Is Being Gay a Choice?

[E_Lewis]

You already know what most people will say.

Far right: Yes. It is a difficult choice, but can be overcome. There are bad things to being gay, but some people live with it the way geeks live with ridicule because of their strangeness that they could change.

 

Far left: No. You can't choose who you fall in love with. You're just born that way. Why would someone choose to be teased, rejected and alienated by society and their loved ones?

 

Well, to be fair to the right, some people, like geeks or weirdos, don't care about being teased or bullied or rejected because of the things they like. Even straight couples are willing to be teased or rejected because of their choice of a partner, but it's for love, right? Then again, is there really such a thing as true love at all?

Maybe it's just physical. Let's be honest, being gay or straight depends mostly on sex. If you fall in love with someone online then find out their not th gender you like, you probably wouldn't want to be with them the same way you did before.

For all we know, we do choose who we fall in love with. We make decisions about how to interperet our feelings, how to react to a person's actions or thoughts, when judging something they do or believe in, those are all little choices. Bu are they really what make us fall in love with people?

 

But it's true, if you want to love someone, why make it someone you're family or friends would reject you for? Why pick someone you can't have kids with or marry?(If that's what you want)

 

In Chrsitianity, the Bible says at least three times that being gay is wrong. But the only reason it would be wrong is if it's a choice, because sin is about disobeying God's will and rejecting the truth of his law and words. You can really only go against God's law by choosing to reject or go against it, like choosing to steal or choosing to ignore Jesus once you've heard the truth, or choosing not to even try to be a better person. So how can something be a sin if you don't choose to do it? (please no religious bashing from any sides in this discussion) Many christians who don't support being gay say that it's a hard thing to overcome but can be done, but how many gay people do they know that have actually stayed celibate or gone straight?

 

Main questions wiht this issue: Is it a choice? Can you choose who you fall in love with? Why or why not?  If it is a choice, why would you choose to be gay at all?

EDIT: If you have anything directed specifically at me, the one posting this, I'm not going to read it. The discussion is mainly for other people who wanted to discuss it, and I lost track of the comments months ago anyway.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Arn't you kind of removing people's agency. Yes, people are subjected to environmental impacts beyond their ability to control, but they can also change their enviroment and their response to it.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

And you can also respond to your enviroment, change it, and change your attraction. There are too many testemonies of people who have to ignore it

[Daniel Matthews]

I think that, in the words of the Hank Green, human sexuality is complicated. It's not L or B or G or T or Q, it's more of a spectrum, and that means that it's not so much about what you choose as who you are. I'm attracted pretty exclusively to men, and it is entirely possible that there's some mystical determining personality trait that's responsible for that, but I know that it feels true and correct and that that's all that really matters. 

I suppose I could, if I so chose, wean myself off of loving men. It's possible. But to do so would be to kill who I am for the satisfaction of people who have no business telling me who I should be, and I would never choose to do something so unfair to myself. 

In the end, it's entirely irrelevant if sexuality is a choice or not. Who you are determines who you are, and if who you are decides that you are most definitely a woman inside of a man's body, there's not a damn person out there who can tell you you're wrong because they aren't you.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

As someone who is queer id like to point out how far from black and white these things are.

I fell in love with a girl online and found out they were trans and  honestly had no problems with it. Even though i only like females physically this made no difference because the importance is in the emotional connection. 

Who you are attracted to is not a choice, you have chemicals in your brain that release things and give you the hevvie jeevies and suddenly you're infatuated with someone and you want your tongue in their face more than anything. That is not your choice.

Who you fall in love with works similarly. You like the vlogbrothers? i like the vlogbrothers? you like vonnegut? i love vonnegut? and then nerdfighter like and then dates and back to the tongue in the face and you know how this all works. 

However to an extent acting on these feelings is always your choice. Who you date and who you have sex with is always under your control. I however feel it'd be unreasonable to tell anyone they need to be forever alone because genitalia!

"Why would you choose to be gay"

Exactly. No one would choose the stigma attached, the fact it makes it 10 times harder to find a partner, or find media related to your community. The risk of being kicked out by your family and picked on through most of your education.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Who you are attracted to is not a choice, you have chemicals in your brain that release things and give you the hevvie jeevies and suddenly you're infatuated with someone and you want your tongue in their face more than anything. That is not your choice.

That's lust though, not love. Infatuation isn't at all the same thing as love, and it can be controlled.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

i went on to explain that love works similarly. it starts with chemicals and then emotions which are from more chemicals and none of that is in your control. so you feelings arent your actions are.

but its' human nature to not be alone, so even your actions are justifiable and understandable.  

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

i went on to explain that love works similarly.

No it doesnt. It is very simple to control who you fall in love with. What you are describing is being a slave to every slightest emotion you come across. You can control it by changing the nature of the situation your in. Not spending time with a given person etc.

[Tom Steinbrecher]

True, you can disconnect from that person. But there are people I've kept myself from for years and would still have feelings for.

Plus I have only been in love with people who identify as woman and i highly doubt that's coincidence. So why should i assume that it's coincidence for a gay man to only fall in love with men? Because it obviously only happened once.

I can go "I can't be in love with this person" and keep myself from them and cut them off from my life and heal. But that will not make me ever go on to love someone of the same gender. You would continue to cut yourself off from people you fall in love with and then fall in love again with someone you consider unright and go on forever like that. Eventually you settle with someone you don't love and eventually don't even like and that's awful. 

We can stop loving a person but we cannot force ourselves stop feeling love of any kind all together and keep our humanity. 

[Rem]

I love a lot of people. My parents, my sister, my dog, a few close friends of both genders, and so on and so forth. I'm not romantically interested in any of them. Sexuality is guided by lust. The most fulfilling marital relationship incorporates both of those attractions--mutual physical and emotional love. Homosexuality is basically a failure on our biology's part to continue the species--the desire for reproduction, but in a non-productive way. It could be compared to preferring low calorie food over high calorie food--a behavior that conflicts with the years of programming and conditioning that evolution, or at least the force that encourages the survival of the species, has created.

[David N]

In both of those examples, the services are no longer necessary. The world population is becoming unsustainable given its resources: each nation can afford an approximate 10%, non-reproductive homosexual population.

As for obsession over calories, I think it's a cultural thing, and I don't find it equatable at all, but changes in the average American lifestyle at least to a sedentary one have reduced the number of calories burned daily, and thus the amount of calories required on a daily basis to function. Calorie reduction in itself isn't a solution to this problem, but the whole issue is beside the point.

[Rem]

Oh, I'm by no means criticizing homosexuals. Merely saying that our bodies are coded by natural selection for heterosexuality. Similarly, we're adapted to environments where every calorie counts, which is why we struggle with eating in moderation. However, humanity has adapted our environment to our own needs (rather than adapting to the environment), throwing the whole system out of balance. As you said, the conditions imposed upon us by natural selection no longer apply, and things like, "Needing to find the strongest mate," or, "Violently attacking your competitors," are obsolete. Sure, the species still needs people reproducing, and you need to eat to survive, but we've reached a state of such prosperity that being homosexual is about as harmful as still having your tonsils.

[Maxwell Waters]

To be fair to the more orthodox members of my religion (Roman Catholicism), being a homosexual isn't a sin -- and it's also considered by the Church not to be a choice. The Church believes (though tentatively, barring any further news) that people are born gay or straight or bi. What She (the Church) also believes is that the act of sex is only fitting between couples who are capable of and open to the possibility of procreation, in a loving a mutually beneficial relationship which is only possible (so She believes) in the framework of marriage.

Now I think that's a load of horse-E.E. Cummings, but no one's going to elevate me to the papacy.

But in answer to the actual question, not getting into my pretty obvious opinion (I am bi and am totally open to having a husband in my future), if even the Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality isn't a choice, people need to start listening, because if you're more conservative than the Roman Catholic Church, you probably made a wrong turn near Albuquerque.