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Why does it matter is sexual orientation is innate or choice? Most people choose who they sleep with, who they live with, who they marry. Why do we care if some people are going to choose people of the same sex (or sometimes people of the same sex)?

To those of us who don't care who other people sleep with, have sex with and marry to, it does not matter whether it is innate or not. But you know very well that it matters to a lot of people in the world and we can not pretend like everyone see it as "it does not matter" . Now back to your question why it does matter to them whether it is innate or not A logical person would think that religious people would be more tolerable to homosexuals if they knew that it is innate . This is common sense but a very naive expectation imo.. Among multiple reasons, the most powerful reason is, in my own opinion, if it is accepted as "innate" it leads to accepting that the person had no choice and if you are a believer it means that it is given by GOD. Now this is one hell of a big brown and smelly thing for a believer to accept and swallow. Shortly accepting it to be innate contradicts with all the other jambo mambos a believer has already accepted to be true. It threatens the main fundamental structure of what they believe. It is yet another smack on the face about the image of GOD for them. It is acceptable ONLY if those people are sick and there is some sort of disorder about them or they chose to be sinners. Basically it is more about their image of their GOD and about themselves rather than being about homosexuals. And as a result they will argue to death that it is not innate despite the science. As we witnessed in this very topic. If it is chosen by a person and not innate, they will still hate/judge that person but not as much as they would hate when it is decided to be godgiven. Even the idea of it terrorizes them.

Thanks for the answers. Let's say for argument's sake that both hands were ♠ ♦ two suiters , so just mentally switch the clubs and diamonds in each hand. Would that change your mind?

From Pope Francis to Explore Climate’s Effect on World’s Poor: Just when you thought the Vatican was on it's last legs. I love this guy. He is a million times more interesting than anyone on Game of Thrones.

Your partners bidding does not make sense in the case he took your double as take -out. If you are in FG auction, he knows that you should end up in game, so he has nothing to risk to double with his hand(If he thinks your playing TO doubles here), which you then would pass, I assume. As for the meaning of the double here - usually if you are in FG situation, there should be a forcing pass/penalty double, situation so the double is penalty.

The Double of 2H should be penalty even if you have bid a forcing NT. But, when you are in a game forcing and natural auction, you should be making natural bids. Your double of 2H says you want to defend 2H doubled; and partner with the balanced hand expected when he passed 2H has no reason to remove it. Using your Double in this scenario as takeout is just plain silly. If you had spade support you would bid spades, if you wanted to rebid clubs you would have rebid clubs, and if you had a diamond suit to go with your clubs you would bid diamonds. Furthermore, if opener had hearts and no particular club fit he would have doubled and if he had a 2NT rebid he would have bid 2NT; so, everyone on the planet should know that your side wants to stop off and penalize them. It wasn't just you playing some other method than 2/1; neither was partner.

My opinion is that although switching to penalty doubles in G/F auctions where both partners have showed a real suit is technically superior, the advantage is small and making the change isn't worth the extra discussion/agreements so I prefer to stick with T/O doubles especially in a pickup partnership. At MPs, if I did guess to start 2C I would forget about the G/F and pass out 2H. You already took a 'position' by bidding 2C, partner is marked with a minimum hand, limited club support and the hand screams misfit so I'd gamble that any positive score for our side will be reasonable score. It's also very likely that the opponents are playing in a 5/0 or 5/1 heart fit with a 5/4 diamond fit on the side!

I don't want to be banned or see the thread closed, therefore I shall let the 'thinking' behind this absurd proposition stand for itself, lol. Ok, I can't stand it. lol. Atheism is the absence of belief....it is not that I believe there is no God. After all, while it seems improbable that there is, and vanishingly impossible that, if there is, it matches the description of any god invented by humans, it isn't possible to prove that no god-like entity, whatever that means, exists. No, I do not believe in the absence of god....I just don't possess any belief in its existence. This proposition, so straightforward to most secular people, seems somehow to be beyond the ability of most religious believers to grasp.

You gotta get around more :)

Somewhat standard would be to play transfers: XX=4+♥ 1♥=4+♠ 1♠-bal hand 1NT - club 2C - diamonds Higher your choice Usually with a stronger hand that wants to penalize opps you can pass, then X them after they bid

5♣ :)

True. Cue the Howell that I got a little suspicious of off the top, so starting counting HCP. I averaged 7.7 (including the 14-count that I opened an Acol 2♠ on). "But everybody had the same hands". Yes, but nobody else had my 27 :-(. I am so well known as being a bad card holder that there's a convention on my card (that is not on my partners'): APAD. Always Pass As Dealer. I pity those playing in my line, sometimes to the point of apologizing to them. This is cherrypicking and confirmation bias, I know; just as much as "those damn computer hands are". But it's fun. But seriously, on the "cards fall the same way for everyone else" - that would be fine if bridge players were uniform spheres of constant density skill. And it is better than non-duplicate. But if you defend the no-way-to-bid grand showing up against the only pair in the room playing Relay Precision, or play your easy grand opposite the only pair in the room that opens that dreck 3♥ EHAA in front of you, or the "auto" squeeze against the best pair in the room, who figured out how to break it up at trick 3 - "everyone else gets the same cards" doesn't have the same ring.

I can think of the following types of factors: - general skill level - fluctuations in performance, for example caused by bad sleep or family problems. The temporary down related to experimenting with new strategies may fit here also - random artefacts of the tournament design. For example a lucky draw, or white pieces against the equalllevel opponents. Drawing opponents who are particularly ill prepared for your strange openings - making the right choice in a toss up situation where you mentally flip a coin - randomness intrinsic to the game such as dice throws Only the last factor is absent in chess but I suppose one could argue that it is the only factor which is pure luck intrinsic to the game. Really it is a semantic issue. -

I do not understand cuebidding on this type of hand either, keycard is a very simple way to show that you have 3 aces and the queen of trumps, at which point partner should be well placed. You even get to find out if partner has the right black king or not very easily. Cuebidding auctions are very elegant but there is always a degree of judgement in place, and things can go wrong much easier since the bidding is not nearly as tightly defined as in keycard auctions. When I have a hand of all keycards, especially one where one king is much better from partner than another king, I am always thinking keycard.