I know how the “it’s a choice” argument works. I’m talking about how the “why would anyone choose that?” response works. I’m staying that to make that response, you are giving something up that I think is very important. It’s saying that any sane person would choose to fit in over rejecting bigotry. Over saying that it’s no one else’s business, even if it were a choice.
I’m not basing my position on “why would anyone choose that.” I’m basing it on (granted) my experience and my observation that people cannot choose who is going to arouse their sexual interest.
Consider The Friend Zone. A guy likes a certain woman, but she is not interested in him sexually. She IS interested in other guys sexually, but she can’t MAKE herself be sexually drawn to this one guy.
I’ve known married people who WISH they were sexually attracted to their spouse, but they just aren’t. Maybe they were once upon a time or maybe not. They might go to a sex therapist, but their lack of interest isn’t a pathology-- it’s just that there’s no chemistry with this person of the opposite sex. The can go through the motions, but the physical magnetism just isn’t there. They can even stay married for 50 years and CHOOSE to have sex routinely, but they can’t make the sexual attraction happen.
If a **straight **person can’t MAKE him/herself be interested in a given person of the opposite sex, then why would that **straight **person think you can CHOOSE to be sexually attracted to a person of the same sex. Sexual attraction is not a matter of choice. A person is just going to ring your chimes for some reason and that person might be of the opposite sex or might be of the same sex. But YOU don’t choose which way the attraction is going to go. You DISCOVER it. You don’t CHOOSE it.
I’m NOT talking about choosing to **act **on sexual feelings, nor about choosing a gay, heterosexual, celibate, or any other lifestyle/set of behaviors. That is another discussion (even though it keeps cropping up here).
Another way of rejecting the question is, as has already been brought up, to ask when and how straight people choose to be straight. It is a question that has a bias built in. Answering the question on its own terms tends to reinforce the built-in bias. If heterosexuality were a choice, why would anyone choose it? There are certainly tons of downsides to it.
A lot of individual variables, I guess. Broadly speaking, probably more inclined toward women still. I’m pretty introverted and live kind of like a hermit, though, so in reality, it doesn’t come up often one way or the other.
I might have more insight or more to say on the topic if I’d had a lot more actual relationships, but as it is, I just know that my preferences have definitely changed, and the change feels almost the same as any other preference, like my taste in food, or movies, or games, slowly shifting. Not something I went ‘I decide to change’ about, but also not something I had zero influence on, either.
When my father was born the death penalty for sodomy was still on the books. His family were upper class and he and my mother knew they were to be married one day from the ages of 10 and 8 respectively. According to my mother he had sexual experiences with other boys at boarding school but assumed that was normal and he did what was expected and married my mother a few years later once established in business. She claimed that was a happy marriage for a decade or so then he was arrested in a public toilet, my mother waddled in to court heavily pregnant some eight months later (after his lawyers delayed matters) and he was let off without conviction because he was clearly just there to urinate. The same thing happened two years later and I was the result of that pregnancy. When he left us for a fellow four years later my mother was furious that he had broken their contract but agreed to not bring up the shame and they both lived in sin with other people (he more than her of course) until No Fault Divorce was introduced in 1975.
He loathed me for being an out lesbian so much I was not only left out of his will, there were instructions to not tell me of his death lest I appear at his funeral. He spent his life hating who he was, that was reinforced by law and church and society. Nobody will ever convince me that he made a choice to be gay, he tried so very hard not to be. He died in the closet.
I didn’t make a choice either, people were calling me dyke long before I had any interest whatsoever in sex with anyone. Looking back I can see clearly that his (unmarried) sister was also a closeted lesbian but she hid that better than he did by not living with anyone across her lifetime.
It was a tragedy for all of us, he tried to choose to be straight and couldn’t and I don’t believe he ever forgave himself. He certainly never forgave me. My mother didn’t either but she had more reason to hate homosexuality than most I guess, it lumbered her with two unwanted children.
“You see if you ask me we’re heterosexual by default, not by decision. It’s just a question of who you fancy. It’s all about aesthetics and it’s fuck all to do with morality”.
— Mark Renton (Trainspotting)
So far my aesthetic has been strongly pro-female. And it’s not just about the bumpy grindy bits either, I have yet to find man that does anything for my psyche that I can’t do better myself. Yeah, I’ve got a handful of strong friendships with guys whose respect I value, perhaps dysfunctionally. But the thought of getting nakies with them is gross. But when I think about it, my propensity to want a particular woman is only the tiniest bit stronger than that. Vast majority of women? No way, just ick, they’re nightmare fuel, crazy and full of fleas. Perhaps the women in my life have just beaten the already staggering odds against anyone getting to me, perhaps there is a guy out there who can do it as well and I just haven’t met him. Dunno. But as far as I know I haven’t chosen any details beyond yes/no, and the “yes” always has fallen to a woman…
Oh my. A story full of heartbreak. Reading this, I’m very sad for you. I hope you have found a peaceful home.
I say that as someone who has been looking for a home all of my life. For reasons superficially different from yours but similar at the deepest core.
Mine have also changed with age, and I also have changed in my understanding of them, but in the end the point is that I never woke up one morning and decided that I would find my old HS heart-throb’s current version crazily attractive* and his 15yo pictures… SOOOOOO babyfaced. In my case the biggest changes are that better understanding and that my tastes have always tended heavily towards the age-appropriate; yes, back when I was a teen I did like in a “some dude like that would be nice in about 10 years’ time” some guys who at the time were in their 20s, and now I haven’t become blind to eye-candy half my age, but I wouldn’t no more be getting into bed with a guy of 25 now than I would have when I was 15. Too old then, too young now.
- Please don’t tell my mother, he’s a widower now and she’d be on the phone with his mother trying to set us up within seconds.
It may simply be my (urban, middle class) background, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that people “choose” to be homosexual and mean that the person chooses to have certain sexual attractions or impulses. Although, there are no shortage of people claiming that “those” people say this and then making arguing like you’re making to “refute” it.
When I’ve seen people say that you “choose” to be homosexual, they mean that people can decide to act on their desires (or not); can embrace them (or not); can attempt to curb the desire (or not). This isn’t an unfamiliar position. We all expect certain people to reject and restrain certain sexual desires that we view as morally repugnant or, at least, inappropriate to act on. We’ve decided (in significant parts of Western society, at least) that homosexual desires and actions are neither repugnant or inappropriate (and that choosing to restrain them may cause more harm than “good”). But that’s sort of a different question than what you’re asking.
I’m pretty sure people choose to be gay because the sex is so mindblowing it’s worth it. Even though I don’t have attraction to the same sex, I’m wondering if I’m missing out. The sex must be amazing if it’s worth choosing to be gay even if it means potentially being ostracized by your job, society, and family; the risk of being attacked for just walking down the street holding hands; not being allowed to work with children because people are worried you’ll molest the kids, and so on. I’m thinking I need to give this gay thing a try if people choose to do so even with all the hassles that go along with it 
I made a loving life, it just hasn’t involved any blood relations. The one thing I never had any angst about was my sexuality. 
I wish Dad had lived long enough to see Australia vote yes to gay marriage, I think that would have been good for him, odds are he would have voted no himself though.
There’s an Australian series called “A Place to Call Home” set in the 1950s that has a story like your dad’s as one of the story lines. The series is available in the USA from AcornTV and BritBox. A whole lot of other stuff goes on in the six-season series (it’s really packed with Plot), but the man who tries not to be gay is one of the most poignant themes.
All the best to you!
Ahh yes, I tried to watch it as it aired but didn’t manage it. One day I will 
Thankyou
I haven’t thought being gay was a choice for a long time. My first rationale was, “who would choose that?” Inferred in that line of thinking is homosexuality is inherently undesirable though. I do think the smaller pool of romantic partners kind of reinforces that, but I would guess that modern technology has alleviated that somewhat.
The clincher for biological factors for me, was when I saw an article that computer algorithms can now predict one’s sexuality from still pictures with a 91% degree of accuracy. This tells me it is not just not a choice, but is probably so deeply rooted in your biology that it could never be “cured.”
I think finding people of the same sex attractive is completely normal. For me, the boundary between “attractive” and “sexually attractive” is “I wish I could be that person”, rather than “I wish I could be with that person.”
Oddly, no one seems concerned that heterosexuality may be so intractible that it can’t be cured. Nor, for that matter, do we tend to blame hetero people for their choices, for embracing that lifestyle. Either way, I suppose we should acknowledge that with all the peer pressure and other cultural pressures on them to accept that role, it would require a degree of moral fibre that we have no right to expect or demand of them for them to resist that and make their own decisions, so we need to learn to accept that it isn’t really their fault. Try to be tolerant.
It was only a generation or two ago that closeted people married and had families. They found a way to make their lives and relationships work.
Coming out of the closet and into a same sex relationship was a courageous step before the courts struck down the state laws.
A lot has changed in the past 40 years.
There is a degree of choice in the relationships people enter into.
But, that doesn’t change their sexual orientation.
Everybody has deh gay, it’s simply a matter of choice: choosing to desperately deny it or choosing to accept it.
Yeah, on re-reading that, I can see how it could be misinterpreted. I don’t mean that every individual must, on reaching puberty or at any other time, develop sexual interest in someone. There are people who remain asexual for their entire lives, and if they don’t have a problem with that, then neither do I. I simply meant “had to change” in a sort of intermediate-value-theorem way: Given that there was a time (when I was a child) when I was not sexually attracted to anyone, and a time (now) when I am, it logically must be true that there was some time in between when I changed.
Is it still common for people to be straight in high school and college and then come out as gay later in life?
A close friend of mine in high school had the same gf in junior and senior years of high school. Really close couple. We ran in the same social group.
I ran into him at a store a few years later and asked about her. He said that he was gay. He’s still a friend. I was just a bit surprised.