I’m sure that 99%, if not 100%, of Dopers would agree that being gay is not a choice. So there’s not much debate there.
But given that many conservatives think that sexual orientation is a choice, they must think there is some benefit in being gay - nobody chooses to be something without thinking there’s some benefit or advantage therein.
What do they think those benefits are, though? Being gay entails more disadvantages than advantages in almost every nation in the world. Even in Western, progressive societies, you might have a tough time getting married, your dating pool is far smaller than that of heterosexuals’, you can’t have kids biologically (without resorting to surrogacy or whatnot,) you might still face ostracization, your family may disapprove, etc. The AIDS rate is higher. You face a greater risk of violence. Even in a liberal place like Canada, Holland or Sweden, the advantages of being straight still far surpass those of being gay.
Then when one talks about societies like the Middle East, it gets really dangerous to be gay. Being gay or lesbian in Taliban Afghanistan, ISIS territory or Saudi Arabia may be a death sentence. But yet those nations still have homosexuals nonetheless. So why do conservatives think someone would willingly choose to be gay in a society where it could lead to very, very painful death? Do they think homosexuals are suicidal?
I think it’s more that they view gay acts as a sin like other sins. It’s in the same way someone might have the urge to steal, but they are supposed to strive to keep that urge in check. Saying it’s a choice means the person is choosing to give in to a sinful desire, not that the person is making a choice to have the sinful desire.
Which fits well with the frequency with which conservative male politicians and leaders are discovered to have engaged in, or at least explored, that particular sinful choice.
Do they think it’s funner than sinful sinful hedonistic casual sex with someone of the opposite gender? (Of course, they disapprove of that, too, but that’s a different topic.) Why choose gay sex over straight sex?
So we are talking here about a religious issue, therefore there is nothing to say. Religion is irrational, there’s no point in arguing about it.
The real traditional conservative arguments have more to do with society’s need to have stable families with children in them. Now gay folks have proven that they can have stable families, and some of them go to great lengths to have children in non-traditional ways. So the argument has to shift back to religious grounds. It’s all based on fear, fear of the unknown, or fear of one’s own desires.
Well, I’ve tried both (not sure I gave one of them a fair shot, but it was more than once) and I prefer gay sex. Because, you see, there can be more to sex for a man than sticking his dick into something.
Open opposition to God’s will, both by defying the supposed guidance for only heterosexual sex, as well as avoiding any chance for the sexual act to result in conception?
The conservatives believe God’s will is that, “sex is reserved for marriage, and marriage is to be between a man and a woman,” as well as “humans should be fruitful and multiply.”
As a gay man of the world, I would have a career that made use of my inherent talent in art, architecture, fashion, or entertainment. Right now, I bus tables in the hospital cafeteria. But as a homosexual, I would be resourceful enough to channel my passion for antiques into a viable means of self-employment.
Most people, particularly on the left, define “being gay” as “wanting to have gay sex.” The conservatives who push the idea that “being gay is a choice” tend to operate on a different paradigm - to them, actually having gay sex is what makes you gay. Someone who wants to have gay sex, but only has sex in the confines of heterosexual marriage is straight, even if they have to pop Viagra like M&Ms to get it up with a naked woman. Someone who has adopted this framework would, generally, acknowledge that the person didn’t choose to be attracted to men, but they did make the choice to act on that attraction, and that’s the “choice” they’re talking about when they say “homosexuality is a choice.”
For fairly obvious reasons, this way of conceptualizing sexuality is extremely attractive to people who were raised in conservative cultures, and are struggling with same-sex attraction, because it means they can be “really” straight despite what their libido is telling them. So people who are closeted end up significantly over-represented in this demographic, leading to a lot of the Freudian statements like, “If we didn’t oppress people for being gay, everyone would choose to be gay and humanity would die out!” Which feeds into the impression that most people spouting homophobic ideas are homosexual themselves, but I don’t think its actually anywhere near the majority.
Anecdote: I read an essay a while back by a young man who thought people could choose to be gay or straight, until he volunteered at the Special Olympics. He was supervising a group of men from a group home, and one of them had Down syndrome and functioned at the mental level of a preschooler. The other guys from the group home were checking out women, and the Down syndrome guy was checking out other men. He couldn’t have known the difference between gay and straight; it really was, for him, an instinct.
Now, teenagers who claim to be trans? I really think that a huge percentage of them are indeed saying that for attention, or they think they can get away with assorted misbehaviors if they hide behind the “trans” curtain. This is making things MUCH harder for people who really are trans, or they are intersex.
I’m being really honest–either it’s disgust and rationalizing, or it’s because they want to fuck guys and rationalizing. Hey, GOPers? I’ve had gay adjacent dreams, but I’m not worried about who wants to fuck whom…
Or to put it another way, it’s not that they “think that sexual orientation is a choice”; it’s that they don’t believe in or aren’t aware of the concept of sexual orientation as many of us understand it.
Imagine being heterosexual and assuming that everyone else has the same feelings toward the opposite sex that you do. Then “gay sex” would mean having sex with someone you have no natural attraction toward.
In that case, what would the benefits of “being gay” be? Physical pleasure or assuaging one’s horniness without any emotional connection, I guess—as if you were having sex with a blowup doll or a farm animal or someone (of whatever sex) you found repulsive? The thrill of the taboo and kinky? Exerting dominance over another man by penetrating him?
I think it’s very likely that the majority, if not the vast majority, of prominent men who vocally condemn gay people, are closeted gay men in denial. And some of the may even be sincere, in a way: they are incredibly tempted by the idea of sex with men, and believe that all men must therefore face this incredible temptation, and thus if it’s truly evil (as they are taught) they must necessarily stand as a champion against it to help all the other men facing this terribly dangerous evil. Many others are just hypocrites, of course.
Outing these sorts of men is always okay, IMO. As Dan Savage says, forcibly outing is a brutal act, but can be used against brutes.
EDIT: Or what @Miller said (except that I think it’s likely a majority, at least for the publicly homophobic men).
I think this is an excellent post, but I also think there’s another angle beyond the very real repression you describe.
Think about how conservatives tend to not believe that mental health issues are really a thing. The liberal media blows it all out of proportion! Snowflakes need safe spaces! Children are soft! Depressed? You just need to get out there and live your life and push through it. Blah blah blah.
These people would agree that somebody can get into a funk or into a bad place, but they would also argue that a depressed person is choosing to not get better. An agoraphobe is choosing to not go outside. A person with a binge eating disorder is choosing to not get thin. And so on.
Same for being gay. Maybe something happened that made you try something weird, but it’s your choice to keep doing it even though it’s wrong and bad and blah blah blah. And of course that ties right back into the repression. “I’m pulling myself up by my bootstraps by choosing to keep those shameful thoughts at bay!” But also “those reprobates are choosing not to live a virtuous life, how weak and shameful!”
So this:
Is of course provably incorrect. People make shitty self-destructive decisions all the time. Conservatives have just decided to label all but one kind of sexuality as shitty self-destructive behavior.
ETA: And just in case it needs to be said, I do not ascribe to any of the beliefs I’ve described here. Everybody should take mental wellness seriously and everybody should live their best, truest lives.
Besides many of them being repressed homosexuals themselves as said, there’s the fact that homosexual men can have romance & sex without dealing with what the Right considers the literal source of all of evil: women. Of course misogynists are going to think that an option that sidelines women is going to be a temptation.
