So why is it offensive to consider homosexuality as a choice?

[Griffolion]

At its core, you don't choose who you're attracted to. At emotional and psychological levels you can make acceptances or rejections, so in a sense you can "choose" your partner; but most people have little control over which group of people starts a conga dance in their pants in the first place.

 

[Silvanus]

It's true that while sexuality isn't a choice, whether or not to have sex is. People can choose to go celibate, or go against their own sexuality-- but those can be very unhealthy choices.

The thing is, OP, I guarantee that pretty much every time you've heard somebody claim that "homosexuality is a choice", they're talking about the sexuality itself. They're not saying that gay people should just have sex with women; they're saying they should just become straight (which is, of course, an impossibility).



Slight tangent: If you really can choose who you're attracted to, OP, I envy you-- I'm attracted to both sexes, and I can't even choose which sex I'm attracted to at any given time.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Well yes, acting upon it is a choice, but the actual orientation itself isn't. You can't honestly expect people to be abstinent, repress it and still be happy, and they shouldn't have to. It shouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately it is with some people. Suggesting that people are choosing to deliberately be different to aggravate homophobes is insulting, it's saying that an integral part of their being is actually just a snide piss-take.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

Mainly because it isn't, and believing it is makes you wrong.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Do you hear people talk about "acting upon" their heterosexuality?

Yes actually, usually at the infidelity hearing!

 

[Toilet]

Because if homosexuals had a choice in the matter they would obviously choose to be attracted to women.

Sounds crazy but it's true.

 

[In Search of Username]

Because it's a choice between being happy and being repressed. It's pretty much consensus that if you are attracted to a certain gender, you should probably sleep with people of that gender. It's a choice but it's obviously the right choice to do what makes you happy, so there's not much point really thinking about it as a choice.

But really people are only going to get offended if you imply that the orientation itself is a choice, or if you imply that acting on homosexual urges is the WRONG choice. One of those two is usually what people assume you mean when you say you think it's a 'choice', so if people have been getting offended when you say that, that'd be why. Otherwise it's just... basically a pointless distinction to make?

Also wow, this thread has a serious case of 'didn't-read-the-OP' syndrome. Which kind of proves my point about the issue here not being your nuanced but pointless opinion, it's the opinion people ASSUME you have when you say 'homosexuality is a choice'.

 

[immortalfrieza]

People find the idea that Homosexuality is a choice offensive because they think that it demeans Homosexuality, but it really doesn't. Homosexuality is a preference, and like all preferences is the result of upbringing, both by their parents and the community at large, that eventually develops from these things into a subconscious drive. Homosexuality is no more a choice than a preference for say, Diet Coke over regular Coke, but neither is it something genetic. Why? It's because as anyone who knows anything about genetics and evolution will tell you, if Homosexuality was a result of a gene then Homosexuality wouldn't exist, since it's a self culling gene. If a gene for Homosexuality was mutated into a person at some point, it couldn't be passed on to subsequent generations and thus become widespread because by the very nature of the sexual orientation Homosexuals are much less likely to have children. It's like someone mutating a gene for a inherent tendency to kill their own children, that gene would die out with the person that first had it.

 

[Vareoth]

Technically, when I act upon my homosexual feelings I am (mostly) making a conscious choice to follow feelings I didn't choose. Homosexuality as a whole isn't a choice. The problem with your statement is that when people say this they are almost always referring to the whole picture as an excuse to vilify this group of people.

Homosexuality isn't a choice, homosexual behaviour (mostly) is. Doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with it because of that.

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

Because... It isn't. It's not a matter of being "politically incorrect". It's just the regular kind of incorrect.

 

[Rainforce]

Because it's not a choice, and you should really treat it as such.

I've got no problems without homosexuality

sure : D...

also obligatory video:

Spoiler

 

[Herzesser]

So, is this one of those things where someone pretends they don't understand what's offensive about perpetuating ideas that have been used in recent memory as a stick with which to beat someone and they know darn well that it has been and we all pretend they're just ignorant as opposed to disingenuous folks who want to logic their way out of the thing they know to be true so they can feel all moral and junk when they're jerks to someone instead of feeling the slightest twinge of guilt about it?

'Cause it looks like that.

 

[Aris Khandr]

I didn't quite catch that last bit. But I've think I've got the gist of it.
My view on the matter is that it's obviously a possibility for a gay man to just bite the bullet. It wouldn't be healthy, and in most cases extremely rude to the female. But it's an option. In other words it's a choice not to do so, and just go with what you feel like.
If I would be at the far gay side of the sexual spectrum, I think I'd be like: So I happen to be gay, so I'm going with the obvious healthy CHOICE to have sex with men instead of women.

Cooked fruits make me wretch. Something about the texture makes me completely ill. Yes, I could choose to eat them anyway. I can choose to pretend they don't exist. But that doesn't make the fact that they make my physically sick was not a choice in the first place.

Goes the same way for men. The idea of sleeping with one repulses me in every way possible. Sure, I could ignore every single instinct I have and do it anyway.

Actions are a choice. Existence is not. I can no more choose who I am attracted to than I can choose to be Chinese. I can dye my hair, buy a qipao, and learn the language, but I am still not Chinese. Similarly, I could sleep with a hundred men, but that would not change what I feel inside me. Telling us that we're choosing to be gay is like me telling you that you're choosing what foods make you sick.

Yes, it is offensive that you keep hammering on about choice, because there's really no choice at all. You may as well insist that we're all making the choice not to ingest rat poison every day: for most of us, there isn't any choosing.

 

[lacktheknack]

Because the only reliable way to change your sexual orientation is via neuroplasty. And neuroplasty is complex, hard, and a bit dangerous.

Since there's no particularly safe way to change it, it means you're effectively stuck with it.

Which means it's a choice in much the same way that having a gimped liver is a choice.

 

[Callate]

It's far easier to condemn someone for doing something you see as one option out of a suite of possible options (or even two possible options.) The majority of people who describe homosexuality as a "choice" or a "lifestyle" do, in fact, condemn homosexuals on this pretext. If their homosexuality is not a "choice"- if it is, in fact, something more or less innate to the person that they can't control, that may indeed have been "decided" for them at their birth- condemning someone for their homosexuality begins to seem about as defensible as condemning someone for their eye color.

As far as the idea that expressing one's sexuality is a choice... Well, the studies I've seen suggest that the vast majority of people who live lives of celibacy (religious vows, etc.) still either masturbate or at the least experience nocturnal emissions. One way or another, our sexuality tends to make itself manifest whether we'd like it to or not.

 

[Jacco]

No one ever considers heterosexuality to be a choice.

I've always found this argument to be just as nonsensical as saying the opposite.

Whether we want to admit it or not, heterosexuality is the "natural" default-- without it life does not exist in sexually reproductive beings. It HAS to exist. Homosexuality does not. There is no "choice" in being what nature has evolved you to be.

Now, that being said, I'm not making an argument one way or the other. I'm simply stating that applying the "choice" argument to heterosexuality is just as straw man-ish, if not more so, as applying it to homosexuality.

 

[Flaery]

I don't think sexuality is very clear-cut. Certainly most people don't really make the choice that they are attracted to the same gender, but I know a few girls who have "sworn off" men in favor of women simply because they've been hurt too much.

The reason the belief in choice is demonized is because it's usually associated with the intolerant groups who use "it's a choice" as some sort of weak argument.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Why? It's because as anyone who knows anything about genetics and evolution will tell you, if Homosexuality was a result of a gene then Homosexuality wouldn't exist, since it's a self culling gene.

If the person saying this claims to know about genetics and evolution, slap them.

Regardless, I believe that the current thinking as to the cause of homosexuality is something to do with hormone levels during foetus development. In this regard, being gay is about as much of a choice as me choosing not to be born into an obscenely wealthy family.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I always say the choice is to chose to accept who you are for what you are and be happy and true to yourself.