I'm a fairly conservative guy, but I am still flabergasted by people who think gay is a choice

[HT_Black]

Okay, so how about we find some middle ground: What if people aren't born gay, but it's not a choice either? I like to think that a person's sexuality is decided mostly by experiences in their formative years; but then again, I don't exactly have a psychiatry degree, so maybe I'm just talking out of my arse.

 

[Nimcha]

Okay, so how about we find some middle ground: What if people aren't born gay, but it's not a choice either? I like to think that a person's sexuality is decided mostly by experiences in their formative years; but then again, I don't exactly have a psychiatry degree, so maybe I'm just talking out of my arse.

You are, sorry.

 

[bdcjacko]

None of that sounds fun, but on the other down side you can take it in the butt and not get married.

Well, I wouldn't say taking it up the butt is a bad thing~

ahahaha, you're all right.

 

[Tri313]

Ice cream is good to me cause it's sweet....Do I CHOOSE to have an ice cream craving at 2 AM in the morning that won't let me sleep?

 

[Sevre]

Hence why I'm only fiscally conservative. Let people do what they want. I'm pro choice and pro gay marriage; if you think abortion is wrong... don't get an abortion yourself. At the same time, I'm REALLY against big government and higher taxes. If someone isn't responsible with their money (the gov't), giving them more money won't help.

We need more people like you! Because you share the same policies as me!


OT: I think the definition of 'gay' should have been put under scrutiny here. No you can't choose to be a homosexual, but you can choose to partake in homosexual activities.

 

[HT_Black]

Okay, so how about we find some middle ground: What if people aren't born gay, but it's not a choice either? I like to think that a person's sexuality is decided mostly by experiences in their formative years; but then again, I don't exactly have a psychiatry degree, so maybe I'm just talking out of my arse.

You are, sorry.

Elaboration, sil vous plait?

 

[Dexiro]

Sexuality is complicated.

Firstly not everyone is born gay. Sometimes it's biological, sometimes it's due to psychological factors during childhood, and often there's a mix between the two.
And sexuality isn't black or white either, it's a scale. You can be mostly gay, mostly straight, bi with male preference, etc..

One thing that's sure though is that it isn't a choice.

Arguably you could change the sexuality of someone who has it mostly psychologically if they really wanted to change, but the morals of that are questionable. You'd basically be reprogramming someone, and to what cause?

 

[BabySinclair]

snip

So, you just don't like to accept something because it would diminish the amount of free will you have and how much you can influence your own personality? I call that being scared.

No, I think that people try to blame genetics for everything because they are afraid that any of the blame can rest on them for any actions they take. Take ADHD kids these days, most aren't biologically more hyper than 30 years ago but parents claim they are so that they aren't blamed for poor parenting. Blaming genetics rather than one's own cognizance is a sign of cowardice. Having physical homosexual drives and acting upon them or even acknowledging them are two entirely different things. The same applies to everything else that people blame. Once they find the genes that makes someone definitively a homosexual than I will recant my views to follow the evidence that science provides. It is true that multiple male children will slowly "feminize" them but that is primarily an issue of gender which, contrary to the standard and uninformed viewpoint, is not fixed or let alone consisting of two points of reference, but instead constantly changes daily and depending on the cultural relativity of the society you are observed from but that is another rant entirely.

 

[Lieju]

Whether it's a choice or not has really nothing to do on whether it's moral or not, and it's really thrown out there just because people who think homosexuality is a sin want to believe those horrible gays only do it to be evil and annoy them.

You can't choose who you are attracted to. But you can choose how you act on this attraction, or do you act on it at all.

BTW, I'm lesbian. Can't say I ever had any choice in how my sexuality turned out to. I do, however, choose to date women, and on individual level, when I'm attracted to someone, I can either choose to try and get romantically involved with them, or not, based on several things, such as whether either of us are already in a relationship.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

It's been said before, but anyone who thinks it's a choice, should have to go take one in the butt for their team, so they can say they chose to do it, and can see how much fun it is, but now they're choosing never to do it again because they think it's wrong.

Surely if it's a choice, then all homophobes could choose to try gay sex just for a day.

Or, they could choose to stop being a hateful dumbass, I know which of those two options is easier, both rectally and psychologicaly.

But then they probably think being black is a choice too, and they're just doing it to annoy white people.

 

[movienut]

Does it matter ?

Either it is not a choice, in that case it has to be accepted and respected, because it can´t and shouldn´t be changed.
Or it is a choice, in that case it has to be accepted and respected, because every person on this planet has the right to make such a decision (seeing how it doesn´t really concern anyone but the person him/herself).

I always found this entire debate kind of weird.

This is pretty much my opinion. I think saying "well they can't help it!" makes it seem like a disability or an unfortunate circumstance. Choice or not it shouldn't be anyone's buisness except the person and their partner's.

 

[Nimcha]

Once they find the genes that makes someone definitively a homosexual than I will recant my views to follow the evidence that science provides.

That's kind of the problem, there doesn't seem to be any conclusive genes that make someone definitely a homosexual person. Current study suggests it's a combination of any kind of genetic structure and prenatal influences.

It's a shame it isn't just as simple as that, if there was one 'gay-gene' a lot of problems would be solved.

Besides that, there's also a theory there is no gay gene simply because sexuality isn't restrained by gender.

 

[YukoValis]

Sure it's a choice, if you are born gay. Either you accept it, live it up, and be happy. or you hide and be depressed all thanks to the idiots around you that say it's wrong.

 

[Valksy]

If I decided today that I wanted to be gay even without any physical attraction to other men, I could. Likewise, any homosexual person could choose to be heterosexual. There is always a level of choice, even if outside or internal factors influence the decision.

Bullshit. You could have sex with another man (or he could have sex with you) but that would NOT make you gay. There is more to it than fucking and the sooner people start to realise that, the better.

 

[mike1921]

What are our feelings on what, exactly?

1. Gay being a choice/not being a choice?

or

2. People who think gay is a choice?

Which ever, I think either could be interesting subjects.

Gay obviously isn't a choice just like straight isn't. Being gay/straight/whatever is like preferring strawberry icecream over vanilla. You either like one flavour more or the other flavour more, you can't help what you like.

[ice cream]
Preferences are decided upon...
these people are making choices!
why is this concept of not being a choice so widely believed by people?

Exactly - even if something is more to your taste than the other option you are still choosing your prefered option. That's like being offered a meal by your other half's parents and saying "oh sorry I don't like that quite as much as the pizza I ordered, sorry I didn't have a choice"

And I have a gay friend who keeps being told by girls he's known over the years that if he'd stayed straight would've made a move. Which makes him curse and say he wish a bit that he hadn't chosen to be gay.

So yes, it is a choice but it is influenced by your mind and environmental factors as you go through life. You don't just get born with the gay path set out for you

There's a difference between choosing to be gay and choosing to do gay things.

Eating that pizza or not is a choice. But whether you like it or not isn't. Is it that hard?

If I decided today that I wanted to be gay even without any physical attraction to other men, I could.

If I decided today that I wanted to love pizza even without in anyway liking pizza I could.

 

[CoverYourHead]

As far as I know, there has been research that has indicated that there is... something... in the brain that triggers it, I can't remember at the moment, but I'm fairly sure I read it somewhere.

[citation needed].

"It would appear that sexual orientation is biological in nature, determined by a complex interplay of genetic factors and the early uterine environment. Sexual orientation is therefore not a choice." -Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2007.

Cited!

Anyway, I'm bisexual, so I suppose I have a choice, that said, for people who are strictly gay or straight, it is not a choice. There's no debate about this, it's stupid to assume that -the entire gay community- is lying about it being a choice. Not to mention, it would be the same level of "choice" for a straight person to go through life with only homosexual partners.

As for people who think it's a choice, they're stupid.

 

[beniki]

I have had a few friends that are gay or transgendered or both and had talks with them about the human condition and such. And so I convinced gay is not a choice.

I bring this up because my girlfriend just told me she is in a debate with a work friend who still thinks it is a choice. How could it be a choice? I mean logically being gay doesn't make sense. I mean on the down side you are degraded, belittled, and repressed by society. You are stigmatized and grudgingly accepted in most place that don't specifically cater to homosexuals. None of that sounds fun, but on the other down side you can take it in the butt and not get married.

The only real plus side I can see is that you can dress how ever you want, and if someone says you look gay, you can reply, "I know, isn't it great?"

Anyhow, what are your feelings on this?

I'm anti-gay men which I won't get into here, simply because i've debated it on these forums before and it's not going to do anything besides start an endless, irresolvable battle. What I think is probably still far back on the forums though if your really interested.

To speak neutrally however, your question has a clear answer:

To answer your question the whole "gay is a choice" thing is political, and comes from the gay rights movement itself. This arguement doesn't generally spring from the anti-gay community, though it is used (turned back on them) in the course of debate.

The basic issue is that if being gay is an inherant state of being, then it can be corrected. Thus out of an interest in not having homosexuality defined as something that can be corrected (a medical condition) the arguement about it being a lifestyle choice is made. In response to it being a choice, implying that someone can choose not to be gay, it's argued as being an intristic state of being. This is one of the reasons where my stance against homosexuality (for men, I won't go into my full opinion since it's irrelevent, but I believe gays and lesbians are seperate issues as opposed to something that should be addressed together. Just as there are specific "women's issues" that exist seperatly from those affecting men. Saying that the genders can be put together here is a political move when like a lot of things you wind up dealing with two fairly differant situations).

However, you ARE correct that being gay is not a lifestyle choice, as much as the gay rights movement fears it, we know it's a medical (not entirely psychological) condition. Simply put for people to have any kind of sexual arousal they need to transmit and receive chemical signals. This is why you can castrate people by removing parts of their sex organs. These chemicals interact with the brain (and we don't fully understand how the brain works) and ultimatly cause one's personality and drives to be built around what the body is telling it it's needs are.

Someone who is homosexual is reacting to the chemical signals of their own gender, basically their receptors are broken, and this influances the brain and how they think.

One important thing to remember is that while the body influances the brain, the same can happen in reverse. This is why psychlogical conditions (various kinds of insanity) can have profound physical effects in addition to behavioral ones. What's more everyone's DNA includes the information for both genders. One thing that you might remember from science classes is that in cases where a species is endangered animals have been recorded as undergoing gender reversal in order to reproduce and keep the species alive. This was used in "Juraasic Park" as one of the problems they faced, you might remember a pregnant dinosaur with the handlers going "OMG, how, they are all men" and then (at least in the books) a very strong "Nature finds a way" arguement about how it was foolish to think the population could be controlled. It's not common, but it does happen.

Also, as you might guess from the above, animals have also displayed homosexual behavior, but this is not surprising because a lot of the same diseases and medical conditions that afflict people also affect animals. If a human's sex receptors can respond to the wrong signals, so can those of animals.



The point of the above is actually that one of the reasons why psychology has been able to influance sexuality (causing the belief that it's a psychological problem) is that if you force enough trauma on someone to fire up deep survival insticts, the body and mind will adapt to whatever it needs to do to survive. It's not something that can be controlled, and results are uncommon (especially if you don't know what your doing exactly) but the same basic thing has caused split personalities and the like with people adapting to horrendous situations. This is why old school "torture psychology" did effectively treat homosexuality, but also can't reliably duplicate the results.

A more well known example of the same basic thing is hypnosis, brainwashing, and mental deprogramming. Simply put someone who understand how to influance the mind nowadays can totally alter who a person is, including their sexual orientation. Then again such people can also make other people think they are dogs. You see this demonstrated on a low-end scale in magic shows where a hypnotist will make guys from the audience do ridiculous things, but then have no memory of it. Techniques exist for doing that kind of thing permanantly.

The overall point here being that homosexuality is a medical condition, with actual physical causes (you can't have any kind of sex drive without the equipment, and unusual sex drives are it malfunctioning). Everybody pretty much knows this nowadays, but few people put the information together in their heads for political reasons, and "gay is a choice" is one of the arguements made to try and hold off any kind of massive societal resolution on the subject when it comes to dealing with gays. Like anyone who has their brain adapted to something, the feel there is nothing wroung with them, do not want to be cured, and are afraid that if the condition CAN be cured (which it can) people are going to force the treatment.

Given my initial statements, you can guess where I lean here. Typically though the gay arguements tend to revolve around people who point out the things I did wanting to chemically castrate them all or something, which is hardly the case.

So whilst biologically it's not a choice, with the techniques you mentioned it is still an intellectual one. Huh, that's actually a rather more interesting debate, which I'm sure without fail descends into the irresolvable battles you mentioned.

I think I'd be against treating it though. More variety in a society is usually a good thing. And my inner nerd is saying we should keep those traits around in case we need them later.

 

[CoverYourHead]

If I decided today that I wanted to be gay even without any physical attraction to other men, I could. Likewise, any homosexual person could choose to be heterosexual. There is always a level of choice, even if outside or internal factors influence the decision.

Bullshit. You could have sex with another man (or he could have sex with you) but that would NOT make you gay. There is more to it than fucking and the sooner people start to realise that, the better.

Well said. Homosexuality is more than just the act of sex. The physical act of sex can be achieved with anything. Having sex with a dog does not make you a dog, having sex with the same sex does not make you gay. There's the attraction, the ability to emotionally connect on a different level, and a huge number of other things that would take way too much time to list.

You can not simply say that choosing to have homosexual sex makes you gay, because it doesn't.