Let's look at what this might mean for Google, in practical terms. Some 10-15% of people are LGBT. It stands to reason that the same holds true of engineers. Now, it's well-established that the well is running dry in SV; talent needs to be imported.

So if I'm a gay engineer thinking of moving to SV, how does this change my thoughts about where I want to work? It stands to reason that a significant number of LGBT engineers would be motivated to work for Google by this announcement.

Let's look at non-gay immigrants. Outside of places like China and India, most of the countries Google is looking to recruit from are way ahead of the US on gay rights. So much so that the mere fact that gay marriage is an "issue" in the US serves to perpetuate the bible-thumping moron stereotype of Americans. So even for non-LGBT engineers from Europe, Canada, Australia, etc, this would be viewed by the majority as a reason to work for Google.

Now, how would this hurt them? The argument can be made that, among more conservative (read: Indian and Chinese) societies, where gay rights are not accepted as human rights, that some percentage of potential hires would be put off by such a move. Perhaps, but I think that there are a number of mitigating factors, here. First, gay rights aren't nearly as big a political issue in those countries as in the US. It's frowned upon, but you don't have presidential nominees from one of the two parties proving how much they deserve the candidacy by falling over themselves to say who thinks gays are worse.

Secondly and generally speaking, "culture" is simply nowhere near as big an attraction for people from those countries as status and income. So while it may deter some people, it likely wouldn't be many.

Now for advertisers: will anyone really drop Google for online advertising because of this? Somehow I doubt it. There may be some of the Walmarts and whatnot who drop them, but I find the prospect unlikely.

To sum it up: advantages for Google include easier, more effective recruitment. Disadvantages include potential loss of customers.

I think Google wins this solely on the bottom line, let alone the fact that it's just a good thing to do.

Would love to see two citations for this! (post 1940s!)

~1% identified themselves as homosexual

~4% identified themselves as bisexual in varying degrees

~5% could be labeled as bi-curious (tried it/want to try it)

A further ~5% of men and ~15% of women had "fantasized about having sex with someone of the same sex at least once".

So by being extremely generous with definitions, you could claim that ~80% of the population is completely straight, and that ~20% is therefore "LGBT". But that's stretching it way too far. A reasonable interpretation is that ~1% is gay, and ~5% is LGBT.

A variety of references can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientat... and if I were to cherry pick a couple from there to try and prove my 5-10% I could go with "2003, 12% of Norwegian respondents have had homosexual sex" and in the UK in 2010 "5% of people do not identify as heterosexual".

Off that same page you could pick out some other stats to suggest that my 5-10% is too high.

Here's a couple of reasons it's complicated:

1.) There's a hell of a lot of gay people in the closet, ranging from people who have told close family and friends but won't tell a survey, to people who are in denial to themselves.

2.) Different countries have different general stances on homosexuality. Even if everyone in, for example, the UAE answered an anonymous survey completely truthfully, without fearing for the fact that if they answered anything other than heterosexual could land them in jail or worse, you've got to assume that in countries like that far less people actually realise they are gay given they are in a society that assumes nobody is, so they are never going to question themselves about it.

you've got to assume that in countries like that far less people actually realise they are gay

Can you please explain? Are you saying that people may be gay but in happy heterosexual relationships because they don't understand their true desires?

There are people in areas where homosexuality is generally accepted (like American, UK etc.) - at least accepted enough that plenty of people can be open about their sexuality without too many problems - who don't acknowledge their sexuality early on in their life. Sometimes this means "not until a few years after puberty", sometimes not until they're middle aged or even older.

Whether it's because it literally doesn't occur to them to consider the possibility, or whether they've had some feelings but ignored them, I'm not entirely sure, I suspect both cases happen. All I know is that these people do exist, people who genuinely take a long time to realise, not talking about people who know early on but take a long time to come out to others.

So, if this is possible in society where, whatever your view on homosexuality, it's an understood fact that there are gay people out there, it logically extends that those people exist in countries where gay sex gets you a death penalty - and I would assume that it happens more there, because there's no built in expectation surrounding you that some people are gay. When I was at school there was a "known fact" through the school that 1 in 20 people are gay - so when I first thought about my own sexuality, I was aware that it was far from impossible for me to be gay. In some countries I'd have been raised to believe that I am definitely straight because there are no other options.

I believe sexuality is something you are born with not brought up to have, therefore there should be as many gay Muslims as there are gay Atheists - culture can definitely prevent people from admitting it, but I think it can also prevent them from knowing it too.

p.s. Hope you reply letting me know if I've made my thoughts clearer, and if so whether you agree or think I'm talking shit. It all makes sense to me, but I have no personal experience, having been lucky enough to never have had any fears or uncertainty about my being gay, and living somewhere where I've never actually spoken to someone (internet excluded) who had a problem with me because of it.

When I was a kid and a teenager, and a young adult, I never found other men attractive personally. I suppose I could recognize attractive people to some extent but never felt sexually attracted.

Then I read Plutarch's biographies of Spartan kings and he talks a lot about the role of pederasty in the political structure of Spartan society, and also talks about wifeswapping as a part of the political structure. And I also read works talking about prevalence of homosexual activity in many other cultures. And so I asked myself "if I was in such a culture would I be attracted to other men?" and it seemed the logical answer would be "yes."

Keep in mind this was already in my thirties. I was already married, had 2 kids at the time (now have three), and all the sudden on realizing this, I started finding men sexually attractive too. I am not about to cheat on my wife with another man. But I will admit my attractions.

So what does this mean? Was I bisexual all along and just had to be convinced by Plutarch? Or was there a cognitive shift that occurred from contemplating other places and times? How can you differentiate?

Certainly it wasn't due to lack of exposure to gays. I had a gay roommate in college, a gay business partner for a while, etc....

My experience is a big part of the reason I am not convinced sexual orientation is in-born. I think it is very complicated and is relatively plastic.......

I do think sexuality can be fluid, just the same as a hetero might change what they consider "their type". However if you change from straight to bisexual, were you ever really straight? Same question for gay to straight, or whatever. Maybe everyone is on a bisexual spectrum and some people are just really near one end of it.. but if that's the case, that we're all bi, then the entire discussion is irrelevant, so let's ignore that possibility.

Is it possible that you have always been bisexual and for some reason didn't know it until reading up on history made you realise and accept it, I think yes. Is it possible that you were once genuinely not bisexual, but straight, and that this changed, yes as well. I don't think there's any way for me to know which is the case for you, I'm not sure there is any way for you to know either. Maybe I'm wrong - but hey, even if you think you know, are you necessarily right? I think I was born gay (well technically bisexual, homoromantic, but on the bisexual scale I'm about a 5.9 on the Kinsey scale [1]), but who knows, maybe if I hadn't gone to an all-boys school and experimented with friends when I was 11-13 I would today consider myself straight. For some reason I like to think that isn't the case, and that being gay is an original part of my DNA, but I guess realistically whatever way I ended up wouldn't have been any worse or better.

And finally, how "homosexual", "straight" and "bisexual" are defined changes the answer to your questions. If the fact that you never experienced MSM action, or considered it, or fantasised about it, then I guess you fit the definition of 100% straight, and therefore yes you did change to become bisexual. On the other hand, if there is something in our DNA that defines what genders we can or can't be attracted to, maybe you had homosexuality inside you without knowing it, and other people, even if they experienced the exact same life as you, down to the most minute details, couldn't become bisexual the way you did.

I really hope that sometime in my lifetime scientists discover some answers, because I think the whole subject is fascinating, and for that matter it's one that I haven't spent nearly as much time reading up on as I would like to have, so perhaps sometime I'll get onto changing that.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale#Table_of_the_scale

There is another possibility too that is worth considering.

Sexuality may be, for humans, primarily social in the same way it is for Bonobos. Reproduction may simply be a functional necessity met as a side effect. If we see sex as a social interaction and the choice of a sex partner as a social matter, then the question is how various individuals fit within social structures or not.

There may be in-born aspects to how people relate to social factors and for some people these are quite evident (autistic people, for example, relate to social structures very different from non-autistic people). But even within the spectrum we might call "normal" (I don't like the idea of normal btw), there may be cognitive and even neurological reasons why some people may relate to specific social structures in specific ways.

However, beyond that, there are functionally necessary reasons why people must fit into social structures differently, and why at least some people must necessarily challenge and fall outside a social structure. Every taboo in society must have someone who challenges it. Every norm must have someone who falls outside it.

The reason is that without this process of perpetually challenging society, there are no individuals. You can't be an individual and blindly follow social norms. But beyond that perhaps on an evolutionary level, without people continually challenging, and redefining, social norms (a process which btw happens much faster in verbo-motor than literate societies), culture and society are static and dead and there is nothing to adapt it to the problems of the day.

So might be able to see various non-standard forms of sexuality (i.e. outside the social model of "normal" which in our society is defined by Barby and Ken, husband and wife, etc. i.e., monogamous and heterosexual), as necessary acts of rebellion which transform and breathe life into society. The only problem is how some Christians relate to their myths of rebellion but that's a different topic.

In this way we can perhaps past the argument as to whether gays are defective people who can't help it and simply can't conform to models of normality, or whether they are immoral people who choose to live outside accepted social norms.

I don't think that sexuality can be reduced to applied neuroscience just as chemistry can't be reduced to applied quantum physics.

One of the huge problems of course is how Christians relate to the story of the Fall from Eden. You hear this brought up all the time, and the lesson they draw from it is follow social mores. Don't rock the boat, don't rebel. But a close, careful reading suggests:

1) The fall from Eden is foreshadowed in Genesis 2 with the description of marriage.

2) The forbidden fruit is general heterosexual activity. This is particularly obvious when including a look at Middle Eastern iconography and, in particular, figures like the Pazuzu, who had a serpent-headed penis. Yes, the tree of knowledge is knowledge in the biblical sense ;-).

3) This act of rebellion creates the Biblical model of (heterosexual) marriage.

The problem for Christians is that the very model they want to push arises from the very act of rebellion they want to use to bludgeon everyone else into submission.

Furthermore, you can hate anal sex yet still be bisexual, homosexual, etc.

Far from it, you have it backwards. My point is that having had homosexual sex doesn't automatically make you bi/homosexual. I've said nothing about the relation in the other direction.

Furthermore, you can hate anal sex yet still be bisexual, homosexual, etc.

Of course. I never said anything to the contrary. There are lots and lots of ways of having "sex", many that don't involve sticking your penis in an orifice and having penises stuck in your orifices.

edit: In case something was unclear, Kinsey's numbers obviously also included people who self-identified has home/bisexual, no matter their sexual history(or lack of it)

If you get some sort of working visa in the US, you can in many cases also get a visa for your spouse so that both of you can live there and work there. However, the %#""&!! DOMA explicitly defines spouse as someone of the opposite gender that you are married to.

It doesn't matter if same-sex marriage is legal or not in the country you're from. It doesn't matter if same-sex marriage is legal or not in the US state you're going to. If your husband or wife is of the same sex as you, you're just screwed by the visa process, you can't bring them.

I think there is virtually no chance that Thomas will vote against a 10th Amendment argument. The only hope congress has on this (though kudos for them for defending the doomed law) is to hope the court follows Comstock and gives the federal government broad authority to tack on all kinds of things to federal powers.

I think the chance of this though is very, very small.

However, if they do strike it down on 10th Amendment grounds expect a lot of hand-wringing from liberal law school professors. When a district court found it violated the 10th Amendment, Jack Balkin (very much on the liberal side) said something to the effect that while he wanted to see DOMA struck down, the 10th Amendment was just too dangerous to the idea of centralized government to allow that to stand.

Also, deterring people who are against gay marriage might be a good thing.

Really? How so? Because gays suddenly want to take part in the antiquated, religious inspired ceremony of marriage?

How about gays/lesbians want a part in health insurance, inheritance, and non-harassment for them and their children?

Religion was ex-post-facto applied to marriage, not vice versa.

Note that marriage is pervasive in cultures without strong religious influence or state religions (see: marriage in China, where historically Buddhism rules, and scripture stipulates nothing about marriage).

Marriage, like many social customs, is a cultural phenomenon. Religion is only pinned onto it in cultures where religion is a Big Fucking Deal(tm).

Wrong, marriage was a religious ceremony all along. Maybe you have "mating" in mind, not marriage. Check anthropological accounts. Actually religion predates most forms of even government and cultural practice.

>Note that marriage is pervasive in cultures without strong religious influence or state religions (see: marriage in China, where historically Buddhism rules, and scripture stipulates nothing about marriage).

Buddhism in China is _one_ of several religions. Taoism, Shenism, etc, are as prevalent.

As for Buddhism stipulating nothing about marriage: "While Buddhist practice varies considerably among its various schools, marriage is one of the few concepts specifically mentioned in the context of Śīla (Buddhist behavior discipline). (Wikipedia)".

Not to mention that the pure and "non religion like" idea of Buddhism that westerners have is not at all how it works for common people in China or asia in general.

>Religion is only pinned onto it in cultures where religion is a Big Fucking Deal(tm).

Religion is a "Big Fucking Deal" in all fucking cultures. Visit any archeological museum of any civilization to check this out. It's just that there are many forms of religion, and not all involved a bearded deity in the clouds. Even confucianism serves the role of religion, with several societal norms and guidelines etc.

> "Not to mention that the pure and "non religion like" idea of Buddhism that westerners have is not at all how it works for common people in China or asia in general."

I'm Chinese. Please do not seek to describe my own culture back to me with Wikipedia.

For one thing, I object strongly to the use of "shenism" - it's as much an "ism" as "Westernism" is an "ism". It's an umbrella to try to catch entirely dissimilar and wildly variable things all in one bucket, and it implies a level of coherence that simply does not exist. The folk religions of China wildly vary depending on people and region, and to try and slam it all into an "ism" makes about as much sense as trying to corral all Native American beliefs into the umbrella "Aboriginism". "shenism" transliterates into "deism". How much sense does that make to you?

Reading Wikipedia articles on Chinese religious belief is like reading a terrible social sciences textbook from high school. It captures none of the context and none of the spirit of what is actually worshipped. Instead it's just a purely academic account with purely academic distinctions drawn between things.

> "Even confucianism serves the role of religion, with several societal norms and guidelines etc."

This has always been a vibrant topic of debate in Chinese society, and I'm surprised you can confidently say that when no one who practices it can seemingly agree. Confucianism lacks the hallmarks that identify other religions (including ones practiced in China) - most notably the complete lack of deities, or in fact any belief in the supernatural.

Most adherents seem to regard it as a philosophy and cultural imperative (given its dominance of Chinese intellectualism over history) rather than a religion. The need to label it as a religion, in fact, seems to derive from Western inability to categorize it in their world view.

IMO if we start classifying Confucianism as a religion, then we need to throw democracy, libertarianism, communist, and capitalism into the religion pot too.

> "Buddhism in China is _one_ of several religions. Taoism, Shenism, etc, are as prevalent."

Indeed. Well, not really, sort of. It's complicated. Traditional Buddhism and Taoism are relatively rare amongst the general population, though has gained more traction in recent times. Most people adhere to a mish-mash of Buddhist thought, Taoist belief, and what you describe as "shenism", not one of the above. This giant religion-gumbo more or less deserves its own name, but we really don't have a good word for it. An important side effect of this is that religion in Chinese society is largely grassroots and disorganized (well, until the introduction of Judeo-Christian thought). You will find people worshipping Buddhist deities (or deified Buddhist not-deities) right alongside traditional folk deities, using rituals that are not at all similar to what you might find in original Buddhist scripture.

Wikipedia tries to characterize this as "shenism", though as previously mentioned, this is a nonsense concept. Though I would not be categorically opposed to finding a word for "that crazy mix of Buddhism, Taoism, and local geocentric folk religions that is practiced in various ways in China" - bit of a mouthful after all. Only if they choose a word that's less stupid than "shenism". "Shenism" is not a coherent religion, and as currently defined just means "people that believe in deities in China".

In any case, this is a very roundabout way of addressing your point:

> "Actually religion predates most forms of even government and cultural practice."

Which means... exactly what? My contention is the marriage as practiced in China is not primarily a religious event. It features no priests, no church steeples, nor synagogues, nor mosques. It features no overarching religious motif, though it is common for various aspects of folk religion to manifest as ancillary rituals - folk religions that lack any form of organization and scripture, mind you. No religious figures are present - neither priest nor monk. In fact, none of the major components of Chinese marriage, from proposal to tying the knot, are religious in nature, nor do they even have hints of religious meaning.

If Chinese folk religion created the institution of marriage, then why is it none of the entire process involves religious worship of any sort? In fact, if it's primarily a religious exercise, why is it that the rituals and traditions are pretty much all the same even for traditional Buddhists and Taoists? Or perhaps, alternatively, marriage in China is primarily a cultural institution, where religious motifs are applied, removed, and changed over millenia to suit the religious mores of its time?

I: Confucianism and religion.

I think the real challenge here is to define religion. As I define religion there is no question it qualifies. Namely:

A religion is a tradition of myths and/or rituals which transmit and encode patterns of meaning which can be flexibly applied to life in order to make sense of what happens all around us.

It is not necessary to believe in historical accuracy of myths (this obligation to believe was new with Christianity). Adherents may in fact have complete freedom to make sense of the tradition however they like.

Interestingly there are religions (the traditional Hopi religion among Native Americans, for example) which incorporate forms of atheism into them, so a lack of deities isn't fatal.

My understanding is that Confucianism would meet this definition. Would you disagree? You have rituals, stories, etc. which create the patterns of society. The same with Taoism in a different way.

II: Meaning and function of religion

I think our brains work on mythic levels as well as logical levels. I think that religion gives us ways to understand patterns of life which are beyond what we can do in a reductionist approach. I think it has always done this in a way which is deeply tied to culture. That's why I agree with the GP that religious rituals recognizing procreative marriage are entirely universal.

If Chinese folk religion created the institution of marriage, then why is it none of the entire process involves religious worship of any sort?

I don't know that you would define it as religious worship but at least what little I know of it has religious symbols woven throughout the practice. It is ritualized in a religious context. I don't think all religions demand worship though. For example, why is red so highly associated with weddings? Then there is the tea ceremony.

My knowledge of all this is pretty highly abridged because my wife told her family when we got married to abridge the Chinese rituals.

I think there is a functional reason why procreative marriages are so universally ritualized.

Everywhere, mothers are mothers by virtue of having given birth. Motherhood is thus a biological and physical state defined by what has happened to one's body, and the biological link between mother and child.

However, everywhere, fathers are fathers by virtue of social recognition. There is no biological state that corresponds to fatherhood. Fathers may be fathers of children not biologically related to them in societies which practice wife-loaning and wife-swapping, or in polyandrous cultures even without anything like an adoption involved.

In one formerly polyandrous culture (the Todas of India), a woman would ceremonially choose the socially recognized father of her children, and if she changed that choice for future children, she would have to go back and ritually designate a different husband.

So this difference in how men and women are situated relative to reproduction goes a long way towards explaining the trans-historical and cross-cultural emphasis on procreation as a necessary concern of marriage.

The problem is defining religion. Religion can be a Big Deal somewhere like ancient Athens where as a resident, you participate in the religion or else maybe condemned to death but that doesn't mean you have to believe in it in any specific way. Similarly Hindus generally get to decide whether or not they think their religion has any deities or not.

Well, Americans e.g. are pointed to Wikipedia (or other sources) for falsehoods they believe about America all the time. And most of the time, Wikipedia is right and they are wrong. Being a national or resident of some country doesn't mean you are always correct about it (or even that you are EVER correct: Glenn Beck followers come to mind). So let's stick it to the facts and numbers and point to sources and/or arguments.

That said, while I agree about the general "cultural imperialism" of Shenism, the gist wasn't it, but that Buddhism is not THE prevalent religion in China. Which you agree with as far as I can see.

>My contention is the marriage as practiced in China is not primarily a religious event.

Nowadays it might not be. But wasn't that the case in USSR too, when religion was frowned upon? (Not that PRC is that kind of stuck up nowadays, but from what I've read about the Cultural Revolution a lot of things got a remake).

Wikipedia, again, gives these "mythological origins" of Chinese marriage:

The story about the marriage of Nüwa and Fu Xi, who were once sister and brother respectively, told about how they invented proper marriage procedures after becoming married. At that time the world was unpopulated, so the siblings wanted to get married but, at the same time, they felt ashamed. So they went up to Kunlun Shan and prayed to the heavens. They asked for permission for their marriage and said, "if you allow us to marry, please make the mist surround us." The heavens gave permission to the couple, and promptly the peak was covered in mist. It is said that in order to hide her shyness, Nüwa covered her blushing face with a fan. Nowadays in some villages in China, the brides still follow the custom and use a fan to shield their faces.

>Or perhaps, alternatively, marriage in China is primarily a cultural institution, where religious motifs are applied, removed, and changed over millenia to suit the religious mores of its time?

Well, that happens in the west too, but we're talking origins here. At the time the ceremony/idea was established, not even Buddhism or Taoism was available, but folk and pagan religions were. Actually Buddhism is a quite recent phenomenon, historically speaking.

I think the problem here is defining religion. Many people here equate it with belief. Certainly religious marriage in the Protestant sense of religious only comes around after the advent of Christianity, perhaps after the advent of Protestantism....

But as you point out, ritualizing (almost always with religious symbolism, again for anthropological definitions of religion, not Protestant definitions) procreative marriage is universal. In fact I would point out it is more universal than is ritualizing remembering the dead. Fewer cultures don't have rituals involving procreative marriage than don't have rituals for funerals, etc.

>Religion is a "Big Fucking Deal" in all fucking cultures. Visit any archeological museum of any civilization to check this out. It's just that there are many forms of religion, and not all involved a bearded deity in the clouds. Even confucianism serves the role of religion, with several societal norms and guidelines etc.

I think again the problem is defining religion. Here in the West we see religion as a system of belief. Outside the sphere of Christian influence (Christianity, Orthodox Judiasm, Islam, Sikhdom, and derivatives), religion is a far more flexible concept than that.