Posts made by raphjd

I knew he was gay the minute I saw him on the show.

I seriously doubt he's only realized he's gay in the last few weeks.

The problem with this case is that if she was white and supported racism against blacks, she would have been thrown out and no one would have dared question that decision.

HOWEVER, because she hates fags, people are creaming that her rights are being taken away.

Here's an interesting article on the topic;

**Gay genetics

Straight, gay or bisexual, most of us believe that we were born that way. So is sexual orientation in our DNA? JV Chamary goes in search of the gay gene**

“WANTED! Gay Men with a Gay Brother,” reads the banner. It’s held aloft by Dr Alan Sanders and a group of colleagues from NorthShore University near Chicago who are attending a gay pride festival. They’re recruiting volunteers for a groundbreaking study that sets out to answer fundamental questions about who we are.

“We’re trying to locate genes that may influence variation in male sexual orientation,” Sanders says. Volunteers from over 700 families responded. Researchers asked them questions about their sexuality, the size and structure of their families, and took DNA samples. Sanders is now analysing that data and the results could tell us once and for all whether there’s such a thing as a ‘gay gene’.

“The people participating in our study are interested in contributing to this kind of scientific knowledge and want to understand at least part of how they came to be the way they are,” Sanders says.

The search for ‘gay genes’ goes back to 1993, when a US team led by Dr Dean Hamer described a region of DNA located on the X chromosome called Xq28. The region also goes by another name: GAY-1, a genetic marker linked to male homosexuality.

The discovery caused Hamer to be attacked from all sides. “Conservative, right-wing people hated it because they felt that it was saying that being gay is like being black, that it was in-born, that it would somehow ‘excuse’ gay people or give them more rights,” says Hamer. “On the other hand, gay people hated it too because, at that time, there were fears that the discovery would be misused to abort gay babies and wipe gay people off the face of the Earth.”

Although these fears remain, in recent years the search for ‘gay genes’ has become more accepted by the gay community, in no small part because a biological explanation would undermine arguments that being gay is a social or lifestyle choice. Conservative attitudes remain unchanged, however. “They continue to be vehemently opposed to any notion that homosexuality is something natural,” says Hamer.

Despite their objections, there’s a lot of evidence that homosexuality has a biological basis. While there hasn’t been much research on lesbians, there has been on gay men. For instance, identical twin brothers (siblings derived from the same fertilised egg) are more likely to both be gay than fraternal twins (twins that develop from separate eggs). The fact that identical twins have the same DNA and fraternal twins share 50 per cent suggests that male homosexuality is hereditary.

The gay gene
It was scrutinising family trees to see how homosexuality is inherited that led Hamer to the discovery of Xq28. Now chief of the gene structure and regulation section at the US National Cancer Institute, his study revealed a curious pattern: gay men tended to have more gay uncles and gay male cousins on their mother’s side of the family than on their father’s.

“For geneticists that’s fascinating because it suggests it could be due to X chromosome linkage – those types of traits tend to run on the female side for males,” says Hamer. This is because males inherit their X chromosome from their mother.

To track down the DNA region linked to the gay trait, Hamer used a technique called ‘linkage mapping’, an approach that lets geneticists find a gene even when they don’t know what it does or where it’s located. Linkage mapping works because close relatives like brothers share not only a particular trait, such as homosexuality, but also the genes underlying the trait. When comparing bits of DNA from two brothers, the sequences will, on average, be the same 50 per cent of the time. So, if you study many pairs of gay brothers and find a DNA region that’s the same in more than 50 per cent of cases, it’s likely to be linked to homosexuality. In this case, Hamer compared the X chromosomes from 40 pairs of gay brothers, and Xq28 stood out.

Inheriting the gay version of Xq28 won’t necessarily make you homosexual. “Our studies showed that it significantly increased the odds of being gay, but it was not determinative,” says Hamer. “Many people who are gay don’t have any history of homosexuality in their families.” He points out that some heterosexual men in his 1993 study also had the so-called gay gene. A subsequent study in 1999 failed to replicate Hamer’s results and other researchers are sceptical that Xq28 is linked to homosexuality at all.

Big brothers, immune mothers
Many scientists believe that exposure to hormones during pregnancy heavily influences sexuality. Hormones are chemical messengers, released by certain cells to affect the growth and development of other cells in the body. During pre-natal development, for example, the sex organs in a foetus can recognise testosterone, which will switch on genes to make it male.

Aside from a few superficial differences (among them penis and ring-finger length – both longer in homosexuals), gay and straight men’s bodies appear the same. The exception is homosexual men’s brains, which show remarkable similarities to the brains of heterosexual women, suggesting that sexual orientation depends on the effect hormones have on the developing brain.

But these two factors only go so far in explaining how homosexuality develops. “People assume that all of the biological influence on sexual orientation is either genes or hormones,” says sexologist Ray Blanchard from the University of Toronto. “They might account for the lion’s share of variance in sexual orientation, but it looks like there’s some other bit that requires a third biological mechanism.”

In 1996 Blanchard and Professor Tony Bogaert revealed a peculiar phenomenon: the more older brothers a boy has, the greater their chances of being homosexual. This ‘fraternal birth order effect’ meant that each subsequent brother increases the odds of being gay by 33 per cent. An only child has a two per cent chance, but with 10 brothers the odds are over 20 per cent. But why the increasing odds? Blanchard believes it’s related to how a mother’s body protects itself when pregnant with a son.

“There’s only one system in the mother that would have the ‘memory’ to know how many male foetuses she’s previously carried: the immune system,” says Professor Blanchard. According to his theory, a mother’s immune system keeps track of the number of sons she’s already had, producing antibodies to protect her against male-specific proteins entering her bloodstream, which often occurs during childbirth. As the mother’s level of immunisation increases with each son, so too do the chances of variation from typical sexual orientation as, in theory, the mother’s antibodies could cross the placenta and neutralise proteins that her son needs for normal sexual development.

Many of these male-specific proteins are found on the Y chromosome, DNA that’s foreign to females. “A lot of male-specific proteins are preferentially expressed in the testes and have a crucial role in sperm development,” says Blanchard. “Some are expressed in the foetal brain for reasons that no-one has established, but you wouldn’t expect them to be expressed without a reason.”

Blanchard believes that homosexuality is “100 per cent biological”, and estimates that the fraternal birth order effect accounts for 15-30 per cent of gay men in the population. So what explains the rest?

Fertile females
Professor Andrea Camperio Ciani at the University of Padova in Italy has tested various hypotheses by studying 100 families of gay men. Not only did he replicate Blanchard’s birth order effect, he also detected inheritance of homosexuality on the mother’s side, supporting Hamer’s idea of a gay gene on chromosome X. The maternal inheritance effect seems most important too.

“Genetics explains 20-25 per cent for the moment,” says Camperio Ciani. “The rest is unknown. A part is environment; a part can be other genetic elements that we cannot perceive with our study.” In principle, the genetic component might even be the Xq28 region.

Regardless of which regions of DNA are linked to homosexuality, the very existence of ‘gay genes’ creates a Darwinian paradox. How would genes that cause homosexuality pass from one generation to the next, given that gay people reproduce less than heterosexuals? Natural selection opposes anything that might cause even a small reduction in the number of offspring you produce, so a gay trait would soon disappear from the gene pool. “If you carry a trait that reduces your fecundity [the number of offspring you produce] by 10 per cent, in seven to eight generations your trait and all your descendents disappear,” says Camperio Ciani.

The paradox was finally resolved by his 15-year-old daughter. After Camperio Ciani described the observed patterns in pedigrees of homosexuality – the effects of maternal inheritance and birth order – his daughter suggested that he re-check his data to see if the female relatives of gay men had more children on the mother’s side. When Camperio Ciani went back to the lab, that’s exactly what he found. “Mothers and aunts on the maternal line of homosexuals had around one-fifth to one-fourth more kids than the heterosexual comparison, and also than the paternal line.”

He thinks that the evolution of homosexuality is driven by a process called sexually antagonistic selection. It’s where a genetic factor confers an advantage when expressed in one sex, but incurs an evolutionary cost in the other. In this instance, the ‘gay genes’ don’t exist to make men homosexual, instead they’re a consequence of ‘fertility factors’ that help women reproduce.

Nipples are another example of a sexually antagonistic trait: they’re needed for feeding babies, but developing nipples in men is a waste of the body’s resources and allow errors leading to breast cancer.

The search for sexuality
Even if Camperio Ciani’s fecundity factors are the same as Hamer’s gay genes, it doesn’t tell us what the specific genes actually do. Hamer speculates the genes might boost the size or connections from parts of the brain used in reproduction – such as the hypothalamus – to make people more libidinous.

Alan Sanders’s study at NorthShore University could finally reveal the identity and function of ‘gay genes’. Sanders, director of the Behavior Genetics Unit, is comparing DNA from gay brothers to find shared genes that underlie sexual orientation. He’s initially using linkage mapping to find candidate regions. The large sample size – over 700 families – provides huge statistical power for detecting regions significantly linked to homosexuality. Sanders will then use sequences from databases like the Human Genome Project to pinpoint which genes are in these regions.

So what happens if ‘gay genes’ are found? While they may confirm the idea that homosexuality has a biological basis, many people fear that the results could be used to discriminate against gay people. “It is a valid concern,” says Sanders. “People we talked to at gay pride festivals have designer-baby kind of worries – a genetic test employed in a pre-natal way, or for employment and insurance discrimination, maybe in the military too. It’s not just an issue in sexual orientation, but intelligence or disease screening .”

A test for gay genes also has a flipside: homosexual couples might exploit reproductive technology to have gay kids. “This has been a huge debate in other areas, like deaf parents wanting to have deaf children,” says Hamer, who has fathered a daughter with a woman from a lesbian couple. “One of them said, ‘If I had my choice, I’d select the sexual orientation of my child’. But this is all theoretical for now, as it’s not actually happening yet.”

Genes that influence our sexual orientation further fuel the debate over what makes us who we are. For Hamer at least, sexual orientation is determined at birth. “It’s mostly biological,” he says. “The way a person acts is altered by culture, society and individual choice, but that’s a different issue than the underlying deep-seated orientation.”

Dr JV Chamary is reviews editor of Focus

hXXp://www.bbcfocusmagazine.com/feature/life/gay-genetics

It sounds like the situation is solved.

Sadly, I'm sure the bigots will win as usual.

Eastern Europe is not center right.  They are far right.

I'm sure he understood that is what I meant.

hXXp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100707/ap_on_re_us/us_hawaii_civil_unions

Hawaii governor vetoes same-sex civil unions bill

By HERBERT A. SAMPLE, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jul 7, 7:06 am ET

HONOLULU – Hawaii's governor ended months of speculation by vetoing contentious civil unions legislation that would have granted gay, lesbian and opposite-sex couples the same rights and benefits that the state provides to married couples.

Republican Gov. Linda Lingle's action on Tuesday came on the final day she had to either sign or veto the bill, which was approved by the Legislature in late April.

The measure would have made Hawaii one of six states that essentially grant the rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself. Five other states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage.

Lingle said voters should decide the fate of civil unions, not politicians.

"The subject of this legislation has touched the hearts and minds of our citizens as no other social issue of our day," she said. "It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials."

For weeks, Lingle heard emotional statements from both supporters and opponents of the bill. On Tuesday, she invited leaders from both sides to her standing-room only news conference.

Opponents of the measure, including many religious groups, erupted in cheers and hugs when the announcement was made.
"What she did was very just, and I'm very happy about it," said Jay Amina, 50, of Waianae. "It sends a good message throughout the state of Hawaii — that our people here on the islands are standing for traditional marriage."

Supporters of civil unions shouted, "We'll keep fighting!" and "Let's go!" The group of about 100 joined in singing "We Shall Overcome."
"We had hoped the governor would do the right thing for civil rights and equality," Lee Yarbrough of Honolulu said while standing arm-in-arm with his partner. "This battle is far from over."

The Aloha State has been a battleground in the gay rights movement since the early 1990s. A 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling nearly made Hawaii the first state to legalize same-sex marriage before voters overwhelmingly approved the nation's first "defense of marriage" constitutional amendment in 1998.

The measure gave the Legislature the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples. Lawmakers responded by enacting a law banning gay marriage in Hawaii but left the door open for civil unions.

Last year, civil unions easily passed the House but stalled in the state Senate. When legislators reconvened in January, it was passed in the Senate but shelved by House leaders until the final day of the legislative session.

About 60 percent of the more than 34,000 letters, telephone calls, e-mails and other communications from the public to the governor asked her to veto the measure, the governor's aides said late last week.

Lingle's decision will be the last development on the proposal this year. State House leaders had decided not to try to override any of her vetoes.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, a 1996 law that the Obama administration has argued for repealing. The rulings apply to Massachusetts but could have broader implications if they're upheld on appeal.

It must also be noted that the Obama administration, in both of the defences of DoMA, said that gay relationships were not better than incest, bestiality and pedophila.

So while they tell us that DoMA should be repealed, they have done everything they can to stab us in the back on the topic.

I have yet to find a way to get decent quality converted videos from FLV.

SATA II hard drives are better and cheaper nowadays.  Make sure it's 7,200rpm or faster, as the 5,400rpm HDDs are pretty sluggish when 500gb and over in size.

With a good inkjet printer, some full face printable discs and Accoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, you would be a lot better off than with Lightscribe and the expensive discs that it needs.

External speakers and a decent monitor would also be on the cards.

A seedbox is mostly so you can have faster file transfers between you and other people on the tracker.  It has little to do with your home computer other than it saves your home bandwidth for other things.

YES, getting files from your seedbox to your home computer depends on your ISP's bandwidth.

You will need to take the stuff from your seedbox and put it on your home computer to burn it to disc.

You have to remember, this is the same boyfriend that doesn't care how his female friend treats him {pornynick}.  They already discussed that and the boyfriend chose his female friend over ponynick's feelings.

It does seem very odd that the boyfriend has sided with his female friend and is now also regularly seeing his ex.

My point being, increased participation will increase your reputation just by virtue of how that system works. Give it a try.

He is right.

If you notice, you already have have positive rep now.  :hug:

Most countries still refuse to accept that women can be child molesters, even with countless cases already recorded.  So this won't help us much either.

They should be fined and lose their tax exempt status.

I've always liked "twink" for the youngest actors {as it is now} and "frats" instead of "young bloods".

@martini20:

The term 'barely-legal' sends out the wrong message and invites unwanted attention, imho

I agree.

Nice find.  :hug2:

I'm not really sure how to answer this other than to voice my concern that he dismisses your concerns so easily.