[cl_steele]

it used to be listed as a mental illness, i believe it got scratched from the list a couple of decades back though, interestingly enough trans-sexualism is still listed as a mental disorder though..

[Id and Ego seek]

(Original post by 2ndClass)
No not really, it's bizarre each of them are typically un-attracted to the opposite sex's traits yet they embody them. It's not about conditioning or perception so I don't know where you pulled that out from.

You're talking about gender roles; gender roles are culturally subjective, they are set by the majority. How isn't that conditioning or perception?

Show me objectively what female traits are and we won't discuss perception.

[minimarshmallow]

(Original post by soempty)
Can i just ask an offtopic question, is your favourite subject by any chance English or English Literature?
I am saying that SOME people could be persuaded, not all and not majority of gays but minority of them.
If you suggest that only one option is viable you have pretty narrow outlook i would say. There is always more than 1 option. Why do you think my method is not right? It is peacefull, and possibly will save more resources for everyone than yours, so why is it worse?

Why did you ignore the bit of my post which talked about evidence, if you have so much?

I'm a psychology student. Don't know why it's relevant.
No gay person will be 'persuaded' to not be gay, it doesn't work like that.
Your option is not at all pieceful, it advocates telling people they are bad and wrong for something that is not bad or wrong and is also they had no control over acquiring and cannot change. It will lead to more homophobic bullying and gay suicides; and there will still be gay people, they will just be miserable because there's nothing they can do about being 'wrong'. The resources you will use doing this will be wasted, because this won't work and then it will take even more resources when you discover you have failed to go down the tolerance route.

And here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...=FBCNETTXT9038
Even the guy who advocated 'curing' homosexuality admits he was wrong. You can't make gay people straight.

[Bobo1234]

(Original post by Rooster523)
alternatively your post was a stupid reply to a genuine argument.

And to construe that because homosexuality (which a small percentage of the population are) could be seen as a medical condition (by my reasoning) you therefore think that I believe heterosexuality to be a medical condition also.

Case and point- being born with one arm is a medical condition (this representing homosexuality- it occurs within a minority of people but it is completely accepted) whereas being born with two arms (representing heterosexuality) isn't.

That's why I feel you were being too literal.

No but that's not a good argument in favour of classifying it as a medical condition. A smaller portion of the population has blonde hair and the majority have dark hair- that doesn't make the blonde ones medically handicapped in some way. Whatever it is that you're labelling as a medical condition, has to have the characteristics of a medical condition to be a medical condition- the fact that the "thing" whether it's homosexuality or blonde hair, is only present in a small portion of the population, does not automatically qualify it as a medical condition- THAT is naive.

[soempty]

(Original post by PJAdams)
You can never persuade people to change sexuality. Imagine the sheer amount of mental damage you'd be doing to yourself

This is getting quite ridiculous now. I SAW people who were persuaded to be straight, by influence from relatives and/or religion. Why are you saying it's impossible? I also agreed that persuasion would only work for tiny minority.

[minimarshmallow]

(Original post by soempty)
This is getting quite ridiculous now. I SAW people who were persuaded to be straight, by influence from relatives and/or religion. Why are you saying it's impossible? I also agreed that persuasion would only work for tiny minority.

You heard people say 'yeah, I'm straight now'. Unless you also read their mind, they're lying to you.

[2ndClass]

(Original post by Id and Ego seek)
You're talking about gender roles

Erm no, no where did I mention the roles they partake in. I'm specifically referring to their mannerism and the characteristic they embody. A heterosexual can carry out gender roles that is opposite to their sex, this isn't the issue here.....

gender roles are culturally subjective, they are set by the majority. How isn't that conditioning or perception?

Yes and? what relation has that got with what I'm talking about.

Show me objectively what female traits are and we won't discuss perception.

Femininity tends to list highly up there, unless you'll try to counter this and bring up the traits of some isolated tribe in the mountains of Peru where the women have a masculine personality

[Retrodiction]

(Original post by soempty)
This is getting quite ridiculous now. I SAW people who were persuaded to be straight, by influence from relatives and/or religion. Why are you saying it's impossible? I also agreed that persuasion would only work for tiny minority.

Yep, and I told people I was straight for 20 years, and everybody believed me. Imagine how easy it is to lie about something like this.

[soempty]

(Original post by minimarshmallow)
I'm a psychology student. Don't know why it's relevant.
No gay person will be 'persuaded' to not be gay, it doesn't work like that.
Your option is not at all pieceful, it advocates telling people they are bad and wrong for something that is not bad or wrong and is also they had no control over acquiring and cannot change. It will lead to more homophobic bullying and gay suicides; and there will still be gay people, they will just be miserable because there's nothing they can do about being 'wrong'. The resources you will use doing this will be wasted, because this won't work and then it will take even more resources when you discover you have failed to go down the tolerance route.

And here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...=FBCNETTXT9038
Even the guy who advocated 'curing' homosexuality admits he was wrong. You can't make gay people straight.

If you tell people that someone is ill, will it make them want to bully the s*** out of that person? It will create compassion and understading, they would try to help, they will take others lightly and in friendlier way.

I will try to clarify. Imagine i decide what happens in the country. I will say "Look, gay people are absolutely the SAME as all of you are, however they are a bit ill because of their upbringing (or whatever), let's make sure it doesnt happen to your children. OK?" To the gay person i would say "Hi there! You are still a respectable member of society, but we think you are ill. Do you want us to help you?"
a

[fineas]

(Original post by chefdave)
A story that caught my attention this week was that of a journalist who went undercover to expose a professional psychotherapist over claims she could 'cure' homosexuality.

Personally I don't have a problem with homosexuality (one of my favourite TSR posters is gay, I also believe in the maxim 'live and let live') and anyone who claims they can cure it is probably either deluded or a charlatan. But I have some sympathy with the view that it's a mental illness. Why? Because homosexuality presents a barrier to procreation and the continuation of life.

To put it another way, if a tiny % of the population were born with a fatal disorder that meant they lacked the hunger mechanism we'd have no problem saying there's something medically wrong with them. Well why can't we say something similar about homosexuality? Homosexuality (on one level) is intrinsically anti-life, and as life naturally wants to preserve itself and reproduce it represents something of an aberration.

http://www.channel4.com/news/gay-cur...nst-suspension

A lot of people here have no idea what you're talking about. According to Darwinism Natural selection, the purpose of all lives is reproductive success, not survival. Hence if an individual/mutant does not live to enhance its reproductive success, they are meant to become extinct.
So yes it it is "anti life" as you put it, which a lot of people seem not to understand. However whether it is a "mental illness" is uncertain.

[ThatSBKid]

(Original post by 2ndClass)
No not really, it's bizarre each of them are typically un-attracted to the opposite sex's traits yet they embody them. It's not about conditioning or perception so I don't know where you pulled that out from.

Straight men are not attracted to other men. In other words, they embody what they are not attracted to. It's really not that weird if you think about it :/

But anyway, even though you say "I'm not generalising", you are. Don't think "gay guy = effeminate apart from some", because that's honestly not the case. The effeminate ones are just more pressured by most to make a definite comment on their sexuality.

[PJAdams]

(Original post by soempty)
This is getting quite ridiculous now. I SAW people who were persuaded to be straight, by influence from relatives and/or religion. Why are you saying it's impossible? I also agreed that persuasion would only work for tiny minority.

People can say they were "cured", but even afterwards, they are still going to act in the way which their brain is wired to work in, regardless of social pressure or the quack-medicine idea that gayness can be cured

[Doni]

(Original post by Retrodiction)
What? How do the underlying genetic causes of criminality relate to homosexuality?

:| ... Some may argue homosexuality is not a personal 'decision', it's a natural desire, in this case an 'illness' -_-">> determined by ur genotype .,
If this was true, even to some extent, theoretically any deviant behavior is considered as disorder!
On the bases of the argument above, criminals don't 'choose' to commit crime, they have a natural tendency which leads them to do it,,
This would meen no one should be punished for crime, that's why I refuse to believe homosexuality is not a decision,
I hope I put it simply enough for u to follow

[soempty]

Can you suppose that at least 1 out of 100 tells truth? Than i would say it's worth of doing. It's easier than to persuade million of people to become tolerant.

I could as well say, that this article is slightly biased by the author, i cannot read his mind.

[Sophia1994]

I don't think anyone could call it a mental disorder...
It isn't known what causes same sex attraction, there have been many, many studies done on it. All that is really known is that it isn't a conscious choice.
I don't have a problem with gay people, in fact they are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It's just hard to understand.

[Rooster523]

(Original post by Bobo1234)
No but that's not a good argument in favour of classifying it as a medical condition. A smaller portion of the population has blonde hair and the majority have dark hair- that doesn't make the blonde ones medically handicapped in some way. Whatever it is that you're labelling as a medical condition, has to have the characteristics of a medical condition to be a medical condition- the fact that the "thing" whether it's homosexuality or blonde hair, is only present in a small portion of the population, does not automatically qualify it as a medical condition- THAT is naive.

I feel like I'm repeating myself again- stop being so literal! I'm not suggesting that everything that is a minority must be a medical condition, that's just plain ignorant.

[PJAdams]

(Original post by soempty)
Can you suppose that at least 1 out of 100 tells truth? Than i would say it's worth of doing. It's easier than to persuade million of people to become tolerant.

I could as well say, that this article is slightly biased by the author, i cannot read his mind.

Why should people have to lie about what they are, to make the intolerant people feel good about themselves?

[Saif95]

Homosexuality IS a mental illness/psychological illness..what ever you want to call it. No one was born homosexual...it develops later on just like schizophrenia.

...that's what people believed back in the day anyway..but now as judgement day is drawing near it is the norm.

Allah shows his signs, yet people do not take heed.

[noisy06]

(Original post by PJAdams)
People can say they were "cured", but even afterwards, they are still going to act in the way which their brain is wired to work in, regardless of social pressure or the quack-medicine idea that gayness can be cured

Yes, gayness might not be cured in the same way that a pedophile's tendency towards children might never be cured, or a person's sexually perverse desire to mate with dogs might never be cured. "Curing" the feelings is not the goal, the goal is to help prevent those of a sexually perverse persuasion to act upon their desires regardless of whether they have been born with it (i.e "natural") or not.

[ThatSBKid]

(Original post by Doni)
:| ... Some may argue homosexuality is not a personal 'decision', it's a natural desire, in this case an 'illness' -_-">> determined by ur genotype .,
If this was true, even to some extent, theoretically any deviant behavior is considered as disorder!
On the bases of the argument above, criminals don't 'choose' to commit crime, they have a natural tendency which leads them to do it,,
This would meen no one should be punished for crime, that's why I refuse to believe homosexuality is not a decision,
I hope I put it simply enough for u to follow

Two gay people in a relationship - apart from a few cases (where the same can be said for heterosexual relationships), it is fully consensual and no-one is being taken advantage of.

Paedophilia - if acted on (key thing here), then the child is being taken advantage of. They are not consenting. They don't have the emotional maturity most of the time to understand the gravity of the situation.

Criminals usually commit crimes in the hope they won't get caught, save for a few rare cases where they have some sort of condition where their perception of right and wrong is muddled, such as something on the autistic spectrum. You could very easily have someone attracted to young children who never acts on it.

I'm not sure what other crimes you're trying to link in here.