Jiraiya72 said:
I see a lot of people on both sides arguing if people were born gay or chose to be gay themselves. What I don't see is anyone saying both camps are just as valid as the other. Rarely, other animals beside human have exhibited gay behavior before, clearly showing it can be a rare natural occurrence. But we humans also have free will, meaning you can, indeed, choose to be gay. I'm sure both types of gays exist, they're equally valid. So why does it need to be one or the other?
It's a political thing more than anything tied to gay rights. The whole issue is that is that if being gay is something that is chosen then a person can choose not to practice that lifestyle and since it's not inherant it can be morally regulated. If it's an inborn condition then there is the issue of it being a deviance and something to be cured. The gay rights movement argues the definition based on what they are trying to counter at any given time.
The reality of the situation is that it's a medical condition. While all the details of pheremones and chemicals and how they relate to the brain are not understood, the bottom line is that there can be no sexual arousal without responding to the chemical signals sent out by other people. Incidently this is why castration works, if you destroy the sex organs (testicles on guys) then they become incapable of having sex, and also lose their sex drive. This can also be witnessed in animals where if you spay or neuter a dog or cat it's behavior changes greatly since it no longer reacts to the other gender and tries to have sex/reproduce.
The thing is that your personality and desires are formed around the needs of your body. You think in a certain way about sex because of the signals that you receive. You stop receiving those signals and it's going to alter a lot of things about you.
Now, one thing that can be pointed out is that the mind can influance what the body does. A lot of mental conditions can have profound affects on the body, and sexuality. A lot of sexual deviations like Nymphomania (which in reality is not "fun" it's a self destructive behavior) can be treated mentally and trickle down to the body. This is why homosexuality has been classified as an insanity in the past, bing considered akin to other psychosexual disorders that can be treated that way. Old school psychology which was based on inflicting trauma on someone who was damaged worked by tripping the human survival insticts where the brain can make someone change in order for the person to survive. This can result in turning someone sane occasionally, but in more cases it's caused more extreme problems like when people have developed split personalities under trauma. With a better understanding of human pscyhology and how the brain works though we can now program and deprogram people (brain washing), which frequently uses trauma as a component but it is not the sole factor in the treatment. With brainwashing a person can be altered almost entirely given enough time. You see this with hypnosis shows where a hypnotist using certain techniques can get people to bark like a dog and have no memory of having done it. Brainwashing and deprogramming can be very similar, except with permanant results. You could for example make someone act like a dog permanantly and not revert at all.
That said, the issue about gay rights largely comes down to a moral one, the big question not being whether we can identify and cure homosexuality, but whether we should. Is the behavior destructive enough in most cases to warrent elimination from society?
Opinions vary, I'm pretty much anti-gay men as people who have frequented these forums are aware of. I'm not going to get into an arguement on my beliefs right now because it will ultimatly go nowhere.
Above and beyond personal beliefs, even if I was not anti-gay, I would have little respect for the gay rights movement because it's by and large playing games. The entire issue is artificial because as I've explained above we already know the answer. We know about castration, we know why it works, it's common knowlege. We know about hypnosis, brainwashing, and psychological deprogramming and how it can (through the brain) greatly influance behavior and sexuality. People even play with their minds in hypnosis shows. Like many hot button issues people tend to ignore or overlook common knowlege in favor of trying to make an issue they feel strongly about seem a lot more complicated than it actually is.
As far as homosexuality being observed in animals, understand that living things operate on the same basic rules. Animals and humans can contract a lot of the same diseases and conditions. Just as human sex organs can malfunction and respond to the wrong signals (either exclusively to those of their own gender, or to both genders) animals that operate on the same principles can also have the same, or very similar issues.
