9 Answers

• Reputation: 3429 Q&A: 66 0 19 2158 469 8 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 3

  11 0 If homosexuality isn't a choice then making laws that treat gays differently is arbitrary and punitive. If it is a choice then our status changes from minority to fetishist. Kip Waddle answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report 1 comment by Adrian Ryan… 0 0 nicely phrased. Adrian Ryan commented about 1 year ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 152 Q&A: 4 0 0 74 2 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 2 topics Pride Week Q&A Gay Pride Follow Following 0

  6 0 well, it shouldn't matter, but it does. is it biological? of course it is! my gayness arises in and from my, um, body! (i look at a guy, i get a boner; there endeth the arguement.) the need to prove a biological origin? of course we shouldn't "have" to, and possibly we never will. we were forced to. one of the primary screaming screeds the bigots have brandished for years is the "choice" thing--if it IS a choice, then we are deviant fad chasers who MUST--think of the children!--be curbed. so locating the genetic smoking gun became a matter of political urgency. personally, i think that debate has cooled off substantially over the last few years... and thank god. Adrian Ryan answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 62 Q&A: 1 0 0 45 3 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 2 topics Pride Week Q&A Gay Pride Follow Following 0

  3 0 For some people, it actually IS a choice. For most of us, it isn't. Finding that ever elusive "gay gene" would serve one simple purpose: legitimizing our struggle and kicking out the Ex-Gay Movement's last leg to stand on. Incidentally, for a lot of transfolks it's not a choice either. Gender dysmorphia is a biological/psychological condition. Gina Young answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 1560 Q&A: 30 0 2 1153 233 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 0 Lee

  3 0 *knock* *knock* NomadontheGo: "Who's there?" Strawman: "I'm the straw man!" NomadontheGo: *thwack* "And now you're dead!" Another way of saying that would be that outside of specific arguments and their contexts, there's no way of discussing this. There are a lot of different contexts in which same sex sexuality comes up, and the fact that free will versus biological determinism might come up in one context does not mean that they are relevant in another context, and vice versa. In the context of civil rights and consenting sexuality, no, whether or not people choose to be gay isn't a relevant question. The only relevant question would be whether the sexual conduct violates someone else's rights, and since it clearly doesn't in the case of two or more gay people doing whatever lifts their luggage in the privacy of their own homes or bathhouses, the question of whether or not biology determines sexual attraction is moot: it is your right to choose to do these things that is at issue there, not the underlying cause of your decisions. But let's say you're trying to discredit the idea of "gay therapy." Believe it or not, there are a whole lot of people who wish they could be straight, and there is certainly a great deal of value in discrediting the charlatans who try to feed on their self-loathing false hopes. It is also relevant as a response to fears about "recruitment," and paranoia over the motives of gay adoptive parents. Sexual attraction is not a learned behavior - at least not in any simple way, and we don't have evidence that specific sexual preferences are acquired through the same acculturation process that teaches us to be polite and not pee on the floor - but it is frequently said to be by those who wish to oppose equal rights for gays on the grounds that they are corrupting the children. Basically, there's no answer to your question outside of a specific conversation and specific sets of consequences. Lee answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 23 Q&A: 0 0 0 25 2 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 0 Robert L Darden

  2 0 Wow. It really should not matter, you're right. But, for whatever reasons, it does. Homosexuality isn't about fucking, as it really isn't even about *having* sex at all; it's based on the sex of the person/people that one individual finds attractive. Pointing out that it's NOT A CHOICE goes to showing that it's not something that we choose and it's not something that we're able to change - and this distinction is important because there are those folks who believe that is IS a choice and therefore people who identify as homosexual shouldn't have the same rights as those who identify as heterosexual. It's that simple, and it's a fact. As far as trannies not being "born to be whatever sex they decided they wanted to be", that's ridiculous. Yes we should honour each transsexual's personal choice, but it should be noted that the only real choice most of them have made is to make his/her body match the sex of the person he/she feels they are on the inside. It's not a situation of someone waking up one day, deciding "I wanna be a girl" {and vice versa} and setting to making that happen ~ although, I'm sure that has happened. It's not that cut and dried. Some people grow up feeling/knowing that their outsides don't match or reflect who they know they are on the inside, and they sometimes (but not always), somewhere down the road, see to it that they become who and what they've always actually been... Placing emphasis on birth DOES NOT distract from the greater issue that it's nobody else's business how two consenting adults want to fuck each other. Instead, it offers an excellent reason as to WHY it's nobody else's business. Robert L Darden answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report 2 comments by Geni and Robert L Darden… 0 0 I've always wondered when homophobic types who insist being gay is a choice made THEIR choice of who attracts them. I've never figured that one out. I never chose who to be attracted to. It just is what it is. Geni commented about 1 year ago | Report 0 0 Exactly. Robert L Darden commented about 1 year ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 3723 Q&A: 109 0 27 1716 713 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 1

  2 0 "nobody else's business how two consenting adults want to fuck" Yes, it would nice to live in that nation/world, Nomad. I agree. FWIW, I'd like a little more airtime given to proving bisexuality is biological, too. Kip's got it dead-on. It's about the perception of nonhuman laws, and the people who slam gavels in regards to those laws, not self-perceptions. i.e It's a proof required for justice, not a 'need' for sexuality itself. " I mean, even if it *were* a choice (not saying it is), why should that matter? " Or turn the debate around - Perhaps our choices, our need to uniquely choose what we like, is a biological need of the human race. (No? Prove me wrong with science then...). ;) Rev.Enant answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 2589 Q&A: 52 0 4 1611 142 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 2

  1 0 I have to disagree with your contention that transfolk weren't 'born to be whatever sex they decided to be.' In my experience, most transfolk ALWAYS knew they were something other than what people assumed they were/treated them as. As Calpernia Addams put it, "In spite of the apparatus I was forced to carry around, I always knew I was a girl." I suffered some gender dysphoria as a child, being confused as to whether I would become a boy when I grew up (probably because my 5 older sisters are much older, and my 7 older brothers, who are nearer me in age, are the ones I patterned myself on). I more or less grew out of it, but I have retained a memory of what it was like to have a mismatch between self-image and apparatus. Geni answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 22 Q&A: 0 0 0 22 0 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 2 topics Pride Week Q&A Gay Pride Follow Following 0

  1 0 It's the only way to shut up those of the conversion-therapy mindset, as Gina points out. And, for me and lots of other people, it's the truth, so acknowledging it just makes sense. David Schmader answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend:

• Reputation: 26 Q&A: 1 0 0 11 5 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Follow Following 0

  0 0 The very religious anti-gays have a major disconnect involving Creation & Sin. If sexuality is biological, it would have to be considered God's gift along with life, body parts, etc. If this was the case (which of course it is) then their projection of "sin" is reflected back upon themselves because they are the ones scorning creation. This insecurity is behind every one of their vehement denials. Very few of the Bible's prohibitions are against the way we are born. The only other one I can think of is the degradation of the idea of the "left" side which has traditionally involved punishment of left-handed children (at least in Catholic schools) Ivanhoe Beanstalk answered in Pride Week Q&A about 1 year ago | Report 2 comments by Ivanhoe Beanstalk and Geni… 0 0 Just to follow up about this matter from the secular point of view: When talking about this and other psycho/social studies, there seems to be a common position implied and accepted by many without explanation, which involves a hypothetical removal of a subject from all social conditioning for the purposes of distilling whether something is "nature or nurture". Perhaps this is a wish for an impossible control group who could be studied without any social conditioning. Without the benefit of something like a Skinner box or Kasper Hauser this would be impossible and cruel in any case, but it seems to be a pernicious and pointless thought experiment that is usually present in some way when this subject comes up. Can anyone follow what I'm talking about? I'm having trouble because I'm not versed in philosophical terms but I'd like to know if there is a term for this logical fallacy. Professor Mudede? Ivanhoe Beanstalk commented about 1 year ago | Report 0 0 Yes, it's a valid point. There is no human reared with just "nature" - "nurture" will obviously always have an influence too. Geni commented about 1 year ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

  Share this answer with a friend: