I'm torn between how hilarious that is and how deeply offensive it is. How could homosexuality be weaponised? The video of the US newspiece says that they were hoping to combine strong aphrodisiacs with the "chemical that makes us gay" (not a quote - paraphrased only). On the one hand - hahahahahahhahahahaha idiots! But on the other - were they assuming that all that gay people do is have sex or think about having sex? Per-lease

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by Alan
Thoughts?

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"Guys, when I said we'd go to the gay bar ... I lied!"

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by Kate
they were hoping to combine strong aphrodisiacs with the "chemical that makes us gay" But on the other - were they assuming that all that gay people do is have sex or think about having sex? Per-lease

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It's not offensive at all as they are not suggesting that gay people only think about having sex. They say that people which are subjected to a strong aphrodisiac only want to think about sex. The army consists mainly of men (especially in the countries they would be fighting) so if you would subject them to a chemical that would make them gay and also with a chemical that would make them want to have sex (an aphrodisiac) this could result in them wanting to have sex with each other which could distract them from fighting a war. I honestly do not see what is so offensive about that towards gay people.

What gay people most likely are afraid of is that if you can indeed make someone gay using chemicals there will most likely also be a set of chemicals that would make a gay person straight. They are just offended because if this would work there would also be a "cure" for being gay.

It goes without saying that the "gay bomb" idea is just ridiculous. But did you hear about their other bright ideas--including the weapon to give enemy troops "severe and long-lasting" bad breath, another to make them attractive to swarms of stinging bees, or the one that would cause the smell of flatulence around them?

I mean, what can you say to this stuff? Supposedly responsible people (remember, I said, supposedly) being paid good money to sit around and think up ways to defeat an enemy with bad breath, farts, angry insects and--what, "gayness"?

You have to laugh at the stupidity. But at the same time, you have to wonder how these people can be allowed to run around loose on the street.

(Edited by Sandia 15/06/2007 00:09)

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by Sandia
It goes without saying that the "gay bomb" idea is just ridiculous.

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No it doesn't go without saying at all. Please do explain why these ideas are ridiculous. If it works wouldn't it be quite a nice and non-lethal way of disrupting an enemy army? Which is exactly what these scientists were asked to do. The idea behind this is that by making life so uncomfortable or distracting for the opponent they are not able to continue. In the classical sense we have been doing this by subjecting these soldiers to hot metal at high speeds which generally prevented them to preform their duty any longer (or live for that matter).

We have now come to an era in our human development in which we find it somewhat barbaric to kill another human being. Especially if they are just performing their duty and really it's their leaders we want out of the way. So if we can find non-lethal ways to achieve the same result (make life so uncomfy or distracting they cannot perform their duty) I definitely don't think thats either stupid or ridiculous. And lets be honest how well do you think you can perform your duty if you are being attack by swarms of bees or are bent over in corner puking and shitting your guts out? And unless you are allergic to bees it definitely beats being subjected to hot metal at twice the speed of sound.

Given the activities at the Tparty, I'm not entirely sure that it went untested

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by Chambler
(quotes)
We have now come to an era in our human development in which we find it somewhat barbaric to kill another human being.

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There's never beeen a shortage of people announcing that they "find killing barbaric". It rarely stops them when the time comes. Personally I don't find moral-schizophrenia to be particularly developed.

Mass-gayness in the ranks, however, would be something new. Spartans excluded.

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by Chambler
(quotes)

No it doesn't go without saying at all. Please do explain why these ideas are ridiculous....

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They just ARE. I'm not gay, but I do find the whole idea offensive--in addition to being stupid. I don't know anyone personally who has heard this story who doesn't also think it's ridiculous. I know that's not an argument in my favor. I'm just sayin'. And if this is such a great idea, I have some others they can try. Why not find a way to make one half of the soldiers paranoid, thinking the other half are cheating with their spouses? Why not find a chemical that turns some of them blue, and then chemically induce the others to attack all blue people. Why not program them so that they can't resist the urge to drop everything and start dancing whenever they hear Barry Manilow music--and then blast his music over the battlefields. Well, maybe the last one would be too cruel. And anyway, can you really dance to Barry Manilow music? But, I digress...

Thing is, we're never going to agree on this, Chambler. You either find it stupid and offensive or you don't. There may be some twisted logic that can be applied to doing it, but at its base, there's something kind of insulting to gay people embedded here. Maybe it's the way it's phrased--make them "gay." Using pheremones wouldn't make them gay. It would make them attracted to each other--if it worked. That's not making them gay just cause they're jumping each other under the influence of chemicals. Anyway, I don't want to get into that argument.

I guess one of my problems with the whole idea of doing this sort of thing is that we're spending (or spent--I hope they're still not doing it) a lot of good money that's needed elsewhere to have supposedly bright people sitting around trying to think up crap like this when there are so many other useful tasks they could be tackling. And that can be said about a lot of things government does. But this is our subject of the day.

And no, it's not preferable to have people shot dead by bullets. It's preferable to find ways to deal with disagreements among nations in ways other than fighting it out on the battlefield. Maybe they can spend a few billion researching that.

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by Chambler
(quotes)
It's not offensive at all as they are not suggesting that gay people only think about having sex. They say that people which are subjected to a strong aphrodisiac only want to think about sex.

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The reason they suggested it was because they were saying that Gay men in the army will get distracted and have sex with one another. This reason is trotted out to prevent Homosexuals in the armed forces. This so called bomb was more about preventing Homosexuals being in the army, than an actual serious idea.

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by wes
(quotes)
This reason is trotted out to prevent Homosexuals in the armed forces.

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The ban was dropped years ago in any Western country I can think of, and soldiers still manage to kill people just fine, so "they" can trot it out all they like -- the horse has long bolted.

Wes thats a elegant and simple explanation, however, that would have required the military to actually spin it the right way which they haven't done so far... However if we want elegant theories...

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The US Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Ohio asked in 1994 for US$7.5 million to develop a bomb containing a powerful aphrodisiac chemical that would cause "homosexual behavior" to affect "discipline and morale in enemy units."

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It's pretty simple.... as women so often tell us.... most men are dogs. Add powerful aphrodisiacs and they turn into dogs 10x over. However enemy armies would most likely have less women in the army than we do therefore that wouldn't have that much effect. But if you could make them sexually attracted to each other this could cause some serious discipline issues. It's like a traffic jam were 10% more or less cars makes all the difference. You don't need all of them to start jumping each other but if even 30% give in to their urges (at some point or other) thats more than enough to cause some serious disruption.

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Sandia
Maybe it's the way it's phrased--make them "gay." Using pheremones wouldn't make them gay. It would make them attracted to each other--if it worked. That's not making them gay just cause they're jumping each other under the influence of chemicals. Anyway, I don't want to get into that argument.

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(you didn't think the "I don't want to get into that argument" was really going to work right?) Okay here goes... Has the definition of being gay all of a sudden changed since I last checked a dictionary? Gay [noun] a homosexual person, esp. a male. Homosexual [noun] someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex.

And for good measure: Pheromone: A chemical secreted by an animal that influences the behavior or development of other members of the same species. Queen bees, for example, give off a pheromone that prevents other females in the hive from becoming sexually mature, with the result that only the queen bee mates and lays eggs. In many animal species, pheromones are used to establish territory and attract mates.

Are you also going to say to those female bees "no you aren't really sexually immature it's only caused by a chemical". Sorry but that doesn't all of a sudden mean they can lay eggs, fact is they are still changed by the chemical. Sure if they make you "temporary gay" with chemicals it doesn't mean they all of a sudden become snappy dressers and get in touch with their feminine side (yes I know that's a stereotypical depiction of gays). But from a biological viewpoint they would have sexual attraction to persons of the same sex which would make them homosexual and therefore gay. And if you than dose them with strong aphrodisiacs... well men are dogs..... heterosexual or not.

Also I don't see why the military shouldn't fund "ridiculous" & crazy research? Take DARPA about 85-90% of their projects "fail to meet their objectives" as they put it so politely. They will finance a lot of ridiculous ideas as thats how they develop revolutionary technologies. Think of stealth technology, GPS, most modern guidance and object recognition systems and the foundations for the internet as we know it today are all made possible by research funded by DARPA. And you don't think that many of these ideas were pretty out there when they were first thought up? With these fields of innovative research you never know what the actual end results will be and what kind of spin-off research it results in therefore you can't say before hand that "this research is ridiculous".

Also you don't seriously think that scientists are interested in building a "gay bomb"? Why would a scientist be interested in turning people temporarily gay and dose them up with aphrodisiacs? It is just the packaging that all the research gets wrapped in for them to get their research paid for by the Military. You have a homophobic military which is currently fighting an enemy which is very intolerant to homosexuals and you want to do research into how the human brain works and which chemicals effect it how and you have preexisting research that shows that sexual orientation can be affected by chemicals / hormones. Seriously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to write that grant application... (you are better off getting a biologist or chemist to write it for credibility)

And although you might not like the "promised" end product it's hard to deny that human brain chemistry is a very interesting field of research which has many other applications besides building a "gay bomb". But I doubt that many people would read that from a headline saying "Military wants to build gay bomb". So even if a project like this is part of the 90% that fails to deliver the end product it's 7.5 million well spent in furthering our understanding of the human brain and if it's part of the 10% we still got the research and the military is happy as well to have weapon they can probably never really use.

I think the reason that this is more funny than offensive is simply because it was just an idea. They failed to even get funding for further research because even the deeply stupid at the Pentagon saw how ridiculous the notion of a gay sex bomb actually is.

It caused a big stir because it's so silly, but I'm sure equally silly ideas were considered - and in some cases applied.

I think people are finding it offensive because
a) It's grossly stupid and would have been an obscene waste of US taxpayer's money and
b) The idea that a few chemicals will make heterosexual men "gay" is to suggest that a few chemicals is all it takes to alter the deep-rooted sexual behaviour of any given human being and exacerbating the notion that homosexuality is in some way a "disease" and can be "cured" with a simple drug.

Mostly a) , though

On a related topic - I wonder what they were slipping in the coffee the morning of that particular focus group

maybe they should have just started supplying them with the coffee served at torchwood??

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by Sandia
Why not program them so that they can't resist the urge to drop everything and start dancing whenever they hear Barry Manilow music--and then blast his music over the battlefields. Well, maybe the last one would be too cruel. And anyway, can you really dance to Barry Manilow music?

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::Loves Barry::

No really, I do HAHAHA!

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by Teresa
(quotes)

::Loves Barry::

No really, I do HAHAHA!

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Another Fanilow!

Jazz likes him too and we quite often have a big old gay sing song in the car. I'm totally not ashamed of this.

Quite right too. No Fanilow should ever be ashamed.

Chambler, as I wrote above, we're never going to agree on this issue. But there's nothing wrong with a discussion.

Using pheromones (thanks for the spelling correction) on someone to make them attracted to someone else doesn't make them gay. Not in my book anyway. I can't say it better than Kate said it above: "The idea that a few chemicals will make heterosexual men 'gay' is to suggest that a few ehcmicals is all it takes to alter the deep-rooted sexual behavior of any given huna being..." Yeah, what Kate said. It might change their behavior while they're under the influence of the chemicals, but it doesn't change who they innately are. And that's as far as you're going to drag me into that argument.

And by the way, people have learned to use pheromones for useful things. U.S. Forest Service scientists are using pheromones to stop a huge infestation of mountain pine beetles from destroying whitebark pine forests in the Rocky Mountains. Certain pheromones applied to the trees seem to keep the beetles away. I'm sure there are many other useful things that can be done with pheromones. But not this stuff--again, in my opinion

As for DARPA, what can I say? Their task is to find new technology that the US military can use. And yeah, some useful things have come out of DARPA. GPS is certainly useful, and it's great that it has been made available to the world. DARPA's predecessor was responsible for some of the early work that eventually produced the Internet. OK, I'm all for that. I'm sure a lot of other things useful to civilians have come out of DARPA. But I'm not going to get into the habit of defending their "research" because I believe the huge amount of money they get could be assigned to non-military areas of research and development (which have seen major budget cuts in recent years, especially under Bush) and we would eventually get products or applications that are just as useful, without spending a ton of money on finding ways to kill and maim people. But then, that's just me.


OK, and to both Teresa and Maffrew, how can I ignore the Barry Manilow love? You were really brave to out yourselves there. But when I think of Barry Manilow, songs like "I Write the Songs," "Cobacabana," and "Mandy" come to mind. And I have to say those songs would be on my Jukebox from Hell. Someone once said that hell--if there is a hell--would be an eternity of having to endure whatever it was in life that you hated or feared most. So my personal "hell" would probably be an eternity of being stuck in an enclosed place with a bunch of spiders. And then, to make it even more hellish, there would be a loudspeaker blasting Barry Manilow music in--or maybe that old Roberta Flack song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Or anything by Sade. And I'd be forced to eat cheese--warm, soft, drippy cheese. And there would be a screen showing a continuous loop of "American Idol" or "Knight Rider" or "Baywatch." And... Goodness, there's so much more. But I'll stop before it gets really weird.

apparently, this is going into production as a "fine art" movie...
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