It was a beautiful, thought warm, day. We did our usual Saturday morning trip to walk the doggies, visit the farmer's market, and stop by the library. I got ''Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town''. It's the usual compelling read. After lunch, Phil called for a bit of starcraft. We finished up just in time for me to go on my longish bike ride. I rode to the Lupa Zoo to meet the rest of the family, who went by car. It was only about 20 miles, so I wasn't expecting it to be that difficult. There was a long uphill to cross the Holyoke Range, though, and I was kinda bonked at the end of the long climb and didn't make good time afterwards. It was an undulating terrain and right into the wind, but I was feeling wiped out, so each little grade had me crawling along in a low gear. I eventually made it, but was pretty well exhausted.

This guy responded to my article about same-sex marriage in MA. He was fairly restrained in his comments, but in his blog he says a bunch of misinformed stuff. I have to reply to a few of these things.

First of all, the word "normal" is derived from "norm", i.e. something typical, standardized.

There is actually a different word for this. You can use "normative" if you want to refer to what something ought to be. Normal simply describes how things are.

In statistics, when you use "normal" you're usually referring to the normal distribution. That distribution shows that only a small fraction of any population is actually at the median or mean for any value. There are members of the population four standard deviations both ways from the mean. That's what's "normal" -- having a lot of variability.

I think you can make the same argument from a commmon-sense standpoint. Homosexuality is pretty clearly normal, since it has existed at a substantial fraction of the population throughout recorded human history.

So, what is sex? Sex is a way designed by God (or Nature, for non believeres) to increase the adaptability and variery of a species to its environement.

This is a misinterpretation of science. Sex is not "designed" by nature anymore than it was "designed" by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sex is a common biological phenomenon, but note that there is a huge range of different takes on sex. Lots of organisms don't reproduce sexually at all. Lots can reproduce both sexually and asexually. And then there are the weird things, like the Jefferson's salamander, that reproduces asexually, but where the egg has to be fertilized by a closely-related species of salamander, even though the genetic material of the male doesn't contribute to the offspring. Or how about hermafroditic slugs and snails that strike a balance between fertilizing their own eggs and letting another slug fertilize them? Or how about the beetle larva that asexually produces eggs that are clones of herself, that subsequently hatch inside her own body, and consume her from the inside out? Sex is just a variation on a nearly infinite chorus of biological themes.

As one can't create an offspring, there is no natural way to keep a homosexual couple together.

Earlier in your essay, you proposed that sex influenced hormones to keep couples together. You didn't say anything about offspring being required. I'll argue that even sex isn't required to keep couples together. There are a lot of species that are more-or-less monogamous and in almost all of them, you find same-sex pair bonding at some significant frequency. Even in species that don't pair-bond, you find same-sex sexual encounters. There are even fruit-flies that "do it".

And statistically, most homosexuals have an unbelievable high promiscuity, having sex with hundreds of partners (jus check any statistics about AIDS or other deseases spread - any sexually transmitted disease has a higher incidence among homosexual groups).

What you're really talking about are the risks associated with unprotected sex with large numbers of partners. It doesn't matter whether you're gay or not -- if you have unprotected sex with multiple partners, you increase your own risk of contracting a disease and spreading it to your partners. But the fact that homosexuals are discriminated in our society implies that our society may play a role in furthering this behavior. Maybe part of the reason that homosexual relationship are less likely to be monogamous is that couples are discriminated against and can't marry?

Furthermore, you'll find that STD rates are among the lowest among women who have sex with women. Most of the STDs in that population are due to women who also have sex with men and then spread the disease among women. Are you really advocating that women should all be lesbians in order to reduce transmission of STDs?

Thei are the lower quality genes that are not neded for the species survival, and will be sacrificed for the well being of the better adapted individuals, avoiding the overpopulation. It is a mechanism triggered when the epidemics can't regulate the species.

That's ludicrous. Natural selection isn't about being "sacrificed for the well-being of the better adapted inviduals". Natural selection simply means some individuals are more successful at having their genes represented in following generations. The fact that homosexual alleles continue to persist in the population is evidence that they may confer fitness -- just not in the narrow-minded way you envision. There are a lot of alleles that can work that way.

For people who think they were born with the wrong sex, the nowdays medicine allows sex change operations, so they can do that and become normal people

How about people who don't believe either gender is what they are? There are a lot of people who feel that way too. And do you think that someone who's been operated on -- who's had the body parts your God gave them chopped off and replaced with surgically reconstructed ones -- who may only be able to reproduce using laboratory techniques -- you think only under those conditions that they're now normal? You suddenly have a very odd idea of normal, from my perspective.

Why not just extend your definition of "normal" to include people the way they are, rather than only the way you wish they were. The fact that other people see the world differently than you do really doesn't need to threaten your world view. Maybe, since you're a believer, it would help you to think that God made them the way they are.

StevenBrewer