Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, you will possibly be downvoted, but not because your opinion dissents with the majority. There are plenty of dissenting opinions on HN who get upvoted to the top, as long as they're well argued and informed.

You will be downvoted because your comment has no substance to it. The only claim you make is "we know that homosexuality is a destructive force in society", and it isn't backed up by any meaningful conversation or argument. The rest of your writing is just fluff around this statement.

Sadly, you can't back up such a statement with any meaningful prose, just the same way you can't back up "we know that blue eyed people are a destructive force to society" or "we know that people over 6ft are a destructive force to society".

If you hold equality and respect for your fellow human being as first principles, which many people on HN do, you can't logically derive "homosexual people are a destructive force to society" in any meaningful way.

That is way your comment will probably be downvoted.

Precisely. And the inability to sustain this argument is why gay marriage bans are failing in court. The legal conclusion is that there isn't even a "rational basis" for the bans.

LOL you people really need to learn to read. or you are all a bunch of homophobes.

Where do i mention the destructive force or ANYTHING negative about gay people? Oh wait i didn't. .. fools

Male-male homosexual intercourse significantly increases your chances of contracting HIV/AIDS. Is that destructive?

Sure, but the degree to which homosexuals are persecuted (and the manner in which this happens) do not match the actual risks resulting from HIV/AIDS.

Male-female intercourse significantly increases your chance of dying in childbirth. Is that destructive?

To be fair, that is a false equivalency. 15,000+ Americans die a year from AIDS. 700 die from childbirth. AIDS is 20x the bigger killer than childbirth.

The attack on homosexuality was not based on the degree of harm.

Regardless, at one time, 4% of all women died in childbirth - a direct consequence of heterosexual sex. That is far more than people who die from homosexual sex, yet no one sought to prove that marital procreative sex was immoral because of this.

Quoting the comment guidelines:

The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience. Whereas comments like "LOL!" or worse still, "That's retarded!" teach us nothing.

I do believe simply offering a different perspective falls under the guidelines of a good comment, without the need for elaborating prematurely. That would be like pre-mature optimization; I might guess incorrectly what to elaborate on. Feedback gives me greater direction in what to answer.

1) "by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned"

The only thing we're led to consider is that you have a dissenting opinion. That doesn't contribute much to the discussion. If you talk a bit about your reasons for having your opinion, it might fit this guideline more clearly.

2) "by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience"

Again, you haven't given us any more information about the topic. The only new information we have is that you are part of a group that knows "that homosexuality is a destructive force in society." That assertion alone isn't going to convince anyone that you're onto something.

Something else to consider, which should be obvious, is that this issue is an extremely charged subject. Because of that, it's especially important to talk about your reasons for having your opinion. Otherwise, people are going to immediately dismiss it.

The self-evident fact that homosexuality is contrary to nature should be sufficient substance.

Then I suppose you consider medical advancements to be unnatural and thus bad too as compared to the natural course of letting the diseases just kill you and similarly modern form of communications bad as well over the traditional flapping of mouth flesh.

There's nothing self-evident about that at all. All species of animals have a homosexual population; this has been observed in the wild as well as with domestic species (dogs, etc.). To be sure, it is a minority behavior, but "contrary to nature" is stretching it.

Interesting. Source?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

A casual examination of nature would demonstrate your statement to be false. Your statements are both extreme and unfounded, which is a curious state to start from when you have very little objective information about a topic.

natural ˈnatʃ(ə)r(ə)l/Submit adjective 1. existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.

2. in accordance with the nature of, or circumstances surrounding, someone or something.

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The existence of millions of homosexual humans in nature invalidates your point.

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