JohnDB
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- Jun 16, 2021
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Debate Now Post in thread 'Can You Choose To Be Gay?'
A recent study in the journal Science claimed to “reveal insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior.” Following the study’s release, an above-the-fold, front-page headline in The New York Times declared, “Many genes influence same-sex sexuality, not a single ‘gay gene.’ ”
This is not entirely news. A 1991 study examined the likelihood of both twins being gay. The chance of two identical twins being gay was 52%; the frequency of fraternal twins being gay was only 22%. If homosexuality resulted from genetic transmission, one might expect 100% gay identical twins. Yet, 52% for identical twins compared with 22% for fraternal twins suggests genetics play some role, although not entirely, in the development of sexual orientation.
This new study notwithstanding, today, the relative contributions of nature and nurture remain unknown.
Heterosexuality as Default
Although theorizing origins of both same-sex relations and other-sex relations are found in Plato’s Symposium, the terms “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” were first coined in 1869—in fact, by a journalist—a time when scientific speculation about same-sex feelings, behaviors, and attractions flourished. Then and now, heterosexuality’s origins were taken for granted, requiring no need for further study.
Sigmund Freud was an exception. Despite his own theorizing about “inversion’s” etiology, a 1914 footnote to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality noted that “from the point of view of psycho-analysis, the exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based upon an attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature.”
Freud’s caveat notwithstanding, researchers often, and implicitly, treat heterosexuality—needed to propagate the species—as a default position requiring no explanation. Consequently, headlines trumpeting genetic “causes” of heterosexuality are unlikely as no one is looking for them.
Patients Ask “Why Am I Gay?”
In clinical practice, gay patients sometimes ask therapists “why” they are gay.
What motivates the question? When one has a stigmatized identity—and gay identities are still stigmatized today—perhaps a therapist can provide an etiological narrative that makes sense to the patient. However, depending on the therapist’s training, beliefs, and biases, patients might conceptualize their homosexuality as good (“normal,” “born gay”), bad (“mental disorder,” “unforgivable sin”), or childish and immature (“infantile sexuality,” “developmental arrest”).
Occasionally, although less commonly than in the past, gay patients encounter therapists who introduce the issue of why the patient is gay. Of course, it would be highly unusual for a therapist to raise similar questions with straight patients. Heterosexual patients rarely ask therapists why they are straight, and one would be hard pressed to find many heterosexual patients willing to spend time and money on such a “treatment.”
You get a choice until a point it's no longer a choice but an imperative.
Much like heroine addiction.....
It's purely recreational until it isn't....you then are doing heroine to stay well....
And like a heroine addiction, homosexuality ALWAYS comes with a shortened lifespan.
For men it's the STDs and multiple partners.
For women it's the physical assaults and abandonment.
RNA ultimately triggers DNA....thats how it works.
