Is homosexuality a birth defect?

A birth defect is the result of a traumatic event during birth. I'm pretty sure that most of us gays came out of the vagina normally.

To answer your questions and comment on your comments:

1: Modern technology now allows even homosexual couples the ability to reproduce like artificial insemination. You don't necessarily have to have sex in modern day to be able to reproduce. It can be done externally. Now I don't know the history of these forms of reproduction, but maybe back in the day before modern day medical technology it would have been considered a reject to the human species but you can't really say that now.

2: I believe also that people do not "choose" to be gay or are "born" that way. That is like saying you choose to like the opposite sex, or you were born to. You were either taught or you observed or experienced or heard about or read about or simply followed the norm in regards to your own sexuality right? If you think about it, to you is being straight the normal thing? or is it the right thing? or are you just following your feelings? Did you like vegetables as a kid? even if you did, there was probably something you didn't like as a kid that chances are you like now. Sexuality is almost the same situation. As you grow older and experience life, your own personality and feelings and individuality develops and continues to develop for the rest of your life. I simply believe that as your grow that your "tastes" develop and whether it be toward the same or opposite sex is through your own progression in life. I grew up believing that my sole interest were in the same sex. I dated and had sexual encounters with men and thoroughly enjoyed it and still do and i thoroughly enjoy the company and companionship of men.. However, as i grew up realized the many own interests or what i felt attracted to changed and no longer did i believe i was solely attracted to the same sex. Yes now i am married to a woman but that doesn't mean i have moved away from my feelings toward the same sex. Its your experiences in life that drive who you are. Its your interaction with people and what "YOU" perceive as attractive. I believe men are beautiful beings, as i now find woman to be beautiful (speaking romantically of course) as well.

Being gay doesn't mean there is something physically or mentally wrong with you...just means you are attracted to the same sex. Don't gay people eat and breathe, **** and piss, talk and yell, see and hear, run and walk, drive or cycle, or fly, or learn, make mistakes, and so on like every other human in this world? Outside of sexuality, what is different between homosexuals and non homosexuals? Aren't we still part of the same species? When has being gay ever proved challenging medically? Can't even say HIV because even non homosexuals can still contract HIV just as easily as gay couples...why or how? Because we are all still humans.

Do yourself a favor, stop listening to the media, or your stupid ******* church about what is right and wrong in this world. Worship god if you want, but think for yourself instead of being arrogant and make your own conclusions. How else did you come to the idea that being gay is a defect?

In all species where homosexuality has been recorded, and there are more than a thousand of them, it has been shown to be evolutionarily advantageous. Nothing that benefits the continuation of the species is a "birth defect".

If it is, I've learned to live with it. There is no way to fix it. People have tried for ages to fix it and it's only produced a lot of unhappy people. I chose to be happy and accept myself as I am. If someone has a problem with that, it's their problem, not mine.

It's a variation, like being left-handed. A birth defect creates hardship. The hardships faced by gay people are caused by *other* people.

No, it would need to cause some sort of disability or disadvantage to be a defect.

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"Cleft Palate, for example, is well know as a birth defect (it's called that by those that raise money to fight it). It does not hider the individual or species' ability"

Children born with a cleft palate have a high instance of single and multisystem comorbidities. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21422313 The CP is usually just the most obvious of the overall developmental difficulties. In infancy, it hinders the child's ability to feed and with the hardships of feeding and nutrition, it impacts overall development, including epigenomic development, that impacts everything from brain development to likelihood for diseases like mental illness, diabetes, and even cancer. The implicit abuse of being treated as "Different" impacts their overall life and even the health of their future offspring for multiple generations. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-ghost-in-our-ge...

After development has been achieved, an uncorrected cleft palate impairs the ability to feed and reduces the likelihood of the person being chosen as a mate, alters the quality of a mate they can attract, and alters their overall survival and quality of life, thus hindering the ability of their line to succeed.

The combo of comorbidities and, in the case of non 1st world births and uncorrected cases, and since we're discussing evolution of a species and why something might be perpetuated intergenerationally, the inability for an individual with a true birth defect to successfully thrive and perpetuate their genetics means that the genetics will have a high failure rate.

Additionally, cleft palates are usually the result of behavior choices of the mother, including smoking, drinking, and exposure to chemicals and unhealthy environments, either by choice or incidentally. http://www.operationsmile.org/downloadables/news-e... You can't track homosexuality to alterations in a parent's behaviors and lifestyle the way you can birth defects such as Cleft Palate.

Homosexuality doesn't "reject(s) reproduction" since, as I stated, it is both perpetuated via the genetics of relatives and just because a homosexual can't directly breed with ones partner doesn't mean you can't easily find a surrogate, come to an agreement with a man or woman to have a child with, nor negates adoption since we'll never eliminate children that need a home.

Homosexuality in nature also doesn't stop animals from being able to breed... Such as the documented pairings of lesbian Albatrosses http://www.livescience.com/2576-female-albatrosses... where 1 in 3 nests are unrelated females where one female mates with a male then the pair of females raise the offspring or the 1 in 5 are pairs of gay male Greyleg Geese. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38821650/ns/technology...

So... *BOOM*

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A "Birth Defect" is something that hinders the ability of an individual animal and the species as a whole to survive.

Since we know the evolutionary advantage to homosexuality, this is an invalid argument.

So not only do we understand the evolutionary advantage of homosexuality in Humans, the fact that it exists in thousands of animal species proves that it is not a "Defect" because the first thing that happens in nature is that those with "Defects" tend to die out if the alteration doesn't prove beneficial to the species.

In humans, we've found that the female relatives of gay males have higher sex-drives and produce more offspring, thus passing the genetics that result in homosexuality onto the next generation and helping the survival of the species. And then you combine the increased breeding of females with the fact that gay men can still choose to have children "The Natural Way" by getting a female to consent to having a child with him and you remove the idea that "Gays can't breed". MANY Lesbians have sex with men in order to get pregnant and have a family... And many gay men have sex with women in order to have a family... Just because your sexual partner of choice is of the same gender as you doesn't mean the parts don't still work and that people can come to an agreement.

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► The Real Story on Gay Genes

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/born-gay

Homing in on the science of homosexuality—and sexuality itself.

“Who cares about gay men or lesbian women?” asks geneticist Sven Bocklandt of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Sexual selection defines evolution and creation—such a major ­player in determining society—and we have no idea how it works. This is much larger than the gay gene; it’s about all sexual ­reproduction.” (And no, he doesn't mean "Creation" as in "Creationism/Theism".)

► How Gay Uncles Pass Down Genes

http://www.livescience.com/culture/homosexual-gene...

► Survival of genetic homosexual traits explained

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6519

► Evolution myths: Natural selection cannot explain homosexuality

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13674-evolut...

► Do Gay Animals Change Evolution?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=g...

Animals that engage in same-sex sexual behavior may be acting in accord with adaptational strategies rather than against them--and bending the way we think about evolution

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Saying that being gay is a "Birth Defect" because of how other people discriminate against them is like saying that being of African Heritage/Black is a "Birth Defect" because the KKK exists or that being Jewish is a birth defect because of antisemitism.

The choice of others to cause hardship to a group of people doesn't change anything.

No, but wilful stupidity is.