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

[Liham]

Because you don't "choose" who you're attracted to.

So the whole concept of it being a "choice" is pretty nonsensical really.

acting upon your homosexuality

And this is nonsensical too.

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

Is that poor English? If so I apologize. What I meant is that you while you can't choose your sexual preference, you can obviously choose your sexual partners.

Well, would you choose not to act upon your heterosexuality? exactly, that's a dumb line of thinking.

 

[CaptainThom]

I think you have missed the point you don't choose who your attracted to it isn't a choice. Sexual orientation isnt something you choose its part of who you are.

 

[Charli]

I never chose to like banana milkshakes. I just did.

There. Fucking arguement over.

I CHOSE, to drink one. That is the extent of your choice.

Just as you can choose NOT to act on homosexual or heterosexual desires. However you will still have them. You didn't exactly 'control or choose' whom you are attracted to.
That's why to some it really is not a choice. Some have no heterosexual drive or desires. So what is left for them? Well Aesexuality I guess... bust most of the time it will be the same gender.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

The whole concept is ridiculous. You can't just turn on attraction, you can't meet a random person on the streets and say: "Ok I'm going to be attracted to him / her now."

Neither can you tell yourself: "Let's be gay for a day!" And whazzoozle, your sexual preferences are now changed.

The logic doesn't hold up.

 

[IronMit]

The left and right are always using a buzz-words in the States, partially propaganda and partially to simplify stuff. The entire pro-life, pro-choice thing and now weather homosexuality is a choice or not.

The offence with 'homosexuality is a choice' or not seems to originate from the arguments on weather gay couples should have rights (tax, adoption, inheritance from one another, legal sodomy, allowed into clubs and practice openly etc etc). Some who don't understand it or feel threatened argue that gay people should not have these rights because they are going out of the way to make this 'choice' against societies norms and are just being difficult- so screw them.

So when people react angrily towards weather it's a choice it's often masking weather they think gay people should have certain rights.
To me even if it was a 'choice', (which it's not) it would not make a difference to what I believe. It's about free-will, we should be able to do what we want and have equal opportunitys no matter if something is a choice or not.

 

[Zeterai]

Take a look at a beautiful woman. Take in her lines, curves, swells and valleys. What you feel, as a heterosexual male, is natural to you. In point of fact, you don't even think about how your body reacts. If you attempt, instead, to apply such scrutiny to a rugged, handsome man, do you feel the same way? Do you control how you feel, when trying to examine another man in a sexual manner? Or do you instead feel indifference, perhaps even revulsion? Lord knows, I've tried. It'd make life simpler, if I could shift that basic, biological interest to what is viewed as normal, but the body seldom obeys the mind when it comes to attraction and intimacy. Your basest of physiological reactions are not something to change and manipulate at your slightest whim.

Consider the flavour you hate most. As time goes on, that may shift of its own accord, and you may find that what you refused to eat as a child appeals as an adult. But sitting in a locked room with a mountain of turnips will never succeed in making me enjoy them via brute force, nor do I apply a choice in my distaste for them. The same can be said for most stimuli that one can partake of - you don't decide what music you like, rather you find that there is music that you like. The difference is subtle but important. I did not decide that women are preferable, but rather found that in a world of two physical genders, one triggers interest and the other indifference. It is no more a choice than my utter hatred of country & western.

It is offensive to imply that I am abnormal by choice, as it is to say that I am simply being difficult out of a stubborn dedication to rebel. It devalues my interests by stating that they can be changed if I felt inclined to cooperate, and that the simple, taken for granted act of being who I am means less than it would we're it integral and critical to my being, rather than a decision. It gives ammunition to the religious zealots, so as to passively enable them to cry out of my deviltry and the immortality of my choices, when no choice has been made beyond refusing to lie to others and myself. It empowers lawmakers to draft against me, since catering to people who are simply choosing to demand equality is ever so much less important than protecting people who aren't simply wasting everyone's time with their inconveniencing lifestyles.

Perhaps an argument could be made to say that offense is the wrong term. But judging it to be a choice is certainly wrong.

 

[HalfTangible]

Offensive...no. Inaccurate yes.

If being Gay was a choice all men would be Gay, you get to hang out with your best friend all day, and get blowjobs.

You'd also have to GIVE blowjobs and shove your dick into the same place shit comes out.

If sexuality were a choice nobody would have sex of any kind, ever. It's really quite disgusting when you stop and think about it.

 

[AshuraSpeaks]

Honestly why is it? Don't get me wrong I've got no problems without homosexuality, in fact I can see myself experimenting some day. But for the live of me I can't see why it's most often considered offensive to think of it as a choice.
I can see that being more sexually attracted to the same sex isn't something you do so purposfully/consiously. So if you purely regard homosexuality as being dominantly sexually attracted to the same sex. Then yes it isn't really a choice, more something that just happens to you. But surely everything beyond that is a choice right?
Again I want to stress that I think it's the right choice. Sexuality is a good thing, so I'd encourage people to do whatever they want on that area as long as all involved parties are consentfull.
But still acting upon your homosexuality is surely a choice right? So why is it considered offensive to regard it as such? Especially as the alternative is to regard it as something like an affliction, which I personally would find much more offensive.

This is why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJtjqLUHYoY

 

[TheOrb]

I was unsure whether or not to give my view, but then I saw IceForce, so I knew was in good company, and thought why the Hell not.

I am not convinced that homosexual is completely caused by genetics or other inherent parts of a person; I still think there is some weight to the idea of sexualities being changed, especially if there is enough exposure during puberty.

Definitely something that warrants more reasearch...

 

[aba1]

I feel like nobody actually read the OP. What he is saying is just obviously true. You don't choose what you enjoy sexually but acting on it is a choice. I don't see why everybody is so afraid of that it isn't like it being a choice is any sorta secret. I might not choose to be straight but I do choose who, when and how I have sex because the physical act is a choice. Everyone keeps acting like he has a problem with people for having different sexualities but in the first line he clearly states he is open to it himself. Just cause something is a choice doesn't make it bad.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I served as a member of the armed forces of the United States of America under Don't Ask Don't Tell.

I chose, of my own free will, to not engage in the sexual activities to which I was predisposed, for a period of six years to preserve my standing and career until other circumstances rendered it untenable and I left. Before that, I maintained a strongly hetero-normative life to avoid the hostility that I felt would come from stepping out of the closet.

People choose to act on their sexuality, including heterosexuality, all the time. Often, they do not think of themselves as acting on anything. But you can tell that, for instance, heterosexuals act on their sexual orientation on a fairly regular basis on account of we're all here having this conversation.

Is sexuality a choice?

I believe it is. Or, rather, how we compose ourselves based on our sexuality is. We are all predisposed towards, to one degree or another, a given choice of sexuality. Being predisposed to a particular answer doesn't mean you don't have a choice, it just means you know the answer you /want/, or the answer you need to reach emotional and psychological consonance.

It may not always be the best choice under the circumstances in which you make it. It may not always be the safest. But it's your choice to make, and I don't think it's right to take that from someone any more than I think it's right for us to create a condition in which such a choice becomes so perilously difficult to make.

It shouldn't be any harder for a homosexual to choose to live openly as a homosexual than it is for a heterosexual to choose to live as a heterosexual...a choice so easy we don't even notice that it is being made every day.

But I don't believe it's right to deny someone agency, particularly over so powerful and personal a subject, by waving genetics and hormones and unilaterally declaring that they are helpless before the engines of their body. It's no righter to say that, than it is to say they make that choice to spite you, or that it's a trivial choice or to threaten suffering and damnation for making that choice.

That sort of coercion, to satiate any form of greed, is evil.

Why is it considered offensive to regard sexuality as a choice?

I believe Piorn has the right of it here.
Because most people who suggest that it is do so under the misapprehension that there is only one right choice, and that anyone choosing otherwise is doing it to spite them and (worse) to spite 'god', irrespective of whether or not the subject of the choice being made even factors such.

We should try not to be guilty of the same sin.

That...is one of the best first posts I've ever seen. You should be congratulated for it.

I feel I should add in my own point of view. I am a virgin bisexual. I am attracted to either gender, but I haven't actually had sex yet. Is it my choice to be bisexual? Not consciously, no. That much, I can say for sure. But it is my choice to not have sex, because I haven't met that special guy or girl yet that I feel enough connection to in order to take that step. Who you are attracted to is not a choice. Acting on it is. It is the same as the difference between a pedophile and a pederast. Both have the desire, but only the latter has acted on it.

I'm not saying being gay is exactly as bad as being a pederast, obviously, mostly due to the whole "consent" thing. I'm just pointing out the difference between being bisexual (not a choice) and having sex with the same gender (choice). Obviously, one choice is better for your mental health than the other of you are homosexual. I am not saying that if you are homosexual, you should remain a virgin for the rest of your life, or submit yourself to a passionless marriage for the sake of appearances.

 

[kalakashi]

http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F

On a phone, haven't tried this before but hey ho.

Being gay isn't a choice blah blah blah, what the more educated people have said. Above is a link to dawkins talking to a gay man about various theories of how the gay gene might have made it through history.

 

[Annihilist]

I don't care if it's a choice or not. It might well be - and in fact, the theory of neuroplasticity would have us believe that sexual orientation could be altered with enough willpower and mental conditioning. But the point is, even if it is a choice, who cares? That doesn't make it a choice we should discourage. If people want to choose to be gay, then all power to them I say.

 

[eljawa]

Probably because it being a choice means they could choose to not be gay, and this not be granted rights they feel they deserve.

 

[kalakashi]

The social stigma and opinion of homosexual behaviour being amoral have slowly receded, allowing more homosexual people to make the choice to openly admit their sexual orientation and pursue relationships with other like-minded people.

Admit their sexual orientation. You just undermined the entirety of your incredibly arrogant and ill-thought out argument. Sex is a choice, gay sex is a choice, sexuality is not. As you have pointed out, as social stigma has lessened, more and more people have felt able to ADMIT their sexuality, not have a go at gay sex and decide that that's their cup of tea.

As mentioned by other users, consider those who have literally been put to death in horrific executions as a result of their being gay. You would have to be a fully fledged moron to not learn of this and immediately see that there is no choice. Or, as also mentioned, try it yourself. If you consider yourself fully heterosexual, watch some gay porn and get turned on by it. Conversely, go through your most appealing fantasy involving girls, and remain entirely unaroused.

Implicit in your post is that gay people are receiving special treatment, I'm sure we'd all be very interested about the specifics.

 

[Rylingo]

It's considered offensive because of who normally says "homosexuality is a choice". I don't see the statement as inherently offensive statement. It is however a wrong statement.

You can choose to live a homosexual lifestyle.
You can choose to have sex with people of the same gender.
You can choose to call yourself homosexual.
You cannot however choose whether you are a homosexual or not. There's no choice to it.

I'm heterosexual. I never made a choice to be attracted to women and not to men but I am attracted to women and not men. The attraction to women surfaced around puberty and I feel no similar attraction to men.

 

[Sing]

First off you can't deem homosexuality as choice. It is no more of a choice then the choice of who you are attracted to. It comes naturally. Of course, you can choose wether to or not to act and live with your sexuality. And from what I've gathered living and acting upon you sexuality is far more healthy then opressing it.

Secondly, when we judge someone's sexuality as a choice, I feel like we are tresspassing on another person's private life and something very sacred. Who are we to judge anyone else's sexuality as a choice? What gives us the right? It's when we pass this "private sphere" along with a demeaning attitude that we offense people.

My two cents anyways...