Graeme

It would certainly be interesting. Some people would be disappointed, though, to find out that the person online isn't the real life person they imagined. For example, despite over 2000 posts here at GA, I think you'd find that I'll be one of the quiet ones in the corner. I'm naturally introverted when I'm in a stress environment, and a convention with lots of people I don't really know would count as a stress environment for me

Thanks, lesfeaxdemoncoeur, for your thoughtful post. There are a number of motivations for wanting to know what causes homosexuality. Blame is one, curiosity is another. For me, personally, it is partially curiosity and partly so I can have (hopefully) a counter for those who tell me it's a choice and I should choose otherwise. One thing that has always bothered me regarding research on homosexuality is that they never have a representative sample. They can't -- there are too many people still in the closet. For example, I have never been approached to take part in any sexuality research, and I've never volunteered. My circumstances dictate that, for at least the next few years, I stay largely in the closet. Therefore, I, and others like me, are not included in any research. Even that article posted above annoyed me in at least one place because it was confusing masculine/feminine with sexuality (the section on making female rats masculine by exposing them to testosterone at an early age). There is nothing wrong with proposing suggestions outside of the box -- that's how humanity often expands its knowledge. However, most of the thinking outside of the box does fail because the box is there for a good reason Your experiences make you wonder if father neglect could be one cause of homosexuality. My experiences make me wonder if pre-pubescent sexual episodes could be one cause of homosexuality. My first sexual experience was when I was six or seven, and was with someone a few years older than me. That continued for several years until I stopped it -- but I can't help wondering if it "switched" me onto homosexual behaviour (a case of Jamie's accumulated experiences "making" me homosexual). I have since read enough to know that it is unlikely but I can't stop wondering. If you like, one reason I'm keen for homosexuality to be partially genetic is that it means that my early experiences didn't make me gay. Yes, I'm biased, but I not blind to the arguments for and against. Finally, for Jamie: Research has shown that if one of a set of identical twin is gay, the other is 50% likely to share that orientation. For fraternal (non-identical) twins, it's 20%. For other siblings, it is well below that figure. I don't see any way of explaining those numbers without accepting that genetics plays a part in determining sexual orientation. Yes, genetics is not the only factor involved (otherwise the identical twins would be both gay 100% of the time), but if genetics were not involved then there shouldn't be a difference between the fraternal and identical twin percentages. That is as solid a proof as I can come up with at the moment that genetics are involved. I can't come up with a reasonable alternative explanation that doesn't involved genetics. As for the nurture argument, did you read the section in the article about the boys raised as girls? To recap, a study was made on a set of boys that, due to deformed genitals when they were born, were surgically altered to have vagina's and were raised as girls. According to the article, every single one of them ended up attracted to women, not men. In other words, they obeyed the default orientation for their genetic sex, and not the default orientation for their apparent sex and the sex that they were raised to be. That is a powerful argument against nurture being the primary driver of sexual orientation.

What Jamie has said highlights one of the crucial issues with discussions in this area -- what is homosexuality? At the Religious Tolerance website's introduction to the topic of homosexuality, they point out that the two extremes in the debate have different definitions for homosexuality. This means that they aren't debating the same thing. If (like me) you believe sexuality is a spectrum from same-sex attracted to opposite-sex attracted, then my interpretation of what Jamie is saying is that a person can move on that spectrum. I happen to agree, but I don't think they can move very far -- that word "dramatically" he used is too extreme for me. Jamie -- can you define what you mean by "sexuality"? I can't debate your statement above until I know what you're talking about, because I suspect it is different to my definition of "sexuality" (or, more precisely, sexual orientation). Define "solid proof". We can't even prove that gravity (the force that causes objects to be attracted to each other) exists. All we have is a set of observations that appear to meet a theory. After Newton, Einstein came along and said that Newton's theory was just an approximation and the reality was something completely different -- that what we are observing is the result of a space-time distortion, not the attraction of two objects....

I thought the same thing, so I went to the Gay Press Report 2006 itself (the tinyurl link at the end of the article) and that quote was taken out of context. The report is looking at advertising in the gay & lesbian mainstream (ie. not predominantly sexually based) press. What this is saying is that in the gay "mainstream" media gay-specific ads have increased to almost 50%. In other words, companies are spending the money to develop gay-specific ads, rather than just recycling their other ads in the gay media. Not necessarily. After all, I don't change my behaviour at work, but I'm not out. I'd like to think you're right but I don't know whether that one third is only one third of the ones who are out elsewhere in their lives.

I'm late coming in with this chapter, but I have an excuse -- I had almost two days without internet access (I refused to pay the hotel $25 for a couple of hours....) I'm actually glad -- I've got less time to be stressed out before the next chapter is posted I still think there was something wrong with Thaddeus's plea to save the church, but I accept that he wasn't thinking clearly. Even a moment's thought would've shown that if they DID save the church, the congregation would still find out that there was no insurance to fix whatever damage had been done. As for the boys.... I believe I suggested that the Piedmont sheriff was desperate and would try something. I expected him to go for Chris, but he was smarter than that and found a way to make Chris come to him. The business about the data stick doesn't make a huge amount of sense, since I think stopping the case against him is still more important than their original scheme. However, if they could make the fake cards quickly and sell them quickly (even at a reduced premium), that might give him the money to either fight the case against him, or to escape. I don't know what channels he has in place for getting rid of the cards once they are made, so for the sake of the story I will assume he could get paid quickly. What will Chris and Steve do? The first thing is I expect Dex to involve Betty. The others from Lonesome Valley will also get involved because of Veronica -- even Chris and Steve will realise that they need to bring the others in because it is no longer just them -- they wouldn't be able to face Chad (using one example) if they tried to rescue Veronica without help and failed because there were one person short.... I see Chris and Steve being the point guards, and the others will scramble to help. One worrying thing -- the sheriff was using Veronica as the incentive. If I was in the Piedmont sheriff's shoes, I would have trouble justifying keeping Mr. Williams and the Lonesome Valley sheriff alive. He has Veronica to make the boys do what he wants -- he doesn't need the others. All I can hope is that he's keeping them alive for insurance and that they aren't already dead....

It's okay -- he's told enough people, including publicly The name comes from a song by Tool -- Third Eye.

His picture is earlier in the thread, but I'm too lazy to go looking for it...

Happy Birthday, Frank! Quarter of a century -- you've still got three-quarters to go

By some strange coincidence, The Age newspaper in Melbourne had a large article on Wednesday in the business section on gay and lesbian business people. Work closet keeps talented gays, lesbians hung up It also had a number of positives about how the younger generation is changing things A quote from the article which I think is applicable to the sporting field as well:

I'll add one more word of caution... Nerotorb is listed as 17. In many places around the world, if you are over 18 and have a nude picture of him on your computer, it could be taken as child pornography. It would be up to a judge to decide if it was art or pornography -- and you never know which way it will be judged. The same would apply if GA had a copy of the picture or a link to a copy. This is a very serious issue. If someone made a serious accusation, it is quite possible that the GA servers would be seized....

I've been looking forward to lots of pictorial chapters -- especially around the time of the Chase and Shawn section of the story -- but I've been disappointed so far. The decent picture has been of Blackheart. I can't see why this next chapter should be any different. I'm away for a couple of days, so you can spoil to your heart's content until then....

I use the style feature of Word to do what you want. Edit the style to include an indent, and all paragraphs with that style will be indented

I haven't used it a lot, but I've had a three way conversation on Skype that was at least as good a phone line. The three participants in the call were in Australia (me), Korea and USA (Texas). One of people I was talking to is in the broadcast media industry, and he's used Skype for some of his recordings, and they sounded like they were in the same room. I found it was very heavy on CPU power on my machine, but since I wasn't doing anything else while I was talking, that wasn't really a problem -- just something I noticed.

Sometimes I think gay readers are a bit paranoid There is no need to believe any of the characters will be homophobes. There is ample reasons already given in the story to dislike Lump, but until he shows himself to be a homophobe, I see no reason to believe him to be one. It's like Eric in FTL -- we have ample reasons to dislike him without having him be homophobic as well. Indeed, I think you could make a good case that Eric in FTL is not homophobic. It's the same here. People can be disliked for other reasons. Even being homophobic doesn't mean that they are disliked, depending on how they express their homophobia. It is almost as if some readers require that there be a homophobic character to "oppress" the gay character....

You've lost me. Why do you think the brothers are homophobic OR that their ex-singer is gay? To me, they kicked him out because: 1. He was doing drugs 2. He wouldn't rehearse 3. He was unreliable Given where the story is being posted, I'm expecting that Brandon will turn out to be gay, but it is by no means certain.

So polite. So formal. Not what we would expect from a creatively gifted goat.... After that prologue, I don't think you needed to indicate it was action/adventure. I can't think of many other genres (apart, maybe, from horror) that uses nuclear weapons.... A great start that introduces some of the characters while still moving the story forward -- always a challenge and I think you've done well

You may be onto something there. The smilie you just used is one that CJ often uses, which leads to the conclusion that you're saying CJ is the real criminal! I think if we dig into it, he's behind every nasty thing that's happened in the story.... That is, unless the theory that CJ is just a front for shadowgod is true, in which case it's shadowgod, but then he gets blamed for everything anyway.

Happy 18th Birthday! :music: :music: I hope you have a great time and end up partying all weekend

Just a minor correction. The rumour is that Shadowgod is the author and simply using C James as an alternative channel for publishing his work. The goat is a separate entity, but is not the true author of the stories.... My view is that Eric escaped well before the fire. He fled from the boys into the room which exited into the church. He wasn't in the first room and he didn't appear to be in the church (though he could have been hiding in there). Either way, he wasn't in the tunnels under the church when they went up, and would have had plenty of time to get out.

Thanks, Viv! How old is Toby?

Am I the only one who thinks that Thaddeus's plead at the end came over as false? It just seemed out of character for him to want the church saved, since there may be more incriminating evidence to be found. I'm wondering if he had bundles of money stored in there, too, that he was hoping could be recovered and used to pay for his defence (or his bail -- and then used to fund his overseas retirement plan). I'm trying to think of other reasons why he'd be pleading to save his church. Could it be that there was a camera trained on him and he was going to use it to show how much of a "good pastor" he was -- that even in the midst of being arrested "on patently false charges from evidence planted by those two criminals who had been running a pornographic website out of the home of one of the Lonesome Valley law enforcement officers" that he was able to be more concerned about his church than himself?

Sorry about that incident. I hope he'll find that once he learns he knows someone who's gay, he'll change his mind. As for the rest, it sounded like a great time! I'm off to Vegas myself in a couple of months, though I won't get much chance to sightsee (I'll be at a conference). I've never been there and I'm looking forward to it.

Happy Birthday, Steve! :king: :king: :king: :king: :king: I hope you have a great day, and best wishes for the year ahead.

This is off topic, but I needed somewhere to post it.... I found this story on genetically modified goats. I think we're beginning to learn a bit more about our elusive CJ's past....

Surely you know by now -- shadowgod is to blame for everything! CJ even admitted as much above: This is how shadowgod gets around the restriction on only having one entry per anthology -- he uses CJ to submit another story for him