Genital mutilation.... (1 Viewer)

[SachAccess]

Hi @The_Doc_Man , thanks a lot for the detailed response. You always treat each reply and member with same sincere intent.
Pardon my English, I was not able to find more suitable word for 'sincere intent' but I surely meant it in a positive way.

About religion, be it any, I will not be able to comment on it.
The primary reason is, I do not have any knowledge about it.
Please do not think that am trying be rude. I have immense respect for you.

In my little personal life, I try to follow one principal. Never get involved in politics and religion discussions in public (virtual and real).
Especially the space I live, it might get un-pleasant any time. So, I try to stay quiet to avoid any further argument.
In my office and social media profiles I avoid getting involved.
I certainly have my own views, but you never know who might get offend.

The question in my mind was, for some people it is okay to be gay.
I personally will respect the person irrespective of he or she is straight or gay.
Person's orientation is not my business. It is their own life and choice.

Sometimes, we get a counter question saying, if you allow gay, then why do you not allow relations between close family.
Am sorry for word play here, but you will understand what type of relations am trying to say here.

While I personally do not mix both of these scenarios but how do you encounter these.
For the record, I can never think of 'relations between close family' being accepted as a choice.
However, this is certainly different from being a gay or straight but when people bring this point in argument for supporting gay as immoral choice it is tough for me to answer them with a clear logic.

I guess, considering my experiences and knowledge I took more forum space on this than I should have. Have a nice day ahead.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The question in my mind was, for some people it is okay to be gay.

...

Sometimes, we get a counter question saying, if you allow gay, then why do you not allow relations between close family.

Well, there we have to consider a couple of factors. I could repeat something that has been repeated before in this thread and in others, but I'll maybe just give you a way to research this at your leisure.

Regarding being gay: There is medical evidence that being gay is potentially a condition of birth (inevitably, with complications). The issue is that the human brain has inherently male and female structures and that MOST of the time, the brain's gender aligns with the sex organs - but not always. Search the web for "homosexual + brain scan" and look for 1990s articles from the U.K. where a team used Positron Emission Tomography (PET scans) to analyze the structure of living human brains. They discovered "brain gender" and were able to correlate brain/body mismatches with people who were gay. In other words, there is a hard and measurable physiological structural difference in the brains of gays vs. straights. To then blame gays for something that occurred to them while they were still in the womb just seems unfair. And there is no conscious decision that any person can make that changes physiology. So being gay isn't a choice. To then chastise someone for a birth condition is just stupid and hateful.

Regarding relations between close family: An incestuous relationship is just an expression of misdirected love. I have to admit I had a cousin I would have LOVED to be with - but it didn't happen. We didn't get together. The reason that incest is frowned upon has to do with the nature of genetics. When a man and woman get together and become intimate, they share genetic material. But when the relation involves incest, it is like dealing cards from a half of a full deck (for siblings) or a three-quarters deck (for 1st cousins). The problem is that IF you have disadvantageous genes, you boost the odds that you reinforce these bad genes and propagate conditions of birth that are disadvantageous. Take a look, for example, at the Habsburg royal family.

The Habsburg Jaw: How Inbreeding Ended a Dynasty

Discover the Habsburgs' legacy and how inbreeding led to genetic disorders, health problems, the "Habsburg jaw," and their eventual collapse.

blog.23andme.com

So let's apply the "Do no needless harm" concept. Inherently, being gay reduces the chance that you will reproduce at all to produce a blood heir, so if there ARE negative genes, you just reduced the odds of passing them on. Who gets harmed? At most, family members who are sadly disappointed that there will be no grandchildren. There are people who will say that they are harmed by someone who is gay because it is an affront to their beliefs. But that is merely someone living in the midst of an archaic belief system. Gays cannot transmit "gayness" to someone by contact. The search has been done and nobody has ever found a "gay" gene. Most gays don't "recruit" kids to be gay. (Whereas straight and stiff-laced parents DO emphasize being "straight" and use persuasion and punishment methods. Which don't always work if the child was born with that condition.)

Now, if you have an incestuous relationship, who gets harmed? Your offspring have an increased chance of inheriting birth defects or genetic diseases. The issue isn't whether you love the person you want to be with. It is whether you respect the potential children that could result from that union. Which is perhaps why the state of Louisiana passed a law a couple of years ago that says that first cousins can marry if the man or woman has been sterilized or the woman has gone through menopause.

 

[Pat Hartman]

In my office and social media profiles I avoid getting involved.
I certainly have my own views, but you never know who might get offend.

Then they've won I understand the problem of disagreeing at work. They'll just cancel you if they're liberals. Only if they are conservatives will they allow you to have your own opinions.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Pardon my English, I was not able to find more suitable word for 'sincere intent' but I surely meant it in a positive way.

I took it as a compliment. I try to make allowances for people whom I know whose native language is not English. But to be honest, I have rarely had any trouble understanding you.

Especially the space I live, it might get un-pleasant any time. So, I try to stay quiet to avoid any further argument.
In my office and social media profiles I avoid getting involved.
I certainly have my own views, but you never know who might get offend.

When I was working for the U.S. Navy as a contractor, we had office rules that we had to avoid sensitive subjects in order to avoid distractions and violent intentions. We had to keep the peace. I remember at a job early in my career when a devout Protestant called the then-current pope "the Anti-Christ" and the Catholic lady in our group begged to differ with him to the point of asking him outside. I was a supervisor at the time and put an end to that discussion quickly.

I therefore understand the need to avoid certain subject matter around less flexible people. Particularly in an unfriendly and socially strict culture, it becomes difficult to reconcile that restriction vs. the fact that you have views of your own and that they differ from those working around you. I am fortunate that in the USA I can express my views more openly.

You always treat each reply and member with same sincere intent.

If it happened that my discussions regarding the repressive nature of Islam bothered you, I will try to avoid further unsolicited discussion. However, I try to answer every question I can that is directed my way, and this IS the Watercooler section.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Pardon my English

@SachAccess Your English is far better than that of many of our younger contributors. Standard test scores have been dropping in the US since the Department of Education was formed in the 70's. The people in charge have no self awareness and so they don't look inward to see if THEY might be causing the problem, they just keep asking Congress for more money and the idiots in Congress just keep taking more money from me and handing it over to the incompetents running the DoE as well as the other poorly run agencies. We won't even talk about the evil being done by the teachers' unions.

 

[SachAccess]

Hi @Pat Hartman thanks for the encouragement.

 

[SachAccess]

Hi @The_Doc_Man thanks a lot for the positive response.
To be honest, I was bit scared, I thought you might feel offended the way I have written about religion or rather 'not about the religion'.
You understood and explained my point of view even better and beautifully than me.

'I am fortunate that in the USA I can express my views more openly.' I truly admire the truly democratic nature of your country.

About the religion, I must confess, I might be more scared, I might be wrong, I might pretend to be more politically correct, I really do not know.
Somehow, the moment I see mention of religion, I go to panic/defense mode automatically and try to keep myself at a safe point.
This is the way I am. And this is not only on this forum, I follow this practice everywhere.
So it was not judging your comments or having a counter argument, this was just self-defense.

The reason that incest is frowned upon has to do with the nature of genetics. I have read about this flaw.
However, never realized that 'immoral relation' is connected to this scientific reason.
Anyways I do not know how I will re-act if similar thing happened in my surrounding.
I am bit un-easy on this part irrespective of the bio-logical impact, be it negative, positive or neutral.

So being gay isn't a choice. Till today, I used to think it as a choice.
Though I never had issue with this choice but now it is clear that it is not a CHOICE.

Once again, thanks lot of reading me out.
One thing I would learn from you and other respected members is, how to remain calm and respond even if you do not agree on some point or the entire theme. Personally, this aspect is very important for own self.
Have a nice weekend.

 

[Pat Hartman]

For religious discussions, I try not to be judgemental since they don't really impact me. However I do object to religions limiting the rights of certain segments of the population and executing others due to their beliefs or lack thereof.

On the other hand, politics affects me personally so I am much more vocal. I talk to strangers about election candidates if i encounter them browsing books. People who read are more open minded.

 

[ColinEssex]

On the other hand, politics affects me personally so I am much more vocal.

I'd never have noticed.
Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

One thing I would learn from you and other respected members is, how to remain calm and respond even if you do not agree on some point or the entire theme.

It is a learned, not an inherent, ability. However, I will also admit that the time I spent with the government (where I had to avoid starting any personal arguments) helped me to remember that old rule. It has many forms:

"Look before you leap."
"Measure twice, cut once"
"Never send the first draft of an angry response to an e-mail."

All of them have in common the idea that you need to take in what you are about to say and then ask yourself... is it possible that this can be taken badly? The worst trouble I've ever been in with the Navy was because I violated this particular rule. Even though I was right, I essentially called a visiting software salesman a liar (by implication). Some people hated me for that. However, seven years later, the guy who ran the meeting that day told me he wished he had listened better to what I had to say because now (seven years later) he knew I was right. But by then a contract had been signed.

I won't name any names, but if you get overly curious then look up "DIHMRS" to see the aftermath of that incorrect decision.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Anyways I do not know how I will re-act if similar thing happened in my surrounding.

The best advice is to realize that the child of such a union didn't have a choice and therefore, lay any blame squarely at the feet of the unwise parents.

Though I never had issue with this choice but now it is clear that it is not a CHOICE.

You have to ask yourself: Why would anyone in a religiously strict, even harsh, environment EVER make such a choice? Yet people do come out as gay, perhaps inadvertently. How you react is, of course, your choice, which I understand must be tempered by your surroundings.

We have a phrase, "tarred by the same brush" - derived from a time when unwelcome characters were chased out of a small western town after being painted with tar and having chicken feathers poured over them, which of course stuck to the tar. If you were too close to the unwelcome character, you might get a little bit of the tar on you from the same brush used to apply that tar. So it is now a phrase used to suggest "guilt by association" and is a valid reason why you don't want to get too close or too sympathetic to someone whose social status is now, or is soon to be, ruined.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I read articles like that and they make my blood boil. They say -

The current systems use programming language from the late-1960s that are unable to handle complex changes. When new pays are adopted, it was taking the Army on average 12 to 18 months to automate.

The problem is not the programming language - which was probably COBOL - it was the fact the app was never designed with expansion in mind. You don't really know in 1965 what new requirements will need to be supported in 1995. You can build in certain types of flexibility but they probably didn't and by the time the systems had been operational for 20+years, they had been bent and broken by poor "upgrades".

600 people working on a project like this is way too many and they would be impossible to manage. You spend all your time chasing people and scheduling meetings and nothing ever gets done. 30 people would probably be too many but they'd have a better shot at getting the job done within two years for ten million Hell, Access could handle everything except the Web parts. This isn't rocket science. HR and Payroll are two separate applications that share some of the same data.

So it is now a phrase used to suggest "guilt by association" and is a valid reason why you don't want to get too close or too sympathetic to someone whose social status is now, or is soon to be, ruined.

This is where we are headed ---
China Social Credit System Explained - How It Works [2022] (nhglobalpartners.com)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I read articles like that and they make my blood boil.

Pat, I'm curious. Was that in reference to my "DIHMRS" article call-out? If you REALLY want to know what was wrong with the project, I can tell you in a few sentences and it won't violate my clearance NDA.

First problem: Getting them to agree to unify their treatment of soldiers/sailors/marines... never really happened. The four targeted services (excluding Coast Guard) each had different rules on how things were done and were unwilling to budge. So the software had to plan on doing the equivalent of "double-entry bookkeeping" to handle things the centralized way and then the parochial way. Oh... add to that, the Reserves of the four services, each of which had different rules from their primaries and from each other. So eight services to reconcile. As I recall, Air Force and Army were closer to each other but Navy and Marine Corps were outliers.

Second problem: Doing it in PeopleSoft, which uses a proprietary language which is INTERPRETED. (Not even pseudocompiled and emulated like VBA). The overhead ratio was several hundreds of machine cycles, verging on thousands, for simple PS instructions and let's not talk about more complex sequences. The initial runs of their "PeopleCode" modules took WAY over 24 hours to run a daily cycle. If they COULD finish the cycle, which often they couldn't because the biggest UNIX boxes they could get at first could not keep up with the speed requirements. Can't tell you why the earliest versions actually crashed the systems, but they did. It was load-related but don't know beyond that.

Third problem: PS is a "library" system that is data driven. If you tell it what the particular datum is, PS knows what to do with it. BUT the down side is if you need a treatment not within their library of treatments, you have to get the vendor to write up a new customized treatment module for every new data type. And as it happened, less than 20% of their standard labor-category library was applicable. PS was originally written with state and local labor laws in mind. Military labor laws are totally different. Can you say "project extensions, add-ons, and modifications"? And worse, from a sole-source contractor not subject to competition rules because it was their proprietary product.

Fourth problem: The data involved here is fragmented & distributed because the individual military units have local personnel autonomy for actions that do not involve enlistment, separation, or transfers, but things that cross a unit's boundaries or change the personnel benefit rolls are centralized. PeopleSoft claimed to support automatic retrieval of data from wherever it was centered. And yes, you can do that... but it means you are no longer working at internal memory or local disk speed - you are now at network speeds... only as fast as the slowest link, and as part of that distribution, there were multiple units of one kind or another in every state and in several US territories. Not to mention that there were implications for network drops everywhere.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I've worked projects with the same concept - take multiple systems and "unify" them. In one case, it was only three separate divisions of a large multi-national so I was ultimately able to corral them sufficiently well to deliver only slightly late a working application. A wants this, B wants that, and C hates both. After a month or so, I started putting my foot down since we were wasting so much time dithering. A certain amount of flexibility is fine and we could accommodate it and still deliver a coherent product. But, I started giving them ultimatums. If they couldn't come to an agreement in a reasonable time, I would decide which of the options to choose or possibly make up my own. I could get away with a certain amount of bullying and herding because my charter came from on high. These people were nuts. I'll give you a view of their corporate culture.

We (the development team and the local subsidiary) moved into new quarters. We had two, three story buildings. The decor was mostly gray and white with each floor having an accent color. Ours was blue. It was beautiful. One of the nicest offices I've ever worked in. My cube was bigger than most offices. I had a floor to ceiling window wall as well as a meeting table a credenza and a couple of bookcases. We (the IT people) occupied only half of one floor. We came into work one day and there was a construction crew putting up a wall. They had decided to move the local "field" office into the "headquarters" building. Since they interacted with the public and handled money, they wanted a wall. OK. A month later was the grand opening. I was appalled. They had removed all the brand new, never been used furniture and decor and replaced it with beige and brown junk. Why? Field offices weren't entitled to headquarters comforts

I've never had the misfortune of having to work with PeopleSoft but I've had several foreys into the SAP world. These products are sold to non-technical management. They are all things to all people and "expandable" as you described. They sound really good on paper. The bottom line is they end up doing nothing well.

 

[jpl458]

I'm going to strenuously object to one aspect of this: Gender fluidity. It is commonly mislabeled by the closed-minded crowd. If you talk to gays, they would NOT (never in a million years) agree that they are gender-fluid. Using the wrong descriptive terms will alter the viewpoint of outsiders looking in. Gender identification is NOT FLUID. What people (incorrectly) call "gender fluidity" is "delayed gender recognition."

Just about every gay person I have ever talked to on this subject will say "I tried to be what everyone said I should be ... but at age NN years old, I recognized that I was not." (NN does vary from person to person.) So they change gender identification when they are aware that their currently public gender identification is incorrect. But they don't fluidly flip-flop back and forth. There comes that moment of realization that they are gay, that they don't conform to the rigid structure imposed by society that if you have a particular sex organ, you must be like other people who have that same bit of anatomy. Because the determining factor is the BRAIN (the most power of all sex organs), that externally visible anatomy does not tell the whole story.

Now, if some of them choose to hide their gender misidentification from others because they want society to leave them alone, can you blame them? But others sometimes get rowdy in parades because they are tired of living the lie; tired of conforming to someone else's incorrect mental image. NEITHER of those cases is misidentification.

Therefore, when folks discuss "gender fluidity" they are mistaking that for "delayed gender realization" or "temporary camouflage" and thus trivializing the issue.

You said "No matter who may say what about me, and how imperfect and flawed I may be (and am, I'm sure) as a human being and a Christian, I still believe that God meant a man to be with a woman, for life, barring certain extreme cases where marriages must terminate." This runs afoul of a simple reality. If you believe that God made us, then that detectable condition of birth - having mismatched genital and brain anatomy - is made by God, too - and totally spikes your belief. The brain structures in question are defined by 6 months of gestation. If you have to believe that God made us all then you have to believe that God made some people imperfect. And it is medically demonstrable that the condition exists. It cannot be denied in the face of hard science.

This leads to a terrible dilemma: God makes some people gay, which many organized religions claims to be wrong. Therefore (1) God is not all-powerful because He makes mistakes when He makes gay folks; or (2) God is doing exactly what He wants - and thus WE must be at fault for not loving everyone equally. In either case, what we are doing to gays by persecution and ostracism is just wrong.

Well said.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The bottom line is they end up doing nothing well.

Ah, yes, ... PeopleSoft. "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none."

And I WOULD say "Jill of all trades..." but a smart Jill would want to divorce herself from any association with that hot mess.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

You may as well have people actually fornicating on the floats.

During Mardi Gras, I cannot say that this has not happened - and those are generally straight folks for over 2/3 of the krewes.

For our members from other than south Louisiana, a Mardi Gras organization is a "krewe" - pronounced as "crew" - that is a group of people that parades once per year but usually does a lot of charitable work the rest of the year.

The krewes are just ordinary people - with the exception of the Krewe of Barkus, which is restricted to dog owners who parade their dogs (which are usually in costume - dogs AND owners). The dogs don't have floats but ARE often listed as members. The owners may or may not be floating at the time. Floating on what? Any one of several popular forms of "human anti-freeze" which usually involves something alcoholic.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Regarding genital mutilation:-

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

youtube.com

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Unit 731

Unit 731 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Well I could preach a 50-page sermon book on who it hurts,

In re-reading this thread to catch up with later posts, I noticed this statement which I now realize I have to challenge.

You cannot show how homosexuality hurts ANYONE except for those folks who have sense of entitlement to interfere with the lives of others and usually perform that interference to their own standards without first considering if their interference would violate other standards.

People say that gays go out to "groom" children (implying that they would convert those young folks to become gay - which actually cannot be done.) That just does not happen. Gays MAY, however, be sensitive to others who find themselves in the dilemma of deciding their own uncertain orientation. That isn't "grooming" but might be "rescuing." I've said it before and I'll say it again. Gays are BORN that way. The rest is a matter of personal discovery.

People talk about gays threatening traditional marriages. But that is bull. If your traditional marriage was hurt by someone outside the marriage who was gay, your marriage wasn't that stable anyway. The divorce rate climbs because folks are tired of the really tight strictures placed on the partners of "traditional" marriages. It is sort of like "toxic masculinity" that pushes people into stereotypical rules. And guess what? They often decide to opt out of those tightly structured situations because one size DOES NOT fit all.

People talk about gay life-style as being dangerous. But what IS the gay life style? I've known quite a few gay people. Their life styles? Well, to start: A home of their own to share with their partner. Jobs to allow them to support themselves. About half had military careers and thus served their country (including my gay step-daughter who was a USAF veteran of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, where she was in an area communications unit.) The gays I've known enjoy the arts including music, painting, dance, movies, and stage productions. They go to sporting events. But you know what? On review, I just described a straight life-style. I glossed one and over only one difference: Sharing a home with a GAY partner. That's all the life-style difference you will find for the majority of gays.

You want to talk about dangerous life-styles? Become a drug dealer or distributor. Become a human trafficker. Become a South American or Central American street gang member. There, we can talk danger.

People talk about how open discussion of gay lifestyles confuses the children. But why should we care about that? Aren't you competent to advise your own kids? Why do you want someone to pass laws against homosexuality? Is it because you know you cannot intellectually justify your own deep-seated hatred for people who are different?

People talk about how gay activities violate certain Biblical admonitions and therefore represent terrible sins. If 2000 years of learning more about human sexual identity doesn't prove the lie in the really old texts, then I don't know what would. But all too many people of strong religious leanings will say that God made us. Well, we can now prove that gays are made that way, so we have two choices. (Last time I used this, I left out something, but this time I'll fix it.)

Either God didn't make us perfect, because gays are "imperfect and thus damaged goods" ... or God made us all perfect and thus HIS idea of perfection includes sometimes being gay - in which case (my preferred resolution) is that we misunderstand what God considers as "good" so we have to find the language loophole that would allow us to love even those who are different.