Choice in Homosexuality

[wolveraptor]

I just came up with this problem after reading a debate between pro- and anti-gay posters. If a man wilfully commits himself to a brainwashing institution that inculcates him to connote homosexuality with shame, until he finally looses his sexual urge, did he just choose not to be gay? Does this mean that it's a choice?

[nickolay1]

Can such a complete loss actually happen, however?

[Pick]

Begs the question of whether your "If" is possible.

[Davis 51]

Can such a complete loss actually happen, however?

I doubt it. Even the guy who runs Love in Action (an ex-gay group) said once that he feels something special when he looks at another man. He failed to realize that this is the gay part of him.

[Darth Wong]

In "A Clockwork Orange", a young man was conditioned to be repulsed by sex and violence. Does this mean that sexual and violent instincts are both choices? Why do animals have them then?

Of course, one could retort that it's only a movie, but then again, there's been no real evidence that gay men subjected to this brainwashing actually lose their urges either. They say they do, but they're desperate for approval from the brainwashers by that time.

[Vympel]

Does it matter if it's a "choice" in the first place?

[Darth Wong]

Sure it does, because anything which is a choice is a perfectly legitimate reason for discrimination and persecution. Like religion. Oops!

[Covenant]

Social discrimination and threat of violence can force even reasonable people to choose less-than-reasonable ways to gain social acceptance or live without fear of violence. If a man willingly chose to undergo invasive mind-altering techniques in order to repress an urge which does no harm and it's only expression is affection, a better question is, what could have driven him to this? If it is a choice, he could simply choose not to, and avoid persecution as easily as I choose not to do any of the myriad things I could do. This has clearly not been the case.

Has anyone seen the movie Grizzley Man? There were several sections where he talked, at length, about how much he loved women, and how it would be much easier for him to be gay, and he laments that he's not. Anyone can see, however, that he certainly carries himself in an odd way (constantly adjusting his hair, speaking with a very pronounced lisp) and is under a great deal of emotional tension, as the candid moments of the movie detail. Is he gay? We won't ever know for sure, but he seemed torn over it, to the point that it became something he would talk at great length to the camera about during his months alone.

It's not difficult to indoctrinate people to respond to specific things in specific ways. Look at the Evangelists who go up on stage and are struck down in droves by the 'power of christ' operating through a sweaty minister swinging his coat at people. They'll claim to have felt the hand of some higher power, but is this true, or just an effect of being open to suggestion out of the desire to have their faith reaffirmed?

However, there's more to this than just that. We shouldn't take the religious folk at their word, since their interpertations have been notoriously flawed and subject to wild changes in meaning. Let's step back from that and see the actual Biblical issue, since without that this wouldn't even get brought up, let alone shape public policy. Understanding what is being said is the best way to explaining, let alone debating, someone who may have read their scripture but never really understood it.

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives.

Pretty clear-cut, right? Not precisely.

If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.

Hm... since when was that punishable by death? I'd like to see how many people would be willing to vote for loss of marriage rights for adultery.

If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; since they have committed an abhorrent deed, they have forfeited their lives.

An abhorrent deed? I'd certainly call it gross, but this is up there with abominable, and uses the same language--having forfeited their lives. And the best example of that is this:

Anyone who curses his father or mother shall be put to death; since he has cursed his father or mother, he has forfeited his life

Same language, and the same punishment. Cursing your father or mother is punishable by death due to the forfeiture of your life, same as lying with a man. Leviticus is, afterall, a sort of protocol book. This one is full of No-Nos but the idea of it as an 'unclean' thing is all over.

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron,
"Speak to the Israelites and tell them: Every man who is afflicted with a chronic flow from his private parts is thereby unclean.
Such is his uncleanness from this flow that it makes no difference whether the flow drains off or is blocked up; his uncleanness remains.
Any bed on which the man afflicted with the flow lies, is unclean, and any piece of furniture on which he sits, is unclean.
Anyone who touches his bed shall wash his garments, bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.
Whoever sits on a piece of furniture on which the afflicted man was sitting, shall wash his garments, bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.
...etc

This goes on for eight more lines. You even need to smash the pots he touches, all because the guy's got a little VD. It's not that these are truely offensive to a diety, but that people didn't understand why people got sick. Sex between men before the age of disease theory, sanitation and condoms was probably fairly lethal for a number of horrific reasons. Hell, according to 15:18, having sex with a non-mensturating woman requires a bath afterwards and you're still unclean until night.

Pork is another unclean thing--not only because it eats garbage, but it's also well known that improperly slaughtered, cooked or stored pork carries a risk of trichinosis, and before people knew how to combat the parasite it was probably unbelievably rampant. The idea of food being unclean and needing special circumstances to prepare it (lest God smite you with some horrible gastrointestinal problems) is also evident in the blessed foods of various cultures--Halal and Kosher foods come to mind here. So Leviticus deals primarily with what you can eat and when and what you need to do to keep it clean, how to manage people with diseases and body issues, and who and what it is or is not okay to have sex with.

It's a health book, so it makes perfect sense that Biblical accounts would want you to have just the missionary position, and just with one woman, and when she's not menstruating. That would indeed be the safest way to have unprotected sex. But where nowadays nobody kills adulterers, pork-eaters or adventurous sexual partners, they still look at homosexuality with scorn, and hypocritically so. Otherwise, tell them to attack adultery first--that probably does more damage to the 'insitution of marriage' than gay people anyway.

So even as an issue of faith this is really irrelevant, given the context. As a matter of public policy it is irrational. Like Witches, Heretics and American Communist Conspiracies, you'll keep finding people who say they've seen the light and turned from their dark ways so long as there are still people out there looking to find them and persecute them. We're making progress at least. I'm not sure what the scapegoat will be after gay people are accepted. Maybe they'll go back to hating the Irish! Hehe.



Note, the image is real, but these weren't exactly common. I like bringing it up--along with the burning of German effigies in WWI, to remind people that just about everyone was discriminated against, openly, at one time, and that these were always wrong. For further information on that topic though, I've provided a link talking about how there was little systematic job refusal of Irish labor.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

[Plekhanov]

I just came up with this problem after reading a debate between pro- and anti-gay posters. If a man wilfully commits himself to a brainwashing institution that inculcates him to connote homosexuality with shame, until he finally looses his sexual urge,

I’d question if that’s even possible and demand that anybody who say’s it is provide proof from a reputable source (ie a legitimate scientific journal not from one of these anti gay groups). People can and do of course repress there sexual urges for all manner of reasons, not sure that you can totally loose the sexual urge.

did he just choose not to be gay? Does this mean that it's a choice?

No, the ‘choice’ he made is to go to extraordinary lengths to try to repress his natural sexual desires. The guy will still be gay he’ll just have chosen to be a fucked up gay guy, filled with shame desperately trying to deny a significant part of who he is.

[Zero]

Some men can take a vow of celebacy and forsake all women. This doesn't mean they don't have sexual urges and drives, just that they work actively to ignore them. If someone has to go to such extraordinary lengths to supress the urge, then it's a biological function, not a choice.

Just counter it with the fact that some chicks choose to be anorexic, but eating food isn't really a choice so much as a biological imperative.

[Plekhanov]

Some men can take a vow of celebacy and forsake all women. This doesn't mean they don't have sexual urges and drives, just that they work actively to ignore them. If someone has to go to such extraordinary lengths to supress the urge, then it's a biological function, not a choice.

Just counter it with the fact that some chicks choose to be anorexic, but eating food isn't really a choice so much as a biological imperative.

People don't choose to be anorexic, they choose to try and diet, anorexia nervosa is a disease which kills people.

[Zero]

Some men can take a vow of celebacy and forsake all women. This doesn't mean they don't have sexual urges and drives, just that they work actively to ignore them. If someone has to go to such extraordinary lengths to supress the urge, then it's a biological function, not a choice.

Just counter it with the fact that some chicks choose to be anorexic, but eating food isn't really a choice so much as a biological imperative.

People don't choose to be anorexic, they choose to try and diet, anorexia nervosa is a disease which kills people.

Dieting probably would have been the more proper choice, but I was looking for a good analogy to quitting on one biological imperative altogether like homosexual men are supposed to according to people who think they can be reformed.

In retrospect, it was stupid because anorexia nervosa is linked to way too many factors to be considered a conscious choice on the part of those affected. My bad.

[Plekhanov]

Some men can take a vow of celebacy and forsake all women. This doesn't mean they don't have sexual urges and drives, just that they work actively to ignore them. If someone has to go to such extraordinary lengths to supress the urge, then it's a biological function, not a choice.

Just counter it with the fact that some chicks choose to be anorexic, but eating food isn't really a choice so much as a biological imperative.

People don't choose to be anorexic, they choose to try and diet, anorexia nervosa is a disease which kills people.

Dieting probably would have been the more proper choice, but I was looking for a good analogy to quitting on one biological imperative altogether like homosexual men are supposed to according to people who think they can be reformed.

In retrospect, it was stupid because anorexia nervosa is linked to way too many factors to be considered a conscious choice on the part of those affected. My bad.

I could see what you were trying to do, another analogy might be of fruitarians trying to suppress their natural drive to eat a balanced diet for ‘moral’ reasons as ill-conceived as homophobic morality. They’ve obviously chosen to only eat fruit but they’re still omnivores whether they like it or not.

[Darth Wong]

I just want to say that Covenant's posts in the SLAM forum are consistently impressive for their level of effort and research. That is all.

[CaptJodan]

I just came up with this problem after reading a debate between pro- and anti-gay posters. If a man wilfully commits himself to a brainwashing institution that inculcates him to connote homosexuality with shame, until he finally looses his sexual urge, did he just choose not to be gay? Does this mean that it's a choice?

I've never been down the road of choosing to participate in a brainwashing institution, but in my youth I was very much strongly opposed to being gay. I was as pro-active as one could be alone, trying to change myself through negative reinforcement and even punishment. I prayed more than once a day for it to change (yes well, back then I wasn't a fundie, but I did expect to burn in hell because of it). I made a conscious choice not to be gay. It wasn't going to happen.

It didn't work.

Honestly I've never understood people who believe it is a choice. You'd think that everyone, when they reach puberty, suddenly one day has to wake up one morning and say "Ok, today's the day I have to choose whether to be gay or not. Let's see...be a godly Christian who's accepted by mainstream society on one hand, or a persecuted, oppressed and hated group who is considered unclean, dirty, vile, disease-filled monsters by a majority of society on the other. Gee, this is a tough call." I always like to respond to such fundies by asking them if, when they reached puberty, they had to choose not to be gay. If there was a moment in their life where it really tempted them.

Can't speak for the rest of the gay community around here, most are far more comfortable with it than I ever was or probably will be. I think it stems from a childhood desire to be "normal" and "accepted" which was a problem for me in my youth.

But no, I certainly don't believe it's a choice.

[Covenant]

I just want to say that Covenant's posts in the SLAM forum are consistently impressive for their level of effort and research. That is all.

I've decided to steer away from the shaky pseudo-science posts and stick to things I can actually look up and have a measure of confidence in. ;p I can think whatever I want, but I might as well only offer information when it's something useful!