks wanking.

[crazy canuck]

Again.  A Monty Python link would have proved the point more effectively.

[Ed Anger]

I don't let my seed fall to the ground. 

[The Brain]

Mine gets on the walls and ceiling typically.

[alfred russel]

I don't let my seed fall to the ground. 

If the Onan story was added to the bible to day, it would have come with a jingle:

Seed on the ground,
seed on the ground,
looking like a fool
with your seed on the ground.

[Martinus]

What's interesting in the quote Malthus posted (and something most catholics seem to forget) is that homosexual acts are considered by the catholic church to be equally sinful and "disordered" as premarital sex, using a condom, using a pill, masturbation or oral sex.

[Sheilbh]

Probably the unhappy history of having homosexuality alternatively treated as a "sin" or as a "treatable pathology" has something to do with it.

Gay people are, understandably, not happy with the notion that homosexuality is a "condition" that can (presumably) be "corrected", and labeling it as something influenced by cultural and environmental factors could support such a contention. If it is genetically determined it is part of inherant nature - you can't change your genes.

I think this is part of it but more importantly I think the gene has become identified as 'nature' while other aspects are largely seen as 'nurture'.  I think that's wrong and it's simplistic, but the truth is that to a gay person their sexuality is natural and in every sense broadly the same as a straight person's just directed at a different object of desire.  So I think some people are defensive about it because there is no other nature or naturalness to them - which is why it would be nice if we could remove those words I think they simplify, confuse and obfuscate the real issue.

Personally I just think sexual desire is hard-wired.  I find it far likelier that our sexual desires are mostly hard-wired than anything else but that's because I think sex is primeval; it's an old bit of the human condition however we now dress it up.  My own experience is that while we don't have to give in to every urge the desire itself is enjoyably base, but it is base.

What's interesting in the quote Malthus posted (and something most catholics seem to forget) is that homosexual acts are considered by the catholic church to be equally sinful and "disordered" as premarital sex, using a condom, using a pill, masturbation or oral sex.

They're all equal to adultery.

[citizen k]

My own experience is that while we don't have to give in to every urge the desire itself is enjoyably base, but it is base.

Indeed,it is an omnipresent reminder of the reality of our higher selves inhabiting the bodies of monkey creatures.

[DontSayBanana]

I take it then that you disagree with Pope John Paul II's interpretation:

To protestants, the Vatican clergy are more creepy old men wearing dresses than theological leaders.

[Sheilbh]

I take it then that you disagree with Pope John Paul II's interpretation:

To protestants, the Vatican clergy are more creepy old men wearing dresses than theological leaders.

To Catholics Protestants are groupuscules beneath notice

Indeed,it is an omnipresent reminder of the reality of our higher selves inhabiting the bodies of monkey creatures.

Yeah.  I love fleshy pleasure.  There's nothing so joyous as ourselves at our basinest.  Eating and lusting and all the other stuff you imagine Brian Blessed gets up to on a weekend.