Being Gay Is Most Definitely Not A Choice

[ruggerson]

This article below by some righting hack at Townhall illustrates why it is so vitally important to tell the truth about sexuality.

Being gay is a fixed sexual orientation.

Being straight is a fixed sexual orientation.

Being bisexual is a fixed sexual orientation.

You cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT change your sexual orientation. If you enjoy sex with both men and women, you are NOT changing back and forth from being straight to gay, you are BISEXUAL, and you are choosing to act on your fixed sexual desires/affections. Even if you don't have sex for the rest of your life, you're still innately BISEXUAL.

Too many of us buy into the bullshit that it doesn't matter if innate sexuality is a "choice" or is biologically fixed, because people shouldn't be discriminated against regardless.

The flaw in that argument is very simply that we are ceding ground to the rightwing fanatics who want to keep gays and lesbians as second class citizens, and in so doing, we are muddying the debate.

The religious rightwing's entire argument against us conflates sexuality with sex. In other words, they deny the fixed orientation that people have, and claim that everyone can choose to be straight (good) or gay (evil and bad).

This is, of course, a total lie. If a gay man remains celibate for the rest of his life, he is still a gay man. His sexuality doesn't change, just because he refrains from sex.

Enter Roberta Sklar, some moron from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Who says, for an ABC piece on sex on campuses:

"These young women see sexuality as a fluid thing," said National Gay and Lesbian Task Force spokeswoman Roberta Sklar. "It's not just between your legs. These relationships are physical, emotional and intellectual, and the boundaries are not hard set," she said.

Sklar said a growing number of young women have a "more flexible view" of their sexual partners, and their early choices of gender may not be a "fixed path."

"I know a woman who had relationships of depth with members of both sexes," said Sklar. "She didn't put a tag on what her sexuality identity was. Recently, I saw her at her wedding to a young, lovely man. In no way does she deny her history or say she has found her true sexuality. It was all her true sexuality."

These words then give this religious rightwing shill, Kevin McCullough, license to write this piece on Townhall in response to Sklar's words:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2007/08/19/radical_gay_activist_we_lose

Checkmate!

Sklar loses, here's why:

For the past thirty years radical homosexual activists have sought out a way to justify their desires and behaviors beyond pure human choice. And by all measure they have been quite effective - at least in moving public opinion - though they've made little headway on fact. They have sought from science a biological explanation of their sexual behavior. They have sought to find medical, genetic, even DNA related origins. These searches have been in vain as there is still no biological, genetic, or cellular explanation for their sexually related behaviors....

With sexual relationships being "more fluid" with no "boundaries that are hard set", girls with more "flexible views" towards their sex partners, gender choices not being on a "fixed path", and woman who are leaving their lesbian amores for the security of a traditional marriage - Sklar is arguing choice, not biology.

In doing so she is arguing for the foundational view that we humans choose to control who we engage in sexual acts with. And in arguing that she ends the debate on the radical agenda she has been working towards for the last three decades.

The jig is up.

Game, set, match.

Of course, what Sklar failed to mention, idiotically, is that she was describing a woman whose orientation is obviously fixed as a bisexual: she can enjoy sex and romance with both sexes.

When our own side fails to make this distinction, we give ammunition to the religious rightwing, and enable them to send even more little boys and little girls into their "pray the gay away" religious prison camps that dot the landscape in the South.

There are little gay boys and girls suffering, because we are not effectively fighting this fight for them. They are being psychologically tortured and abused, because we are not telling the truth, loudly.

Do not enable the religious rightwing liars with bullshit new age crap about sexuality being "fluid." Sexuality is a fixed orientation. The only thing "fluid" about it, the only "choice" involved is how you CHOOSE to act on your already fixed sexuality.

Being gay is not a choice. Don't be afraid to tell the truth.

[knitter4democracy]

1. Only such a moran would call a bisexual a lesbian who changed.

Bisexual is bisexual. Bisexual is not gay or lesbian. How could anyone not get that?

[ruggerson]

2. He doesn't get it

because OUR side, represented by Ms. Sklar, does not know how to present the facts effectively, giving THEIR side the opening they need to perpetuate their lies.

[knitter4democracy]

8. I think he'd mess it up no matter what she said.

We can present things as perfectly as possible, and then they'd just lie. They don't care what we say--they'll twist it to whatever they want.

*sigh* Someday, we'll all be equal.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Don't try and preemt the evidence.

There is some fairly conclusive evidence that genetic factors play a role in determining sexual orientation.

To claim, as you do, that it is a known certainty that sexual orientation is never a choice is not at present, justifiable by the evidence. It's wishful thinking, at best.

Most people I've heard talk about the subject (including me) claim that their sexual orientation was not a matter of choice for them; some claim that it was. It may be that they're lying and you're right, but I think it unlikely.


Also, I think that even if most of what you say is technically true, it would still not be the case that sexual orientation is never a choice.

You say "bisexuality is a sexual orientation". I think that you're deliberately obscuring the difference between active and latent bisexuality to support your political agenda.

Some people choose to sexually identify as bisexual.

Some people are latently attracted to both genders, but choose to self-identify as straight or as gay.

To lump these groups together is, I think, misguided.

For the latter, I would say that sexual orientation is, clearly, a matter of choice.

[ruggerson]

4. The people who claim that they "chose" their sexuality

are either:

bisexuals who think because they are bisexual and that's THEIR life experience, that everyone else must be, too, and therefore they conflate sexuality with their choice of a partner.

or

gay people who were psychologically trying to fit in with straight society as young men and women, until their fixed sexuality caught up with their ability to live a lie.

There is no choice involved. To say otherwise, is simply not factual and it gives our enemies the license they need to perpetuate their war against us.

[goodgd_yall]

10. Why be so authoritarian about this?

Why are you so invested in refusing to accept the possibility that choice is part of one's sexuality?

I think the issue is very complicated. Part of the problem is definition and agreement in our definitions. So some people disagree with you because of how they perceive sexuality. Yet you don't even seem to be open to that notion.

Even using the term "gay." I don't know if you mean only men, or if you're including lesbians. Many times people are careful to distinguish between the two and some people use it as a catch-all term. I, for one, believe there is difference in this matter between gay men and lesbian women. I know of a few women who because of their feminist beliefs have chosen, as a political stance, to be intimate only with women. They have been intimate with men, so it's not that they cannot, but they choose not. How does that fit into your belief?

[ruggerson]

12. No one has chosen

"because of their political stance" to be a lesbian. They must have been bisexuals and chose to act on their attraction to women, because politically they felt better about making that choice.

No straight woman can CHOOSE to be sexually attracted to another woman. If a straight feminist actually becomes romantically and sexually involved with another woman, because of political beliefs, I can't imagine how she can bring herself to maintain a faux relationship where there is no sexual attraction. It would be like trying to live your life doing things with your left hand when you are right handed. Truly straight people do not enjoy and CANNOT enjoy sex with members of their own gender. Truly gay and lesbian folks CANNOT enjoy sex with members of the opposite sex. If they do enjoy it, then they are bisexual to begin with. What's so difficult to understand?

[goodgd_yall]

16. Then you must believe that sexuality

is very easily defined and NOT a continuum. Bless you for being so certain and rigid about your own.

[ruggerson]

18. I think bisexuality

is somewhat on a continuum, as I know people who are attracted to both sexes, but lean more one way than the other. I also know bisexuals who are attracted equally to both sexes.

I know gay people, myself included, who have tried to have sex with the opposite sex (mostly when they were younger) in order to try and "be straight" and they found it to be completely against their natural instincts. In other words, they found it to be revolting.

I know many straight people who are repulsed by the idea of having sex with members of their own sex. They are simply not oriented that way.

The real issue here, it seems to me, is that some bisexuals end up muddying the waters here and confusing sexuality with sex, and play right into the hands of the religious rightwingers.

[goodgd_yall]

33. I'm not so sure

that just because you are able to have sex or are attracted to one or a very few of the opposite sex AND your are gay or lesbian, that that makes you bisexual. I just don't agree with that. If that were so, then there are very few TRUE gay men or lesbian women.

I consider my own sexuality to be largely affected by environment. I can remember being attracted to boys when I was very young, but then, I don't know if that was because all my images were of men and women pairings, or if it was just who I was. Only in high school can I remember actually being attracted to women, but that's just my memory. I may have been showing signs of being "different" from my straight sisters earlier. I know I was tomboyish. Later, post-high school, I discovered I had no interest in sex, but I was going from the assumption men were the only alternative (I'm in my 50s and an alternative was off the radar screen for most of my peers in the 70s.) Finally, I gave myself, what I'd like to call, the psychic freedom to consider the alternative and, voila, I realized being intimate with a woman was actually very much a turn-on (all in my head still--no actual experience).

Later, after being sexual with women, I began to think that maybe I actually could be sexually intimate with men. I realized through a few experiences that I just was NOT attracted to being physically close to a man, but I definitely was with a woman.

Anyway, all this is to say, in my own experience, I don't think I was destined to be a lesbian, but that is my interpretation, and you might think otherwise.

[ruggerson]

34. Well we disagree on that point

"that just because you are able to have sex or are attracted to one or a very few of the opposite sex AND your are gay or lesbian, that that makes you bisexual. I just don't agree with that. If that were so, then there are very few TRUE gay men or lesbian women.


If one is able to have sex with even ONE member of the opposite sex and truly enjoy it sexually and romantically (and one usually enjoys same sex relationships), then that makes one a bisexual. They may lean predominantly one way or the other, but they are still bisxual.

And I know plenty of gay men and women who are no more attracted to the opposite sex than they are to their microwave oven. And the same goes for straight people. There are loads of people who are thoroughly straight - if forced to have sex with a member of their own gender, they would find it unappealing, and loads of people who are thoroughly gay.

Again, I think a lot of bisexuals tend to imagine everyone is like them. Everyone must have bisexual tendencies. That's not the case. Not everyone does.

[goodgd_yall]

37. Even though I argue it can be a choice

I don't say it was in my own case. I happen to be one of those people who, even though I find some men attractive, sexual intimacy would be a total flop. I just could not enjoy it.

Yet, I believe for me, my early upbringing turned me off to being physically close to men. I don't seem to have had any attraction physically to women either until I went to an all girls high school. I laughed when my mother told me she thinks going to an all girls school is what "did it" to me (she can't come out and say it). But there is a smidgeon of truth in that I may not have experienced that attraction that early without, not only being in an all girls school, but seeing girls being very natural and comfortable with themselves, something that is one of the advantages of all girl schools.

[ruggerson]

38. Plenty of women

went to all girl's schools and turned out totally straight. I would venture to say probably the majority.

But we veer from the intent of the OP. I think it's politically misguided and factually incorrect to say that it doesn't matter, people should have equal rights regardless of whether it's a choice or biologically fixed.

It DOES matter. Try making your "choice" argument to gays and lesbians in Muslim countries who are beheaded for being homosexual. Using your logic, we could be saying to them, well, don't CHOOSE to be gay or lesbian and you will not get your head cut off.

Which is exactly the message the Muslim fanatics and the Christian fanatics are trying to push.

[mondo joe]

20. Sexuality can only be a choice when one is actually attracted to more than one gender.

Some people are, some aren't.

[ruggerson]

21. and even then it's not the "sexuality" that's the choice

it's what you choose to act on. The sexuality (in this case bisexuality) remains fixed, even if a bisexual only has heterosexual relationships.

[mondo joe]

23. Indeed - I was sloppy with my language. Thanks for the catch.

:-)

[ruggerson]

25. np

:hi:

[hfojvt]

36. handedness is not fixed

Many people have learned to use the other hand when their primary hand (or arm, really) was lost or injured. I believe both my father and I are naturally left-handed, and yet we were both made into a hybrid. He, because his mother did not approve of lefties, is right-handed in eating and writing, and is left-handed in sports, which he did outside, away from his mother's control. They tell me that I could not decide which hand to pick up the spoon with, so they held my left hand down and I used my right. I think any righty or any lefty could be MADE ambidextrous with training at an early age.

Myself, I do not remember choosing a sexual orientation, but I also cannot remember what early training I had encouraging me to make a particular choice.

You have not provided any evidence which proves your assertion that orientation is not a choice. In this regard I am reminded of food. When I say I do not like a particular food, like steak or beer for example, people hassle me. "You don't like steak? Or beer? :wtf:" As if I made a choice. Like I ate some steak and said "Wow, this is delicious. I love the taste and texture of this, but I'm not going to like it, just to be difficult, or morally pure."

Yet there are acquired tastes. Many people, I suspect, do not start out liking the taste of beer. They drink it though, because they wanna get buzzed, or drunk, and eventually the taste grows on them. Can any number of tastes not be acquired?

[Toasterlad]

31. He Explained Why.

Because the entire argument the fundies propose against homosexuality is that it's a choice. An EVIL choice. You can either wait for their attitudes to change to the point where they'll accept the fact that everyone has the right to love whomever they want, whether it's a choice or not, or you can shut them all right the hell up by proving it's NOT a choice. Since I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that MY sexuality was not a choice, I'm pushing for the more expedient route.

I have met very, VERY few people who claimed their sexuality was a "choice". After discussing it with them thoroughly, it became clear to me that these were individuals who experimented with sexuality out of curiosity in their teens and late teens (which is QUITE common), but eventually "settled" down to the orientation they were BORN with. If they were BORN bisexual, they stayed bisexual; if they were BORN straight, they stayed straight, and if they were BORN gay, they stayed gay.

I'm not a scientist (me and Bill Richardson!), but I know that there are rarely absolutes, so I won't say it's not a choice for ANYONE. However, I WILL say that IF it's a choice for some, they are statistically insignificant part of the population.

[TahitiNut]

5. If it's a choice for some then why isn't it a choice for me?

I never made any such 'choice' ... it never even occurred to me. I never looked around in the boys locker room and had any attraction whatsoever. None.

I feel cheated. :cry:

:silly:

I just ask people whether they had to make some difficult choice ... and why didn't I? They shut up quick.

[cobalt1999]

7. That's always my line too.

I'll look at some religious guy and say "You mean, you chose to be straight?" Shuts them up quickly.

[Help me help Earth]

6. Being an open bigot is one.

Unfortunately, too many people make the wrong choice in that regard.

[JNelson6563]

I think for some it is & for some it's not.

And frankly I don't care one way or the other. What people want to do in the privacy of their own bedroom should be of no concern to anyone else. But then again I'm not a hate-mongering fundy.

Live and let live. :toast:

Julie

[Cairycat]

9. Whether it's a choice or not

being gay is OK. Gays are people, why treat them as less than human?

[goodgd_yall]

11. This is what anti-gay people need to get.

Whether it is something one can't help because it is biology or whether it is influenced by environment or whether it is a choice based on politics does not affect the fact that GLBT people should enjoy the same privileges and rights as white affluent males (a group that's never had any challenges as far as getting what they deserve).

[ruggerson]

15. The reason this is not a good argument

is because it offers up the possibility that the religious rightwing is right in claiming it's somehow a "choice."

This then gives them the moral foundation to keep torturing young gay and lesbian kids.

If it's a choice, why are we then concerned about Muslim countries, where you will be beheaded for being gay. After all, just choose not to be gay and you won't have to worry about being killed.

Sorry, it ain't a valid argument.

We wouldn't have said in the sixties, well blacks might really be genetically inferior, but let's give them their rights anyway. After all, what does it matter?

[goodgd_yall]

39. Blacks, gays, and rights

Most people believed, I think, that black people were full human beings by the mid 1800s. It took several decades for the slaves to be emancipated and then 100 years more for apartheid to end in the South. And the government in passing the Civil Rights Act did not wait for racists to change their thinking, it was forced on them, because it was the right thing to do.

Does saying homosexuality is genetic or biological, really going to make a difference in getting our rights? I don't think so. The government needs to take leadership and make laws to protect our rights.

[dsc]

13. For several years I tried to be straight

In that effort I lied to everyone I knew and loved, led women on in a way that was close to evil, and even considered Exodus (my parent's insurance wouldn't pay or else I would have). I remember crying myself to sleep on my 17th birthday because I felt that I would outgrow the phase of being gay and didn't. For a long time I considered it a combination of a personal failing and a lack of faith. Now I know better but it was a long journey. I really can't believe it is a choice. It just doesn't compute.

[pink-o]

26. The worst of it is, you must've felt completely alone and isolated

...like, there's nobody else in the world going thru what you did. It's hard enough being adolescent without feeling that kind of shame and isolation. I'm so sorry you had to bear that alone.

But it's for what you went thru, and what so many other young people have to deal with that we ALL must continue to fight for equal rights--for ALL people. No one in our "great" society is ever supposed to feel marginalised or inferior. That is the foundation of all my liberal beliefs, and FAR more importantly, the foundation of my country!

When folks like you can humanise the unnecessary suffering of so many good people for a really fucked-up reason, then we have a far greater chance of change and equality.

[dsc]

27. It was very hard

Honestly I did feel very much alone. I didn't tell my parents what I was going through for obvious reasons. As a teacher now I try to be sure that all kids feel protected in my classroom. I by no means had the worst experience ever given what I have read here, but it was bad enough. I don't want another kid to go through what I went through.

[bamacrat]

41. I think that most people are attracted to attractive people, regardless or sex.

It just depends on who you WANT to have sex with or be with is what make you gay or straight. A straight guy who can acknowledge that another man is attractive doesn't mean he is gay, as with women who think other women are attractive, it doesn't matter. I am straight but realize that there are attractive men in the world, I don't want to have sex with them, but I see them. Many college aged girls make out with each other yet they clearly state they are not gay, women are just pretty. I agree, and am happy to be around when that happens. But, two guys kissing does kinda ick me out, not that there is anything wrong with it, just not my thing.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

14. "Game, Set and Match" indeed.

Major jerkoff alert.

Except real jerkoffs and jerking off is far more productive than this clown.

[Deja Q]

17. It's not the emotion. It is how you react to it and what you do with it.

Being "bi", getting flak from both homo and hetero camps was a nightmare in of itself.

But I digress.

So I did what both sides wanted.

I made a choice.

I am hetero.

Feelings and urges will always exist. And they can be controlled. To not practice them will not make me any less of a person.

I was able to do so before. In that respect, very little has changed.


And I am not afraid to tell the truth.

[ruggerson]

19. If you're attracted to both sexes

you're still bisexual.

The only "choice" you made was to act on your opposite sex attractions and not on your same sex ones. This does not make you "hetero." It makes you a bisexual who chooses to have sex/relationships only with members of the opposite sex.

[Deja Q]

22. That's one way to look at it.

Such rationality, when not rationalizing, is rare. Since the majority of people want a 'choice', I made it and stand by it.

Such rationalization can go either way.

It saves a lot of pedantic and pompous arguments just so say "straight", an argument that most people I know don't want to bother with in the first place - hence a reason for making said decision.

[ruggerson]

24. I understand what you're saying

but you're still a bisexual.

The only "choice" you made was to only have heterosexual relationships.

Which goes back to the point of the OP. You can't CHOOSE your sexuality. You can only choose whether, and which way, you act on it.

[mitchum]

28. I thought LUGs and BUGs were just 90s things...

is it still going on?

[Withywindle]

29. I'll tell you why it doesn't matter if it's a choice or not.

(For the record: it isn't)

But religion is MOST DEFINITELY a choice. You can choose to believe the religion of your parents, or not. You can choose to convert to any religion you like, or none. And yet no one but the most slathering of authoritarians has a problem with the principle of religious freedom or treating all religions fairly, right?

A trait doesn't have to be innate or biological to be respected under the law and to make discrimination wrong.

[dsc]

30. except it wasn't thought of as a choice when we first started protecting it

In the 1700's religion was considered pretty much hereditary.

[Withywindle]

43. True, but in many circles atheists and free-thinkers of the time

were hated and feared as thoroughly and irrationally as gays and lesbians are now. It was thought that there was something WRONG with them and they'd bring the Devil down on us all.

How little we learn, really...

[ruggerson]

32. But we're talking about a cultural war here

with little kids as the victims. There are thirteen and fourteen year olds, RIGHT NOW, in "christian" re education camps, being psychologically tortured by their parents and their church. No one is helping them. No one discusses it. And your stance, that the choice argument doesn't matter, plays right into the hands of the bigots.

As I said above, we wouldn't have made the argument in the sixties that blacks were genetically inferior, but it should't matter - they should still get equal rights. We made the argument,and rightly so, that blacks were equal to whites in every respect AND they should get equal rights.

Just like today we should be making the argument that sexuality is NOT a choice and that gays, lesbians and bisexuals should all have the exact same rights that straights enjoy.

[Withywindle]

42. You're right, though, and for those kids religion isn't a choice either.

But you can't force someone to believe something they just don't with abuse and violence, just like you can't change sexual orientation that way.

[goodgd_yall]

35. Just want to make this point re: the safety found in the genetic/biological argument

I don't doubt that if something genetically based or biological is definitively discovered to determines sexuality that another even more dangerous problem could arise. I can just see anti-gay activists privately funding ways to affect the genetic/biological markers or factors to "make" gay and lesbian people straight. If a person is rabidly anti-gay, no argument of origin is going to stop the violence to who we are.

[BlooInBloo]

40. It doesn't fucking matter whether it is or not. There's nothing wrong with it.