Category: Let's talk
What do you guys think of this belief? I think its a choose at free will and that people can decide at anytime.
People can't help who they are attracted to. I am attracted to both guys and girls and I can't change that.
Oh, yeah, that too. I think it can go both ways.
Until someone tells me about a homosexual geene, I'm going to say that people choose it, or are unconsciously influenced that way by a book or media or just something in their personality.
If it's just something in their personality, how different is that from what you're born with? After all, we're born with at least parts of our personality it seems to me.
I suppose that I'd question whether people are born with any sexual orientation what so ever rather than ask whether you're instantly going to drop out homosexual. I think that all sexual orientation is something developed once you're born and not something that you're genetically predisposed too. After all, genetics are nothing more or less than hand-me-downs from prior generations and the very nature of passing those traits on hardly smack at rampant homosexual activity. I'd say that it isn't impossible for a 100% gay man to impregnate a woman, or 100% gay woman being impregnated by a man, but I strongly doubt that it happens very often. So it doesn't really make sense to me that sexuality is a genetically passed on thing.
If I cast my mind back to my rapidly receding younger years the one thing that strikes me is that I developed an interest in the opposite sex, I didn't instantly have it. I think when I was 5 and first going to school I noticed a girl in class with me who had very pretty blonde hair. Her name was Emma if memory serves me correctly. That's the first time I can ever remember, all be it very very vaguely, noticing that a girl was anything other than something to be scorned and maligned at all costs. I'd have to move on a further 6 years before I had any serious interest in members of the opposite sex.
So you see, as unsettling a thought as this may be for the heterosexuals of the World today, I think we're all capable of being homosexual or bi-sexual. It is only the things we learn as children that decide one way or the other. Now exactly what those factors that make such determinations might be I'm really not sure. But I do believe that sexual orientation is developed and not an instant given.
I also absolutely do not subscribe to this view that people choose to be gay because in order to make a choice about such a thing would be to suggest that there is an alternative. And yes, I know subscribers to this view will instantly shout "but there is stupid! Heterosexuality." But if you follow that thought to it's logical conclusion then you are saying that you have made a conscious choice to be straight and that my friends, wouldn't be true. I certainly didn't choose to be straight. I developed an interest in the opposite sex and it was a process that was completely out of my hands. It is nonsense to claim that you're straight by default but that people choose to be gay. I believe that we're all influenced by the things around us as we grow older and that applies as much to straight people as it does to gay people. You can't have it both ways. Because you either accept that people are what they are and have no say in it, or you're saying that we choose our orientation, in which case you're accepting that it is a choice in which event you have no right to say that it is wrong.
They're my thoughts anyway.
Dan.
I didn't choose to be straight, I was apparently born that way. I also like being straight, don't have desire, compunction or will to become gay, and would find living in a straight-hostile universe where my wife's and my relationship was frowned upon very challenging. To claim one is a choice by definition claiming the other is a choice, is it not? You either choose to be a hard worker, for example, or you don't. Even if born with some personality tendencies, we've all chosen to get up and go to work when we didn't feel like it.
Those who are students choose whether or not to study for or cheat on exams; those of us who are parents choose if and how well we will care for our kids. These and many other things are all things we choose. But who chooses their sexuality, any more than we may choose to be black, white, Indian, blind, or whatever?
I will say, though, that I have far more respect for folks who just fit into society, not this running around screaming for attention that social and religious groups of different kinds are infamous for. But to me, that is a choice of behavior, and not a trait, on the part of the individual.
Hi,
Interesting read, so: and I am sure this will get everyone going. but would homosexuality be considered a disability or just a characteristic like having blonde hair the latter being if I have blonde hair I can try and dy it to brown but it's still originally blonde. Does that mean I can pretend to be gay even if I'm not? What if and I know a few like this men who are gay but hate it and wish they were strait there for would that fall in to the disability category. I mean I am blind and really don't have an issue with it but just the same I know people who hate being blind and would do anything to not be.
Dan, amen! I totally agree with you.
Saying that people can be born homosexual is like saying that some people are born with their favorite color being yellow, or their favorite TV show being Sesame Street. And all who have common sense know that this is impossible. No one is born with any kind of tastes or preferrences. What you like and dislike is influenced by whom you are raised, your experiences with certain people and objects, and what you learn about and associate with certain objects, colors, places, and people. So every born baby has a chance of being bi, homo, or hetero. You cannot predict an infant's sexual preferrence, just as you cannot predict an infant's religious preferrence.
Sexuality is not a part of a personality either. Sexuality is not what makes a person funny, playful, gloomy, or beef-brained. You cannot inherit sexuality as you can inherit blonde hair or skin color. You can pretend all you want but you can't cover up anything forever.
if being gay is a choice, then being straight is a choice as well.
You are who you are.
Unless you're in denial.
could it be that we are born with both tendencies? then the experiences of life bring one or the other to the fore?
I think sexuality is mainly driven by the hormones in our bodies, and that is inherited.
But, having said that, I also think we have the proclivity to swing either way, Abbey Hofman's edict, "if it feels good do it."
I'm afraid, though, some people in their youth choose to be gay because it's easier though more dangerous. (Should I say, less acceptible). But I think it's easier for a gay person to get a quick date, than it is for a straight person.
Just my thoughts.
Bob
i'm really ambivalent about this. my brother is gay. he has told me that he always felt different and uncomfortable with the roles that society wanted him to play. although he tried to fit in during his high school years by having girlfriends, it wasn't until he got out on his own that he really understood who he was. whether this was genetic or environmental i don't know. I was raised in the same home with the same parents and am a flaming heterosexual.