Provoked by [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=660543this thread).
If you could have chosen before birth to be born straight or gay would you have chosen to be gay?
Poll to follow.
I’m going to assume most gay people will respond “no”, because they are happy with themselves and being gay lead them to the life, personality, and friends they have now. To have been born straight would have had them end up completely different, possibly for the worse, even if just in their own eyes.
Me, I’m not assuming. That’s why I’m asking.
This may change later, as I get older and more stable and more out and more… comfortable with the whole thing. Or if I do have children and all the things I see my friends getting to have that I don’t become less important.
But right now… I’d be straight if I could pick.
maybe that makes me a bad person. But, at least right now… this is hard. I just want to be what my mom wants me to be. I want to have a baby with my partner like all my friends. I have enough things already that make me different that I can’t control… I just want to be normal in this one way, you know?
I know that’s not really the right answer.
It’s not really the wrong answer, either. Sounds like you’ve got enough stuff to worry about in your life right now. Don’t feel guilty for wishing things were easier.
Though my teenage self might have chosen to be straight, I can say in all honestly that myself and my friends frequently thank our lucky stars that we are lesbians when we see our straight girl friends putting up with all manner of shit from their (delete as appropriate) lazy, smelly, inconsiderate, monosyllabic, hobby obsessed, farting husbands. Give me a wife any day!
I am very happy to be gay and would not now choose otherwise.
I would have chosen to be gay, at this time in history and in this culture. It’s a fairly fundamental part of my personality, but it also exists in some sense as a response to my cultural and historical context.
During much harsher times or cultures perhaps straight. Assuming sexuality eventually becomes a total non issue in the future (hello Jack Harkness), I would choose at that time to be bisexual.
This is difficult, because there is no doubt that life would have been easier had I been straight, and so I picked that option. On the other hand, if I were suddenly single and given the opportunity to magically be converted now, I would refuse outright, for the reasons jackdavinci gave in his first paragraph. And I think the effects have been profound enough that had I been straight, the person I would have been would be unrecognizable to the one I am now.
I’m okay with what I am, at least in this regard.
Choosing the first option is not meant to in any way imply a self-rejection of your current self, any more than when a mother of five kids might say she wishes she had used something other than rhythm method implies that she rejects any of her five children or would at this point choose to not have any one of them … (and I am a fifth kid whose mother swore she had nothing to do with having that many … “He must’ve poked holes in the condoms!” … and who never felt rejected by that statement.)
It is however an open question if “easier” is “better” …
I’m a trans man who digs men.
Since without transitioning, more than ten years ago, I would have spent my life as a het girl, I pretty much chose to become gay and I wouldn’t like it any other way.
I just can’t picture me living as het, either as a woman or a man.
Very happily Gay, and if there should indeed be reincarnation as a human, I would most certainly wish to be Gay again!
Maybe looking a bit more like Brad Pitt, and coming from a family of billionaires would be a nice bonus - but regardless, I would have chosen to be Gay and I most certainly would choose to be Gay again! Very happy!!
I’m straight…and if I had the choice, would be completely and comfortably bi. Why suffer under limitations if they aren’t needful or beneficial? ("… immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.")
ETA: also, seriously, I suffer from a mild degree of homophobia, and I don’t like it. I don’t want to be that kind of person. At very least, if I could be born all over again, I’d choose to do away with such feelings.
I would be interested in an ask the thread regarding this. I would like to know what reasons people have for holding this opinion/feeling. Afraid of being hit on? Afraid you will like it? Uncomfortable around the pop culture representation of homosexuals? Indoctrination? Curious. Or maybe there are enough threads about this topic at the moment.
Teenage me would have loved to be straight. But now, I would choose to stay gay.
You just try being a well groomed eclectic polysyllabic male who’s not attracted to men. Ain’t exactly coney dogs and skee ball, I can tell you.
To me the choice is simple. There are very few gay men compared to women so your dating pool is much smaller, and you can’t reproduce during a passionate act of love making if you are a gay man with another man.
So I’d choose to have been born straight. Of course, optimally, I’d choose to be bisexual (largest possible mate pool).
BTW, I’m perfectly happy being gay. Life was tough but come on, not that tough in the grand scheme of things. That wouldn’t be a major motivator in wanting to be born straight. It’s not like I lived my life in fear of being lynched or having my house burned down by the KKK.
Not being able to have my own kid during some passionate sex, however, is a major downer. As much as I am SURE I will love and adore my future children, whether it is through adoption, fostering, or donor/surrogate, I think most people agree it’s better to be able to produce a kid during an act of love with your life partner, when the time is right.
And only having <10% of ~50% of the population, of which probably only 50% are out and comfortable dating is very limiting, even in a large city.
Why not? It’s your life and it would be your choice to make for yourself.
In the other thread, I opposed the idea of a parent making this choice for their child. But I have no problem with somebody making this choice (or the choice to change from straight to gay) for themself.
I’m not gay. I’m bisexual, I guess, though if you ask, I’ll tell you I’m straight. I prefer men (sexually) over women, but when I do like a woman, it’s baaaaad.
I would be born straight. (I sometimes joke I’m 16 per cent gay.) I’ve dated women in the past and it terrified me. Girls are nuts. Girl/girl relationships are nuts. I could never quite be comfortable with my feelings or what I was doing. If I have a thing for a girl, I get silly. I can’t think straight. I turn into a twelve year old boy. It’s probably why I have zero lesbian friends, since I’m rarely attracted to a straight woman.
I like things that fit into boxes. I like rules. I like to know how stuff goes. Dating or liking a woman makes it all go out the window and I find myself extremely unhappy.
edit: I also don’t fit into the gay community very well.
Well so far the results have informed my response to that thread. The hypothetical entrusted me with making the decision on behalf of my unborn child’s best interest given that the child was not in a position to make the decision for himself. To date only a minority of those responding would have chosen to not be gay, knowing what they know as adults. The results would need to have been overwhelmingly the other direction to convince me to intervene in how the dice rolled. I can vote now!