If, as some people argue, homosexuality is not genetic, or an intrinsic part of someone, but rather a choice, then doesn't the flip side work?
Doesn't that mean that sexuality is changable: people can be either homosexual or heterosexual depending what they want or how hard they try?
And so isn't then heterosexuality as much as a choice? A straight person could, under the same logic, choose to be gay. After all, it's the same premise.
So - to all those who do think homosexuality is a choice: is your heterosexuality also a choice?
Could you, if it meant better social acceptance, be sexually attracted to a member of the same sex?
And if not - why? Is it because your (hetero)sexuality is an intrinsic part of you?
posted
As I said in Lalo's thread, my views on homosexuality being a choice are more complex than yes/no. But fundementally, I think that should I want to be attracted to other men, it would be possible. So in as much as I think homosexuality is a choice, absolutley heterosexuality is just as much a choice.
posted
I would say no. I've always been attracted by men (and I mean always ! I wanted to marry a little boy when I was three...) and couldn't be attracted by women. It would seem... Well, gross to me. I respect women attracted by women, it's just that I don't feel the same.
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posted
Hobbes - I'm also curious in terms of partners.
As I said in the other thread, I am heterosexual not only because I am attracted to men, but because Tony who I love and hope to spend my life with is a man. I know the two are interrelated: but could I be homosexual, meaning I would give up Tony? No way in the world.
I imagine a lot of other people on this board feel the same way with respect to their partners.
So I figure, do homosexual people.
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posted
And that's my point Anna - just as you and I are not attracted to other women, gay women are not attracted to men.
It's not a choice. It's just the way we are.
The reason I started this thread is I think some people who argue that homosexuality is a choice would not be happy to agree the same about heterosexuality.
(some, not all...)
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posted
Well in my opinion one would have to want to be homosexual, and just as you would never want to give up Tony, the idea of parting with Annie... well let's just say that the thought holds no appeal in my mind and leave it at that.
posted
Personally I do think it's choice. If a person really wanted to, they could grow to like the same sex. Of course that person would have to be intra-persuasive enough to get over his fears of doing so. I think it's the fear that keeps the majority of people playing on the hetero team.
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posted
That was kinda what I was hinting at. Not that subtly it turns out.
But I guess: if wanting to means giving up the person you love - then I don't see that as a choice. You love who you love.
It hits you, you're amazed - sure, you have to work at it at times, but there is something there so special, so unique, and so right that you will never abandon it. And I think people who argue that homosexuality is a choice are ignoring such love existing between same sex couples.
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Right now, I'm married. To a great gal. But were love to "just hit me" from some other angle, from a guy, from a girl, from anybody, I'd be obligated, based on my promises to her when we wed, and a responsibility to the children, to deny those feelings and stick with her.
In that sense, I don't think that marriage is as about "sticking with the person you love" so much as "loving the person you're sticking with." And that's a choice we constantly make throughout a marriage, not just a happenstance chance of genetics or "true love" or whatever a person might think could make their behavior unchangeable.
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posted
No, I don't believe heterosexuality is a choice.
I can't describe my thoughts on this without appealing to my religious beliefs so if you're looking for an argument that doesn't involve religion I can't help you there.
But, God created us male and female distinctly different, and yet complements to each other. Since that is how we were created, we are all in a sense naturally heterosexual.
Do gay people choose to be gay? It's not a simple choice, I don't think. I doubt many people wake up one morning and state "I want to be gay from here on out." I think there are many factors that might influence a person's sexuality, one of them might even be a genetic tendency to be attracted to the same sex. But, I believe that is not the natural state for people, and that it can be changed and people can have a healthy attraction to the opposite sex with proper therapy and treatment.
There are some though that do choose it. My cousin is one, she flat out chose to become involved with women after her husband cheated on her. She said so. She was and is at her nature heterosexual, she makes a conscious choice to be gay and live with another woman.
I base my beliefs on my faith, for a large part, so if you're not religious they probably won't make sense to you.
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posted
Lots of people who are 'straight' engage in homosexual behaviors, usually under unusual circumstances, like prison or single sex boarding schools, etc. But people do it.
My mother remembers being approached by a group of other military wives who had 'get togethers' when their husbands were away (I have mentioned before how pretty and exotic-looking my mother was, and they went to some lengths to try to recruit her.). These women were not lesbians, per se.
I'm not really attracted to women at all, but it if was socially expected of me from a young age and I was really drunk... I dunno.
We want to stack people into neat rows and say "These people are gay; these are straight; these are African American; These are *whatever*.
Most of us are ethnically mixed to one degree or another in the US. When I have to fill out forms that ask my race, I hesitate because a good bit of my heritage is Native American. I'm not ashamed of it, but would saying that I'm Native American be dishonest? It doesn't really show.
I think our need for labels has skewwed our sense of reality.
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posted
Belle - I understand that your view is based on your faith.
This thread wasn't really started with people like you in mind: rather people who argue that homosexuality is a choice based on 'social evidence' or try and mask the religous root of their arguments - because that I can, and will argue against.
I may not agree with what your faith teaches, but I will not argue against it: I can't. But because it is faith-based, I would also expect you not to apply it to the world at large - which is the difference.
As an aside: isn't your cousin's experience demonstrating, in her case, *heterosexuality* is a choice? That is, she was straight, but chose not to be?
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posted
I would think people who don't try to apply their faith-based beliefs to the world at large aren't being very true to their faith.
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posted
I gotta go with Tres on this one, imogen - my faith would be pretty paltry if I didn't apply it outside of myself.
Also, I don't get your question. I believe in my cousin's case she was born hetero, lived a hetero life, and then chose to be gay. So, in that case her heterosexuality was not a choice, only her leaving it behind her for a different life was the choice made there.
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You have your faith. You try and apply it to the world, because it is the way you understand and judge things.
What I am saying is that I would expect you not to hold other people who do not believe in your faith up to that standard.
So while I can understand, accept and agree with you right to your own faith I will never agree with your (hypothetical you here ) right to impose that same faith on people who do not believe.
Does that make sense?
Belle - in terms of your cousin....
quote: I believe in my cousin's case she was born hetero, lived a hetero life, and then chose to be gay. So, in that case her heterosexuality was not a choice, only her leaving it behind her for a different life was the choice made there.
Ok. How about someone who in all their life was gay. They lived a life of homosexual relationships, they lived a 'homo' life. Then, because of a bad homosexual relationship they chose to be straight.
Wouldn't then the choice be about heterosexuality - that is, homosexuality was *not* a choice?
I think I understand your point of veiw in being that everyone is inherently heterosexual. And this stems from your beliefs. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
posted
What if you are basically asexual until you find the right person? Sexuality is more than just gay and straight. How many female friends I have had that I have somehow convinced were at least bi. Disappointingly, they did not fall for me... *Said too much*
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posted
grah. I really do try not to talk about that... It's just that it's as complicated as my religious beliefs... There's no clear way to explain it.. I am attracted to both men and women just about evenly... But when I was younger I wasn't interested in either... It's weird... I can't limit myself to just one gender because the right person COULD be female or COULD be male And the only thing that would really count is if I cared about them a lot. I have a weird theory that sexuality is completely relative. It just depends. Once I read an article about compulsary heterosexuality but no article or theory covers it well enough.
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posted
I don't expect people to live up to my standards, I don't try to live up to my standards. I try to live up to God's standards even though I know I will fail everyday.
By applying faith to the whole world, I mean that there is no issue in the world I can consider outside of my faith. I can't look at something and say "I'm going to view this without considering God." I can't do it. So, I can't discuss homosexual marriage without taking into account what God has to say on the subject of marriage. That means that an athiest and I will not see eye to eye on the issue, ever. See what I mean?
My faith is an all or nothing deal. I can't stop being a Christian and laying aside the belief that God created the world and that he has certain ways he wants things done. I am either Christian 24 hours a day or I'm not a Christian.
Not everyone believes the same way I do, not even all Christians agree with me on each and every issue. I recognize and appreciate the freedom afforded us in America to make our own religious choices and I don't think we should ever establish a national religion and force everyone to join, even if it were MY religion.
It's my job as a Christian to be a witness and to spread the news of the gospel. But it's up to the person to listen and make a decision. I can't force that on them and I wouldn't want to.
So, my definition of applying my faith to the world at large does not include forcing others to do the same. Clear as mud?
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posted
So true... Again, I have a weird way of viewing it. I don't even WANT to label myself. ESpecially since the opportunity has not presented itself... Ah, well. I just am... To quote Rumi I'm a "breath breathing human being."
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The thing is, I don't have a problem with religions or religous beliefs.
Like Bob, I am not religous not because of choice, but because I have never been drawn/accepted/answered. That's not to say I wouldn't question some doctrine if I was.
But Belle, honestly, I have the upmost respect for people who can separate their own faith from what they mean to impose on other people
From a non-religous standpoint, it took a long time before I could separate my views on certain issues from my judgments on religions that took an opposite view. In terms of that, I was a bigot. Luckily, I got over it. Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
My theory is that it's more a combination of genetics and society.
Degrees of homosexuality, if you will.
A scale of 1-5 (is this a gay community-wide thing, or just my friends?). 1 being totally gay. Like Village People gay.
It's still possible for someone born with strong homosexual tendencies to be straight due to social pressures(direct or indirect).
And someone born with little to no gay leanings could become so if the desire were strong enough.
I think this is what conservatives are afraid of--I do think that when it becomes more acceptable, there will be more homosexuals.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Again, this is based solely on my speculation and anecdotal evidence. I'm not sure what the gay community as a whole thinks about it (my friends find it pretty accurate).
I don't think it should matter whether it's choice or genetics, though. As society becomes more tolerant, it takes more and more work for a 1 to force him/herself hetero.
A Catch-22 of-sorts. Maybe it is a virus. If only all diseases could make people better at art, get them to dress nicely, and give them an appreciation for antiques. Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
How about this... this may agree or disagree to certain extents with prior suggestions on the thread:
Some number, lets give it... 40% of people are somewhere in the middle. With societal or internal encouragement, they could slide into a loving sexual relationship with either gender.
The other 60% (a random number) are more fixed. You can change them, but only through severe effort like brain washing, medication, electrical therapy. Then there are probably a few that would never change no matter what.
Voluntary change is perfectly fine, on either spectrum. Change over time is common-place. I have a friend who identified straight, who became bisexual, then became gay exclusively. I have another who identified bisexual, and then became gay exclusively. There are the multitudes of straight "bicurious" women who will decide they're bi. Or straight. Or lesbian.
It does not hurt the gay agenda to embrace the idea that sexuality is fluid and affected by the environment, as well as having genetic components.
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posted
I believe the question here is phrased too vaguely. It almost doesn't matter whether or not your sexuality is a choice - although I figure most people lie somewhere along the spectrum.
The ACTIONS we take are definitely, definitely a choice. I may or may not be attracted to someone who's unavailable - married, a professor, a cousin, whatever - but doing something about it takes an act of will.
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posted
I'm with you, 100%, Suneun. It sounds reasonable to me, and I think something along those lines is closer to true than either party line.
Some people seem to think that proving a genetic factor in homosexuality will somehow make people more accepting, and I don't think that is true. Even if it was as simple as the XY/XX chromosomes (which if there is a genetic factor, to won't be that simple) people will still have their faiths and their fears and their squicks and some of them will choose to be bigoted. Of course, that's just my opinion.
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posted
Aside from the God argument, why should we force one person to make a harder choice than another has to and force them to pursue something they don't want?
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posted
Why do we ask people to be faithful to their spouses? Even the ones who aren't attracted to their spouses, have people throwing themselves at them, and aren't doing anything that has a chance of getting someone pregnant. Why do condemn these people for not controlling their sexual impulses?
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posted
I don't think that biology controls specific aspects of behavior like sexual orientation. Biology certainly provides hormones for sexual drive, and the female biology is certainly evolved and of nature to be receptive to the male biology, but that is evolutionary physical tailing, and coding to follow it is not implicit in the genome. The reason why most people are probably straight is because heterosexuality is the most obvious and easiest way to express sexual drive. But, like I said, your genome does not determine specific aspects of behavior that are either modern or have no biological use (ie evolution kills off unproductive behavior)(being gay COULDN'T be biological since most gays don't have biological children and could NOT pass on the gene. Claiming it's a mainstream mutation of the normal genome would be out of line for the simple fact that there aren't even close to 30% gays in the population).
quote:But, like I said, your genome does not determine specific aspects of behavior that are either modern or have no biological use (ie evolution kills off unproductive behavior)(being gay COULDN'T be biological since most gays don't have biological children and could NOT pass on the gene.
Evolution does not kill off unproductive behavior. There are many diseases in which the affected patient dies before maturity. Those diseases are often correlated with genetics. Simple mendelian genetics only exists in textbooks. Even recessive traits explain the existence of "unproductive behavior." New mutations, multifactorial inheritence, and sex-linked traits are other examples of complexity that adds to the picture.
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posted
Sun, it does kill it off when the behavior is behavior specifically subverting and preventing normal reproduction and passing on of genes.
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quote:Why do we ask people to be faithful to their spouses?
Because spouses become the victim.
In the secular world, a sexual relationship between two consenting (and mentally capable) adults has no victims.
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quote:Cystic fibrosis is the most common lethal genetic disease in the United States, striking 1 in every 2,500 Caucasians (it is much rarer in other races).
The cystic fibrosis allele causes excessive secretions of mucus from the pancreas, lungs, and other organs which lead to blockage of the digestive tract, cirrhosis of the liver, pneumonia and other infections.
If untreated, most children with cystic fibrosis die by the age of four or five years.
Special diets, daily doses of antibiotics to prevent infection, and other treatments can prolong life into the adolescent years.
A small percentage of patients live to adulthood. If they reproduce, there is a 100% chance of transmitting one copy of the cystic fibrosis allele to their children.
Antibiotics for CF are a fairly modern invention. Why didn't CF die out a long, long time ago?
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posted
Adultery is bad because it breaks a vow made, it destroys faith and trust in a relationship, it breaks down the bond between the people in the marriage.
What does that have to do with homosexuality?
[ February 24, 2004, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote:So, why is adultery bad? What if there is tacit approval from the spouse?
Aside from God? Suneun had it--it's a vow. A written, legal vow. Not like saying you'll wash the dishes then forget--it's like not paying rent or taking steriods before the Olympics.
Frowned upon, yes. Practiced? Definitely.
If there's approval from the spouse? Then I'd wager that it's only the God people who are condemning it.
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posted
Ack, Brian M I strongly disagree with what I feel is your warped biological perspective. I'm not sure exactly how to phrase it. The fact that there are homosexual behaviors in many species of animals does lead one to believe in genetic inclinations. There are even fish that change gender on a regular basis as part of their lifecycle. Genetics is far more complicated and messy than you are infering.
For example, I have studied the color genetics of the Cardigan Welsh Corgi extensively, and am as educated as just about anyone else on the subject. But they still have recessive genes that we suddenly find out exist, when an oddly colored puppy shows up. And a trait known as merleing that we know is dominant was still lost after WWII and re-discovered. This means dogs that *shouldn't* have been carrying the merling gene because there was nothing visible about it, actually were. (We still don't know where the gene marker is either.) And color genetics are the "easy" tip of the iceberg.
AJ
(Suneun said it much better than my simple example!)
posted
Suneun, all the examples you gave were of diseases caused by recessive genes. That is, both parents must be carriers.
No idea how that relates (if at all) to homosexual tendencies, but it IS why they have stayed in the population.
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posted
Both of the diseases you listed have a lower incidence than the occurance of homosexuality, therefore it would be the simplest conclusion that those problems are not mainstream mutations or defects that can be carried by others. There could be many reasons why some animal species engage in homosexual behaviors, maybe it's because they don't have much mental capacity so they just make a reproductive mistake and it sticks (almost like the way its a choice with humans).
I'm not saying it's wrong, but it IS a choice. Even if it were genetic, it is best to assume it's a choice until we know for sure because the modern generation has too much of a tendency to victimize themselves with their biology. Biology is not destiny. However, I still don't believe that it is the case. You can call me warped, but you can't explain how a behavior more prevalent than most reproductively-dehibilitating diseases but yet not prevalent enough to be shown to carried as a mainstream mutation has managed to be passed on in the genetic code even though the behavior itself subverts and works against reproduction of genes.
Those are the reasons it's probably not genetic. Now lets look at reasons why it's probably a choice. Sensitization to a million different societal factors occurs for most people while they are still young, before you can explain away behavioral influence, you would have to go through the momunemental task of going through each person's experience and proving why it should be discounted as a reason to why they are the way they are now. That seems much harder to me than understanding how biology does not control specific aspects of behavior, it merely offers potential for types of behavior that can go several different ways.
posted
The study on monozygotic and dizygotic twins cited in the earlier thread suggests that homosexuality has both genetic and environmental components.
I don't think it can be successfully argued that homosexuals have refrained from reproducing for the last hundred thousand years. Or even the last 10 thousand years. Or the last 1 thousand years. Obviously, they _are_ reproducing, re: lesbian couples with children, married men with children, famous men like Oscar Wilde who had children and were gay.
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posted
Are you claiming that the majority of homosexuals reproduce? I don't believe that. I DO, however think that the advent of gay adoption will prove this once and for all. As it becomes more and more allowable and societal pressures on the children wear down, un-interfered-with influence from the gay parent will be able to be shown that it would be a behavioral choice if even a small amount of those chuldren chose homosexuality in consistent methods.
posted
Either way, let me return to my initial statement and reason behind the statement: Evolution does not kill off unproductive behavior.
I just want you to be clear on that, because the wording in the other post sounds like you believe that any unproductive trait must be weeded out in finite time. That premise is untrue.
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