I blame this entirely on the grostesquely polarized race politics of the United States that makes being black shameful. Gee, sorta the same way that American politics makes being gay shameful. Funny how that works.
Well, I’d agree with you there. People shouldn’t have to deny their race, or their sexual orientation, or what have you.
Perhaps an even better example would have been Jews who converted to Christianity during times of intense persecution. People shouldn’t have to change something that’s a very part of their being in order to be accepted. (Unless, of course, said important part of their being is being an ax murderer!)
Not something I have ever written in this thread.
I accept that it’s hard to be gay in today’s society. I don’t accept that it’s so hard than no one could possibly choose to be gay (if being gay is a choice.)
My entire point is that people who make the argument “No one would choose to be gay because it’s too hard/painful due to social stigma, and therefore being gay cannot be a choice” are wrong. They are not necissarly wrong about homosexuality being a choice, (something I have not taken a position on in this thread either,) but wrong that no one would be gay given an option.
As responses to this thread have shown, there are people who would choose to be gay if given a choice.
I don’t believe I am missing a distinction. I am referring a situation where a discussion about whether being gay is a choice is going on. In such discussions people have made the argument that no one would possibly choose to be gay and therefore being gay can’t be a choice. As you said earlier:
You would choose not to stop being gay.
Would you recommend to a friend who confided to you that they were struggling with the pain of being gay to take the pill?
When you first realized you were gay, would you have taken the pill?
Would you counsel a teenager who is confused about his/her sexuality to take the pill?
Would you recommend giving the pill to toddlers so that they would never even experience sexual confusion?
Unless you can answer that you would always be for taking the pill, you cannot argue that no one would choose to be gay if given a choice because you would be advocating exactly that.
Besides which, I can speak from personal experience: women do not have a monopoly on boobies.
(I am on a diet, though…)
You’re absolutely right, of course. The original question isn’t “Would you choose to be gay?” but “Would you choose to stop being gay at this point in your life?”
But feel free to answer the questions I just posted for panache45.
to say you can take a pill and stop being gay, implies the underlying issue of calling homosexuality a disease/disorder. so what you’re asking is, if homosexuality were discovered to be a result of, say, a chemical imbalance, or underdeveloped portion of the brain, would you take a pill to fix it? (assuming such a condition didn’t shorten the lifespan of the individual). would the government start putting the drug in water like flouride? i think many wouldn’t take the pill, but you’d find a tough battle for “immunizing” (i hate that word) the next generation.
In the bit of your post I quoted, that’s pretty close to what you said.
There are people who would remain gay if given the choice, which is very different. Maybe one or two who are different, but I think the number of people who would choose to be gay if they could is small.
You’re kidding me, right?
You really think that me saying that it’s disingenuous for a gay person to say:
- I’m happy being gay and I wouldn’t change.
and
- No one would choose to be gay because of the hatred and ridicule, therefore homosexuality cannot be a choice.
is the same as:
“They are gay and happy, therefore it isn’t hard to be gay.”?
Never once in this thread have I said that it isn’t hard to be gay. In fact in my reply to you I said, “I accept that it’s hard to be gay in today’s society.”
Well, in the small sample of this thread we have:
clairobscur straight, but would take a pill to be bisexual
panache45 gay and would “fight to the death for my right to not take it.”
Freyr gay and “having waaaay too much fun being gay.”
SolGrundy gay and might have taken the pill as a teen but is now glad the choice wasn’t available
Brandus gay and wouldn’t change
TeaElle bisexual and wants to stay that way
Hamish gay and probably would have taken it as a teen, but not now
Alan Smithee straight and might take a pill to become gay
Miller bisexual and would, but only if it were reversible
Ludovic ??? and would take a pill to be bisexual
Zagadka bisexual and “quite happy with my sexuality”
Grand total of 0 people who are gay and would take the pill to change now (permanently.)
2 who might have taken the pill as teens, but are glad they didn’t.
1 straight who might take the pill to become gay.
1 straight who would take a pill to become bisexual.
Can you seriously read these responses and say to me: “No one would choose to be gay, therefore being homosexual cannot be a choice.”
And let me repeat one more time because people seem to think I’m trying to say that being gay is a choice with all this. I’m attacking the argument “No one would choose to be gay” not the conclusion “being homosexual cannot be a choice.”
And this is an amazingly narrow self selected sample. Gay Dopers tend to be rather secure in their homosexuality. We are also (Dopers, I’m not Gay - or not very), rather secure individuals, and have intellectualized that who we are is more important than what we are - and what we are defines who we are…
Go post this same thing over on a board with a lot of Christian gay teens (or even Christian gay adults), and I think you’d see a very different result.
ICC, I answered your question (rather naively) on the assumption that nothing was behind it–that your only purpose was to learn how people felt about their sexuality, not to prove a point. I think many other posters did as well. Now you are using our (often rather personal) words to make a political point that many of us are very uncomfortable with. You are also isolating the argument about choice from its obvious political context.
I agree with you (obviously) that the argument that no one would ever choose to be gay is falacious, but the way you are going about arguing this is rather disingenuous. (It also ignores that many people possibly would take the pill, or would have at one time.) The fact that you are being coy about what you actually do believe about homosexuality is not helping you–it makes you look even more disingenuous and manipulative. Imagine if (sorry Godwin!) one were to argue that a person’s Jewish heritage can be detected through cranial mesurments, while refusing to make any claims either way about the apropriateness of Naziism.
I’m not going to accuse you of trollery, because I have no way of knowing your intentions (which may possibly be innocent or even noble), but having now been told how you’re coming across, I suggest you change your ways.
I didn’t really mean to have it come across that way. Admittedly I wasn’t up front about where I intended to take the discussion once people had answered the question, but I honestly wanted to see what the answers would be without the rest of the context. If a large number of posters had said, “I’m gay and I’d take the pill in a heartbeat,” I would have been surprised and edified and would grant that the argument I’ve been attacking has merit.
I do think it’s unfortunate that people seem to be unable to separate an attack against a particular argument from an attack on a conclusion. In math if a “proof” is found to have flaws, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong, just that to prove it right you’ll have to find another way of getting there.
I had hoped that upon seeing the evidence in this thread, people would say, “Aha, I see that this argument I (or others on my side of the debate) have used is not a good argument. I should no longer make it.”
That is unfortunate. I had hoped that this would be a simple enough issue, that my personal opinions wouldn’t enter into it, but if it’s making me look manipulative to withold, I’ll share.
I think that the issue of homosexuality being choice or not isn’t black and white.
I think that there’s a continuum of both inclination and behavior.
I think there must be a large “non-choice” component, but I think that people’s minds are a lot more flexible than they’re given credit for by the “homosexuality isn’t a choice” side of the debate.
Umm, thanks, I think.
Though to my understanding, a troll likes to stir up trouble and then disappear. I’ve continued my involvment with the thread, haven’t made any personal attacks, tried to keep the discussion at a respectful level, acknowledged other peoples points, and even apologized for instances where I’ve given offense. I hope that explaining my viewpoint on the homosexuality/choice issue has been the change you’re looking for. If there’s something else, please let me know.
ICC, I’m very tired, and don’t have time to respond to your latest post point by point. I’m sorry.
I think your desire to counter this particular argument through reason is misguided since it’s obviously an emotional argument. I frankly doubt most people would have disagreed if you’d just come out and said so in the beginning. I understand why you started the discussion the way you did, I just don’t think it was the best way to get the results you wanted.
You certainly aren’t a troll. I hope you stick around after your guest registration expires.
I’ll try to add more tomorrow if I have the time.
What you seem to be arguing is "the ridicule isn’t that bad, as evidence by the fact that all these people wouldn’t change their sexuality. I don’t think this makes any sense.
I know that homosexuality isn’t a choice, so those responses don’t begin to enter into it. You’ve found precisely one person in this thread who would choose to be gay. A lot of others would stay gay, but that’s not choosing to be gay, it’s choosing to remain as they are.
I suspect Alan Smithee is correct and that ICC wishes to point out that the argument that no one would ever choose to be gay is fallacious.
I suspect he/she read through a bunch of related threads and noted how many people produced this argument. What perhaps (s)he didn’t notice was that it was generally made as a cri de coeur or out of exasperation.
The problem is that you’re coming to a conclusion that’s not supported by anything that’s been said in this thread.
When I say that I wouldn’t take a pill to become straight, that’s not the same thing as saying that I would choose to be gay. When I say I’m fine with my sexual orientation, that’s all I’m saying. Period. I don’t wake up every morning thinking, “All right! I’m still gay! Whoo hoo!” and I don’t wake up thinking, “Dammit! Still gay and I’ve got to go through another day of this hell.” In fact, I usually don’t think about it at all. It’s just there, a part of who I am. What conclusion can you make from that? Just that I’m a gay person who’s come out of the closet. That’s it.
As Alan Smithee said, your polling audience here is a bunch of people who’ve already come to terms with their sexuality. And when someone says that he likes being gay, or that he likes the friends that he’s made in the gay community, that doesn’t imply that he would’ve chosen to be gay. It simply means that because he was already gay, he was able to find a community of people he might not have come into contact with otherwise. Your conclusion ignores the fact that the choice was already made for us. Any “pill” that we could take would be (or would have been) changing us into something else, not making a different choice.
If you want to ask people whether they would have chosen to be gay, then that’s the question you should’ve asked. Anything else could be interpreted as coming to a false conclusion and putting words in people’s mouths to support your conclusion.
Silly Rashak :rolleyes:
There is only one way for a pill to make a gay person straight and that would be to change their sex. That means that the sensitive, well groomed, polite and educated man will turn into woman and who therefore can still have men, and the lesbians will turn into men where they will have serious issues with their own dicks and thereby leave us straight guys with more potential girlfriends… 
Can I get one of those pills, please?
The problem is though is that it’s been voiced on this board that people who believe homosexuality is a choice and/or homosexuality is wrong or gay marriage is destroying the family are accused of being small-minded bigots unwilling to listen to reason. Their arguments are labelled as weak or illogical. People who make them are roundly mocked.
Excusing this argument on emotional grounds puts you in the same boat. Is anyone here seriously going to let the other side get away with:
“I think your desire to counter this particular argument through reason is misguided since it’s obviously an emotional argument,”
or “it was generally made as a cri de coeur or out of exasperation,”
to defend arguments that homosexuality is a choice?
My method in starting this thread has been attacked several times and even though I’ve admitted that it wasn’t really fair (post 66), no one has bothered to respond to the questions I asked in post 64.
I’m willing to start the discussion again on an open basis:
People have made the argument that, “No one would choose to be gay, therefore being gay can’t be a choice.”
I’d say that this argument falls flat on its face first of all because it’s couched in absolute terms. Does anyone really believe that in a world of 6 billion people, that not one person would choose to be gay?
Second, there are a multitude of things that people choose to be/do that bring more persecution and ridicule than being gay, and therefore claiming that everyone would be deterred from a choice by opposition doesn’t fly.
Third, over time the general acceptance of gays has increased, so the argument is dramatically losing its convincing power. Compare the life of gays 60 years ago to the life of gays now. Believe me, I’m not saying that it’s easy. I’m saying that relatively it’s incredibly easier. If things continue, in another 60 years I doubt it will even be possible to make this argument with a straight face.
Fourth, it’s easy to make this argument to straight people because to them (us :)) it makes sense: “I wouldn’t choose to be gay, so why would anyone?” But does it make sense to gay people? Does each of you think, “I woudn’t have chosen to be gay”? I’m sure there are some who feel that way, but all? most?
Am I wrong here? Convince me that your argument makes sense.