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]]

If you can demonstrate how celibacy is somehow unhealthy, then perhaps your argument will indeed make sense.

[Übereil]

To quote the first part of that text I linked to:

Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female.

If you want to know why that article claims that you ought to read the acricle in question.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

I'll re quote myself and you'll see why I said what I said.

 

If you can demonstrate how celibacy is somehow unhealthy, then perhaps your argument will indeed make sense.

 

Unhealthy. Not "less healthy than you could be", unhealthy. Yes there may be a loss of some minor health benefits, but there are no specific health drawbacks.

[Übereil]

I guess there are no health drawbacks of not eating then.

(By now it should be clear what I mean when I say celibacy is unhealthy.)

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

I guess there are no health drawbacks of not eating then.

 

Of course there are. Now you're just being obtuse. Not eating leads to death.

 

What I'm saying is that by not having sex, your not going to die and there will be no substantial damage to your health. That is NOT the same as not eating.

[Kenny]

And if we were a purely utilitarian species who cared only about the benefits of all the things we do rather then enjoying life your argument would make sense.

[Kellen T. Frank]

Actually, his arguement wouldn't make sense, because we would still need to make babies. Remember, the evolutionary point of sex?

[Übereil]

Of course there are. Now you're just being obtuse. Not eating leads to death.

It's not not eating that's unhealthy, it's just eating that's really healthy. Just like not having sex has no negative consequences but having sex does.

Both sex and eating are things that you can either do or don't do (...well, there are of course levels of it, but let's not make things unecesarily complicated). And both are things where you'll be healthier if you do them than if you don't do them. So if we can say not eating is unhealthy then we can say not having sex is unhealthy. And if we can't say not having sex is unhealthy then we can't say not eating is unhealthy.

(Sometimes semantics matter.)

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

It's not not eating that's unhealthy, it's just eating that's really healthy.

 

No, not eating is unhealthy. Let me put it another way

 

If you don't have sex, your not going to get a disease, your not going to get ill, your not in any way going to be incapacitated or die. You might avoid some fairly marginal health benefits, but your not going to die. If you don't eat you WILL die. No question.

[Übereil]

Here's an image to help illustrate what I mean:



Whenever you choose between two things where one choice has better consequences than the other this is ultimately what it looks like. The choice with the poor consequences will be A and the choice with the good consequences will be B. So if we consider eating food: not eating food is A and eating food is B. Is it A that's unhealthy or B that's healthy?

That depends on from what point you're looking. If you're considering A to be the norm then it's B that's healthy (and A isn't unhealthy, it's normal). If you consider B to be the norm then B isn't healthy, it's normal. A, on the other hand, is unhealthy. Which of the two perspectives is the correct perspective? Well, they're both equally correct, because healthy/unhealthy speaks about relations between things. Eating food is healthier than not eating food. Healthy is like cold/warm. At what point is it cold outside? We can't really say. What we can say is that 20 degrees is warmer than 15 degrees. Whether that means 15 is cold or not is something we can't really say (because 15 is still warmer than 5, which is warmer than -10, which is warmer than -30).

Eating food and having sex are the same in this respect. They are both actions that are relativly healthy compared with not doing them. If you eat food you're going to be better off than if you don't eat food. If you have sex you're going to be better off than if you don't have sex. The only real difference is the gulf between the two positions (C in the picture above): not eating food will be far worse for you (compared to eating) than not having sex (compared to sex).

That's what it means to say something is unhealthy: not doing it is healthier than doing it. Eating food is healthy, not eating food is unhealthy (because eating food is healthier than not eating food). In the same way having sex is healthy and not having sex is unhealthy (because having sex is healthier than not having sex).

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

That's what it means to say something is unhealthy: not doing it is healthier than doing it. Eating food is healthy, not eating food is unhealthy (because eating food is healthier than not eating food). In the same way having sex is healthy and not having sex is unhealthy (because having sex is healthier than not having sex).

 

There's a rather large problem with your entire post. It is a MASSIVE oversimplification. You are technically correct, but the realitiy is more complex. Yes, eating food is healthy, yes having sex is healthy BUT having sex is not essential to live. Eating food IS essential to live. Making them the same is just playing with language. Yes, it is healthier to do both, but one of them you need to do to stay alive. Another one, you don't. Its that simple. So to say "not having sex is the same as not eating" is absurd. Stop acting like its the same.

[Übereil]

I never said having sex is the same as eating, I merely said not having sex is unhealthy. That's the statement I've been defending all this time (and I've done so by showing how claiming it's not healthy is absurd).