Homosexuality a choice = heterosexuality a choice?

Great Debates
41

As a Christian, I agree that this whole anti-homosexuality thing is massively hypocritical. But it is easier to throw stones when you think you’re without sin. (After all, Jesus himself said that if you so much as hold lust, you’ve sinned, which makes it possible for married people to commit adultery with each other!)

Back to the OP:

  1. Good question. I hit puberty later than most people my age, both physically and mentally, so I haven’t had a lot of time to think in sexual terms. I think I might be bisexual, but I’m not sure if that’s because I actually am, or because I’ve had issues with my self-image, or I’m just making up more problems for my mind to focus on.

  2. Sexuality is very, very complicated. It’s influenced by physiology, genetics, socialization, and psychology. And I wish my church did more education on sexuality than just “ICK SIN BAD”, but unfortunately that’s the way things tend to be.

42

First, can you show that the choice of being homosexual (or heterosexual) is a volitional act?

I can’t, which is precisely my point. We don’t understand the mechanisms of how such choices are made, of even if they are choices. Yet, people still proclaim that homosexuality is a choice yet have no evidence that it is. In fact, the APA believes it isn’t. And if there if it is a choice, how does one explain bisexuality?

I never made any claims like this, so please stop implying that I did.

43

The original question seems to be “If a person considers homosexuality to be a choice of free-will, shouldn’t they also consider heterosexuality to be a choice of free-will?”

First, as another poster noted, there should be a distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual acts. Though there are undoubtedly some who consider even the thought of desiring the same sex to be sinful based on Matthew 5:28 and the various prohibitions from the Pentateuch, I doubt most Christians who see homosexuality as a sin believe this, and even thouse that do consider it a lesser calibre of sin that the actual homosexual act.

There is no doubt a person chooses to indulge in sexual acts, just as there are plenty of folks who indulge in celibacy. Theologians argue that our status as rational creatures allows us free choice in the matter of what we do with our sexuality; in short, in contrast to the instinct of animals, we are not slaves to our biology. The answer then to the original question is yes.

This may strike us as unfair because the presence of a condition (homosexual orientation) that makes a sinful act (homosexual relations) more tempting (i.e. less a product of free-will) should mitigate the consequences (damnation). For example, though killing in general is prohibited by the 5th/6th commandment, killing in self defense should not bear the same penalty as killing for sport. The theological answer, I think, is that:

(1) God has decided that some are born with heavier personal burdens for purposes we cannot understand. Applying this logic, people born with homosexual orientation have a personal cross to bear, much like someone born with Cerebral Palsy or a predisposition to alcoholism (I am NOT stating that these lead a person to sin, merely illustrating that even theology acknowledges we don’t all start in the same position). In order to lead a Christian life, a person born with homosexual orientation has an additional–but not unbearable–burden of celibacy. I’ve always thought this was a cop-out answer, but there it is,

(2) the conflict is completely internalized, and so completely within the control of the person (defeating the killing-in-self-defense analogy).

My personal opinion is that religious persons, while perhaps conceding that no person is harmed by consentual homosexual acts, they do say the acts are a sin against God’s law. Such an appeal has always made me suspicious, as an appeal to an approved canonical interpretation of God’s law is exactly what Christ argued against in his debates with the Pharisees. Consequentially, more recent arguments point to the damage to society cause by the tolerance and (what many see as) acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, e.g. it will lead to an eventual breakdown of the family structure, people will gleefully have sex with horses, <insert your favorite bigoted remark here>. The kernel of that debate–the effect a tolerant attitude toward homosexuality would have on social structures–is worth considering without the usual biased vitriol, and may be the only route toward resolving the lingering social problem of intolerance toward gays.

44

Ok, I just gotta ask… what in the hell does religion have to do with the OP? The question is whether sexual orientation is a choice, not a sin.

45

I’ve always thought of it as similar to a school career fair - there are tables for the sexual orientations and they each try to woo you with the advantages of their lifestyle. (“Our members aren’t socially shunned!” “Oh yeah? Well, we can enjoy opera without shame!” “We’ve got John Steinbeck!” “We’ve got Oscar Wilde!”)

46

My working definition of a homosexual is functional, i.e., one who voluntarily performs (or actively seeks opportunities to perform or enjoy vicarioiusly) homosexual acts. The words “voluntarily” and “actively” seem pretty good descriptors of volitional behavior. Is a guy raped in prison against his will a homosexual? Not to me. Is the rapist? Sure looks like it. Is a guy banging his wife but lingering overly long over the photo spreads in FHM a homosexual? Remains to be seen. Am I a “Latinaphile?” Five years ago, not in the least – didn’t do a thing for me, though I saw them all the time. Then I decided to start checking them out after being introduced to a friend’s gorgeous Catalan wife. The more I chose to look at and cultivate an interest in them, the greater my interest became, to the point where I now respond viscerally to them in a way I never would have even a few months ago, and find my response to the gringas comparatively deadened. If I date/marry only Latinas after this experience, then yep, I’ve made myself a functional Latinaphile.

You’re positing a false dilemma between a discrete moment-in-time binary choice and no volitional act at all. The point of my analogy to many other situations in which the actor may be said, with great confidence, to have made a choice, or more accurately a series of choices over time, despite the absence of a verifiable moment-of-choice, is that such instances are indeed circumstantial evidence that people can very readily arrive at a particular station in life through voluntary or partly voluntary decisioins, none of which will be attributable to a specific moment in time or subject to scientific dissection. The appeal to the authority of the APA doesn’t do much for me. Psychiatry’s record as an actual verifiable science (and even its role in the social and political arena) is a pretty awful one, in the past century alone, as psychiatrists have assured us at various times that resolving “Oedipal complexes,” performing lobotomies, electroshock, and sending people to the Gulag for “mental disorders,” were the answers to what ailed us. And you must know that the APA’s current policy is a 180 degree reversal of their last “scientific” position on this issue, which was revoked largely under political, not scientific, pressure.

Bisexuality? On my definition of homosexuality, it’s not really difficult to explain or characterize. Some dudes, in choosing which volitional sex acts to perform, choose to perform some homosexual acts with other dudes, and some heterosexual acts with chicks. Functionally, they’re being bisexual or “sort of homosexual.” Some choose to perform lots of homosexual acts with dudes, no heterosexual acts with chicks. They’re pretty much homosexuals. If my wife bites my neck once and I sort of like it, but that’s it, then I’m probably just a plain vanilla heterosexual. If I get really into it and decide I’m going to have her tie me up and beat me with a paddle every time, I’m pretty much a heterosexual masochist.

You didn’t say what I said in my words. But why would you have raised the questions you did if the endgame were not to say “There’s obviously no choice involved?” Hence my counterexample – if that’s not where you were going, apologies.

47

Oh, c’mon now. You can’t submit your own definition of the term then point to it as evidence for your position.

As for the “Latinaphile” argument, there’s really no comparison, since no one has ever argued that there’s some “natural” or even “dominant” orientation toward attraction to ethnicity.

Btw, y’all may have heard the fundies warn about the homosexual agenda. Ever want to know what it is? Betty can tell you!

48

Defining a homosexual as one who commits homosexual acts is hardly some sui generis far-out definition. Gardeners are people who garden, carpenters build things, and murderers are distinguished by their tendency to kill people.

Honestly, my definition is pretty straightforward and unembellished, and fairly unambiguous – it’s not like I’m saying “If we define a homosexual to be a deviant ass-raping sex pervert, then it ineluctably follows that . . .” Is there another consensus definition of “homosexual” to which you can point? (By consensus, I’m meaning one that doesn’t have the type of tendentious assumptions given in my “pervert” example above – i.e., it won’t do me much good to see a definition: “homosexual (n) – a man of taste and impeccable grooming, friend to small animals, and pre-destined by wholly biological and non-volitional factors to want to find love with another fabulous human of the same sex.”

49

Ok, how about this…

My working definition of an autistic is functional, i.e., one who voluntarily performs (or actively seeks opportunities to perform or enjoy vicarioiusly) autistic acts. The words “voluntarily” and “actively” seem pretty good descriptors of volitional behavior.

My point is that you invent a definition which already assumes that homosexuality is based in action rather than attraction, and you treat universally human behavior of the most fundamental nature (sex) as though it were on par with going to the movies, something one just chooses to do rather than other things that might occupy one’s time.

Then you point to your own definition and say, “See! It must be a choice”.

That’s silly.

The rest of your post is even sillier. Why start talking about deviance, rape, and perversion? Where did that come from?

Suppose I decide to define a homosexual as someone who naturally is attracted sexually to people of the same gender. That certainly enjoys a good bit of consensus, although not total by a long shot. But in doing so, I’ve committed the same logical error you did above.

In other words, making up your own definitions does absolutely zip to answer the question of whether homosexuality is a choice.

To go further, you’re not justified in restricting your “definition” to behavior. I know gay men and lesbians who aren’t with partners, aren’t having sex. I know teenagers who know they’re homosexual, but are still virgins.

When I’m not in a relationship, I’m still striaght. I don’t suddenly become undecided. I still get hot over women, not men.

It’s really pretty simple.

50

Anyone who performs sexual acts (extraordinary circumstances aside, e.g., rape) is choosing to perform a sexual act, and choosing which particular act to perform, and with whom to perform it. Can we not agree on that? No one’s literally compelled (absent rape) to have sex, of any flavor, with any person.

Since I think the notion of inherently “being” existentially homosexual (or heterosexual) without ultimately establishing some meaningful pattern of manifesting this sexual attraction (typically, sexual attraction is manifested through, er, sex) is pretty abstract, much like being convinced that you “are” a Democrat but then never registering or voting, or then joining the GWB campaign, why not focus on a functional definition?

There’s another reason the functional definition has relevance to the current debate (which arises in the context of the S.C. creating a “right to sodomy”) – the sodomy laws, or other positive strictures on homosexuals, were not aimed at some abstract sexual “orientation” or “intrinsic homosexuality” – they were aimed at homosexual acts (whether you agree with this or not=different debate). Given that that was what was at issue in, say, Lawrence, I definitely see analytic value in defining homosexuality within this context – as indeed you’d have to. As much as one might not like the prospect of a cop arresting you for whatever you’re getting up to in the public park restroom, it’d be far more intrusive, and subject to abuse, if the government were empowering cops to sanction you for “being” homosexual with no overt acts in furtherance.

51

Sexual orientation is defined by attraction, not behavior. Heterosexuals are not asexual until they get laid and neither are homosexuals. You don’t have to have sex to be either gay or straight and trying to define orientation by behavior is not going to work for you as a way to call it a choice.

52

Yes, I understand that you believe that is how it “is defined.” Stating that belief, without more, doesn’t make it epistemologically or linguistically so. In fact, referring to “sexual orientation” and then asking what its definition is largely negates the seriousness of the question, as “orientation” implies an inherent state of being attracted in a particular direction.

Interestingly, OED refers to both “behavioral” and “attractional” aspects in defining what “homosexual” means.

If it is your argument that we need to use an “attractional” and not behavioral definition because there is a scientific consensus (i.e., near-unanimity) that homosexual-manifesting people are inherently attracted only to the same sex, I don’t believe the science supports this as a consensus, as yet. If it is your argument that we need to use an attractional definition because there is a societal consensus that people have inherent immutable attractional “sexual orientations,” I really don’t believe you can show that consensus.

So we don’t have those two “slam-dunk” arguments that we have to accept that persons can only “be” homosexual by virtue of some inner, immutable nature, without reference to whether they intentionally committing any homosexual behavior in furtherance (query: could I “be” a masochist if I never went out of my way to seek or enjoy painful sexual or other experiences? maybe you’d say yes, but I don’t get that). The behavioral definition thus makes makes sense in a world where it is conduct, and not states of being or thought crimes, that the government rewards or doesn’t reward, acknowledges or doesn’t acknowledge, privileges or dis-privileges.

53

Well said.

54

Huerta, do you even understand the topic?

Yes, we can agree that people who perform voluntary acts are choosing to perform those acts. So what? That says absolutely zero about whether a preference for same-sex or other-sex partners is or is not voluntary.

This idea, and this analogy, are ridiculous. For this to be true, you would have to deny that sexual preference, and sexual attraction (in the absence of sexual action) are not real. We do not have to indulge in anything as abstract as “being”. We can certainly discuss very real and measurable phenomena such as arousal from sexual stimuli (both external and fantasy-based).

I’ll look for a cite, but sexual orientation in men (including heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and pedophilia) as measured by penile volume upon exposure to various types of sexual images, is scientifically verifiable. Whether these men actually engage in sex at all is totally irrelevant.

There are no such tests that can measure, objectively, political orientation. The comparison is nonsensical.

This discussion of law is a total red herring. Laws have no affect whatsoever (and could not) on the underlying biological mechanism. You should not even bring this up, as it is completely off-topic.

Here’s an analogy that’s actually to the point. Consider pedophilia rather than homosexuality. A man who becomes sexually aroused (a measurable physical phenomenon) upon seeing images of nude children or fantasizing about sex with children is a pedophile. Whether he abstains from engaging in sexual acts with kids is immaterial. Normal men (I do not apologize for the term) will not become aroused by images or thoughts of naked or sexually compromised children, and will not be able to maintain an erection and achieve orgasm when subjected to this stimulus.

For an even more extreme example, men like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are able to achieve arousal and orgasm while committing violence and murder, a situation which renders normal men entirely impotent. You can argue about what causes them to be that way (genetics, upbringing, etc.), but it is impossible to maintain that ordinary people could simply choose to find violence and gore sexually pleasing.

55

You are flat wrong about the scientific consenus. It is absolutely the consensus of the APA and the AMA that sexual orientation is innately and immutably fixed within the individual.

And despite all your wiggling, sexual orientation is defined purely by attraction. That is what “homosexual” means. That is THE definition of the word. It’s stupid to define it any other way. That would imply that anyone who isn’t currently having sex with something has no sexual orientation.

Look, we both know this definitional tactic is just a dodge to avoid having to admit that homosexuality cannot be chosen. It’s bullshit and the substance of the issue cannot be avoided anyway but trying shift the definition to behavior. The fact remains that the attraction can not be chosen or changed, and moreover that it is a normal part of human- indeed all mammalian- sexuality. It is not a disorder, it is not “immoral,” it is not “unnatural” and it is perfectly healthy and right.

So what’s with the 88 in your screen name?

56

You’re citing dictionaries? A dictionary will not, cannot answer the OP. It is not an authoritative source on the matter.

I must emphatically disagree with your criteria. You seem to think that authority makes it so. Is it in the dictionary? Is there consensus? We would do better to look at recent research which is beginning to produce measurable data, not only of externally observable signs of arousal, but even activity in the brain.

The most interesting new research indicates that orientation in women may be very different from orientation in men. Consider the paper A Sex Difference in the Specificity of Sexual Arousal by Chivers, Rieger, Latty, and Baily. It includes this finding:

In other words, even in the absence of action, orientation is scientifically demonstrable in men.

It is not necessary to accept an “immutable nature”. No one said orientation doesn’t develop and can’t change. But you don’t seem to care much about accurate portrayal of the topic.

Yes, of course you could. Connect you to the right machinery and we could measure the activity in pleasure-centers in your brain while you were subjected to pain. There would be measurable differences in brain activity of normal people and masochists.

Government rewards and penalties are absolutely irrelevant to the OP.

57

Hmm. If your pet fallacy is the appeal to authority, you might try reading the authorities to which you appeal. Even the politicized APA narrative doesn’t say anything about “sexual orientation” being “absolutely . . . innate” [OED: innate: Existing in a person (or organism) from birth; belonging to the original or essential constitution (of body or mind); inborn, native, natural]. What APA actually says is:

*There are numerous theories about the origins of a person’s sexual orientation; most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors. In most people, sexual orientation is shaped at an early age. There is also considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality. In summary, it is important to recognize that there are probably many reasons for a person’s sexual orientation and the reasons may be different for different people. *

“THE definition of the word” homosexuality is not purely defined by attraction, other than in your personal lexicon; you can’t change the content of the dictionary by force of will. (OED: Involving, related to, or characterized by a sexual propensity for one’s own sex; of or involving sexual activity with a member of one’s own sex, or between individuals of the same sex.)

I’ve run across your bizarre fascination with numerology before, but since I don’t share an interest in freakish glyph-ciphering or anagrams of people’s screen names, there’s no point in returning to that weird obsession of yours.

58

My guess is year of birth or IQ.

So, Huerta, are you a law student or an English major?

59

Please see post #56 above, which was probably posted as you were composing this bizarre response to DtC.

Again, you appeal to a definition in OED to answer a question regarding biology, psychology, and human sexuality. Words fail me.

And again, we are not faced with the alternatives of “free choice” on the one hand and “absolutely innate” orientation on the other. There is nothing in the laws of physics or biology to prevent sexual orientation from being both plastic and involuntary.

For example, I sometimes am allergic to cats. It comes and goes. I don’t choose it. But it’s not innate and immutable. It’s obviously influenced by a combination of genetics (a predisposition) and environment (I get allergic when I don’t have cats around me all the time).

In any case, please stop (1) citing dictionaries, (2) citing laws, and (3) bringing up the notion of immutable and unchanging nature. The first is inadequate, the second is irrelevant, and the third is a straw man.

60

It’s fun to argue with the self-styled ueber-“tolerant”, because at every turn they show their true colors. Interesting how the intolerant troglodyte can make sequential posts and frame arguments without weird forays into numerology, name calling, ad hominem argument, and other distractionary folderol. Yeah, it’s nice for you guys to be on the side of the angels (or Angels in America, I guess) – seems to excuse a whole lot of just plain tacky manners and fallacious thinking (your latest: the genetic fallacy, in assuming my occupation has anything to do with the validity of my arguments).

I’m about done with what’s become a pointless difference of opinion, and wow, look at that, I’ve managed to make it through the thread without attributing or attacking any of your views based on your being “cocksuckers” or “evil” or Hitlerites.

Sorry you two couldn’t manage a similar feat.