[adventured]

Gay people do not have to be born gay, even if the radical majority tend to be.

There is nothing that prevents a person from deciding they want to experiment sexually, or completely alter their sexual identity, at any given time.

It would be a form of bigotry to proclaim that straight people can't choose to be gay of their own free will, and vice versa. It would imply we're not in control of our own sexuality, and that we lack free will.

And this is not a support of the bigots that proclaim that being gay is always a choice and that gay people should just stop pretending and change their minds --- those people were always in the wrong, their argument was always vile. Sticking to the: gay people are all born gay, premise, is a defeatist response to that bigotry, it's a very very poor defense when a defense is not needed at all.

The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on.

[dudifordMann]

I am not sure I can buy into the "it's a choice" camp.

If you were a avid meat enthusiast, you owned your own meat smoker, held barbeques on the weekend, and your license plate said "3atmeat". if you woke up one morning and said, "You know what? Imma be a vegetarian" there is something disingenuous about that. Even if you decide that the treatment of animals by the meat industry is cruel, and you chose to abstain for ethical reasons, if a perfectly cooked and seasoned steak was presented to you, you would probably salivate.

Now, instead, if you found yourself never really enjoying meat, and found that dining without meat was more pleasant to you, then it would seem you were always a vegetarian, or at least have vegetarian leanings. and did not realize it.

EDIT: with respect to the person below: to be clear I am not saying that being gay is necessarily genetic. Perhaps neurological, but my claim is that you cannot fight against what feels natural without some repercussion

[coldpie]

I think you missed his point. The point is, it doesn't matter whether it's a choice or not. It's not bad in either case.

[tibiapejagala]

It's first time I encounter someone sharing this sentiment too.

I'm so tired of hearing 'they're born this way' argument. It just sounds like if it was a choice, it would be totally ok to persecute them.

[aoeuasdf1]

Agreed.

Although, I'm a vegetarian and I'm salivating at the thought of a perfectly cooked and seasoned steak. :)

[JoeAltmaier]

That's arguable - folks are notoriously incapable of controlling their sexuality, to the point its reasonable to postulate free will has nothing to do with it.

[fizzbatter]

It may be a moot point though, i've always felt that it's a gray area - not black or white.

Eg, i could feel/claim to be entirely straight. But if i have a drunken experience in college, perhaps i realize that i enjoyed it a bit. Did i change? Or was i never "100% straight" to begin with?

Who's to say that you can't even be wrong about your own sexuality? We're wrong about things all the time, even within our own minds. Is sexuality any different? I doubt it.

The idea that you're born straight or gay appears to be created by a desire to separate humanity. You're in one camp, they're in another, and with that separation you can judge them differently.

Interesting how it all comes about though. We're complex creatures in everything we do, it seems.

[AlexandrB]

> The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on.

I agree completely. I always thought that the biological argument was a red herring meant mostly to sway those that couldn't be swayed anyways (those that thought gay impulses were aberrant). The moral argument remains the same whether someone is born gay or choses to become gay.

[glesica]

> Gay people do not have to be born gay, even if the radical majority tend to be.

I thought about noting that "most" gay people are born gay, but I didn't. It doesn't really matter for my argument, provided that at least some gay people are born gay. The point is that you can't equate polygamy and gay marriage because polygamists make a conscious choice to be polygamists, they aren't born that way.

I would actually be fine with polygamy (I think the correct term is actually polyamory), but it is a commonly used argument against gay marriage because most people are against it or find it uncomfortable, and it has a pretty ugly history in some areas. I was trying to refute the "slippery slope" class of arguments against gay marriage, so I gave a refutation for that one.