Do homosexuals choose to be that way or are born that way?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by xylus, Sep 7, 2005.

  1. xylus chocolate Registered Senior Member

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    This came up in one of my classes. Are homosexuals born homosexual? Do they choose? Does their environment choose for them?
     
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  3. Mystech Adult Supervision Required Registered Senior Member

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    We've discussed this point many times on these forums, but before I launch into anything on the topic, maybe you could spice up this thread by adding in a bit of info about what sort of class this was, and what some of the points discussed in your class were - I think that'd be kind of interesting.
     
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  5. Crucifixor Light must endure burning. Registered Senior Member

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    I believe its the acceptance or guile that such a choice would cause upon the individual. It is in a sense; sexual deviancy, as it is dysfunctional and serves no purpose other than relief of desires. It is a different response to a need, learned behaviour to deal with an instinct.
     
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  7. Mystech Adult Supervision Required Registered Senior Member

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    Crucifixor, your sentence structure is completely impenetrable. Would you care to rephrase your post in some comprehensible manner?
     
  8. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for the reality check Mystech. I thought I might have had too much burgundy. The one point I did get was that 'it is dysfunctional', while at the same time 'it serves no purpose other than......'. That's quite a trick if you can pull off that duality.
     
  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    People consciously choose to be a doctor instead of a computer programmer or some other occupation. It is obvious that nobody makes a conscious decision to be homosexual, but that does not make it some form of behavior built-in at birth. There are a lot of behaviors which are neither chosen consciously nor built-in at birth.

    Before I get accused of being anti-gay, let me go on record as not considering gay behavior to be unethical or immoral, although it has been and still is illegal in various cultures. I would be against any law making homosexual behavior illegal, and had many gay friends 50 years ago when there was a fierce stigma attached to being gay or tolerating gay people.

    I do not think that gay people or gay behavior has any detrimental effect, provided that the gay person is not some NFL lineman who believes in rape. I had a gay housekeeper who cooked, did laundry, et cetera when my children (a boy and a girl) were about 5-8 years old. He played the piano, taught them some songs, and told them stories. The kids adored him and I never worried about him making them gay, although my wife objected at first, accepting him only because we could not find anybody else.

    A man who is exclusively homosexual due to his genetic heritage will not pass those genes on to the next generation. Genes causing exclusively homosexual behavior would have been eliminated from the gene pool thousands of years ago. Exception: Sex-linked recessive genes (like those for hemophilia) might survive. In this case, genetically induced homosexuality should be no more prevalent than hemophilia, which is much rarer than homosexuality.

    Note that the above applies to neither switch hitting behavior nor females. Genes causing bisexual behavior would be likely to stay in the gene pool. Genes causing females to be lesbian could stay in the gene pool due to rape.

    There is no good reason to believe that modern humans differ in any significant manner at the genetic level from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. However, similar genotypes would be expected to result in vastly different behavior due to the modern environment and effects of education, cultural heritage, et cetera. Thus, genes not causing homosexual behavior among our hunter-gatherer ancestors might cause it in modern man, but I would still not consider it normal behavior. I think that the above also applies to other sexual behavior considered to be abnormal or not normal.

    I believe that many behaviors considered to be different from normal (what ever that means) might be caused by the interaction of genes with our modern culture and environment.

    BTW: Note that there are many behaviors which cause problems in modern times, but which might be benign or even favorable in a hunter gatherer environment. Attention deficit disorder seems to be a good example. 20,000 years ago it might have been useful to have an ATD individual or two on a hunt. He might be the one to notice a dangerous snake because he could not focus on conversations taking place when there was no compelling hunting activity. An ATD individual confined in a classroom has serious problems coping and is likely to be disruptive, while the same individual might have no similar problems in the culture of 20,000 years ago.

    The homosexual mind set differs from other unnatural behaviors in various ways.
    • It is not harmful to others like pedophilia or a rape mentality.

    • Unlike various neurotic behaviors (like obsessive compulsiveness and manic depression), it is the attitude of others which causes problems for gay people, not the behavior itself. I suspect that gay people would not be so active in claiming that their behavior is natural or genetically induced if our culture did not cause them so much physical and emotional pain.
     
  10. FreedomCry75 Registered Member

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    People have incarnated as both male and female, a number of times. We decide what we are going to come into this life as, and what challenges we will face. Some people are born feeling like they are in the wrong body...not remembering of course, that they choose this path. I think others just want to experiment, and find that they prefer this over that.
     
  11. CharonZ Registered Senior Member

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    Depends, only if they are dominant. Recessives would survive even if they are not sex-linked. In addition, there is some evidence at least that allels possibly involved in establishing homosexuality might cause higher fecundity in females. This can then lead to an selective advantage and thus higher occurence of this allel:

    "Proc Biol Sci. 2004 Nov 7;271(1554):2217-21. Related Articles, Links
    Click here to read
    Evidence for maternally inherited factors favouring male homosexuality and promoting female fecundity.

    Camperio-Ciani A, Corna F, Capiluppi C.

    Department of General Psychology, Universita di Padova, via Venezia 8, 35100 Padua, Italy. andrea.camperio@unipd.it

    The Darwinian paradox of male homosexuality in humans is examined, i.e. if male homosexuality has a genetic component and homosexuals reproduce less than heterosexuals, then why is this trait maintained in the population? In a sample of 98 homosexual and 100 heterosexual men and their relatives (a total of over 4600 individuals), we found that female maternal relatives of homosexuals have higher fecundity than female maternal relatives of heterosexuals and that this difference is not found in female paternal relatives. The study confirms previous reports, in particular that homosexuals have more maternal than paternal male homosexual relatives, that homosexual males are more often later-born than first-born and that they have more older brothers than older sisters. We discuss the findings and their implications for current research on male homosexuality."

    In addition to genetic factors, of course others like sexual imprinting are likely to play an important role for homosexuality. But clearly this is clearly not a real choice. Conversely, the same is true for heterosexuality.
     
  12. duendy Registered Senior Member

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    First, a very important point: 'homosexuaity' and 'heterosexuality' are invented abstractions created by men in the middle of last century to totally 'other' a category of people they label, 'homosexual' from their 'norm', 'heterosexuals'!....when one realizes this the question of this thread bcomes beside thepoint....(-)
     
  13. xylus chocolate Registered Senior Member

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    Sorry Mystech haven't checked this in a while...
    This was brought up in my history class actually. My teacher likes giving us controversial questions and watching how the debates go. The majority of the people said they choose to be that way, although a lot of them just follow the crowd.... I actually said they didn't choose, but became homosexual according to their environment and the way their minds interpret things. In a way, that is being born homosexual. You could be born with the mindset to become attracted to the same sex.
    And duendy, the term might not be perfect, but it is widely used and slowly becoming less of a bad thing. If you have another name for homosexuals though, I will be glad to use it...
     
  14. madoc Registered Member

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    Bryan Sykes, Professor of Genetics, Institute of Molecular Medcine at Oxford University.. has an interesting take on it.

    Could a mothers mDNA actually have a anything to gain by having a gay son? For some time I couldn't see what it possible could possible be. Then, much later, I realized an answer lay in the beehive in the museum just beyond the grass where I saw the mother and her son. Could a gay son possibly be doing for his mother what the sterile workers in the hive were doing for the queen bee? Could a gay son be helping his mother to bring up his own sisters? That would directly benefit the mother's mDNA. Any such small advantage would be very usefull indeed and mDNAs with that ability would do very well, irrespective of the fact that had made all their son sterile. That would elevate male homesexuality to a true piece of genetic altruism. It is a stuble plan by the mDNA, not only to get rid of Y-chromosomes but to help itself at the same time.​

    Bryan Skyes, pg 273, Adam's Curse
     
  15. Mystech Adult Supervision Required Registered Senior Member

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    I'm skeptical of most research on this subject, to be honest. How do such explanations explain homosexuality in female? And what about gay males who are first born or don't have sisters? It all seems a bit convoluted to me.

    If you want my opinion all heterosexuals are just in denial or they turn to the opposite sex because they can’t score with a viable member of the same sex. Uum or not.

    More likely everyone has the capacity for both homosexual and heterosexual desires, with some strong preferences this way or that in much the same way that one woman might like hairy guys and another doesn’t care for them, or one guy might be into skinny chicks where another likes ‘em with some meat. Society just indoctrinates us and puts blinders on us and tells us fiercely that there’s only one right way, and makes us afraid to really be at ease with ourselves, and even gays fall into the trap of feeling like they have to choose a side because that’s simply the way the issue is laid out before them, and they know that they certainly aren’t on the straight and narrow side.
     
  16. Crucifixor Light must endure burning. Registered Senior Member

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    Gender biased sexual activities serve only to pleasure the mind and body. This behaviour may be dysfunctional in recognition of the justifications of intimacy. ie. we have sex to make babies.

    Though this behaviour is not necessarily incohesive or maladaptive. It works for them, so there is no debate. They are no different than us because of a sexual activity, just means they may as well be shooting blanks.
     
  17. Mystech Adult Supervision Required Registered Senior Member

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    your second paragraph was at least understandable, but your first still sounds as if it were written by the writing algorithem that produced http://www.timecube.com
     
  18. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Evolution has made the sex drive very compelling. While I consider myself to have no gay tendencies, I have no doubt that in the dark a man could turn me on and I would enjoy it. Without the bias against gay behvior, I probably would have experimented in my youth and perhaps become gay or bisexual. Recognizing this, it does not take much to imagine that some small difference in my early environment, interaction with parents, a minor difference in my biochemisty, et cetera could have made me gay, but this does not suggest that there is some gene or group of genes which causes homosexuality.

    There is probably a tendency toward gay behavior in most males. In a culture without a bias against such behavior, bisexual behavoir with a significant homesexual component can become quite common. The ancients Greeks are an example of such a culture.

    The upper class ancient Greeks even had an explanation for heterosexual behavior which was interesting and suggestive of a bias against what we call normal. While I do not think it was a wide spread belief, there were those who claimed that a male had two souls and a female had none. Females were attracted to men in order to obtain a soul, while males had a desire to share one of theirs.

    I suspect that bisexual behavior is a deviant byproduct of the evolutionarily necessary sex drive. Exclusively homosexual behavior seems to be counter-indicated by evolution, and in some sense abnormal or pathological. The same might be said of other types of sexual behavior deemed unnatural or deviant by our culture. Unlike consensual homosexuality, many types of sexual behavior should be considered anti-social and in some cases evil. Pedophilia is evil. while necrophia merely seems anti-social and weird.

    Similar to another who posted here, I am a bit suspicious of studies showing some genetic basis for gay behavior. There is a publish or perish syndrome in the academic community as well as people who want to prove that gay behavoir is forced on people by conditions over which they have no control.

    I do not know the statistics, but think that about 3-8% of males are gay, and that most are not bisexual. This seems like too high a frequency for genetically induced homosexuality. I do not think a genetic component this strong could survive in the gene pool.

    It is interesting to consider known gentically caused traits that are both prevalent and anti-survivial for the individual as well as for the speciaes. A very well known trait is sickle cell anemia. It has been discovered that the sickle cell gene confers immunity to a lethal form of malaria (at least it is lethal in the absence of modern medical treatment).

    There are cultures in Africa in which almost 100% of the adult population has one sickle cell gene, which is recessive and does not cause the anemia, but which confers immunity to the malaria. 25% of those born of such parents have two sickle cell genes and most of these die young of the anemia. 25% have no sickle cell gene and most of these die young of malaria.

    Evolutionarily detrimental genes seem to require some mechnaicsm such as the sickle/malaria relationship to survive in the gene pool.

    BTW: I do not think that a single gene can be responsible for complex behavior such as homosexuality. It is my understanding that a group of interacting genes is required to induce effects more subtle than eye color.
     
  19. Crucifixor Light must endure burning. Registered Senior Member

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    you're a doosh sack. take english 1013
     
  20. TruthSeeker Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey Valued Senior Member

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    Do homosexuals choose to be that way or are born that way?
    Choose. Most of our lives are determined by the choices we make according to our circumstances.
     
  21. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Do homosexuals choose to be that way or are born that way?
    Possibly born that way, but definitely not chosen. The material conditions of ourselves and society in the pre-natal and post-natal world, respectively, shape us to the extent that many are not quite aware of it.
     
  22. yank God Registered Senior Member

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    a term such as "reincarnation" in the 21st century sounds so obsolete!

    well according to me a person isnt born a "homosexual"
    the society in which he lives shapes his thoughts & actions into him becoming a "homosexual"
     
  23. jayleew Who Cares Valued Senior Member

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