Well, sticking with that - do you think you could convince yourself that eating cardboard was something you liked, say? Something non-food, the opposite of food, but harmless.
But how do we know that you’re not a bored college sophomore trolling the boards to raise people’s ire? I’m not saying that to insult but to exemplify – barring good evidence to the contrary, we expect to find you arguing the point of view you actually hold, debating in good faith, etc.
And that is precisely what the ‘anecdotal’ evidence for the unchosenness of (almost all) homosexuality is – giving good faith to persons’ statements about themselves evidently given in good faith.
There’s nothing wrong with monosexuality either.
I have seen stories of people who “choose” their sexuality. In every case it is a homosexual person “choosing” to be heterosexual. Or rather, live a heterosexual lifestyle. They generally do this because of religion or family pressure.
However to me that is akin to me “choosing” to be a woman. I could dress up and play the part sure but underneath I would remain a guy.
Yes I have and yes I have, actually. Have you been following me around my entire life, recording every person I met with, and then spying on those people to make sure that they aren’t changing their sexual orientation? If not, then your claim to know what’s happened to my friends and coworkers better than I know what’s happened to them is obviously preposterous. I can name a half dozen people who entered college in the same class as me as homosexuals or bisexuals and graduated four years later as heterosexuals. Of course you’re free to doubt the word of an anonymous internet user like me, but there are plenty of well-known examples of people who changed their sexual orientation. Two that come to mind are economist John Maynard Keynes and singer Richard Penniman (Little Richard). I’m sure a quick internet search would turn up plenty of others.
As for your rejection of my claim about research, I’ve already referred to a a source that documents changing sexuality within people’s lifetimes: The Kinsey Study. Do you have any reason to believe that its results are not true? If so, please explain that reason. If not, I’ll conclude that the results stand.
Actually the APA has changed its stance. In 1998, they published a pamphlet saying that “genetic or inborn hormonal factors” determined a person’s sexual orientation. However, in 2008, they published a revised pamphlet in which that claim had vanished, to be replaced by this: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.” As for the AMA, I’ve read nothing, but given how wrong you were about the APA I wouldn’t wager money on it.
I know from my previous experience in debating you that asking you for a cite is a waste of time, but I’m going to do it anyway. Please provide a cite. Keep in mind, of course, that you’ve claimed that no person has ever changed their sexual orientation by choice. So even a “miserable failure rate” would prove you wrong. If there’s anybody who’s changed their sexual orientation, that would prove you wrong.
As I and others have already answered this question on the first page of this thread, I see no need to repeat the answer.
Human sexuality, or if you prefer what turns you on sexually, is a continuum. You will have people all along that continuum. That there are some people who are borderline between heterosexual/homosexual should not be surprising. That some of these people may “choose” which way to go for themselves is not hard to imagine.
I submit that this is a very small percentage of the population however. If it were otherwise, if people really were “choosing” their sexuality on a regular basis we should see evidence of it in literature throughout history as well as it being a common topic of discussion. E.g. “Hey man, why did you decide to like girls?” Personally I have never heard that discussion.
I would also submit the “miserable failure rate” is correct. People have been trying to fix “being gay” for centuries. It was deemed a psychological malady to be cured in the US till the 90’s. My ex-wife’s cousin even wrote a book, The Last Time I Wore a Dress, regarding her experiences in a psych ward trying to “cure” her of being a lesbian. I also have to wonder when someone has been made to un-choose being gay whether they were browbeaten into it or have actually discovered that all of a sudden chicks give them a woody.
In almost all respects the effort to “cure” people of being gay has not met with a great deal of success or we’d be rid of “gayness” by now. More often the effort is tortuous to the individual they seek to cure. If it were merely a choice it would not be hard at all. Indeed ask most homosexuals and they would say they would not willingly “choose” to be gay if for no other reason than all the hassles society throws at them. The “easy” answer would be to choose a heterosexual lifestyle.
I could list the ways, but there are too many to list all of them, so I’ll keep it short.
- It doesn’t fit with my history on the boards.
- I haven’t made any claims.
- I’m not in college.
I have argued the point I hold – there isn’t sufficient evidence one way or the other.
No, that’s not what anecdotal evidence is for.
Anecdotal evidence is just what it is, anecdotal and not enough to base a conclusion on. It’s not enough for me to believe in God, bigfoot or the Lochness monster, why would it be enough for this?
I’ve never said that it can’t be innate, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it was – however it seems entirely premature to hold that as fact. In fact, it seems more like an article of faith than an objective fact at this point.
Being gay, unlike being black, can be faked. And you cannot prove otherwise. This is why this will be an issue for a long time to come, because there will always be some ignorant people out there who will never ever accept that another person is gay by birth and not choice.
As for why religion is protected? The hell if I know, I’ve been trying to figure that out for years.
Mental illness aside, most probably not - but I just think that’s an irrelevant analogy for me. Homosexual and heterosexual are different, but not in the way cheese and cardboard are different.
I have heard that some heterosexual women involved in the separatist feminist movement attempted to become lesbians. It’s my understanding that this didn’t work out well for anyone involved.
Certainly something changed, because I do really like it now and I did really dislike it at first. But the change took place as a result of my decision to get to like it (I could have decided not to bother)
I don’t really see why - I explicitly chose to focus my taste upon black unsweetened coffee. Then again, why not? - I think I could make myself like both black or white coffee, if I chose to - I just didn’t, is all.
Like I said, I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone - maybe I’m anomalous or something, but I can turn them on and off - albeit not instantly.
Point taken that attempts to make this happen have been almost exclusively disastrous - but I think there are a lot of confounding factors in the mix - lots of guilt, coercion, force etc - not a good recipe for any venture.
Dunno - that seems a bit too easy and self-confirming an answer - it’s defined that nobody can change - and any counterexamples are waved away as being something already changeable anyway (I accept you didn’t state it that firmly).
There’s nothing about my sexuality that makes me uncertain about how it works and what it wants right now, but there’s also nothing about it that makes me feel it’s any more written in stone than the things I know I can change. I accept that I might just not be aware of some crucial details - I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for sure.
I gagged a little when I read that.
I’m sure they had fun in trying though 
That’s basically what I said, that you chose to take an action that resulted in a change in your preferences. But was this action guaranteed to succeed? Can you at least imagine that there might be some beverage that tasted so bad to you that you wouldn’t eventually come to like it no matter how often you tried? Or, perhaps more to the point, why didn’t you save yourself the trouble and just decide to like Guinness the first time you tried it?
What I’m getting at here is that just because something can change with voluntary effort doesn’t mean that this change is strictly a matter of choice, or that the original state was one that was chosen. Even the name “acquired taste” suggests that the natural default state is to not enjoy that taste.
*It seems to me like it would be easier, not harder, to give up a personal preference if you felt guilty about what you liked and the people around you wanted you to stop liking it too. And why would people living in more tolerant situations not voluntarily change their sexual orientation just for fun or out of curiosity?
*I didn’t state it in any way even close to that. I said I am open to the possibility that some people are capable of changing their sexual orientation, but that I do not think it is likely. I am skeptical because of the large number of self-proclaimed “ex-gays” who returned to homosexual behavior, and because even Exodus International doesn’t claim to be able to completely do away with all “homosexual temptations”. They claim lessening of these temptations as a success, but if someone had truly changed their orientation then they wouldn’t be feeling any such temptations.
That said, I’m in no position to tell someone else what their own sexual desires are. If someone were to tell me that they used to feel attracted exclusively to members of the same sex but through deliberate effort managed to transform this into exclusive desire for the opposite sex with no pesky “homosexual temptations” at all then I’d have to take their word for it. I’ve never encountered such a person though, so while I can’t rule out the possibility that they exist I’m not going to pretend that I think there are a lot of them out there.
*I do not personally believe that human sexuality is “written in stone”. I just don’t believe that sexual orientation is a matter of personal choice, at least not for the vast majority of people. In the not too distant future it might be possible for everyone to choose to change their sexual orientation through some kind of gene therapy or hormone treatment. But if no one had a sexual orientation until they deliberately chose one for themselves, or if changing one’s initial orientation were something that anyone could choose to do through force of will alone, then we should have plenty of evidence of this. It would be happening all the time.
I recall reading about that at the time. Didn’t work; no matter how hard they tried to convince themselves they were lesbians ideology lost out to biology.
I was just trying to help. There are a lot of things people don’t notice because they don’t care enough to notice.
Good post. I too think that it is fairly obvious that many people are able to consciously change their preferences - I did so with respect to my taste in music, for example. Likewise, I am left handed but am only comfortable using the mouse with my right hand now. Rafael Nadal is naturally right-handed, but he learned to play tennis left-handed, and look where that got him - certainly predispositions can be overcome!
Sexuality is a probably a much stronger preference than taste in food or music, or even handedness - my guess would be that the strong link to biology leads to a generally strong genetic predisposition. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people who were predisposed to homosexuality would be able to “get used to” being heterosexual, to the point where they may in fact prefer the company of the opposite sex. I’d imagine if there wasn’t such negative social pressure against being homosexual, quite a few people who were predisposed to being heterosexual could become comfortable being homosexual as well. Did most of the ancient Greeks who practiced homosexual pederasty do so because they were innately homosexuals, or did they choose to do it because it was a social norm? Of course it is impossible to know whether any of them enjoyed it, so perhaps they were all just doing it out of a sense of duty or something.
My position is that while your predisposition to any particular preference is predetermined, you DO have a choice in your actions, and your actions CAN have an affect on your preference over time. That’s not to say that everyone can change any preference that they have if they put enough effort into it, but I think it’s rigid thinking to assume that sexuality is so hard-coded that it is impossible to change.
OK, let’s say you (and others making the claim) are right – predispositions can be changed. For the sake of the argument, I will grant that this may be true.
I still maintain – and the OP asked about this – that it does not matter. The “fact” (if it is one) that a left-handed person can “learn” to be right-handed does not give society a right to impose right-handedness on them. In the same vein, I maintain that even if it is true that a person can “unlearn” their predisposed sexuality – this does not give society a right to impose on a person to do so, ever.
Innateness, or choice, have nothing to do with this. A person’s sexuality does not harm society per se (if a person is imposing their sexual preference on an unwilling partner, it’s rape, no matter whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual rape!) and therefore society has no business trying to impose a particular choice of sexuality on any person – even if this is possible. I’d **hate **it if society tried to force me to like other men – why should I condone society, or any part of it, trying to force, e.g., a homosexual guy to like women?! 
As someone who actually is “monosexual,” I couldn’t agree more. But when choosing a partner, it would be nice not to have to eliminate half the population.
I think you misunderstood the point of the OP.
At no point in the OP, or anywhere after for that matter, did I suggest that society should change this attribute. In fact, multiple times throughout the thread I said that homosexuality is no way inferior to heterosexuality, they’re equal choices.
The question as to whether or not it’s a choice, or changeable at all, was more to question the motivation behind peoples “acceptance” of homosexuality. Do you accept it because it can’t be changed? Or do you accept it because you truly don’t care whether your neighbor chooses to take a hard pounding in the bum by his not remotely-heterosexual life mate?
Do you accept it because it can’t be changed, or do you accept it because it’s none of your business? (For me, at least, it’s the latter.)
I’m a staunch advocate of personal liberties, the very idea that I’d suggest that society should change anything about an individual without their express consent is somewhat offensive.