les9596, I really liked what you had to say.

pmbuko, I'm not sure what your point was. I earlier voiced my irrelevant opinion that gov't should stop issuing marriage licenses altogether. That marriage seemed like a religous institution and should therefore be left to churches. The gov't should issue civil union permits (or whatever) to provide couples legal status and afford equal rights to all.
I'm not anti-gay. I just wanted to point out that if you attribute sexual behavior to your genetic makeup, then there is no point in condemning, or trying to rehabilitate, sexual deviants such as pedophiles, rapists, and the like. Further, if you attribute sexual behavior to genetic makeup, then what behaviors are NOT determined by your DNA? Criminal behavior? Cooperative behavior? Terrorist-type behavior?

I was not actually disagreeing with spiff, just playing devil's advocate. I was actually hoping to start a discussion centered on the notion that behavior does often stem from genetic causes (instinctive behavior), and that differences (including behavioral differences) exist between human races beyond the color of the skin. Further, that cultural differences are not only the product of disparate histories, but the product of variances in the genetic make-up of the population. We recognize such differences in different breeds of other species, but not in our own.

Back to the terrorists. Here's what some Arab leaders said recently (they don't all buy into the conspiracy theories that 2x6 showed us earlier):

***"What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government?" Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's highest-ranking imam, railed during Friday prayers in the Egyptian town of Benha. "You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims."

Sheik Tantawi's refrain was a familiar one among Muslims who have felt unfairly tarred by the growing number of highly publicised bloodbaths perpetrated by fellow believers.

But on Saturday some prominent Arabs had a more sobering interpretation: corrupt, repressed Arab and Islamic societies have turned into breeding grounds for terrorism. It is a judgement rarely voiced in heavily censored Arab rhetoric.

"Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims," wrote Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of the Al-Arabiya TV channel.

In a blunt column in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, he listed attacks carried out by Muslims in Iraq, Russia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. "Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," he wrote. "The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us."***