but the simple fact is that we live in an overpopulated country on an overpopulated planet
Actually not entirely accurate. You believe this because you live in Massachusetts.
Drive from your home to the west coast and try telling me the world is overpopulated. I made that trip when I was eighteen and moving to Northboro, MA from Utah. I will spare you the same miserable trip and give you statistical information. If you took every single man woman and child on the earth today and gave them each individually an acre of land, they would fit within the North American continent with room to spare. The North American Continent is only 16% of the land mass of the world. The world is full and there is enough in resources to support a growing population for many thousands of years. Even landfill sites are reclaimed by the earth and magically transformed into useful land. Never underestimate a world that works.
As far as the rest of the conversation, I enjoy the debate without the mud slinging. I appreciate how diverse the conversation remains without getting ugly. My brother is/was? gay. He brought home his boyfriends all that during his teenage years and into his adulthood. He is now almost forty. We were not raised in a religious home, so that never came into play. I am a Mormon, but I'm a convert so my upbringing is a little different. God was only mentioned in my house when Dad hit his thumb with a hammer. I appreciated Brandon's thoughts on Why Mormonism. My conversion was one of all those things mentioned: Logic, feelings, common sense, resonance . . . but there were tangible aspects to my conversion as well.
As an interesting aside, my brother has a girlfriend now. None of us have any idea what happened with the girlfriend, we're entirely baffled by her presence, but we all know he "became" gay, ,he had no prior tendencies . . . he readily admits this. He was on drugs as an early teen. His supplier was an older man who traded drugs for favors, and Robert become caught up in a lifestyle.
the nurture/nature issue is interesting to me based on his experiences and so I've enjoyed this thread. I personally believe (which means nothing to anyone but me) that we've each been given our weaknesses. I think a lot of our happiness in this world depends upon how we choose to act upon those weaknesses. I come up pretty poorly some days, but i'm hoping to ultimately overcome all my weaknesses. I think the people who experience the most joy are those who manage to gain full control over themselves. I shudder when I think on the girl I might have been, had it not been for a little self mastery when my weaknesses bared their ugly teeth. I shudder further still at the times I gave in to them.