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

Contents:

• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• WHY WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?
• AM I GAY?
• HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
• 17 SIGNS YOU'RE ACTUALLY GAY (AND JT DON'T KNOW IT)
• WAS CHANDLER OM “FRIENDS” MEANT TO BE GAY? IT SEEMS HE ALMOST WAS.
• LIFE IS TOTALLY GAY
• HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)

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

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 WOULD PEOPLE 'CHOOSE' TO BE GAY?

I me out at a nservative Christian llege the US and was a gay relatnship for around two years wh a basketball player who end up marryg a woman.

AM I GAY?

Well, you mt have been gay the whole time, some might thk, and bee of some relig shame, you cid to lie to yourself and experiment wh a girl.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY

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. ” Vios started circulatg on the ter featurg gay people askg straight people “when they chose to be straight.

” 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.

17 SIGNS YOU'RE ACTUALLY GAY (AND JT DON'T KNOW IT)

”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.

“Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy. ” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. In a 2012 terview wh New York Tim Magaze, the actrs sually mentned that homosexualy was, for her, a choice.

WAS CHANDLER OM “FRIENDS” MEANT TO BE GAY? IT SEEMS HE ALMOST WAS.

“I unrstand that for many people ’s not, but for me ’s a choice, and you don’t get to fe my gayns for me. Callg me “idtic” and “patently absurd”, Aravosis wrote, “The gay haters at the relig right uldn’t have wrten any better. ”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.

LIFE IS TOTALLY GAY

Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays.

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.

Instead, she suggts hg on the fact that far more people are now personally acquated wh someone who is gay. In 1985, only 24% of Amerin rponnts said they had a gay iend, relative or -worker —  2013, that number was at 75%. “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.

HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)

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. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

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.

— but bee they’re qutn of what leads to homosexualy the first place, however, is obscure, even to the experts.