The same pattern I see in all of the claims is they never can attack homosexuality itself. They always have to add something on to it like aids, child molesting, promiscuity etc. Things that have nothing to do with being attracted to the same sex. When your trying to attack something that doesn't go against loving your neighbor as yourself, you are forced to add something on to it. The same thing happened a hundred years ago when people were prejudice against blacks in the US. They claimed that Black people were white women molesters. Thats because the truth is Love is not a sin or anything to shun away and theres no alternative but to add something on to it.
If you have any links or info that would help also. Please feel free to email them to me at [email protected]
The Rainbow Alliance
www.rainbowallianceopenfaith.homestead.com
Gays and:
*Pedophilia
*Ex-gay Minitstries
*Aids or any other Diseases
*Shorter Lifespan
*Fall of the Roman Empire
*Promiscuicity
http://www.rainbowallianceopenfaith.homestead.com/PedoMyth.html
Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html
Playing the Pedophilia Card
http://www.robincmiller.com/gayles4.htm
The Tartan - It�s a no-brainer: gays should be able to adopt
http://tartan.web.cmu.edu/97/4/forum/2035.asp
http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html#kids
In 1995, local child protective service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse; of these, 75% were girls. Nearly 30% of child victims were between the ages of 4 and 7. [US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment, 1995.]
Ok so the US popula in 1995 is 262,803,276 according to the Federal government http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/00000.html
Lets do some math shall we? 75% of 126,000 is 94,500 that would make the amount of boys raped in the US 31,500. The US popula in 1995 is 262,803,276 and the gay population is 3% of that, which is 7,884,098 people. That would make 0.39% of the gay population to be child molesters.
*126,000 x 75 = 9,450,000 / 100 = 94,500 - girls raped
*126,000 - 94,500 = 31,500 - boys raped
*262,803,276 x 3 = 788,409,828 / 100 = 7,884,098 - gay population
*31,500 x 100 = 3,150,000 / 7,884,098 = 0.39% - gays that are rapists
Some people even say the gay population is even 10% that would make an even smaller percentage in them being child molesters.
This link tested 3,952 male child molesters and is not a gay activist site. Only dedicated to stopping child molestation
http://www.stopchildmolestation.org/pages/study4.html
ADULT SEXUAL ORIENTATIONS
OF MEN WHO MOLEST BOYS
While it is a commonly held belief that men who prefer men as adult sex partners molest boys and men who prefer women as adult sex partners molest girls, our study results suggest something different. (Note: Only 7 percent of child molesters show no sexual interest in adults.)
Alfred E. Kinsey, in his landmark study of male sexuality, divided adult sexual interest into seven categories: three categories of homosexuality, one category of bi-sexuality, and three categories of heterosexuality. The Abel and Harlow study used this "Kinsey Scale" in its questions about adult sexual preference.
The 1,038 men who molested boys reported a range of adult sexual preferences. Contrary to popular belief, only 8 percent reported that they were exclusively homosexual in their adult preferences. The majority of the men who molested boys (51 percent) described themselves as exclusively heterosexual in their adult partner preferences. An additional 19 percent reported they were predominately heterosexual, while yet another 9 percent said they were equally heterosexual and homosexual in their adult sex life. As with other characteristics, the group of 1,038 men who molest boys followed the general pattern of the U.S. male population in regard to their adult sexual preferences. As reported by Kinsey, the majority of U.S. adult males (76 percent) described themselves as exclusively heterosexual and an additional 9 percent said they were predominantly heterosexual. In terms of their homosexuality, Kinsey reports that those U.S. males who describe themselves as exclusively homosexual are 6 percent and those that report being predominantly homosexual an additional 4 percent. These findings are in direct opposition to the generally accepted opinion that the overwhelming majority of men who molest boys are homosexual. The majority of men who molest boys (70 percent) are predominantly heterosexual. In general, that large number parallels the number of men in the U.S. population (85 percent) who have reported that they are predominantly heterosexual.
Author Biography
Gene G. Abel, M.D. is a physician, psychiatrist, and a scientist. The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded him funding for six long-term studies to investigate sexual violence against women and children and to design new ways to stop it.
Dr. Abel has received several awards for his significant achievements in sex research, including the Masters and Johnson Award presented by the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. He is a member of the International Academy of Sex Research.
A past President of the National Society for Behavioral Medicine, Dr. Abel is a Fellow of the American Psychiatry Association and a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. A full professor, he has served on the faculty of several medical schools including Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Emory University Medical School, and Morehouse Medical School.
Nora Harlow founded a day care center in New York City and taught there while getting a graduate degree from Columbia University. She has published two books, one on childcare, Sharing the Children, and one on sexuality, Lover to Lover. She is the former editor of two publications for physicians, Sexual Medicine Today, and Frontiers of Psychiatry. They are married and live in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1995 they founded Abel Screening, Incorporated, a testing and research company devoted to stopping sexual violence. In 2002 they founded The Stop Child Molestation Group, a national non-profit organization that helps families stop child molestation.
Another Article:
For Experts on Abuse, Priests' Orientation Isn't the Issue
http://uspolitics.about.com/library/weekly/aa073102a.htm
"The only reason this is even a question is that this is a homophobic society," said Robert Prentky, a forensic psychologist who has spent two decades studying sexual predators at the Massachusetts Treatment Center inside the state prison at Bridgewater.
"Most men who molest boys are disgusted at the thought of having sex with adult males," said William Samek, a Miami psychologist who treats sex offenders and their victims. "Sometimes they choose boys because they are less frightened of them or because they feel a connection with them."
Although some pedophiles are gay, most sex crimes against minors are committed by heterosexual married men. Behavioral scientists say gay men are no more likely to seek out young boys for sex than heterosexual men are to seek out underage girls.
Now one thing the anti gay community has done many times to try to convince people that gays are pedophiliacs is show cases of a gay people caught child molesting and then say the majority of gay people are pedos. Hence we provide:
The List of 83 Cases of Baptist Preacher Rapists
http://web.morons.org/article.jsp?sectionid=2&id=85
Gay Today: Top Story
http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/events/091500ev.htm
ExGayMyth
http://rainbowallianceopenfaith.homestead.com/ExGayMyth.html
ex-gaytruths
http://www.gaychristians.org/xgay.htm
Gay.com News: What's new with the ex-gay movement
http://content.gay.com/channels/news/signorile/010523_paulk.html
Dr.Truluck
http://www.truluck.com/html/apa_warning.html
Analysis of Dr. Spitzer's study of reparative therapy
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_spit.htm
By: Candace Chellew
"At New Hope Ministries we do not attempt to make heterosexuals out of homosexuals. Rather, we attempt to change a person's identity, the way a person looks at himself."
These are the words of Frank Worthen, a leader in the world of ex-gay ministries. It is a telling sentence. Mr. Worthen admits that gays and lesbians will not lose their natural God given sexual orientation toward members of their same sex. They will not attmept to make heterosexuals out of homosexuals. Instead, they will teach gays and lesbians to control their sexuality and change their attitude about it. In short, gays and lesbians will learn how to hate themselves and praise God for their new found misery and loneliness.
In this issue of Whosoever, we will explore the tactics of these ex-gay snake oil salesmen and how they are destroying the lives of innocent gays and lesbians who believe the societal lie that they are not "normal." The leaders of these "ministries" will tell you to expect a struggle, to expect to "fall" back into your old ways, but that ultimately God will "heal" you of your homosexuality. It's all a lie. God has blessed each of us with the ability to love and God has made us to love those of our same gender. That is a gift from God. It is a sin to throw that gift back into God's face.
The lapses that "ex-gays" feel during their brainwashing at the hands of these evil "ministries" are only the true essence of these people battling to be free from the bonds ignorance and misinformation.
One of the most powerful stories of how ex-gay tactics do not work is that of Mel White. Once a ghostwriter for some of the leaders of the modern religious right, White spent thousands of dollars and many years of his life denying his sexual orientation. God did not "heal" White, instead, White discovered he was "praying the wrong prayer" all those years. Now his prayer is that he can help others avoid the pain of feeling they must change to be accepted by God.
Several other writers explore the inner workings of these ex-gay ministries, and one ex-ex-gay shares his experience and how God saved him from one "ministry."
After reading this issue and exploring the stories you may come to agree with another statement by Frank Worthen.
In an article called "Ex-Gay: Fact, Fraud or Fantasy" Worthen writes: "When one has seen the hand of God at work in his life, it is easier to trust God and to rely on [God] in times of trouble." I agree. I have seen God at work in my life every single minute of the day, and I can truly say God is my hope in times of trouble. I can say that, and at the same time, I can freely and joyfully praise God for making me a lesbian.
U.K. "Ex-Gay" Group Gives Up - an exodus from Exodus...
A British "ex-gay" leader admits he's never been able to change himself let alone anyone else, and announces an exodus from Exodus. The long-time leader of an "ex-gay" group in Britain has concluded that sexual orientation cannot be changed, Gay.com reported January 29.
Jeremy Marks' High Wycombe-based group Courage has been granted a two-year "sabbatical leave" by the umbrella group Exodus International "to explore its new direction and practice" and then report back. Courage had been pursuing a mission to help "those caught between homosexuality and Christianity" by supporting them to take "the road out of homosexuality" through prayer, and in Exodus' words to attain "sexual purity" through its renunciation.
But now Marks, a gay minister, is quoted as saying, "We are definitely wanting to be separated from the 'ex-gay' label and be more focused on supporting Christians who are gay." After fourteen years, he said, "None of the people we've counseled have converted no matter how much effort and prayer they've put into it. There is much more benefit to the honest view."
The American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association, among other professional groups, have issued warnings of the unproven effectiveness and possible harmfulness of "change" programs. Marks finds the harm of the "ex-gay" movement in the "internal war" fought by those who presume that as gays and lesbians they cannot be good Christians.
While Marks remains faithful to the vows he made to his wife of nine years, he admits -- distinguishing restraint from denial -- that, "In truth, my own orientation has not changed." Potential Paradigm Shift The news of Courage's conversion comes less than five months after Exodus International was embarrassed by the discovery of its "poster boy" John Paulk in a Washington, D.C. gay bar (see PlanetOut News of September 21, 2000).
The gay and lesbian Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which has made a study of the harm done to individuals by programs attempting to change gays and lesbians into heterosexuals, seized on the news to call on Exodus International members like Colorado-based Focus on the Family's "Love Won Out" seminars to advise their participants of the incident rather than being "guilty of willfully misleading those in attendance."
Marks says that Exodus leaders -- "in most cases, wonderful, caring people" -- "are facing the possibility that we could have been wrong" about changing homosexual orientation, and that, "The potential is a major paradigm shift after 25 years." HRC's Wayne Besen said, "This latest failure presents a wonderful opportunity for Exodus to reevaluate their mission and to begin an honest dialogue with themselves and the public."
However Marks has little expectation of that kind of change in "orientation" actually occurring either. The religious right has often used the notion that gays and lesbians can change their orientation as an argument against making them a protected category in human rights and hate crimes laws.)
In Conclusion:
Now I do believe that God can change gays to straights or straights to gays for that matter. But thats not the point. The point is its nothing to change in the first place. A form of Love is nothing to change or be ashamed of. God made gays just as he made the white tiger to be white or the rainbow to have its colors or the cow to go moo.
http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
http://www.unaids.org/worldaidsday/2001/EPIgraphics2001/
EPIgraphic2_en.gif
Also Lesbians are the lowest percentage canidates for Aids. Notice when they show stastistics for homosexuals with aids its always "men who have sex with men" and lesbians almost around 2%. (Hence it very wrong to call it a gay disease) If aids is a punishment for having sex with the same gender, then God must really like girls or its not true in the first place.
One thing I think that is worth mentioning is they always focus on the mens side, when on the womens side (which I've heard somewhere is 3/4's the population) even in America heterosexual women (worldwide) are hugely the canidates for Aids and gay women are almost none at all and that adds the gay guys that don't get aids. So overall worldwide heterosexuality has a higher percentage rate for Aids.
These are other incidents with people getting aids. We can ask the anti gay community where these people sinned.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/UpClose/DailyNews/Mary_
Fisher_Email.html
31 Dec 02
UpClose: Mary Fisher
Sept. 5 � "We know that death is deferred, maybe. The medicines aren't going to last forever. The virus is very clever, and it pops through these medications, so, you know, you still know that it's going to happen, but now I feel like I can plan maybe six months and a different kind of future, and I just didn't think I had one."
�AIDS patient and activist Mary Fisher
UpClose tonight, Sept 5: Mary Fisher
It's one of the memorable moments of the 1992 Republican Convention: a moving speech by a member of a prominent Republican family, Mary Fisher, who told the assembled delegates and a national television audience, that she had AIDS. Coming from a a straight, white conservative woman, her message helped break stereotypes about who can get the dreaded disease:
"I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from every segment of American society. Though I am white and a mother, I am one with the black infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female and contracted this disease in marriage and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man sheltering a flickering candle from the cold wind of his family's rejection."
Since her moment in the national spotlight, Fisher has waged simultaneous battles, her personal war against AIDS that has left her physically spent at times along with her global battle to increase awareness about the scourge of AIDS in the Third World. She has visited Africa as part of a White House delegation, had her eyes opened to the millions who are HIV-positive and "is determined not to let the world leave them behind."
Fisher tells Michel Martin on tonight's UpClose that despite her ups and downs over the past decade (she's been on the AIDS medicine cocktail), she's thrilled to be here for her two sons (her husband died of AIDS). When she was first diagnosed 11 years ago, she wasn't convinced she'd still be here in 2002. Her oldest son, now in high school, is convinced his mother will see him go off to college.
For Fisher, as for so many AIDS patients, it's one day at a time.
Richard Harris
Senior Producer
Nightline UpClose
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/aidsbreastfeedin
g_wnt010311.html
07 Nov 02
Breastfeeding's Deadly Dilemma
Africa's AIDS Victims Pass On Disease to Infants
B I T C H A Y I, Malawi, March 12, 2001 � It's been done this way forever � no bottle, no formula � just mother's milk.
But with the AIDS epidemic ravaging Africa, breastfeeding mothers are passing pass the deadly disease on to their infant children. And despite the risk of transmission, breastfeeding is still commonplace.
Some of companies that make baby formula argue their products would put an end to the cycle of infection.
But in rural Africa, the problem is not that simple.
Poor hygiene, bad water, and unsterilized bottles make formula-feeding much more dangerous for the babies. The risk of contracting AIDS through breastfeeding is one in five. With formula and other substitutes, there is a 50 percent chance of dying from diarrhea, dehydration and gastrointestinal illnesses.
"It really is a dilemma for a woman who has to choose the risk of infecting her child or the risk of giving her child gastro-enteritis and killing [the baby] that way," admits Dr. James McIntyre, an AIDS researcher.
And until sanitation improves and AIDS education reduces the rate of infection, the numbers are unlikely to improve.
Formula's Risks: Disease and Disgrace
"It's a tremendous dilemma," says Jesper Morch, a relief worker for UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency. UNICEF has found itself at odds with formula makers over the issue.
"We seem to be forced back into a discussion � with the baby formula industry about whether one thing is better than the other. We are saying that is not the key issue," Morch insists.
The cost, he says, is prohibitive, and there remains a social stigma over formula feeding.
"In South Africa, there is a lot of discrimination," says a mother with AIDS named Charlotte. "People kill us because we have AIDS."
Because formula feeding is one way to identify a mother with AIDS, mothers resist using it, or try to use it in secret.
And so breastfeeding, despite the risks, continues.
.........................................................
I could take this way out of poportion just as the anti gay community has against gays and say that breast feeding is a sin because you can't use this to determine whether something is a sin or not
A diet in highly refined carbohydrates that leads to diabetes.
Hormone imbalances in the body cause Acne
The reason of getting prostate cancer is being a male.
Eating certain foods and breathing certain air can cause asthma
Eating alot of fat eventually leads to colon cancer and heart disease.
These people are victims of a disease. They didn't get it because they sinned.
STD's you can get whether married or not married, polygamous or monagomous, rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight.
High amount of Straight Married couples affected by HIV by Donating Blood
http://www.aegis.com/news/bw/1999/BW990707.html
Human Papilloma Virus
http://www.healthsqr.com/fgwh/wh1ch11p3.htm
HPV is spread by skin to skin contact, especially during vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse. It is thought that the virus enters the body through tiny breaks in the skin, which could be caused by the friction of sex or *even by using tampons incorrectly*.
Gonorrhea
http://www.healthsqr.com/fgwh/wh1ch11p8.htm
Gonorrhea infections are caused by a kidney bean-shaped bacteria scientists call Neisseria gonorrhea. These germs live in the cervix in women and inside the urethra (the tube that carries urine) in men.
"People with limited access to health care also seem to have a higher risk for getting gonorrhea."
Pubic Lice
http://www.healthsqr.com/fgwh/wh1ch11p9.htm
Pubic lice is caused by a parasite known as Phthirus pubis that is transmitted by close body contact, most often by sexual intercourse. Since the lice can live away from their host for 24 to 48 hours, there are other possible modes of transmission such as sheets and towels (but not toilet seats).
Scabies
http://www.healthsqr.com/fgwh/wh1ch11p10.htm
Scabies is caused by the mites Sarcoptes scabiei var hominis. It is passed from person to person through close contact, including sexual activity. It can also spread through sheets, clothes and furniture.
Genital Herpes
http://www.healthsqr.com/fgwh/wh1ch11p4.htm
HSV is spread by skin to skin contact (that means only touching), especially during vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse.
............................................................
Any of these are very easy for a married gay or straight person to get infected and then affect there partner through sex and they can have nothing to do with sinning.
I'm not saying no disease comes out of sin, I mean it doesn't mean that everytime. If you use an act that is against "loving thy neighbor as thy self" it can result in physical defects but this is not the case in everyone who has a disease or physical imperfection. They can be the victim of the sin rather than the one doing it. In some cases causing physical blemish is an act of love, like if the other person wanted you to because they were above physicality and liked it. (for example giving someone a hot bath or jalopenios, etc.) Sometimes people get physical "defects" or diseases from doing good deeds. And it can come out in many different ways.
That's not the right place to look, what matters is not the physical result of something but the Love that comes out of it. For God Truely is SPIRIT and beyond physicality.
Is homosexuality capable of Love? Yes. What about uncareful bed hopping? Nope, that is a form of lust. This is exactly what spreads aids. We need to focus on that rather than trying change a persons identity based on prejudice assumptions.
How Aids is Spread
http://www.jhuccp.org/pr/h9/h9boxes.stm#hiv
HIV is carried in body fluids. The most important are semen, blood, breastmilk, and vaginal fluid (246, 558). HIV is spread primarily through sexual contact that passes body fluids from one person to another. It also can be spread by contaminated blood or blood products, by hypodermic needles contaminated with such blood, and from an infected woman to her child during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. A person may have HIV for years before any symptoms appear. Although people may not know that they are infected, and they do not look or feel sick, they still can pass HIV to others.
For physiological reasons, a woman is more likely to contract HIV/AIDS sexually from an infected man than a woman is to infect a man (23, 129, 394). The percentage of HIV-positive adults who are women has risen from 25% estimated in 1990 to 43% in late 1997 and appears to be still rising (12, 266).
HIV also has spread to children born to infected mothers, a trend that is eroding previous gains in child survival. The majority of infections occur during or close to birth; in developing countries breastfeeding accounts for an estimated one-third of HIV transmission from mother to child (269).
Where has those babies sinned when getting aids by being breastfed?
Exchange of bodily fluids is the reason of AIDS being spread not homosexuality. The only reason for getting aids is being uncareful with sex, which is letting you fluids enter the other persons body. This matters no matter what body your in.
If we play and go along with gays living shorter, some tests say blacks live shorter than whites, also men live shorter than women. That doesn't make any of those things to be a sin or anything bad. People that have more stress are proven to live shorter lives. Gays especially have more stress because of societies judging ways about them.
http://www.sgn.org/Archives/sgn.10.30.98/orchard.htm
McMahan said she told the forum audience that the homosexual lifestyle is "not healthy and not normal" citing a statistics that said Gay men who are not HIV-positive live an average of 42 years, compared to the average American male lifespan of 72 years.
The statistics McMahan cited were unattributed at the forum but she said later the "widely published" stats were gathered by the Family Research Council from 126 obituaries of "known homosexual" men published in the Seattle Gay News from January through November 1994.
The statistics did not include Lesbians or closeted Gay men, but McMahan said "homosexual behavior deprives people of a normal lifespan."
Tom Flint, associate editor of the Seattle Gay News, called this use of the obituaries "monstrous." Flint said "HIV negative Gay people live just as long as anybody else," and he pointed out that virtually all of the publication's obituaries are for AIDS-related deaths.
"Homosexuality is not a risk factor for our health -- homophobia is," he said. "McMahan's statistics are absolutely not scientifically based. These are AIDS obituaries" and not proof Gay people lead shorter lives.
(So it wasn't the truth when the Family Research Council said its not from AIDS victims.)
A Cameron study that has received perhaps the most attention is �The Lifespan of Homosexuals.� It concludes that less than 2 percent of gay men survive to old age; that lesbians have a median age of death of 45 that gays are 116 times more apt to be murdered than straight men and twenty-four times more apt to commit suicide, etc. The source of this material? A comparison of obituaries from gay newspapers with a sample from regular newspapers�a method that would be laughed at by any reputable scholar. Obituaries in gay papers do not accurately portray deaths in the gay population as a whole. They are not meant to provide a public record of deaths of all gays but to allow members of the urban gay community to express mourning for their peers, particularly those whose lives have been cut short by illness or accident. Gays who die outside these communities or who die of natural causes are much less likely to be written up in a gay paper.
In the coming months, public debate over gay issues is going to get even more intense; the military gay ban question is far from settled, and at least two states may see anti-gay referenda on their ballots this fall. Cameron will help out with these campaigns as he pushes his new book, The Gay Nineties. His research will again be cited by anti-gay activists everywhere. It�s time to set the record straight.
Homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world was almost universally practised and almost universally accepted as a part of everyday life. Yet it did not exist at all in the sense in which we understand it today. Neither in Greece nor in Rome were there groups of people classifying themselves or each other as 'homosexuals' or 'heterosexuals' and regarding each other with disapproval or incomprehension. This bisection of human sexual potential seems to be a modern invention. Both Greek and Roman men and women practised homosexuality and heterosexuality in different social circumstances, at different times in their lives and according to different religious, political and ritual obligations, without drawing any kind of ethical distinction between them.
It is important not to idealise this state of affairs. Both Greek and Roman society were profoundly patriarchal, and in Greece in particular, male homosexuality served as perhaps the most important bonding-mechanism between men. Greek male homosexuality evolved by the Classical period (5th century BC) into a highly ritualised social-political system, with rigidly-defined roles and a powerful educational role. In Sparta and Thebes male homosexual bonding was actually elevated to a form of military organisation
Female homosexuality seems to have been equally widespread and accepted, though subject to the restrictions that the patriarchal order imposed on women's sexuality in general. Unfortunately, our evidence on this is fragmentary, since virtually all our sources are male writers who were generally not interested in what women did, provided they produced legitimate heirs. Furthermore, the most important focus of women' s social life, and hence of female sexuality, were the rituals of the Mystery cults, which men were forbidden to see or know about. The works of only one woman writer, those of Sappho, have survived, and they only in fragments.
There is almost no evidence in any pre-Christian writer of hostility to homosexuality as such. In various sources, individuals are attacked or satirised for promiscuity, prostitution, procurement or youth-fetishism, but nearly always it is the form rather than the object of sexual expression that is disapproved of. All the great heroes of Greek myth and history were credited with homosexual involvements, from Zeus and Ganymede through to Alexander and Hefaistion .
The Romans seem on the whole to have been less high-minded than the Greeks about homosexuality, as they were about sex in general, and the high sense of moral purpose that generally (and probably hypocritically) surrounds Greek writing on the subject is usually missing from Roman accounts. Nevertheless, Roman public men, certainly by Imperial times, seem to have been as cheerfully omnisexual as their Greek counterparts. Julius Caesar does not seem to have minded being described as 'every woman's man and every man's woman' and the Emperor Hadrian set up monuments to his dead lover Antinous all over the Empire. This tradition runs right through to beginning of the Christian era in the fourth century AD.
Which brings me back to Mr Psalti and the mythical decline of the decadent Romans. This peculiar view of history derives, though Mr Psalti may not know it, from Edward Gibbon's 18th century classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first systematic history of the later Empire. Now Gibbon was a superlative writer and, given his limited sources, a brilliant historian, but he had, like many of his contemporaries, a bit of a bee under his bonnet about homosexuality. Also, not being a marxist, nor having much understanding of economic history, he found it difficult to explain why the awesome edifice of the Roman Empire should have crumbled as it did. So he cast about for some superficial explanation that fitted the world-view of his class and his generation, and came up with this line about homosexuality and decadence, which then became a stock line of 19th century moralistic cant.
In fact, of course, the truth of the matter is quite the reverse of Mr Psalti's view, though not nearly so much fun. The Roman Empire fell, as empires do, for straightforward economic reasons; not because of anything to do with sex at all.
By the third century AD the once-vigorous Roman state was ruled by a parasitic horde of soldiers and bureaucrats, who lived off the productive efforts of a dwindling class of farmers and artisans. Most of what would now be wage-labour was performed by slaves. This endless supply of free labour meant that there was no incentive for technical development or economic expansion. The slave system meant that neither a bourgeoisie nor a proletariat in the modern sense could evolve, that there could be no accumulation of capital, and that there was no real economic, social or political development. Only the rich could consume, and they consumed mainly imported luxuries. The wealth of the Empire, built up by conquest not production, thus drained away to the East or was wasted in military expenditure. Once the Empire stopped expanding territorially, it was living off its fat. Its economy first ceased to grow, then stagnated, then began to decline. Put simply, the Roman Empire went broke.
Not having discovered economics, Roman governments had little understanding of what was going on. They tried to cover their deficits by simply increasing taxation, which of course further weakened what remained of the productive economy and eventually destroyed it altogether. When the barbarian challenge came in the fifth century AD, the State could not raise, feed, equip or train the necessary troops to defend its enormous territories, and like the Spanish, British and American Empires after it, it collapsed under the weight of its own economic contradictions.
The story in more detail
http://www.roman-empire.net/collapse/collapse-index.html
Just thought this was worth mentioning. ROTFL!
http://web.morons.org/article.jsp?sectionid=4&id=1285
The American Family Association has announced that it alone is solely responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire...
After forcing K-Mart into bankruptcy, making Yahoo's stock price fall, causing Taco Bell to end its promotion of Cardcaptors, the American Family Association set its sights on a much more formidable target: the Roman Empire.
"The Roman Empire is clearly rife with paganism, homosexuality, and fine artwork. As a pro-family organization, we felt it necessary to put a stop to the Roman Empire," said the organization's chairman, Don Wildmon. "I am pleased to announce that as a result of the American Family Association's boycott and the efforts of its members, the Roman Empire has fallen."
Wildmon refused to comment on how the present-day efforts of the American Family Association caused the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 AD but insisted that the AFA was responsible, adding, "anyone who thinks otherwise is a godless child molester."
---Nick
http://www3.uakron.edu/hefe/court/note10.htm (Look at the bottom)
Gay Marriage - Among homosexual males and females, long term relationships lately have become just as stable and committed as heterosexual ones. That is - gays are just a little more likely to have relationships that fail as are the "normal" crowd of heterosexual marrieds.
There was a time prior to the Eighties - that male homosexuals appeared to be quite promiscuous, with sex partners running into double digits. However, it is a statistical fact that today - homosexuals who are interested in long term relationships are just as likely to make such a relationship as are heterosexuals with the same interests.
Just as likely - promiscuous heterosexuals are just as likely as homosexuals who are promiscuous to fail at relationships over time.
Communal Marriages - another alternative form is the commune. Communal living arrangements come in a variety of forms. There are no organized group marriages in the U.S. - where the male group "marries" the female group. Almost all communes are heterosexual in nature and monogamous.
In the 1960's and 70's some "family groups" were formed - such as the Merry Pranksters and the Family Dog in San Francisco. These arrangements lasted only a few years and were organized around the drugs and psychedlic music subculture.
Today most communes share in the joined labor and economic efforts of the members. Childcare is shared, each person works outside the group and contributes paychecks to the "family income". Many of these groups have a religious orientation as well, ranging from fundamentalist Christians to Bhuddist and Hindu oriented faiths. There are group sings and prayer sessions as well.
