Why would people 'choose' to be gay? | Science | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?
• AM I GAY?
• CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?
• CAN YOU CHOOSE TO BE GAY?
• BEG GAY NOT A CHOICE: SCIENCE CONTRADICTS BEN CARSON
• IS IT A CHOICE TO BE GAY? IT DEPENDS ON THE MEANG OF 'IT'
• IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

If we fe beg gay as engagg homosexual behavr (the ncept of “gay” as an inty is a Wtern cultural ncept – people who have sex wh both men and women may ll themselv gay, straight or bisexual, pendg on the l of their culture or subculture), then people stop beg gay as soon as they stop engagg this behavr. If sexual preference n be altered, then people who support gay rights n’t rely on the argument that gay people should be protected om discrimatn bee gay people have no choice but to be gay – an argument that seems like an apology for homosexualy, as if homosexualy is a disease for which there is no cure.

Jt as gay people who are happy as they are should not be forced to change their sexual orientatn, gay people who want to be straight should have the right to change if they n – and the rrect word is “change” – not “cure”. Photo creds: Vanuver Gay Pri Para 2008 by edallaluna on Wikimedia Commons; DNA by ynse on Wikimedia Commons; Bra fMRI by views exprsed are those of the thor(s) and are not necsarily those of Scientific Amerin.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

Homosexual members of society n unfortunately expect to regularly be challenged, sctised and nmned by belligerent type who are seemgly nvced that homosexualy is a “liftyle choice” issue has e up aga (for what is possibly the 12, 456, 987, 332nd time) for several reasons. The mastream media has always been somewhat blunt or ham-fisted s portrayal of even heterosexual relatnships (for evince of this, see pretty much any married uple an advert), so was a long shot that they’d show homosexuals accurately.

Normally heterosexual characters sudnly displayg homosexual leangs when a boost viewg figur are need is a mon trope the days, so you n sort of see how this might make some people thk ’s a “choice”, if they lack more realistic sayg that sexualy is set stone om birth is also not que right, the ma emphasis of those g the choice argument is that homosexuals have weighed up their optns and nscly cid “I am gog to be gay om now on”.

Comedian Todd Glass mak a brilliant pot his book (which is great, I got for Christmas), which is that if you genuely believe sexualy is a choice, then you’re not actually straight, you jt haven’t met anyone persuasive enough those who argue that homosexualy is a choice variably assert that is a wrong choice. You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

WHY ARE PEOPLE GAY? GAY BY CHOICE OR IS BEG GAY GEIC?

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy.

”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns.

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay.

AM I GAY?

In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists.

CAN SOMEONE BE HOMOSEXUAL AND NOT GAY?

Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins.

There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure. The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors.

”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

CAN YOU CHOOSE TO BE GAY?

” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc.

I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy. “Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric? ”Acrdg to surveys, ls than half of Generatn Z intify as "100% heterosexual", suggtg more and more people have embraced their sexual fluidy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Perhaps is time to look to the begng of the gay rights movement.

BEG GAY NOT A CHOICE: SCIENCE CONTRADICTS BEN CARSON

So when we therapists are nonted wh male clients, often married on, who e to wh ep nflicts about their sexual attractn to other men, we often fd that they are willg to e the word “homosexual, ” but chew the “gay” label.

I warned them of the pfalls of keepg their sexual orientatn secret: a life of creased prsn, pursug a secret life the gay unrground wh the danger of beg ught, how attemptg to supprs urg n often e them to bee even more obssed wh them. They may need, om time to time, to seek further therapy, but wh the right therapist, one who has thoroughly unrstood the dangers of such practic of “reparative therapy” which the therapist seeks to change the client’s sexual inty om gay to straight. "Blogy tells that sexual orientatn is strongly fluenced by prenatal hormonal and geic factors and there is ltle rmatn supportg the notn that tn or teractns wh peers play any substantial role, " said Jacqu Balthazart of the Universy of Liege Belgium, and thor of The Blogy of Homosexualy.

" DNEWS VIDEO: SCIENTISTS PROBE FOR SMOKING GENE One landmark seri of studi on tws the early 1990s, for example, showed that if one intil tw is gay, the other has a 50 percent chance of also beg homosexual.

IS IT A CHOICE TO BE GAY? IT DEPENDS ON THE MEANG OF 'IT'

“When people who have some media attentn say thgs about gay beg a choice really reverberat the sexual mory muny, ” said Ellen Schecter, a pyschologist Hanover, New Hampshire, who specializ sexual inty and inty.

” NEWS: Gay Teen Suicis and Bad Statistics Some say the bate shouldn’t matter outsi of the scientific world: Dpe his nvictn that sexualy is pretermed to some gree, Balthazart thks that society shouldn’t need scientific proof to rpect all typ of sexual orientatn. “The fact is, however, that the prent Wtern societi will probably show more tolerance towards gays and lbians if their orientatn is termed by prenatal blogy -- and I thk that data strongly argue that directn. Ben Carson, a retired nrosurgeon and printial hopeful, recently apologized for a statement which he said beg gay is "absolutely" a an terview on CNN, the potential 2016 Republin printial ndidate mented that "a lot of people who go to prison, go to prison straight, and when they e out they're gay, so did somethg happen while they were there?

IS ANYONE BORN GAY?

And nearly 130 bird speci have been observed engagg sexual activi wh same-sex the evolutnary purpose of this behavr is not clear, the fact that animals routely exhib same-sex behavr beli the notn that gay sex is a morn human studi have found specific "gay gen" that reliably make someone gay. For stance, a 2014 study the journal Psychologil Medice showed that a gene on the X chromosome (one of the sex chromosom) lled Xq28 and a gene on chromosome 8 seem to be found higher prevalence men who are gay. But this so-lled epigenome n also be passed on om generatn to generatn, which would expla why beg gay seems to n fai, even when a sgle gene n't be such gay gen get passed down om generatn to generatn has puzzled scientists, given that gay upl nnot reproduce.