OT Good For Him

Husky, I couldn't agree more with that post and I commend you for your candour.

For my part, in retrospect, I realise that some of the stuff I've said on this thread might be offensive to you or others, EG the use of the word "nufter".
I apologise for that mate. It was crass.

I suppose certain words/phrases related to homosexuality might seem accepted on a football forum in particular because some might think that there wouldn't be any gay people following football. I know I did. And I was wrong.

I was banned from the Norwich Board once for composing a ditty which in large part took the piss out of Stephen Fry's sexuality. The first person to jump to my defence was a guy who's also gay (he PM'd me that he was gay after he'd defended me!) but realised that I didn't mean any harm. I was just winding up the Carrot-Heads.

Point is, there's more gay people following football than I realised. And we must make them feel welcome.

 

Swords, thank you. But no real need to apologise. The nufty thing, or whatever it happened to be, wasn't slung out in malice and I don't think you were out to offend. I consider most of the posters on here to be 'friends' in a weird, internet faceless kind of way so things like that don't really bother me. I guess it's more the general sort of bulls**t you here from people, such as describing something as 'gay' when they really mean 'crap' or something similar. It's almost a throwaway term, which is quite sad really, particularly for young people growing up struggling with their sexuality.

As for gay people liking footy, I would suggest that most people, straight or gay, fell in love with the game long before they were fully aware of their sexuality. Football's a passion for lots of people, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Anyway, thanks again for your post, and things said in jest shouldn't be jumped all over. I'm not up for the PC gone mad type of thing - but I still think we need to moderate our speech in certain areas and contexts, as we would when dealing with any number of issues.

 

husky & Welsh, Im still trying to decide if you are on the Wum or not!
if you are genuine, then i thank you for having the courage to answer my origional question, as i never really thought anyone would.
I agree that there have been some terrible sweepins statements in this (the "liking the pork sword springs to mind) & I can only appologise if you took offence to anything posted.
Intresting thread and intresting to see the people who are posting. I already knew Flyers take on this as we'd covered something similar many moons ago & I do remember that post that Swords put up.
Bit strang how a lot of others have dissapeard into the mists and not commented, maybe its of no intrest to them or maybe there are other reasons?
Anyway, i too would like to thank al those that commented as i reckong this is about as far OT as we could possibly get.

 

I like this thread.

A few throw away comments aside, this has been very respectfully handled by everyone.

People are their words, character and actions, irrelevant of anything else.

This board has some great people on it and this thread just highlights that.

 

The born or made argument is an interesting one. As I understand it there are examples of men that were sexually abused when young that turned to homosexuality as a consequence. I would suppose that some found themselves leading this life because of damage arising from that abuse, perhaps manifest self-loathing. I would presume that statistically others chose this lifestyle of their own free will. I am sure every individual has a different story to tell, but I personally would not rule out the possibility that some were 'made' as well as 'born'. The instance of the singer Will Young is interesting in that he is gay and yet - correct me if I'm wrong - his twin brother is straight. I am neither an expert in sexuality nor a genetic scientist, but it was my understanding that twins share the same genetics, so if the 'made' argument holds, it must go deeper than simply the genes. It's fascinating, isn't it?

 

I'm being genuine. Would be bang out of order to write all that if I wasn't, particularly to people on here who might be gay or have a family member or friend who is. Plus I was absolutely bricking it posting that - brought back some difficult memories!

To be honest, I thought the pork sword comment was funny. As for people avoiding or not being interested in the thread, it might be their attitude to gay people or simply that they're not intrested either way. But difficult to say more on that.

 

I'm being genuine. Would be bang out of order to write all that if I wasn't, particularly to people on here who might be gay or have a family member or friend who is. Plus I was absolutely bricking it posting that - brought back some difficult memories!

To be honest, I thought the pork sword comment was funny. As for people avoiding or not being interested in the thread, it might be their attitude to gay people or simply that they're not intrested either way. But difficult to say more on that.

 

It is fascinating. But, personally, I would disagree with the concept of someone being 'made' into a gay. As for sexual abuse, an individual suffering that sort of torment might be unfortunate enough to seek some sort of mistaken solace in a same sex relationship. I'm doubtful, however, whether this would make them gay as opposed to someone who has gradually discovered themselves through their teenage years.

On the Will Young, I'll have to take your word for that. Definitely an interesting case, if what you say is correct, but we're not all followers of Mr Young or, say, Girls Aloud! Haha.

 

Uber, I don't think that's factually correct. As far as I'm aware, no such evidence exists.

I may be wrong but I don't think your theory has ever been proven mate.

 

Yeah Uber,
despite knowing a lot of gay/bi people, I never really "bought in or accepted" the "born or created argument. This was primarily because i think i saw it as more of an excuse and in reality, basically i didnt really understand it.
Having known many people who have stated that it wasnt a choice, I can sort of accept/appreciate thier points & feeling in the same way we openly accept that we have "natural" sportmen, athlete, writers etc. Its just something in the indivdiuals make up I guess.
I too am no geneologist nor have any real biology/ anatomy knowledge, but the point you bring up about the twins is intresting. Would love to know if anyone could shed some light on this?
Fascinating indeed.

 

I'm so glad I started this thread. It makes really interesting, honest and thoughtful posts. The statement 'choosing to be gay' makes no sense to me. (I'm straight, by the way.) Who would CHOOSE to be gay. Think about it. Think about the fact that people were ARE locked up, beaten and abused because of their sexuality. Who would CHOOSE that ****?! Anyhow.. thanks, particularly to the gay guys who are contributing. You've made this, for me, an interesting discussion.. Oh and has anyone read 'I Am The Secret Footballer?' Interesting on this subject.. he is quite adamant that it is the reaction of the fans, not the players, that stops players outing themselves.

 

This question that asks why a person turns out to be gay is as helpful to nothing and no one as the one less frequently asked about why for example, Northolt's a tit man who appears not so inclined towards legs, bums or non-white women. You'd have to wonder to what extent that type of questioning would go. Why one twin likes marmite and the other doesn't etc., etc.. Beggars belief.

Even if we knew the answer to the gay question, what would we do with it? Try to eradicate homosexuality? Bet there'd be a few then considering the implications of a population explosion; or worse still, the impact of our wife's reaction to scores of body conscious studs suddenly turning up at the door cruisin' for a bruisin'! Get's silly dunnit?

What we need to attend to here is the knowledge that football fans as much as straight players, managers and clubs, are all part of a social force causing an injustice to players who happen to be gay. That has to be just plain wrong in anyone's book, if we think long and hard enough about it. Gay people are as much part of us as anyone else. Could be our siblings, kids, extended family members and anyone else we care enough about to look at things in the most humane of ways.

If they're talented players, gay men must be both legally and moraly entitled to have the same opportunities as anyone else. It just takes a bit of consciousness and bottle to stand up and question what the ****'s going on here...

...like Justin Fashanu's young neice Amal did in her documentary (even to the extent of confronting her dad, John, on telly); and

...like Husky did so bravely and trustingly here tonight.

Straight, gay or whatever in between, when one becomes two becomes ten becomes fifty - the rights of all of us to coexist with the same freedoms and (if we merit it) the same opportunities as everyone else, then we're on the right track. Anything less than unhestitating commitment is simply perpetuating the known injustice.

Sermon over.

 

Most welcome Pete.

 

Just read this thread from the beginning. Really interesting and great dialogue for a change, you can tell that posters are (in the most part) actually reading and responding to each other. Also some good examples of the risks of generalisation. Nobody should be defined by facts of birth that cannot be changed - nationality, race, gender, sexuality (Uber's comments aside, not sure on those, suspect the vast majority are born though). Intolerance of any of these is in my experience based on ignorance and belief systems (political, philosophical or religious) which arefair game for criticism (though sadly many are 'born into' belief systems and have little chance of learning how to break free). Personally, if I were to be summed up as a 'white, English, straight bloke' I would immediately think 'I hope there's something more to me than that'- all of these things certainly contribute to my character, but you can't tell what sort of person I am from them - you can only do that from what I do and say.

On the footballers coming out while still playing point I'm sure the biggest negative, as has been said, is crowd reaction. Would be great if players would support a gay colleague in the same way that the Milan team supported Boateng when he got racist abuse a few weeks ago and just walked off en masse. I would be very proud indeed if QPR were able to lead the way in this. There must be some out professionals in other countries - Germany?

Swords, your posts seem to have mellowed as the thread has gone on, but I have to take issue with your 'club is the most important thing' stance early on. I struggle to square this statement with your stance as the freedom of speech advocate on the board (in which you have my support).

Flyer, does your revulsion with gay sex extend to the female variety?

 

Extremely good points - and for once a decent bit of a read in it for me too. (Keep it up son and I BELIEVE there'll come a day when I'll get more than a sip of tea before finishing our Stan's latest contribution!)

 

the whole twins thing
born or made



The Importance of Twin Studies

N. E. Whitehead, Ph.D.

A constant stream of media articles--several per year--assures us that there is a link between homosexuality and biological features. These articles mention genes, brain structure, hormone levels in the womb, ear characteristics, fingerprint styles, finger lengths, verbal skills...... and by the time you read this, some others may have appeared. The headlines imply that people are born with tendencies which infallibly will make them gay or lesbian, and that change of sexual orientation will be impossible.

Individually some of these pieces are not very convincing, but the sheer volume of them suggests that they must amount to an overwhelming influence--or if not, further research will add to them and make it so. This is not true either, and we see shortly that twin studies refute it.



Twin Studies

Twin studies in their modern form investigate both identical and fraternal twins, but this article emphasizes studies of identical twins, which are sufficient for our purposes. Studies of non-identical twins are detailed elsewhere (1).

Earlier studies mostly used informal or "snowball" samples of twins recruited from gay and lesbian associations, and by advertisements (e.g. 2,3). Such studies are possibly biased by the nature of twins who volunteer, but even so, if one identical twin was homosexual, only about half the time was the co-twin concordant (i.e. also homosexual).

Better research, however, was based on twins who were recruited for other reasons, and only subsequently asked about their sexual orientation. These are known as "registry" studies, and they similarly gave a concordance rate between identical twins of less than 50%. There have been two major published registry studies (4,5), one based on the Minnesota Registry, the other on the Australian Registry. The larger of the two registry studies is the Australian one, done by Bailey, Martin and others at the University of Queensland. Using the 14,000+ Australian twin collection, they found that if one twin was homosexual, 38% of the time his identical brother was too. For lesbianism the concordance was 30%. Whether 30% or 50% concordance (snowball samples), all the studies agree it is clearly not 100%.

The critical factor is that if one identical twin is homosexual, only sometimes is the co-twin homosexual. There is no argument about this in the scientific community.

 

Swords, I try to be careful when I write on subjects that are specially sensitive such as this, so deliberately litter my piece with words and phrases such as "as I understand it", "I would suppose" and "perhaps". If you read again what I have written, it will dawn on you that nothing was written as fact.

Interestingly, though, there was a caller on the Radio 2 'Jeremy Vine' show only last week that told a sorry tale of his own life from which I drew some inspiration for my dodgy supposition that some (I repeat, some) people enter a life of homosexuality as a consequence of sexual abuse in their younger lives. SuperHusky may draw from this that those 'some' were probably already 'born' homosexual anyway, rather than 'made'. This may be true or, then again, it may not be true. I am sure many individuals will have different, unique stories to tell, some that will support my supposition and many that will be contrary.

As I said in my earlier piece, I am neither an expert in sexual behaviour (ask Mrs Uber), nor a genetic scientist, so am by no stretch of the imagination an authority on this subject. I do believe, however, that there is a danger that people will only come at a subject from the angle of their own experience, or from conventional wisdom, rather than consider that there may be other possibilities.

I commented earlier on this same thread that we should be cautious when using the word 'bigot' to describe (all) those with a diametrically opposing point of view. The use of the word 'bigot' is a fine example of how some sweep up all of their opposition, regardless of whether they have legitimate concerns or not, and smear them with an unpleasant but effective label. We saw how this tactic got Gordon Brown into trouble on the last UK election trail when he was confronted by a lady with concerns over immigration. As I understand it, she was a life-long Labour voter, so the left is not averse to doing it to their own if the mood suits. Frankly, there is some (some!) bigotry on both sides of the political divide, on both sides of the sexual divide, on both sides of the race divide and on both sides of the religious divide. The legitimate concerns and reasonable arguments put forward by both sides can be consequently squeezed, marginalised or downright trampled upon as a result. It is a pity.

 

I think you just agreed with me, Stan. My comments, which were not stated as fact, merely set out to express a belief that there are some 'made' as well as 'born' homosexuals. If you suspect that the 'vast majority are born' then you are also accepting that there may be some, albeit a minority, that are 'made'.

 

Thanks Kiwi, very interesting. So, if my interpretation of this is correct, there is a correlation, but by no means a certainty, that if one twin is homosexual, then so too will his/her sibling. In fact, these findings seem to suggest that it is more likely that the sibling will not be of the same sexual persuasion as the correlation is sub-50%. There may be other findings, of course, that either contradict this, or make the correlation more positive.

If an identical twin having identicial genetics to his/her homosexual sibling is not necessarily themselves homosexual, then presumably there has to be other factors involved to support the 'born' case? For clarification, I do not doubt for a second that some (perhaps the majority of) homosexuals are 'born' - I just do not believe this to be the only explanation as some might argue, and that the 'made' argument is just as valid (though perhaps only in a majority of cases).

As I've said before, I find the whole thing fascinating (on an intellectual level).

 

The critical factor is that if one identical twin is homosexual, only sometimes is the co-twin homosexual. There is no argument about this in the scientific community.