The choice/born argument on homosexuality

I find the argument disturbing. There's truth and BS to both sides of the argument of if homosexuality comes from choice or from birth.
I find it ridiculous to say gays chose to be gay because why would someone choose those repercussions?, but I also find it ridiculous that people conclude that some people are just born with it or not.

I firmly think that it's personality and I wonder if some people agree with me because there's only been like two people i know that agree with me.
Sexuality is a part of personality as demonstrated by threads like sapphiric's thread about fantasizing about playing a woman role, it's too specific and too abstract to come to a conclusion that some people are born with it and some aren't. I really think that if there was a gay gene, it would've been found by now. I just don't understand why personality hasn't been a major opinion in this subject.
People are born with their personality, some things you can't change, some things change willingly or unwillingly. I think sexual orientation is typically clique-making because people with similar personalities connect together. Personality is influenced by environment, genes, wants, and just everything. Some people change sexual preferences later in life just like how any personality trait may change.

Sexuality is a personality trait. Anyone agree? Or are all just gonna keep saying we were born with it just to get civil rights across?

 

Are you gay?

 

yes

 

There will always be arguments about what causes someone to be gay or straight, but I have never found it to be important. So what if it was scientifically proven it is a personality straight? It would make no difference.

I know a totally straight guy who has a lot of close gay friends - does that mean he is actually gay just because he has certain friends?

there are gay people who have the same personality as me and there are gay people who are the complete opposite. As are straight and bi people.

 

Personality is formed by environment. We aren't born with our personalitys, they are shaped by parents, siblings, circumstances, and a host of other circumstantial situation over which we often have little or no control.
Do I think we are born gay???I think we are born with a strong genetic predisposition to be gay. So yeah I think that it is genetic in origin. The fact that a gay gene hasn't been discovered only means just that...genetic science hasn't found it yet. Remember genetic reseach is still very much a growing field. All sorts of discoveries have been made in recent years related to disease process and other phenomena. With more advanced technology more discoveries will be made.
Choosing to be gay doesn't make any sense to me at all. Given that sexual orientation is usually determined in the teen years why would anyone choose to go so dramatically against the tide of their peers. Your opportunities to date, to find sex partners, to talk with like peers are often very restricted. Not to mention all the social BS that gay people have to deal with. Hormones are urging teens to explore sex...it makes no sense that a teen would forego commonly available, socially approved opportunities just to suffer the consequences of homophobia and the restricted choices that attend being gay.

No idea if I'm right or not but thats the way I see it.

 

yeah I know it wouldn't make a difference. the only importance i think there is with this, is that research could take a more accurate approach. Studies in psychology seem to need to meet greater heights than other scientific sections.
And also that I find it strange that barely anyone agrees with me.

No, I didn't say because someone has a certain personality trait they can't be friends with someone. I mentioned the typical-clique-making statement because I think it points out personality traits. but i guess it's not a good statement. There are many factors of a personality and sexuality is the broadest factor underneath general interest.
The birth or gene side of the argument kinda does say it is personality, but it's saying sexuality comes from the genes or something in your brain. I think sexuality solely originates from personality.

yeah thats why i'm sayin its a personality trait

 

I think the whole question and issue is bullshit....

Why should anyone else cares who another person has sex with if everyone involved is an adult and willing?

Stay out of my bedroom and my orientation one way or another doesn't matter to you.

 

yeah i completely agree. I think either saying it's personality or environment is a more accurate hypothesis or opinion than saying its genes or choice.
and the gene research thing is just my opinion that i don't think they'll find anything with genes.
I honestly think science is gonna come up with a humble-jumble of things contributing to gayness. For example I've read how researchers found a statistic that younger siblings from the same mother are more likely to be gay. They've either hypothesized or concluded that thats because the mother's antibodies grow stronger everytime they have babies. And some women have stronger antibodies than others. I am not correlating this to gayness whatsoever but i think many little things like this can contribute closer to a conclusion of where sexuality originates.

 

The problem is the word "gay" itself, its a very generic level of abstraction. Trying to knuckle down all forms into one easy to understand "cause" is why this argument is never going to be answered.

Its a dozen or so different things working together at different ratios to produce various results, many of those influences having nothing to do with sex

Genetics, Environment, Early Childhood, Age of onset of puberty, Number of Siblings, Temperament, Libido, Socio-economic status, even height and weight at certain ages and the influence of everyone else.

Some of those influences, the details of which will always be hidden to the vast majority, especially the influence of number of siblings and early onset of puberty. But it does result in one "type" of gay, and its this type that scares everyone the most

 

agreed 100%

 

you say you don't agree that people are born with their sexuality and then you go on saying it's a personality trait and that people are born with their personality. aren't you contradicting yourself a bit there?

i agree that people are born with their personality (and it doesn't really change during a person's lifetime) but i disagree that sexuality is a personality trait. sexuality (i.e. sexual orientation) and personality are distinct from each other. i think what you really meant was a form of self-identification-- in that sexual orientation is one way to identify oneself, and that i agree with. i identify with being a homosexual. i like that i like men. and if i were given a chance to change to a heterosexual i wouldn't do it.

also -- the roots for sexual orientation have largely already been determined. it's to do with hormonal exposure at a critical time during the development of the brain in the womb. if it's a male fetus it naturally has testosterone, a carefully timed exposure of which will modify the brain so that it will develop to be attracted to females. if it's a female it won't get that testosterone and the brain will develop to be attracted to males. this is what happens in the majority of cases. there are however other possibilities. for example if a male fetus doesn't have enough testosterone left by the time the development of that part of the brain begins, it won't get that testosterone and that part of the brain will develop without it like in females and consequently it will be attracted to other males. with females the testosterone might be provided exogenously at exactly the right time when the brain is undergoing that development which will turn a female brain to be attracted to other females.

on thread's like sapphiric's -- yes, he has described a really specific set of circumstances that turn him on, and only that. how many people do you know are like that? who are sexually attracted to a certain very specific situation only? very very few. you can't make conclusions about a quality (in this case sexuality) based on cases where it doesn't apply. and since majority of people have a defined stable sexual attraction towards other people it would also not be unwise to make certain generalizations based on that. if somebody doesn't fall under those generalizations they don't. that doesn't mean we have to artificially force them into a certain category. we're all intelligent enough to understand that. exception to the rule doesn't mean that we have to start dismantling the whole theory. it only means that we're now wiser by knowing the fuller spectrum. and those exceptions may prove helpful in figuring out even more about the mechanism by which our subject of interest works.

 

no, i just didn't word myself accurately enough. by "being born with" i meant the genes. sorry bout that
i think the personality opinion is a perfect middle ground that presents a more accurate perspective on the origin of sexuality. Gene-believers have a good point that there are major influences that individuals can't control, but choice-believers bring a legitimate doubt that its not a thing in your body.

yeah it is self-identification, but i also see sexual orientation in general as a sub-branch of personality still.
Facts like the ones you provided contribute to personality (having more/less estrogen or testocerone) too though, and I think it's pretty legitimate to say sexual orientation comes from, and is part of, personality.

 

well, i think a term 'gene-believer' is a misnomer. since science is not an act of faith. believing has nothing to do with it. it is rather knowledge or lack of it and logic that makes a person take the side of one scientific theory or another.

on the other hand i don't think your hypothesis of sexual orientation being part of personality could be proven or overthrown right now. personality is much complex. it is made up of too many variables and it has too many expressions that additionally can all be permutations of one another. serious studies delving into it are too few (or too many too insignificant) and we lack an established understanding of how exactly one's personality comes to be. but we all agree that even though we see occurrence of same traits in many different individuals, no two individuals share quite the same personality. we only have understanding of single traits, like aggression for example, and even these are not consistent, and again are variable and depend on other circumstances.

sexuality (sexual orientation) is not like an aggression, in that it is a persistent type of behavior which upon observation turns out to be boringly predictable in its nature (not many variables). and there are a lot of individuals who clearly share the exact same type of sexual orientation (unlike personality). for this reason i do not see it can be viewed as a 'sub-branch of personality' as you put it.

but it is an interesting hypothesis.

 

Perhaps it's not such a cut-and-dried kind of answer. Maybe some people are born with more of a propensity toward homosexuality (or heterosexuality or even bisexuality) and there are factors in their environment that contribute and tip things one way or the other.

Here's why I think this might be true: I'm adopted and was raised with no contact for most of my life with my siblings. One of my two brothers is gay; the other one is heterosexual. My two sisters are both heterosexual.

 

Sexuality, whether hetero, bi, gay or whatever is definitely not a choice. At least not in the vast majority of people. Physical attraction is very natural, and is pure instinct. And the same is also true with emotional attraction. I dont think anybody goes ''oh, look at that person, I think I'll try and make myself attracted to them''. You're either attracted to them, or not. Sure, you can not be attracted to someone right off, and then later become attracted to them on an emotional level, but again, that is done on pure natural instinct. You can certainly choose who to have relationships/sleep with, or whatever. But you dont choose who you're attracted to. Plus, a lot of gay people have to put up with persecution, and abuse. Why would people open themselves up to all that negativity if they could choose not to do so?

 

For me personally I think I choose my sexuality, I know this probably would not be the case for many other people.

I consider myself to be straight/bi-curious. I am in a long term relationship with my girlfriend and would be very happy to spend my life with her. I have chose to experiment with a couple of men and have enjoyed it.

Generally I am very attracted to women, I think they are beautiful and love sex with women. In the same breath I also find cock attractive, though I don't find men themselves attractive (unless dressed convincingly as women)

When I masturbate (very frequently) my thoughts are usually about men/cock, though I can get off just as easily while thinking about women, I just tend not to for some reason.

I think I could "give in" for lack of a better description and be gay due to how much I love cock but I choose not to be and am equally satisfied with that choice.

 

Agree partly.
Whether or not it is a choice is irrelevant.
Lots of people tend to forget that it's OUR choice.
And as far as i'm aware; no, scientific opinion generally states that genetics / birth order alone is not enough to explain sexuality.

 

scientific research has never stated anything like that. for such a statement to be made one would have to *know* how sexuality is determined. unless you know the cause(s) you can't say 'this doesn't explain it'. it's like people in the Renaissance making claims about the causes of lightning.

also, science already has satisfactorily explained the determination of an individual's sexuality through hormonal exposure. whether this explanation will be further advanced/perfected in the future will be seen.

 

Well said.

 

There is truth to both sides, HOWEVER, not to the point where it can be deemed a choice (unless you are doing it simply for attention)... The truth to both sides is that it is both environmental and biological. THIS IS PROVEN, which means all the pointless arguments against just stray people off into an endless direction of hypocrisy and hatred.