Choosing to be gay?

[XMisery666]

Why do you think people are gay? Why does it take some of us until later in life to find out? Is it a choice, just a life style, a fad?

Personally, I believe people are born this way and can tend to supress it...I also believe that some people may choose to be gay for one reason or another...to rebel against parents, to experiment, whatever.

I would like to know how others feel about this topic.

[Allecto]

There are some women who see lesbianism as a political choice, and thre was even one woman who said that a woman didn't even have to be attracted to women to be a lesbian; she just had to choose not to fuck men.

Needless to say, most of those "lesbians" are completely insufferable.

[Jim94]

I think we are born gay and choosing gay is not possible.
I think that it is not possible to turn gay because you cant choose who you are attracted to , you can play gay to get some peoples attention but really change to gay , no.

[Zontar]

I certainly believe it's possible. You would only be choosing your preference though...orientation, not so much. The difference is what you prefer vs what you can prefer.

The most you could make out of choosing to be gay is one going out of their way to see if they have any queer potential within themselves. I've seen people do that and I don't really have a problem with it. I've also seen at least one guy try and force himself to be gay, which was nothing short of ridiculous.

[steel03]

If you've made a choice, you're not gay.
That's not true. You make the choice to accept it. You make the choice to come out. You make the choice to pursue it.
But being gay means you are attracted to the same sex, not that you fuck the same sex. So OBVIOUSLY it's not a choice, since OBVIOUSLY no one can control whom they are attracted to. OBVIOUSLY. Everyone should be able to figure this out! It's not that hard!
I mean if you're confused, that's one thing, but you still didn't make a choice to be the way you are.

[confused102188]

I hate when people say its a choice! NO! Why would anybody choose to grow up worrying about how people will accept it and if you'll ever be able to tell anyone about it. We have gay teens committing suicide over there sexuality! Nobody would choose that. Plus in the USA we can't get married in most states we can be walking down the street holding hands with the one we love and get stared at or laughed at or worse. Sorry about the rant lol. Just passionate about it.

[sanguine]

Originally Posted by confused102188

I hate when people say its a choice! NO! Why would anybody choose to grow up worrying about how people will accept it and if you'll ever be able to tell anyone about it. We have gay teens committing suicide over there sexuality! Nobody would choose that.

i reckon

everyone ive confided my sexuality with automatically jumped the gun and said when did i start being gay or why are you gay or when did you become gay.

like wtf

morons really

i cant speak for everyone but ive had no attraction to women at all, i understand what beauty is when it comes to them but i dont see myself engaging in anything sexual with them, ive had same sex attractions all my life, so therefore it's not a choice, otherwise i would have conformed to being hetero ages ago because of vilification and social angst

[BudderMC]

Originally Posted by confused102188

I hate when people say its a choice! NO! Why would anybody choose to grow up worrying about how people will accept it and if you'll ever be able to tell anyone about it.

Playing Devil's Advocate here:

What if we do choose our sexual orientation? The only thing is, we choose it when we're at a young age. Think about it: you hear stories of little kids going to kindergarten and coming back and saying they have a new boy/girlfriend, based strictly on who they like. None of this societal norm stuff (or very little of it anyway).

Basically, what if we choose before we're aware of all the societal baggage that comes along with being anything but straight? Certainly nobody chooses to be discriminated against, etc. etc., but then again, that discrimination is only present because of the society we live in. Scientifically, it has nothing to do with being gay.

That thought just crossed my mind. Don't get me wrong, usually I'm on the same standing as you. I do very much believe it's something we're "born into", or at least is decided at such a stupidly young age we really don't decide anything for ourselves.

[Tiny Catastrophe]

I don't think people choose whether they're gay or not. I've actually had this discussion with my girlfriend. Her life is a living hell because she's gay and she said if she could choose she would probably choose to be straight and I feel the same way. So I don't think it's a choice. I'm not saying I'm not happy with the way I am but it would make my life a lot easier if I wasn't gay.

[silverhalo]

I dont think people can choose to be gay, people can choose to come out and be openly gay, people (gay or straight) can choose to have relationships with same sex people, just as people (gay or straight) can choose to have relationships with opposite sex people, it doesnt mean that they are changing who they are attracted to.
Sometimes people dont come out straight away or realise they are gay straight away this has to do with stereotypes and society, as well as peer pressure, religion and the like.

Its can be as simple as chocolate, everyone around you is raving about a particular type of chocolate, you try it and you dont hate it but you really cant see what the fuss is about or you dont even fancy trying it, you dont know why. Sometimes you might even try it a few times because surely you must like it (everyone else does) and you must have been mistaken the first time, eventually you open your mind to trying a different type of chocolate and you love it, and wonder why you never tried it before.

[seeksanctuary]

I don't think it's a choice, but maybe for some it is and some it isn't. Maybe people who can "choose" are genetically built to be ABLE to choose, which... means their choice isn't really a choice, so much as a biological ability to just be attracted to whoever the hell they feel like being attracted to?

Eh. I don't think it matters.

Originally Posted by Zontar

The most you could make out of choosing to be gay is one going out of their way to see if they have any queer potential within themselves. I've seen people do that and I don't really have a problem with it.

This, probably. I tend to see the "gay by choice" people as people who are willing and enthusiastic about experimenting, to see if they actually can do it.

[IanGallagher]

Not to sound homophobic, but this reminded me of how I saw a young gay character retort to his father after he was accused of being 'convinced' that he was gay --

Who would want to convince themselves? That they're someone who might get scorned by family, friends, and peers just for liking the same sex? Seriously, who would want to choose that?

We were born this way. Girls and guys caught my attention at the same age. There is practically no differentiating between the two. They happen exactly the same way. My best guess is it's a gene - XXX means straight, YXX or YYX means bi, YYY means gay - that would explain the spectrum.

As to why it takes lots of people time to come out or accept it? Denial, due to the reasons listed above. Please note I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it - you learn to embrace it just as readily as a mutant (in the comics world) does their powers - but, it's still not easy.

[Tracker57]

Originally Posted by steel03

If you've made a choice, you're not gay.
That's not true. You make the choice to accept it. You make the choice to come out. You make the choice to pursue it.
But being gay means you are attracted to the same sex, not that you fuck the same sex. So OBVIOUSLY it's not a choice, since OBVIOUSLY no one can control whom they are attracted to. OBVIOUSLY. Everyone should be able to figure this out! It's not that hard!
I mean if you're confused, that's one thing, but you still didn't make a choice to be the way you are.

Spot on, Steel03!!!! I never chose this, it chose me. Does anyone ask a straight person if they CHOSE to be straight? If you ask that, most people would see that as a stupid question. And it took a long time for me to choose to accept myself for who I am. I remember being this way since I was 5 years old. My brain is wired differently. So....

Vive la diference!

I'm gay now. I've always been gay. And I will die gay. And I am very happy that I am a gay man. No choice but to choose to embrace who I am and enjoy it!!!

Tracker

[starfish]

Seeing as how we do not know the exact cause of homosexuality it would be foolish to dismiss the idea entirely.

At the end of the day, it dosen't really matter, it is no ones business who I have sex with or choose to share my life with. Yes, others can dislike it, but they have no right to dictate how I live my life.

[Mogget]

<soapbox>Whether homosexuality is a choice is irrelevant to any political discussion on homosexuality. If having gay sex is morally acceptable, it is necessarily acceptable whether the desire to have it is inborn or chosen. The reverse is true if it is morally unacceptable.

We actually have a something of a parallel with pedophilia. There's good evidence that a certain percentage of child molesters are fixated on children, they literally have no sexual desire towards anyone other than children; given society's disapprobation of child molestation we can fairly safely say they didn't choose this desire. However, this does not in any way make it acceptable for these adults to have sex with children.

The argument that we don't choose to be gay is laden with bi erasure. Bi people may not choose to be attracted to the same sex, but they are also attracted to the opposite sex and if they hang out in straight areas and communities, can go a long way towards ensuring they'll end up with someone of the opposite sex. In a very real sense, they choose to have same-sex relationships if they have them. However, this does not mean that bi people should all have to have only straight sex, or--as a certain subset of the gay and lesbian communities would prefer--only have gay sex.

Furthermore, the argument has an inherent weakness. By making it, we're tacitly saying that being gay is either tragic or not really acceptable. "We didn't choose to be gay" implies either "but man it sucks that we are" or "and that's the only reason it's okay for us to have gay sex." It's not a good argument in terms of our cause. At the very least, it says that if a cure for homosexuality were developed, we'd all be lining up at the door to take it.

Finally, there's no reason to use this argument. When African-Americans and women advocated for their civil rights they didn't argue that they were born black or female, and that made it okay. They argued that it was inherently wrong to discriminate against them, with no more justification being made or needed than that they were human and all humans deserved equal treatment. Catholics, on the other hand, when arguing for their right to equal treatment never claimed that they didn't choose to hold to Catholic beliefs, they just found them in line with their feelings on morality. They argued, again, that all human beings deserved equal treatment. </soapbox>

[Aya McCabre]

There are people who freely admit that they were born gay but now choose to be straight. The validity of that statement is irrlelvant - the only way we can find out someone's sexuality is to ask them, so if they say they're straight then they're straight. It makes no sense to say that the same thing doesn't exist in reverse, particularly when there are people who also freely admit to it.

In the same way there are people who are adamant they were born straight and people who are adamant they were born gay. So both choice and birth are valid.

Another way to look at it is that everyone has their own sexuality. It is highly unlikely that any two people have a sexuality that is exactly the same. And yet we all use the same labels. If no two people have the same sexuality then no two people define a label the same way, so why does it matter how someone defines it for themselves? (Obviously there are problems when people define labels for other people.) Am I making sense here?

[Chip]

Originally Posted by Aya McCabre

There are people who freely admit that they were born gay but now choose to be straight.

I think a more accurate way to state that would be "There are people who freely admit that they were born gay but now choose to believe they are straight." And even that statement is generous; one of the founders of one of the largest ex-gay/reparative therapy programs (who left the organization and basically gave up on the idea) recently stated that he'd never met anyone who had successfully changed their sexual orientation.

Now... sexual orientation is a continuum. But there isn't any credible evidence that it's changeable, and even the Exodus and other ex-gay people admit that many (and perhaps most if not all) of their members "still have same-sex attraction" but choose to ignore their feelings.

[crazyhead]

I think the confusion comes from what you define as gay. Some people think being gay is just having sex with the same gender. But to me, it having a physical and romantic attraction toward the same gender. And that cannot be controlled, no matter who you have sex with. Anyone can choose to have sex with someone of the same sex, but that doesn't make them gay.

[Revan]

Originally Posted by IanGallagher

Not to sound homophobic, but this reminded me of how I saw a young gay character retort to his father after he was accused of being 'convinced' that he was gay --

Who would want to convince themselves? That they're someone who might get scorned by family, friends, and peers just for liking the same sex? Seriously, who would want to choose that?

We were born this way. Girls and guys caught my attention at the same age. There is practically no differentiating between the two. They happen exactly the same way. My best guess is it's a gene - XXX means straight, YXX or YYX means bi, YYY means gay - that would explain the spectrum.

As to why it takes lots of people time to come out or accept it? Denial, due to the reasons listed above. Please note I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it - you learn to embrace it just as readily as a mutant (in the comics world) does their powers - but, it's still not easy.

This. I don't think anyone would choose it. I mean don't get me wrong, we can be happy for who we are, but with the pain and hardships some of us face, why would someone look at that and be like "I'll be gay and let myself maybe be hurt, no big deal"

[Zontar]

Originally Posted by Revan

This. I don't think anyone would choose it. I mean don't get me wrong, we can be happy for who we are, but with the pain and hardships some of us face, why would someone look at that and be like "I'll be gay and let myself maybe be hurt, no big deal"

The "problem", if you can call it that, is that there are ever growing numbers of communities in this country where being gay does not carry any significant hardship or pain. As the rest of the country begins to follow suit, I can all but predict that there will be a *lot* more people actively going out of their way to explore their same-sex attractions. How many people do you think suppress their "queer" side just because of societal pressure?

Sexuality is already established to be fluid, dynamic, and very difficult to shove into neat little boxes like we all would prefer it to be. In the far-reaching future, I'm not certain if sexual identity will even exist anymore. I personally don't subscribe to an identity because I don't find it important to do so (although it's easier just to tell people I'm bi.) Nobody's going to judge you either way, so it will become considerably less important to label yourself in search of a sympathetic community and considerably more important to do what feels best.