elwaps

Thanks! So... should I move the STEP Compilation? Or will this get me into trouble?

I'm using your suggestions for a while now. I couldn't find any odd distant textures so far. However, I still don't get what you mean with the STEP Texture Compilation. These are the downloads from STEP: You probably mean the above one including the STEP patch and stuff?! Now, when I move this from the beginning of 2N (Patches) to between the end of 2K (Clutter & Misc) and the parallax files (probably to have parallax overwrite a ton of the compilation textures), won't I get problems due to the other mods from the compilation? Or are you again talking about a different pack of textures I'm not aware of? :D

Hiding the files (from TreesHD) recommended in the guide worked for me. Tho my texture problem looked slightly different, here's a screenshot: As you can see the bright texture is repeated at the very top of the screen. In detail my problem was a misinterpretation of the guide. It told me to hide several files names blahblah*.dds. As I couldn't find any files with that * symbol I just didn't hide them. After some thinking I figured out that * means hiding every file with ...blahblah*.dds where the * stands for anything like _n and whatever the files are named. After hiding them in MO everything worked fine.

Using STEP. I think I had it once after adding Alternate Start among all the mods from REGS. But I really only had it once in more than 20 hours of testplaying so I didn't research the cause. Have you activated the Papyrus Log thing in skyrim.ini? Perhaps there's something script related in the logs, the CTDs I'm currently (randomly) having seem to be script related tho I'm too inexperienced to properly interpret them.

Sounds like a good plan to me (: I tracked the folder size too when benchmarking/installing. 13.1 GB After installing Skyrim and doing the Launcher options 37.0 GB After installing (almost) everything from STEP 47.8 GB After installing (almost) everything from REGS 48.5 GB After installing ENB & Weather mods 51.1 GB After installing parallax textures 52.6 GB After installing Environment & Sound mods (that's where I am at the moment)

I know this isn't directly the topic for this but I'm not getting help anywhere else and I'm just too inexperienced to properly interpret Papyrus logs myself. So I am building my setup since a while in a modular way (STEP 2.2.9.2, REGS, ENB, Weather, Parallax, Landscape, Sound,...) with some hours of testing between each section. Since REGS I mostly end up with one or two CTDs in my 3 hours testing sessions. What caught my attention was, that in ALL Papyrus logs, errors about DLC1VampireBeastRace aswell as DualSheathReduxEffect are mentioned thousands of times before each crash. Is this normal or expected? Is there any way to fix it if it indeed was connected to DSR? What does it mean? You can see my logs by clicking on the "My Benchmark" link in my signature and then, in each section, on "Stability". Here's just the latest example: If you could help me with that and make my somewhat playable installation into a rock stable 200+ mods setup, you'd be my hero!

All I've read sounds good so far except for the AMD drivers, I really don't know much about AMD at all since I quit my job at a computer store two years ago so I can't say anything about it. But just as Nebulous said, are you doing 2.2.9.1 or 2.2.9.2? For my detailed mod setup, I think initially I left out only two mods: Dragons shout with Voices (I like the monster like sound better) and Oblivion Gates (hate the textures, conflicts with a cool house mod). Every change other than that can be found on my benchmark page (see signature link). I've separated my "installation log" into sections, each post is one section so it starts with STEP, followed by REGS (see changes compared to original REGS guide), followed by Vividian & Weather (see changes to REGS) and so on. But be warned, "even" I still get CTDs. So following my "guide" isn't a perfect solution at the moment. I'm pretty sure they're script related but I'm too noob to interpret Papyrus logs. Also, be warned looking at your video card. It was a cool card back then but definitely weaker (20%+ specifically in Skyrim) than my GTX 680 4GB. And I got freaking 25-40 fps where I am right now. And my installation isn't even finished yet. You WILL be looking at a slideshow if you do everything I did. Finally, I know how it is playing with equipment like that. I was a student for a long time. When being rich like a student, you even try to bake (yeah, it works (for a short time)) your failing video card.

Modding Skyrim often feels like trying to build a 500hp car out of matches, paper and glue. Sometimes you will fail (but also learn) but when it finally works, its just as awesome as it can get! Well, I've never tried your ENB (as I think Vividian is the perfect mixture of eye candy, performance and, when choosing the vanilla preset, also lore friendlyness while being popular and having a good guide) but such things shouldn't happen with any preset. What do you mean by setting your INIs to STEP specifications? Do you mean the ENBoost settings (which disable any graphics features of ENB) in the beginning of the guide or that extra ENB section telling you what to set when using an actual ENB? This is the page I'm talking about Basically, these are the important parts, given you've already successfully installed/configured ENBoost according to STEP: - Set your video driver to "application controlled" when it comes to VSync, Anisotropic Filtering and Anti Aliasing (given your ENB got some good AA like SMAA) - Set your skyrimprefs.ini to the following to let your ENB control all of the settings [Display] iMaxAnisotropy=0 iMultiSample=0 bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 - Prepare your enblocal.ini for an actual ENB preset with the following. The first setting is basically a switch between "only use the stability and performance improvements of the ENB framework and ignore all fancy stuff coming from presets and other settings" (true) and "allow using all kinds of stuff your preset offers, leading to eye candy and framerate drop" (false). [GLOBAL] UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false UseDefferedRendering=true - Do not copy the ENBs enblocal.ini over your already existing one as many ENBs got weird settings included in their ini. Only change the following sections of your enblocal.ini, my game for example just crashed when I replaced my STEP enblocal.ini with the ENB one: [PROXY]Copy all settings[GLOBAL]Copy all settings[ENGINE]ForceLodBias=LodBias=[FIX]Copy all settings- Check your memory settings in your enblocal.ini, VideoMemorySizeMb should be set according to this memory test tool linked in the STEP guide somewhere (probably in the beginning in the ENBoost settings). This is important as many other guides often recommend formulas outputting way too high numbers. Especially as there's a dumb limitation within Windows 10. Following the usual formulas I get 10240 MB for that setting. But as Windows 10 somehow restricts DirectX9 memory usage, my actual setting coming from the tool is 4064 MB. Be sure to run the DX9 and not the DX11 one as Skyrim is DX9. - For everything else, stick absolutely to every detail in the description of your ENB (usually on Nexus). I don't know about Organic but the Vividian settings are very, very detailed - Often ENBs will conflict with certain mods that alter lightning (ELE,...) and similar things, often there's patches for these mods for ENB, weather and so on. Again, use them according to your ENBs description The "good thing" with your problem is, that you get you CTD at the Bethesda Symbol and not randomly after 348 hours ingame. So checking if your recent changes fixed it isn't really time consuming. However, what a DLC could contribute to let your ENB crash is beyond my knowledge. Finally, I hope you've cleaned your esms with TES5Edit, not with LOOT. While saying that, one thing came to my mind about your DLC issue. Dawnguard needs to be cleaned TWICE. I think I overlooked this in my installation first and due to that had some issues (tho I don't remember what kind of issues but dirty plugins always tend to raise your CTD rate). You REALLY ACTUALLY need to clean it twice. No idea why, no idea who found this out but its true. Dawnguard is a special case. It must be cleaned twice. Repeat steps 2 through 9. /edit Here's someone with an AMD card whose ENBoost was crashing all the time on Win10. He needed to reload DirectX9 as the AMD drivers did strange things and apparently tried to use DX12.

Adding to the above guide with the (1) ... (9) numbers: I remember the Dual Sheath Redux (or, if planning to install it, the SkyRe/PerMa/ASIS?) patcher sometimes complaining about DynDOLOD.esp having missing masters. This happens when removing a mod that is used by DynDOLOD. In this case, the first (instead of the 6th) thing I do is replacing the DnyDOLOD.esp with a backup. That way it is "cleaned" of its master dependencies (as it is a fresh file that hasn't been changed yet) and DSR doesn't complain anymore when patching. Basically it doesn't matter when you replace DynDOLOD.esp, it only gets needed and changed when doing the second DynDOLOD (Worlds) run. This is the point all the masters are saved into the esp, to be exact it happens when you exit TES5Edit after the script run and allow it to safe changes to the file. Also, it may very well be that I have done (and still do) some unneccessary steps (like putting the Docs folder after running the Bashed Patch into the output folder, no idea if this is needed at all) and I surely know that running DynDOLOD after each and every section is not needed. But I just try to go the safe way to prevent all those "Do my issues perhaps come from not running DynDOLOD/Bashed/DSR/... this time? Great, now its try and error time to find the reason." moments from happening. Also, how did that giant star thing get into my post above? :O_o: /edit One last helpful advice, that is even more helpful when you plan to add mods on top of STEP: download everything directly in MO. Do not delete anything from the downloads tab after installing it. That way, when you later need to change something (adding patches for new mods, reinstalling with other options,...) you just go to your downloads tab, you will quickly find the file you're looking for as they're (mostly) in the same order as your left pane mod order and you'll just doubleclick it and thats it. You WILL adapt to this behaviour once you need to redownload a >1GB mod because of a 10kB patch only available inside the mod installer. Also, and again especially when planning to install tons of mods on top of STEP, give the folders in the left pane of MO proper, recognizable names. That way MO is a perfectly clear and comprehensible overview of your installation. You can see what I mean when clicking on "My Modlist" below and then on the "Modlist" tab. [sTEP 2D14] Name, where 2D stands for the category and 14 for the position the mod got inside that category. [REGS 41120] Name, where 41120 stands for the section/number of the mod inside the REGS (which is an outdated pack for STEP) guide [bSaR 2 PARALLAX] Name, where BSaR stands for Beyond STEP and REGS and 2 for the category I've made up myself For adding stuff on top, I collected ideas during STEP/REGS installation and combined mods I wanted to install into my own little "packs" after each I do my patching routine and benchmark and some hours of testing. BSaR 1 was Vividian ENB and a ton of weather mods, 2 was parallax textures only, 3 was sounds and landscapes (that's what I'm currently testing) and so on. Between sections of STEP, I've added spacers by going into the Skyrim\Mod Organizer\Mods\ folder, creating a new folder inside, naming it for example [sTEP 2N], restarting mod organizer and pull that empty folder between STEP 2M and 2N. All of this isn't needed but helps me to not get confused.

Good luck guys. Nope, I'm using a GTX 680 4GB. I'm not sure about AMD & ENB, all I more or less remember is someone else from this forum doing a full 2.2.9.1 or 2 with AMD and it worked. Perhaps you'll need to roll back your driver or something (pure guessing, I honestly don't know), who knows, but I guess the STEP team also tested with AMD so it SHOULD go well without such issues. By the way, before my current installation I've installed 2.2.9.1. I did benchmark it too (no major difference to 9.2 if I remember correctly) but I wasn't as structured as I'm now. STEP itself was stable but when adding stuff on top of it I did almost no testing, didn't note patches for STEP mods I could need later, didn't properly name my mods in MO and ended up with frequent freezes and casual CTDs and no chance to track them down. Back then I didn't know about Memory Block Log, Papyrus Logs and so on and I think I messed something up with the Bashed Patch or one of the other patchers. Its all a learning process and this somewhat failed installation aswell as reading alot of stuff in the forum greatly added to my knowledge, tho I'm probably still on the noob side in this forum. This time, if you look at the thread I've linked in my signature (Benchmark blah), I'm trying to do everything as repeatable and detailed as possible so I got a better chance to know where potential issues arise from. But don't let me make you doubt about STEP itself, before I've added anything to 2.2.9.2 it was rock stable. All of this may sound pretty time consuming (if you should ever decide to somehow more or less follow my efforts) but I'm in no rush and plan to get an installation I can use for a long time. Also, this modding stuff makes fun in my eyes.

@krossbonzz I've ran benchmarks after each and every section during STEP 2.2.9.2 installation. I don't remember exactly which files I had deactivated at which point of time. However, if any missing master was reported I just deactivated the whining esp for the benchmark run. Don't be mad at me if you already know this, which is probable, but they're in the right pane of MO and got a warning sign. Hovering over this sign exactly shows which master files are missing. After finishing my benchmark and putting the results into my sheet I continued installing the next section and when finished, I right clicked in the right pane and activated ALL esps. Some of the warning sign ones would be happy by now as their missing master(s) were added with the current section, the rest with warnings again gets deactivated for the next benchmark run. The only esps that were deactivated all the time were those with a brush icon, meaning their esps aren't needed as long as their package (BSA) was checked in the Archive tab on the right side. Another point is, that after installing one section of mods, I ALWAYS ran the entire patch stuff. Every time. Meaning, depending on the section you've just installed, (1) applying custom LOOT rules for the section, write down those not possible yet (in case the "load after" mod isn't installed yet). (2) running LOOT and apply its result, (3) creating a Bashed Patch and (as I activated all esps before) let it deactivate those it can or already has merged and put the output in its folder. (4) running Dual Sheath Redux and put the output in its folder. (5) running FNIS and put the output in its folder. (6) replace the DnyDOLOD.esp with a backup and put it at the bottom of the load order on the right, (7) run the first DynDOLOD script through TES5Edit, zip the output and install it via MO and replace the former output folder with it, (8) deactivate Birds and Flocks in the left pane and run the second DynDOLOD script through TES5Edit, this time with pressing Shift while loading all mods (I don't know why but it seems to be important) and again with installing it and replacing the existing folder with it. (9) Finally reactivating Birds and Flocks and running LOOT again to put it back into the right place. Hope I didn't forget anything. One thing that can possibly cause issues in section 2I, by the way, is that the Bashed Patch MUST be created after this section when using the Content Addon of Blade of Woe. I think its just a note in a blue box on that mod's "detailed instructions" page but I guess its pretty important. I haven't had even ONE crash during the entire benchmarking/installation. The very only problems I had experienced were spinning horses and flipping carriages that went wild together with the entire physics engine due to too high framerates when testing without mods (after STEP 1B) on low/medium launcher settings. As my 2.2.9.2 installation wasn't too long ago, perhaps I can help you looking at your load order and mod order. A look into your enblocal.ini and the other inis could be helpful too. I'm anything but a pro but as said, I just recently did the same you're doing now. The best way to upload Mod and Load Order aswell as the Skyrim inis should be modwat.ch. You can go to that site, download the tool, tell the tool where exactly your Mod Organizer profile path is, click upload and share your results online. I'm not sure if you need to create an account or something but its convenient as hell. You can see mine when you click on "My Modlist" in my signature but I think I haven't uploaded my very recent additions.

You've missed to react to my comparison to the treatment of black people in the US a few decades ago. You've also again missed to give a reason why the heavy restriction of the lives of millions of people is necessary in your eyes. Also, hiding behind legal theory doesn't change the reality that homosexuals are forced to live with a secret that, when uncovered, leads to prison and/or physical harm while causing psychological damage as long as it isn't uncovered. Do you think such a life is fun? Also, do you think comparing the impact of "worldviews" (remember, we're not talking about a worldview but about a sexual preference) like Sharia on society to the impact of homosexuality on society is a valid comparison? Or perhaps more like a strawman that makes arguing against it easier? Final question: by putting Christian indoctrination into quotation marks, do you want to express that it doesn't exist?

As I also got rare but annoying CTDs, but NEVER during loading screens, I can at least try to exclude some of your mods that shouldn't cause your loading screen CTDs. Climates of Tamriel Vividian ENB (with VividSnow and Clouds and Groundfogs) Wet & Cold I'm using all of these. Looking at your Memory Blocks Log, why have you set the first block to 768 MB when you never even reach 512 MB? I don't know if there's a downside of increasing the value, just asking.

I guess this would be incompatible with WARZONES 2015 and CWO, wouldn't it? Not criticizing your choice as I can't imagine it would be incompatible to anything from STEP, just wondering as I plan to install one of them (probably WARZONES to avoid console use during playthrough).

May I ask which incompatibilities you've encountered so far? As for me it only was Riverwood people being somewhat stuck (solved itself after using the ingame wait function and wouldn't have surprised me if it would have been a vanilla "feature") and the Solitude blacksmith using a grinder that wasn't there.

„Contrary to your impression, I do not believe that homosexuals are interfering with my freedoms by just being present.“ Still you think it is acceptable or even desirable to ban them from public. „I am, however, rather uneasy seeing myself becoming the subject of this discussion, mind you.“ Its not us becoming the subjects of this discussion but our views and opinions. That’s why I’m asking for yours. If I wanted to converse with an opposite that has no opinion I could instead talk to Wikipedia. „But - more to the point - I am extremely uneasy at the though of my children being inducted into liberal PC early childhood education programs teaching them that it doesn't really mean much that they have a father and a mother, replacing me with a second, lesbian, mother would be juuust fine.“ This is a flat non argument. Tolerance towards homosexuals does not mean telling your children that it doesn’t matter who their parents are, this is just dumb. Its just about accepting same sex couples like you accept different sex couples instead of discriminating them and seeing them as inferior humans. All of this aims at allowing those couples to live normal lives just like yours. You’re not met with hostility when seen with a woman in public. Same sex couples often are, especially in countries with laws like the Russian ones. I imagine it must be one of the worst feelings you can have when everyone automatically hates you for being seen with your loved one. To more precisely answer to your statement, it is just about people (including children) knowing that love isn’t restricted to a specific combination of genders. Which it obviously isn’t. Its basically the same like with black/white couples in the US a few decades ago. You can either prevent your children from ever seeing such couples, try to ban such couples from the public and create laws illegalizing them, just like it happened there, so that when your children once encounter them they either react like when seeing a three headed goat or, depending on what they were taught by their parents, with rejection or hate. Or you can tell your children that most guys love girls but there’s also some people who are different. Nothing more is required to allow millions of people living normal, happy lives. „But isn't it the job of every type of government (be it socially conservative or liberal)? Pluralism can only go so far. Where the values in question are inherently incompatible, you have no choice but to uphold one over the other“ Although you’re constantly ignoring my question, this is the very point. Of course governments often need to find a compromise between two positions. Basically, if there wasn’t two or more opinions on any topic but just one, there would hardly be the need for a state. However, I’m asking again. Is it worth destroying the life of millions just so that you don’t have to explain to your children that there’s more than boy loves girl? I don’t think so. And I fail to understand how anyone would be that egoistic and unemphatic. „Not long ago you seemed to have to trouble understanding why, for example, religious morals are largely incompatible with open homosexuality.“ This is wrong. Instead I even gave a detailed explanation on why religion is mostly incompatible with homosexuality. I also remarked that, looking at the holy scriptures, that view objectively isn’t justified, just scroll up. Also, from that point of view, the incompatibility shouldn't be restricted to open homosexuality but to homosexuality in general. „You might not like that judgement, you might find that your particular country's public morals necessitate a different one, but you can't really argue with it.“ As you see, I do. Which takes us back to my question from a few lines above, that was entirely ignored so far. „It prohibits deliberate propaganda of homosexuality to minors“ …but leaves open to interpretation what exactly is regarded as propaganda. With smoking and such like that’s easy. Smoke and your propagating smoking. With homosexuality, what exactly is forbidden? If you cloth yourself more feminine than expected from heterosexuals, is this already illegal and you need to cover up? Holding hands with a same sex person? Protesting against arrestments of homosexuals? Demonstrating? All of this leads frequently to persons being beaten up and the police more likely arresting those persons instead of the attackers. Basically this law attacks all of it, depending on who interprets it. Amongst others, you are robbed of your right to demonstrate (just look online for random demonstrations for gay rights and how they usually end) and thereby by your freedom of speech. For a little impression of one of the more harmless things I’m talking about, have a look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYzccu5tn7A and scroll, for example, to 2 minutes if you’re lazy. „you seem to be overdramatizing the impact“ I’m not. Of course you can only look at the law itself and close your eyes for everything else. But then you’re underestimating the effects. I can give you dozens of examples like the above and worse.

"a) I never said that." But you meant it? If not I don't get your position in this debate then. "which I thought you denied, as in 'respecting the rights and freedoms of people can not include restricting the rights and freedoms of others' - so, did you?" In that quote I was referring to you interpreting the UNDHR. Quite an unclear statement of mine tho. I was trying to say what I've said with a later statement: "abusing the human rights to undermine human rights does not work." in a sense that allows homophobics to abuse their right on freedom to restrict the rights of homosexuals. "I don't believe your personal definition of discrimination has any relevance for this problem whatsoever" So that's where some of the misunderstandings from above derived from. Perhaps that was just me, however, in my language "discrimination" is almost solely used in the way I've described it. Now that you know, you'll probably understand why I've interpreted some of your statements about discrimination as either nitpicking or nonsense. I haven't asked for it but its interesting to see where the current situation in Russia derived from. However, referring to "harming the moral development" is using empty words to impose the moral positions of the government (or perhaps even the majority of society) on a minority. The law just predefines a desired moral development, predefines an absolute moral and doesn't even give reasons what exactly would harm children when seeing homosexuals. Just as I assumed, you would find a rhetoric justification for this, even, and this is plain ironic, in a human rights paper. Still, following the moral positions of a majority (were there polls or something before passing the law to determine those positions or was it just the legislative assuming what would be the moral positions of the majority?) could be of help when weighting two equally problematic positions against each other. In the case of homosexuality however, the impact on the minority is way bigger than the impact on the majority. Not allowing homosexuality is literally destroying the life of a seven or eight digit number of citizens. Which, looking at the alternative, is not covered by human rights. The positions and statements of the government on the topic made it even worse, so that part of the majority now feels to have the right to threaten, beat up and sometimes even kill homosexuals. I doubt many of these crimes are reported as the victims would have to out themselves as homosexual before officials then. If, on the other hand, homosexuality was allowed, that seven or eight digit number of people would be able to live normal lives without the constant danger of being outed and punished while the majority would have to explain their children what homosexuality is. So, again, is it worth to force millions of people into a secret life with the constant threat of prosecution and physical harm leading to a high suicide rate to avoid explaining to your children that there's more than boys loving girls? "I am, indeed, of the religious conviction that views homosexual acts (not homosexuality itself) as morally wrong" Why that distinction? I don't get that "I got no problems with you being homosexual but if I ever see you in public I will make you go to jail" position. I'm not gay myself but I'd rather watch a young gay couple kissing in public than two 300 lbs beauties or an 70 years old man with his 20 years old girlfriend. Yet I would never even think of trying to prohibit any of it. Must be due to "because religion!" I guess... "I'm not one of those who think 'Tis the work of the DEVIL!'" Don't worry, we wouldn't have this debate if you were. "in the history of science as a whole, having a moral/religious views have never been a obstacle" I don't see how this is connected to our debate but you're right. As long as you're working scientifically, you can believe in whatever you want. In a reasonable way. What happens when you get too fanatic can be seen throughout history, young earth creationism respectively intelligent design are just the youngest examples. And, unfortunately, not having religious views or not sharing the exact official positions has been an obstacle way too often.

In contrary to you, the source would be of interest for me so please provide it. /edit By the way, if you don't suggest interfering with child nurture as a "solution" to "cure" homosexuality at a young age or are religiously motivated in regards of homosexuality being a sin, for this debate it doesn't really matter if sexual preference is mainly influenced by factors before or after birth. So in that case we could save several hours each of reading studies and instead debate the core of the topic.

"Your freedoms end where mine begin" True. So how exactly are homosexuals interfering with your freedom to get a justification for restricting their freedom out of these articles? By just being present? Do you value your personal freedom to not being annoyed by their presence higher than their personal freedom to love whoever they might love? "That makes any legal reference to public morals absurd, don't you find? And yet, every human rights instrument recognizes the right and duty of a democracy to protect these morals, just like public health and public safety. You might as well argue that health and safety is subjective, and therefore the police have no legal right to restrict the right to association and freedom of movement of criminals." You're (intentionally) mixing up laws with morality. Also, while murderers, thieves and such not only interfer with human rights (right for property, right to be unharmed etc) but also harm public safety and health and therefore are restricted by laws, how exactly do homosexuals interfer with human rights, public safety or health? Your comparison is absurd. "if a state sees that in a society build around a specific set of morals [...] is exposed to another, minority set of morals contrary" Show me how homosexuality interfers with the foundation of a democratic secular state. Also, who is to determine which moral is minor? This is why I've pointed out that morals cannot be objective. This is also why assisted suicide, abortion and such are controverse topics rather than no brainers with a predefined absolute position. "All in all, I'm afraid you're stuck with an ill-informed idea of what 'discrimination' is. The thing is, international law prohibits illegal discrimination, whereas legal discrimination is, well, perfectly legal. For example, criminals [...]" Criminals again. To me, discrimination is disadvantaging someone based upon his appearance, sex, religion, sexual preference, skin color etc and not based upon his actions. And I don't think my definition is too far from what is generally considered discrimination. By that, "legal discrimination" only exists in states not ensuring human rights. "I believe you're confused here. No-one is taking anyone's rights away. We're talking about justifiably limiting these rights, as per domestic and international laws." To help me with my confusion you could clearly state what your idea of the legal status of homosexual persons would be. You could also point out of what advantage limiting the rights of a group of persons chosen by their sexual preference (this is what I call discrimination) would have.

I am aware of Article 29 (2). However, when following the UNDHR, respecting the rights and freedoms of people can not include restricting the rights and freedoms of others as described in earlier articles. "So, regardless of individual claims such as 'morality is subjective'" Claiming morality to be objective presupposes the acceptance of a divine entity, which is okay. But trying to apply this personal perception on every citizen in a state makes this state rather a theocracy than a secular state. We're talking about secular states as in theocracies there's no freedom of religion and therefore the UNDHR we're talking about does not apply. So in a secular state there is no objective morality. Following that, discrimination against a certain group of people cannot be justified by trying to uphold a predefined morality coming from the government. "every human rights instrument there is somehow recognizes the overarching right (indeed, duty) of the state to protect it." If by "human rights instrument" you mean the UNDHR and other articles you are of course right. Discrimination based upon religion, sex and also sexual preference amongst others, however, goes against many of these articles and therefore isn't valid to protect said rights. "To put is shortly, Russian society is historically conservative enough for the majority of its citizens to hold open display of homosexuality contrary to their morals, be their Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist." As said above, abusing the human rights to undermine human rights does not work. But I understand your point very well. Most religions condemn homosexuality based upon the belief that the respective gods created two genders for reproduction only, that's why many hardcore evangelicals (and surely many members of other religions too) also agitate for no sex other than for reproduction and against contraception. From my perspective, in the case of the Bible, in which homosexuality is declared a sin in exactly one verse of Leviticus (part of the Old Testament), this is mostly cherrypicking to cover up for personal homophobia. In the same book cursing your parents aswell as killing someone else's animals is said to be punished with death and none of these people go on the street propagating death penalty for animal crimes. Not to speak of other weird commandments (eating shellfish, wearing two fabric clothes,...) from the OT that commonly get ignored because [insert anything from outdated to wrong interpretation to only applicable to the "chosen people"]. Simply cherrypicking. We're still talking about secular countries so all of the above isn't an argument when it comes to taking away rights from citizens. As for the rest of simply homophobic people (I bet you'll find way less of these among atheists than among religious folks as the above is probably the most cited justification): is it desirable to take away human rights from a large group of people to not hurt the feelings of a larger group of people? Especially when in a secular state those feelings mostly emerge from a conserative, religious past? I don't think so. Practically you're probably right for Russia and some other conserative countries. However, this state is anything but living the human rights and the treatment of homosexuals, encouraged by the government, is anything but desirable. We're talking about regarding (and treating) a fair amount of humanity as lesser beings. Guess who did this before. Regarding the studies, sorry, my bad, you indeed cited them before. Thanks for the complete sources anyway. As for your first study (Byne): "The validity of the model [...] rests on the validity of the assumptions that (1) some temperamental traits and personality dimensions influence the manner in which an individual's sexual orientation emerges and (2) at least some of these temperamental and personality factors are developmentally influenced by either hormones or heredity" The very main points the entire conclusion of the study is based upon are assumptions about causalities that aren't confirmed. Respectively weren't confirmed yet when the study was conducted. I assume that within the last twenty years they either got confirmed, weakened or disproven, reading at least the abstracts of recent studies seems to imply the latter. The next logical step would now be to look for follow up studies examining exactly the above mentioned assumed causalities. The article (not study) from LeVay and Hamer on the other hand seems to make a case for mostly biological reasons for sexual preference (gonna read the entire article later), which is what I proposed based upon my reading of current studies. However, this again is about 20 years old, only citing studies older than 22 years and not an actual study itself so the last sentence of my previous paragraph applies here too. /edit Quoting myself: "among religious folks [referring to holy scriptures] is probably the most cited justification" As for the probably second most cited justification for propagating the discrimination of homosexuality, it being "unnatural", this is also to be sorted into the religious corner. As pointed out before, with humans (aswell as all other species demonstrating homosexuality) being part of nature, "unnatural" behaviour of humans (aswell as other species) is impossible by definition. The "unnatural" "argument" only works out when again applying a strict interpretation of the Bible or similar scriptures as people doing so see humans as special and above (and thereby not belonging to) nature, while "natural" is usually used in the sense of "what [insert god] expects". So, looking at the individual (and thereby excluding justifications for discrimination like upkeeping public order, as the public perception of order is nothing more than the accumulation of individual beliefs), what reasons are there at all to force homosexuals into a secret life and keep back human rights from them besides vague feelings and sexual insecurity?

However, if allowing religious traditions in a secular state equals the discrimination of a part of that state's population, that's directly opposing human rights. Also, giving religion a lawful impact (hope getting you right here as I'm no native speaker) is against the separation of state and church inherent to secular states. The fact that many secular states struggle implementing this separation, mostly due to the traditional role and current influence of churches in these countries, does not change any of that. Article 2 says "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." This includes homosexual citizens. Religious freedom in that case is applied to individuals, meaning the freedom to personally choose and live a religion. Not to organized religion applying its values upon individuals, which would be opposing Article 2. Article 12 says "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation." Allowing (and in the case of Russia and many other countries also encouraging) discrimination based upon sexual preference includes attacking the privacy and reputation of homosexuals. Article 22 says "Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization [...] social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality." Discriminating against homosexuals, especially when done by states, keeps back their rights to freely develop their personality. Establishing or tolerating a society that values homosexuality as something objectively negative also takes away their dignity. Also, morality is subjective. As for the study/studies, I wish I still had my university VPN account. Unfortunately even the references seem to be restricted to full access, which is a shame. Wasn't there a page/function on PubMed where you could search for all references used in a study? Am I just blind and it is there?! Or was it even Google Scholar or something? As I simplified your position and as your responses didn't contain any actual data, I'd wish the scientific side of that debate could be pursued based upon actual scientific results. If we're going for the raw data to reconstruct the conclusions that, according to you, are prone to interpretation, we'll need some form of access and I don't have 30 bucks per study lying around. Perhaps I can get the login of a friend or something. Of course I can give you more studies confirming my point of view but due to the lack of insight into the actual raw data you'll keep saying that the conclusions are biased, we're not getting anywhere with that. How about you presenting me a study (respectively abstract) underlining your opinion? I haven't seen one so far.

Not a repeatable one tho. What you're basically saying is that no study is of any worth, which is a pretty bold statement for someone with an academic background. I'm probably simplifying your post too much when saying it reminds me of popular but empty phrases like "For every study there's a study proving the opposite" and "Don't trust data you haven't faked yourself" which, when being mean, are translated to "Studies not matching my opinion are to be regarded as not trustworthy". Still there's an obvious resemblance. By the way, how about we all have a look at the debate behind the "Is sexual preference mainly or entirely caused by factors not influenceable by individuals?" one, which would be the "Given sexual preference was mostly not caused by genetics/hormones/other factors before birth, why shouldn't people with a homo or bisexual preference be accepted?" one. Looking at the human population not being at the edge of extinction, the missing reproductional function of homosexual relationships shouldn't be an argument. Looking at most of us living in secular countries, holy scriptures shouldn't be an argument either. Looking at protecting our children from being exposed to homosexuality (looking at you, Russia), this isn't a reason itself but presupposing a reason that isn't defined and therefore shouldn't be an argument either. Looking at it being unnatural, life including humans is part of nature and therefore by definition unable to perform unnatural activities, so that shouldn't be an argument either. Are there any arguments against acceptance besides vague personal feelings? If not, are vague personal feelings a good enough reason to restrict the entire lifes of other people?

Just asking, seeing that Trob is about to get in trouble - what if I would upload my finished Skyrim folder (excluding all vanilla files to make it legal regarding Bethesda) somewhere with instructions for a fresh Steam installation with the needed tools (MO, LOOT,...) so that others would be able to download it and extract my Skyrim over their vanilla installation? For this to make sense, it of course would include all installed mods (which is currently slightly over 50 GB). I've already done that in private with a friend and it worked perfectly fine, all you have to do is changing your enblocal.ini if the other person got less/more VRAM and changing the Mod Organizer.ini if the other person installed Skyrim to a different path than me. I assume only few mod authors would be okay with that?! Just asking as Neo seemed more concerned about the pirated Skyrim than about his mod being included somewhere without his permission. Don't get me wrong, as said I assume I would be hated by the entire modding community as dozens and hundreds and thousands of hours of work put into those mods would just be unmentioned, not honored with clicks/endorsements/... and could even lead to hate against some mods as I could have messed up something during installation or forgot about an incompatibility. I guess this is also the reason why all the big mod compilations (STEP, SR,...) are a huge set of instructions and Nexus links rather than XX GB archives to download and extract. Just asking for the minimal possibility that everyone would be magically okay with it?!

(Natural) Science itself by definition does not allow 100% certainties. Things aren't proven but confirmed while still being falsifiable. The amount and quality of confirmation determines the proximity of something to being a fact. However, instead of randomly casting doubts on a topic based upon a commonplace, one could have a look at actual studies. To my knowledge, sexual orientation is largely influenced by hormonal exposure during pregnancy, somewhat by (epi)genetics and a bit by nurture. When in doubt, check for yourself: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/advanced Here's a study on the topic from last year: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25172350 I still understand why the average homophobic person feels better telling himself sexual orientation had nothing to do with biology but only with choice and/or nurture. In my personal experience, 90% of them are motivated by religion, which naturally conflicts with people being born homosexual. Just like for some biological findings about the development of lifeforms conflict with their beliefs, that's why for them they just don't exist. The rest just wants to justify their hate before themselves which doesn't work when you hate someone for being born a certain way. As said, this is my personal experience. There might of course be some intellectual reasons for being homophobic based upon some serious philosophical considerations. Haven't seen any tho. People don't take away your cookies when they're on a diet. Instead they either look away or got no problem watching you eat them. The same way people shouldn't take away your rights when you're gay and they're not. Instead they should look away or just don't give a ****. I mean, noone forces anyone to watch anyone else having sex in their bedrooms. So what's the harm? Seeing people loving each other by holding hands or kissing in public? Oh my god...

True. He probably means Dual Wield Parrying.