If the former is less relevant to our everyday life than the latter (and I certainly think that’s the case) then it seems only fair to say that the former is “less a part of us” than the latter, don’t you think?

No, I think the difference is that my subjective standards for calling somebody an X are a bit higher than yours. I think that the best solution to this would be to avoid subjective “catch-all” definitions altogether and be precise about what exactly we’re talking about: ideally, we should distinguish between “a man…

Well, that’s where I disagree. For example, I don’t think that a man’s unconscious propensity for violence should be grounds for calling him “a violent person”. There are many environments in which that propensity will simply never manifest itself. It could manifest itself in other ways (as you correctly pointed out),…

I don’t see the problem with that. In practical terms it’s what we do that should matter... we don’t persecute people for thought crimes.

Since, as you pointed out, this is a semantic distinction, we might as well keep it in the purely theoretical realm. Therefore, if we assume (for argument’s sake) that the majority of modern Greek men do, in fact, have a propensity for pedophilia that they are not consciously aware of but which can be detected on an…

It would be naive to assume that everyone that supposedly engaged in sexual relations with boys in Ancient Greece were necessarily sexually attracted to them.

Yes, I agree with all of this. But then again, you can say this about many other “propensities” as well, such as spectacularly violent inclinations in people that were otherwise nonviolent (as in the Nazis during the Holocaust), inclinations to rape women among men that wouldn’t ordinarily commit such acts (as in the…

No, it would:

So, following that logic, most men in Greece today are pedophiles.

I agree that there is probably a core group of homosexuals, (presumably) of heterosexuals, and (possibly) of bisexuals that simply won’t change their sexual orientation no matter what social environment they’re thrown into. But I also think that the remaining portion of people (and this could be a majority) have a…

That being said... it should not be a surprise to anyone that as a culture becomes tolerant towards “homosexual activities” people are more willing to (admit to) engaging in “homosexual activities”.

Fair enough, but I think it’s more interesting to look at the difference between the “All GB adults” and “18-24 year olds” categories. You can see that, in terms of the percentage point difference between those two categories, 0-2 seem not to be too stable and 3-6 seem far more stable. Furthermore, most bisexuals tend…

Again, it’s not quite so simple. You would use “gay” to describe an identity while conservatives could use it to describe a practice. That is not too outlandish a claim:

Well, not quite. For a Kinsey 0 individual it is not a “choice” not to engage in homosexual sex. He simply doesn’t feel such an inclination, and so doesn’t have to take the further step of “choosing” not to act upon it. “Choosing” to engage in homosexual sex only makes sense for Kinsey 1 through 6 individuals, and…

No, I think the first sentence is demonstrably true, the second is plausible but confusingly stated, and the third is up for interpretation.

No, I agree.

Well, it’s showing the effect of culture on something, we just don’t know what that something is.

Well that is something that I simply don’t know.

You cannot choose to have an inclination, that’s not how human brains work. You can, however, choose to act on it or not.

So do you really think that over 1 in 2 young Britons in Victorian England were hiding their homosexual inclinations all the time? I think it’s far more likely that most of them wouldn’t have those inclinations in the first place simply by growing up and living in a far more conservative environment. In the ancient…