The Science of Teh Gay

I don't think it will matter to the religious freaks.. but it is quite true that being gay is simply a matter of biology, at least if you think the scientific method is reliable.

As far as I'm concerned there is no argument any more - if you are gay, you are born gay - Dr Qazi Rahman, Queen Mary, University of London

Oh.. but he has an "Islamic" sounding name, so he must be wrong..

The strange thing in the entire debate is that the religious freaks must believe that there is some sort of "choice" involved. Everything is dependent on that.

For religion to exist, it must have a target of condemnation. It's becoming less fashionable to target other religions, unless it's Islam. For the religious in the United States, gay people must be the target, for financial and political reasons.

There is no "burden of proof", because there is no proof that can be accepted, there is no challenge, there is no way that sexual orientation can be anything other than a choice for the religious. That is simply the paradigm of religion - disbelief of anything that contradicts the dogma handed down from the religious leaders.

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Related, Dr. Myers has an interesting post about the socio-economic conditions affecting the level of religion in society. His post is in reference to a study, which measures economics versus religion.

To put it starkly, the level of popular religion is not a spiritual matter, it is actually the result of social, political and especially economic conditions (please note we are discussing large scale, long term population trends, not individual cases). Mass rejection of the gods invariably blossoms in the context of the equally distributed prosperity and education found in almost all 1st world democracies. There are no exceptions on a national basis. That is why only disbelief has proven able to grow via democratic conversion in the benign environment of education and egalitarian prosperity. Mass faith prospers solely in the context of the comparatively primitive social, economic and educational disparities and poverty still characteristic of the 2nd and 3rd worlds and the US.

The article attempts to explain why the level of religion in other first world nations is not as great as in the US. The conclusion is that it is caused by the widening "wealth gap".

Makes sense..