I was cleaning out a few unread RSS feeds from our local newspaper when I ran across a poll asking this question (with probable answers):
Do you believe homosexuality involves choice or biology?
Normally, I wouldn’t have paid this very much attention; it’s an old and specious argument and, at one point in our history, it was considered to be both a mental illness and a disease – the treatments were rather barbaric, if memory serves me. What got my attention about it was that is was a poll put up by a mother’s group here in my home state and while it makes sense that a mother would be concerned with a child’s sexuality, well, I wondered if there’s a lack of understanding about the nature of this beast?
One could reasonably argue that (c) makes the most sense because it’s my belief its biological… but it’s also a choice and one based on whether or not one would want to go where the biology leads them. As I pondered this thought, I kept in mind that the whole stigma against homosexuality is that it doesn’t lend itself to procreation and since some early branch of religion saw fit to pound this into the heads of their flock, it was deemed anathema, a sin, and just downright nasty. So, knowing this, you had a choice: Go with what your genes were telling you and face dire consequences, go with them and find a closet (or the ancient version of one) to hide in, or do your best to ignore what the biology was telling you. One could also reasonably argue that sexuality is a man-made concept and one stressed, again, because two men doing the nasty isn’t going to produce any children and, way, way, back in the day, we needed people.
The biology of it comes into play in a couple of ways in that our emotions and all that are a product of our biological processes – brain chemistry is the term, I think. I think it goes – and is – a little more primal than that because when it comes to things like love and that thing humans like to do known as the orgasm, your body doesn’t care what’s making it feel good – but your mindset does. We’ve all been conditioned from childhood that the boy/girl thing is the only thing to do… except we also know that it isn’t. But morality is best served by not only seeing homosexuality as part of the human condition, but to vilify it as well because, again, the mindset is that anything that doesn’t lend itself to the continuation of the species is just wrong.
Ask someone what they think of homosexuality and you’d probably get an earful of what’s so wrong with it – the standard moral argument – and that religions say it’s a mortal sin… but I’ve often wondered if they know why it’s laid down like that? And, despite of all the moral and religious implications against being homosexual, um, homosexuals have been around since like forever, haven’t they? Some of history’s most notable personages were and reported to be homosexual. Why do you think they call boning someone in the butt doing it Greek style? Indeed, during the heyday of the Greek and Roman cultures, homosexuality was quite in vogue.
If I remember, it was only somewhere during the last century that homosexuality came off of the list of known mental disorders because someone finally figured out that, nope, it might be a lot of things but it was never an illness of any kind. Granted, given how some homosexuals were seen to behave – men trying to be more feminine that women – and dressing in flamboyant colors and all that, yeah, I could see why people would think homosexuals were insane and needed help. However, if you set the sexual side of it aside for a moment, homosexuality is a form of self-expression in that a homosexual’s life is centered around their thoughts about themselves and their feelings for members of the same sex. When you throw the sex back in, well, sex is sex, and that which gets our cookies off…
I’m sure the authors of that poll had something in mind when they put it out there – I’m just having a bit of a hard time trying to figure out what that is… or if that trip was really necessary. To me, the poll is just stirring up stuff that, perhaps, is best left alone; it is what it’s always been. The angst regarding homosexuality is so deeply rooted in our society that even the definition for bisexuality has been changed to read in a way that takes the emotional content out and leaves only the sexual desire. Indeed, in the many discussions I’ve participated in on this topic, I’ve almost hurt myself laughing to see people hemming and hawing about it and doing that “see no evil” thing to plausibly deny that, um, a component of being bisexual is having homosexual sex.
Maybe if the poll’s numbers say that it’s a choice, maybe people still believe it’s something that needs to be cured, fixed, or something like that. At one point, it was seen in the sense that, if it were really a choice, well, it can be changed; I’ve heard a few horror stories around people trying to deprogram homosexuals and make them heterosexuals again (if they were ever straight to begin with, that is). Some bright folks somewhere suggested that it’s a genetic predisposition and that homosexuals are just born that way. In a way, I think they’re kinda right but just a tad bit off-base with this premise; if anything, we’re genetically predisposed to get our rocks off and if it’s with another girl, all well and good. Given that we’re social animals, well, that some of us would rather be social with someone who’s the same sex as we are makes sense; however, once that whole continuance of the species/procreation thing got going, well, that’s when everything started getting ugly and it’s been that way ever since.
I say it’s both the nature of what we are as well as a choice as to whether or not to act on it; for me, it all goes back to something someone told me a long time ago: You can’t do anything about the way you feel; you can only do something about the way you act on it. In this, if you choose to do what your biology will allow you to do, fine; if you don’t, fine. I’ll leave you with this final thing: Love doesn’t discriminate; only people do that.
Kdaddy23's Blog 
marriagecoach1
26 March 2011 at 15:32
You are of course asking the old nature versus nurture debate. Scientists and psychologists have yet to make a determination. My own personal belief if thatw it is both or a combination. I know of a lot of gay guys who grew up in a household with a domineering mother and a weak or non present dad. On the other hand, I have known gay guys who grew up in normal households and still turned out gay.
What the bible says is that it is an abomination to God both in the Old and Tne New Testament. Now I also knew a gay guy who admitted that he was gay and that he was also a Christian so he would not engage in sexuality becuase it was displeasing to God
other than masturbation for which there is no biblical command not to do. I had to admire the guy. To me, this is the best possible way to handle it for gay guys (and women) but it is also tough to pull off because the sex drive can be so damned strong.
Blessings
John
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kdaddy23
28 March 2011 at 14:28
It’s probably something that needs to be better understood although it’s probably easier to accept that it is what it’s always been: Something humans do. Scientists have seen bi- and homosexual behavior in some primates and, compared with the behavior of other animals, it seems odd… but not so much because those primates, like humans, know it feels good to have an orgasm and aren’t too picky about how they go about getting one.
I also think they tend to discount the emotional element to this division of sexuality and focus too much on the sexual aspects, along with the known problems associated with it but those are kinda universal. It’s true that gay men open themselves up to HIV/AIDS but given that heterosexual folks – and the ones proven to be so – can fall victim to the same thing and in non-sexual situations.
Yep, the Bible says it’s an abomination and, again, it’s my thought that this is because of the whole procreation thing – nothing else makes sense. Homosexuality goes against God’s command to Adam and Eve to “go ye forth and multiply;” clearly if “Seth” and “Joseph” got together and did the deed, well…
The heart knows what the heart wants (or something like that) and, indeed, homosexuality begins with an affinity for the same sex. Overbearing mothers have driven their male children to it and, well, if mom has made him despise women, it’s not like there are a lot of choices when love comes along and taps him on the shoulder. Likewise, power hungry fathers have forced their male children over the line by, crudely speaking, laying the pipe to them instead of a belt or by sissifying them simply because the poor kid ain’t measuring up to his cockeyed standards. So, along with emotional things, there are social things that play into this as well – and you can apply similar reasons to why women become lesbians although I often think they do because men are incapable of supplying them the emotional content they need, along with the usual caveman abuse some men like to apply to women so if a man causes so much disdain in a woman, like the male child who forced into it, she doesn’t have much in the way of options.
And the choices are, indeed, limited: Do what’s considered to be normal, be gay, or do nothing at all – guess what most people are going to do? In these things, that it’s a matter of choice is rather clear (or I always thought); but when you have that kid with a good home life, model parents, etc., and they are gay, well, what happened? It seems that some biological process is at work, like thoughts and emotions. I know gay guys who’ve said that from the beginning they knew they liked men more than women (likewise for the ladies) and in the absence of anything out of order – environment, social pressures, etc., – that homosexuality may be a genetic trait is a possibility but, as I said, I believe that we are hardwired to have sex but it’s the one thing we have yet to understand that makes the difference in which way we’d go with this: How our brains works. We’ve unlocked the human genome; we even know where thoughts are formed in the human brain but we don’t fully understand the process of how they’re formed and all the stuff that happens and combines in our heads to make one guy be heterosexual – but his brother, born out of the same gene pool, is decidedly homosexual without any external pressure to be that way.
It’s said to be unnatural and, since I’ve come to understand it in the way that I do, I tend to disagree because if this is a matter of nature at work, well, it is what it is: Nature at work. Psychologically, it’s said that the only abnormal sex is not to have sex at all because it’s understood in some quarters that we are hardwired for it and procreation, while highly important, doesn’t really figure into this as far as the drive to have sex is concerned. We’re clearly in a state of mass denial about this; it’s not right because we’ve been taught that it isn’t by people who don’t want it to be right because, to them, it serves no purpose and, yeah, they will invoke the Word of God on this one; yet, there have always been homosexuals and unless someone invents something to change this, there will always be homosexuals. As humans, it’s our innate curiosity that drives us to define, qualify, and quantify this; some accept that it is the nature of the beast while others ain’t buying into it and attempt, through coercion of many kinds, to stop people from doing what appears to be a normal function of the human condition and direct the hardwired imperative in the direction they want it go – and that’s unnatural.
If you want to see this at work, all you have to do is think and watch children. Anyone who’s been a parent can tell you how infuriating it is to tell your kids not to do something – and they turn right around and do it despite the threat and reality of the punishment that’ll happen. Any of this sound familiar? We, as a society, are trying to tell people not to do this – so guess what they’re gonna do? It’s disobedience at its best because we want people to either do the boy/girl thing or nothing at all and when you think about this – and the fact that many people will chose the second option never mentioned – it doesn’t make sense; it defies logic. Even folks like you, John, who are dedicated to get men and women to behave better with and for each other rarely ever suggest that second option because, it goes against the supposed conventional thinking.
And because it does, we get polls like the one I discovered.
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John Wilder
28 March 2011 at 14:44
Well that is why I avoid trying to counsel homosexuals or lesbians. It is a waste of time. I have my hands full just trying to get couples screwing each other more and enjoying it more.
Blessings
John Wilder
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kdaddy23
28 March 2011 at 15:39
I wouldn’t say it’s a waste of time because they have relationship issues just like other people do; dealing with them is a little more, ah, complex in that conventional boy/girl thinking isn’t exactly applicable to them… but when you stop and think that even in homosexual relationships, one person assumes the male role while the other assumes the female role. Now, if there’s something interesting about homosexuality, this is the part that fascinates me. Like, I know that Cat Cora is gay and married to a woman and, facetiously, I always wonder which one of them is the “husband” – but that’s Cat – and because I’ve heard her say “my wife” but it’s curious how the male-dominant and female-submissive thing works itself out in a homosexual relationship. We see in “normal” relationships that two dominant personalities don’t work well; likewise, two submissive personalities presents a different set of issues so, ideally, the dominant/submissive combo works and that’s something consistent within the dynamic.
I wouldn’t avoid working with them because my focus would be on the management of their relationship, not their sexuality even though sexual issues could be at the root of their issues in the relationship. But, of course, that’s me…
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John Wilder
28 March 2011 at 16:47
Well I will let gay counselors deal with their specific issues. I don’t feel qualified or motivated.
John Wilder
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