Do people choose to be gay?

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Well, up until 1973, that's precisely what homosexuality was.

And given the number of studies that appear to point to neurophysiological differences between gay men and straight men, there is a strong line of evidence that suggests that homosexuality is better understood as an innate characteristic than either AS or ADHD.

No, I'm definitely sure that being Homosexual is more biological than a choice.

Just think about it, could a heterosexual person "turn gay" and love somebody of the same sex as them in a sexual manner?

I think yes and no.

There are many people who are born gay, that is just who they are.

I have seen stories of girls and guys who were sexually abused turning gay.

I have seen people do gay stuff for attention, or for pay, or because girls didn't like them.

This does happen. But the risk of saying that someone was "turned gay" is that the pro-gay argument pulls a "No True Scotsman" by saying those people aren't really gay...they're bisexual, because they weren't BORN that way but were rather responding to some other influence, in particular here it would be their environment. According to that logic, someone who can "change" their orientation was never gay to begin with, but rather bi-sexual since they do have the ability to make those choices.

WilliamWDelaney would be a good person to weigh in on this. We'd touched on this in a different thread before where I thought it best to stay out of any "ex-gay" arguments. I'm not really interested in picking up where I left off, but I thought it might be good to toss this little tidbit in here for the sake of the present discussion: We discussed a well-known "ex-gay," when WWD pointed out that this person was never gay to begin with but was rather bi-sexual. The reasoning behind his thinking was that the ex-gay in question married his college girlfriend, and they went on to have 9 children. So it's impossible for him to ever have been gay.

My counterpoint to this is the man himself admits to a homosexual predisposition from an early age and kept silent because of how heavily religion factored into his life and because of his fear of how men in his church would have responded. It is also true that gays often hide their orientation because of their confusion about that orientation and the relationships between sexual orientation and other factors such as one's family values and possibly religious convictions. It should come as no surprise that someone who is attracted to the same sex would try to build a facade of straightness by dating the opposite sex and maybe even getting married and having children--and then cave to the unwanted attraction, eventually coming out and leaving old family associations behind. Because of those facts, I find the argument that said ex-gay was never gay to begin with and only bi-sexual to be "No True Scotsman" and thus erroneous.

This is nonsense. You have no insight into the minds of the people you're talking about whatsoever, and no rational basis for stating something like this.

This said, I think that the sexuality of women seems to generally be more fluid than that of men. Oversimplifying, but I think generally these issues aren't "such a big deal" in the female psyche as in the male. I think this leads women who feel independent to play with these things far more than men do in general. I don't think women and men (of whatever sexuality) have quite the same sense of sexuality as the other gender. I think it is is more common and more "natural" in women to be comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation along these lines. I think with men it's more of a hard-wired and intensive drive: "Gotta get that"--whatever, "that" is for that particular man. Don't mean to be offensive, and again, this is just my general impression--not a hard rule.

Pardon my ignorance but would you please explain what "a 'No True Scotsman'" is? I get the kilt allusion, but I've never heard of this identified as some sort of argument strategy along the lines of "red herring", "straw man" etc. What do you mean by that? Thanks.

"Ex-gay"? Really? Here is what "ex-gay" is: beset and terrified self-loathing religious gay people brainwashed to believe that they are horrible and unacceptable for being gay... so they lead a phony life of marrying and having children, etc. while trying to deceive themselves and convince themselves that they are not actually "gay" but simply have an unfortunate "problem" (i.e. same-sex attraction). Their underlying identity has not changed in the slightest--they have simply become self-invalidating to the point that they are trying very hard to live a sham. Somethings they can do this, sometimes not. The point is this has *NOTHING* to do with their internal sexual orientation--it is just a matter of adopting an outward expression that allows them to conform to the "norms" of society, which they have been led to believe is terribly significant for the sake of their immortal soul.

Who cares if it is a choice or not? Choice or not it would still be unethical to deny the right to marry someone of the same sex.

I question if every person who has been sexually molested automatically turns gay.
And how is it determined that they became homosexual because of the molestation? It's very possible that certain victims were already predisposed to being gay, and that being molested was only coincidental.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

OK I've googled the "Scotsman" thing. Makes sense. However I think that in general these dismissive labels are not very useful. If there's something wrong with an argument, just explain why it doesn't make sense rather than saying it's a "red herring", "no true Scotsman", "Gambler's fallacy", "onus probandi", etc, etc. If someone is making a logical error, I don't see how assigning a label to is is going to be particularly convincing to anyone else that there is something wrong with the point they are making--because the label itself may or may not be correctly applied, which raises an entire distracting tangential argument about essentially nothing.

This is a philosophy forum. I vaguely remember a few informal fallacies from an intro to philosophy class I took in college, but I'm not always very good at spotting them. The reason why we call formal and informal fallacies by label is so we don't have to go out of our way writings pages of posts to explain to someone why their argument is wrong. "No True Scotsman" is basically an excuse someone makes when the subject matter hits home and put and end to discussion by saying something isn't what it really is. Someone says, "A Scotsman would never do X." If he's confronted with the fact that a Scotsman did indeed do X, then he says, "Well, a TRUE Scotsman would never..."

If someone makes a fallacious argument, then they are WRONG and will always BE WRONG if they continue in that line of thinking. It's possible, of course, that someone might be right about something, even if the correct conclusion they draw is a non sequitur. All it means is that someone has to reevaluate how they come to their conclusion to make an argument a valid (and thus convincing) one. WWD could be right that the person we discussed is not gay but bisexual. It's just that given what we were discussing at the time (ex-gays) that WWD's description of this person was that he was "not a true homo," especially given what is known about closet gays and the struggles they face.

If you know what informal fallacies are and how to spot them, you don't owe anyone an explanation. I'm notorious for ridiculously long posts. I'd rather just call shens on someone's NTS, strawman, or ad hom rather than get bogged down taking apart someone's argument when the argument itself doesn't deserve the time and effort. If I'm right about something, everyone (including an opponent) knows I'm right, and he starts calling me ugly names, all I have to do is point out that the argument has lost all rationality and I no longer have reason to take him seriously. You can save yourself a lot of butthurt by staying out of foolish argumentation. Never try to reason with the unreasonable. Picking up on fallacies will go a long way towards spotting an unreasonable argument that isn't worth getting into.

AngelRho, I'm keeping this short, not to be flippant, but simply because I have to move onto something else presently, and need to wrap my activity here up for now. I'm just addressing the things that stand out to me. Don't take my comments personally (here or before). I don't so much tend to talk "to" people as about my analysis of things. Anyway, in general, no hard feelings intended, and none taken.

Technically it's a politics, philosophy and religion forum. People come to these areas from different backgrounds, and different disciplines, academic or not.

Thanks for the explanation of the Scotsman.

I had limited my comments to the argument labeling issue particularly because the "true gay" discussion could go on forever. I have a lot of ideas about this. Maybe I'll have the opportunity to get into them more in the future...



My thing is this: Things are not always as neat or cut and dry as they seem. A grammatical problem or technically inaptly worded construction, etc of course can render an argument technically "wrong" quite easily, but this may ignore the larger point that the person is endeavoring to make, which might be based on greater truth right beneath the surface. I encounter this kind of thing endlessly. I have the exhausting problem of finding everything to be vastly complex and nuanced. And it bugs me tremendously when any nuance is neglected--which is something everyone does--and some people it seems to bother not in the slightest. (This is not a criticism of you, or something you did, but an explanation of my general way of processing things.)

Because of this general trend, I, personally, find the argument-labelling thing to be problematic in that it further encourages simplification and ignoring of details that might have been important. I guess I'm trying to say I'm not interested in the argument itself so much as understanding the truth underlying the words. My 2 cents.

I'll add my strange view on this;

Think about it this way, tomorrow some kind of aliens land on earth who happen to be friendly, intelligent and aesthetically pleasing, plus "physically compatible" in terms of female, male differences.

How do you think people will react? I don't see any reason why anyone couldn't fall in love for one of these aliens, but also see the same "opinions from groups of people" coming similar to those against "homosexuals". Religious groups will pretend to not be into this at all, politicians will build careers for decades on fighting for rights, many haters will end up being "the worst lovers" and many "freeminded" people will show for many years that this supposedly impossible love is completely genuine for them.

So, I do think being gay is a choice in the sense that "love" is a concept that changes with time and culture, while physical attraction can easily be manipulated by the mind.

I mean that someone growing up in a world that taboos or despises a certain way of living may override his/her(not going to do this every time) most inner needs towards this way of living and there for not be able to truly be who he wants to be. Someone can only choose if there's a real option. Not "falling in love" and being a "career bachelor" is already an accepted lifestyle. Why is there no "bachelorsexual" status, and people hating against them because they "don't have wives and children like god commands". I think it's because once people have done something oneway for 50 years and believed in it, and then got told they could do it the other way too, they'd get reaaallly pissed off and stubborn about doing it the same as they did for the last 50 years for the 10 more years they are alive.

People who -hate- on "othersexuals" are 90% of the time people who feel cheated out of doing it themselves.

I am not 100% certain on this.

Perhaps people choose individual people they're attracted to, but totally indifferent as to what gender they are.

I'm not offended at all, and to a point I feel your pain. However, the strongest points tend to be the ones that are the most parsimonious. I'm guilty of overcomplicating things and burying my main points in irrelevance. I'm a stream-of-consciousness writer, though, and I probably spend more time REDUCING my word count than I do just writing down every thought that jumps into my head.

But that is no excuse for being unclear. I understand that some people have a propensity for nuance that I lack, and I'm ok with that. But all the nuance in the world isn't going to reveal some esoteric truth if the reasoning is erroneous. Like I said, you might get lucky and be right about something. But if you take a path that doesn't lead to that conclusion, you get a non sequitur and no guarantee that you'll come to the right conclusions in the future. I am convinced about certain spiritual truths, for example. But I know better than to arrive at these truths through empiricism.

If you want to be clearly understood and have everyone get your point, use good ol' Occam's razor to trim the fat and you generally have a solid argument. It's no good communicating a comparatively simple point if you bury it in vagueness.