Sexual Orientation is not a Choice

[Tambora]

We all have desires and preferences. But not all our desires and preferences are good or righteous and some of them will be the exact opposite of good.
The issue is not about those preferences. It is about self-discipline. The assumption in the question is that if our desires are innate or at least not conscoiusly chosen, then they must be ok. This is the false assumption of modern day perverts who want to foist their perversion onto normal people.

What he said.

 

[PureX]

The surrender... was your choice, wasn't it?

Surrender is never really anyone's "choice". It's simply what you do when you've exhausted all other options.

As for lacking any other choice - you said yourself other people die rather than stop. So that was the other choice.

They are not choosing to die. They don't want to die. But for some reason, surrender doesn't work for them. You don't seem to understand that we are not always in control of these things. Even when we think we are in control, and we think we are choosing of our own free will, we often are not. Our choices are only as real as our possibilities are.

Still - this has little bearing on my initial claim.
Your taste in mates is no different than your taste in food, music, or books. It is shaped by your choices.

It has very little to do with "taste".

You must be very young.

 

[musterion]

This may be a first: almost everyone on the thread realizes the cow is just a very poor and slow-witted troll. Actually warms my cynic's heart just a bit. Or maybe it's the spleen. Whichever.

 

[Arthur Brain]

I think my attraction to my wife was preceded by my "taste in women" (ie, hair color), which in turn was preceded by my preference for women.

It seems like partner preference might be a sort of successive narrowing down of potential mates.


Do you think a man who says something like "I'm only into blondes" could never even be capable of becoming attracted to a brunette? Do you think he was born that way, or was his taste in partners somehow formed over time?

When did you "choose" to prefer women over men? What date and year? When did you "choose" to find your future wife attractive and deem her suitable to be a lifelong partner? Are you capable of choosing to see how ridiculous this entire thread actually is?

 

[Nick M]

Sexual orientation can't be chosen, because sexual orientation does not exist. The concept wasn't even invented until relatively recently.

No kidding. You are either male or female. Despite what google thinks.

 

[MarcATL]

I disagree. And I'll give an example as a way of explaining myself.

I am a recovered alcoholic. And I was born with a genetic predisposition to become addicted to alcohol. I know this from personal experience, and from having discussed the subject many times with many other people, both alcoholic and not-alcoholic. My genetic predisposition manifests in the way my brain processes and 'experiences' alcohol. My brain experiences the effect of alcohol in my system as a kind of euphoria. I feel an intense sense of freedom, and creativity, and joy when I drink, and it begins with just one drink. And that sensation is so strong that it makes being sober pale in comparison. The first time I drank alcohol I got drunk because one drink made me feel really good, and my mind immediately presumed that a second drink would make me feel that much better. And it did. So I immediately fell in love with the idea and the feeing of being drunk. And from then on I wanted to do it again. And again and again.

Most other people's brains do not react to alcohol the way mine does, or does not react to it nearly as intensely as mine does. In fact, I have known several women over the years who couldn't get drunk at all, no matter how much alcohol they drink. For some reason, their brains simply did not process alcohol in the way most of the rest of our brains do.

You would say I had a choice whether or not to become an alcoholic. But I don't believe I had a choice. At the time I first began to drink, I was too young to understand or care about the consequences of what I was feeling and what I was doing in response to it. And by the time I was old enough to get some sense of the danger I was in, it was too late. I was already fully addicted. By the time I tried to stop drinking I couldn't stop, even for 24 hours.

We humans are not nearly as "in charge" of our thoughts and our feelings and our actions as we tent to imagine ourselves to be because much of who we are has been pre-programmed into us by our genetic histories, through the physical structures of our brains, and by our circumstantial histories and the concepts of reality that we have come to hold as a result of our experiences.

Some people engage in homosexual behavior because they want to, and they chose to. But many do so because they are inclined by their physical natures to do so. And they really don't have much, or sometimes even any, choice in it.

It was extremely difficult for me to stop drinking alcohol, and I have to avoid it completely, now, if I want to stay sober, healthy and alive. I cannot choose to have a drink or two and then stop like most other people can. One drink could very easily send me into an alcoholic binge that would last the rest of my life.

Until you have experience such a loss of self-control, it's difficult to appreciate how it can occur. But I assure you that it can and does occur, and it effects a great many different human behaviors, including sexual behavior.

Human nature is far more complex and powerful that I think you realize.

Glad to hear about your victory brother. Great testimony and analogy.

 

[Arthur Brain]

No kidding. You are either male or female. Despite what google thinks.

Or hermaphrodite but hey, you never were really comfortable with anything inside actual reality...

 

[Tinark]

No kidding. You are either male or female. Despite what google thinks.

No one changes their biological sex/DNA. They can obviously transition their gender in society.

 

[TracerBullet]

We all have desires and preferences. But not all our desires and preferences are good or righteous and some of them will be the exact opposite of good.
The issue is not about those preferences. It is about self-discipline. The assumption in the question is that if our desires are innate or at least not conscoiusly chosen, then they must be ok. This is the false assumption of modern day perverts who want to foist their perversion onto normal people.

Good and righteous people don't refer to minorities as 'perverts'

 

[TracerBullet]

If there's no such thing as heterosexuality then there can be no such thing as homosexuality.

In that case, since heterosexuality has been and still is the overwhelming 99-to-1 norm throughout human history, homosexuality is an aberration.

just like blue eyes or left handedness

 

[TracerBullet]

Every thing a person does is based on his/her choice.
Orientation is just a condition and result of choice.

so you could choose to be gay, be happy with that, fall in love with a nice man, get married, adopt a child, grow old together?

 

[Interplanner]

It is far more likely that someone else wanted them to be homosexual and was persuasive. It creates a sort of validation that the persuader needs.

No one should use the term gay for this. It is part of the snowjob, or subversion of it. To attempt to avoid (or just void) God's declarations.

 

[Nick M]

Or hermaphrodite but hey, you never were really comfortable with anything inside actual reality...

A defect doesn't change male or female. They are still one or the other whether by choice or born that way.


Matthew 19:12

12 For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”

You are of your father the devil. Did you have a point to your post?

 

[Nick M]

No one changes their biological sex/DNA. They can obviously transition their gender in society.

Nope. Altering physical appearance doesn't change who you are. And behavior is not a part of the discussion regarding faggots.

 

[Tinark]

Nope. Altering physical appearance doesn't change who you are.

Neither does not altering physical appearance.

And behavior is not a part of the discussion regarding faggots.

How in the world can you not talk about who someone is without also talking about their behavior, thought processes, and feelings?

You essentially just want to stick your fingers in your ears and go *la la la la la*

 

[glassjester]

Orientation and preferences are a scale. It's not a simple yes/no.

There are various degrees/strengths of attraction. Such a friend may feel a stronger attraction to blondes but likely will still feel aroused by the thought of sex with brunette (just not as strongly), and may feel no arousal at the thought of sex involving another man.

The preference can certainly change over time - such a friend will almost certainly feel some attraction to a good looking brunette (not as strongly as blondes), may form a relationship with a brunette, and, as a result, their attraction to brunettes can strengthen.

This does not mean however that any and all change in preference is possible. Whatever the particular features of women he may find attractive, he will not be able to change his preferences to where he no longer finds any women attractive and only finds men attractive.

I agree that, as you said, our attractions are strengthened. How does this happen?

How is it that some attractions may be strengthened and some may not? Is it random?

If attractions can be strengthened, can they be weakened?

 

[glassjester]

This may be a first: almost everyone on the thread realizes the cow is just a very poor and slow-witted troll.

You ought to think about why you want to say something, before you say it.

 

[glassjester]

Even when we think we are in control, and we think we are choosing of our own free will, we often are not.

How do you know whether an action was freely chosen or not?

 

[PureX]

How do you know whether an action was freely chosen or not?

"Freely chosen" is a relative condition. Freedom is not absolute. For example, I am not free to levitate from my chair right now even though I might choose to do so. In fact, at any given time I am not free to do a great many things I might otherwise choose to do.

So our freedom of choice is limited by the actual possibilities that are available to us. And if that's not limiting enough, any possibilities we might have, but are unaware of as being possible, are also not going to be considered an option, even though they may be. So, in fact, this freedom of choice that you are viewing as absolute, is really very limited by, and relative to, the actual possibilities available to us. And of those limited possibilities, who knows why we choose one over the other? Sometimes we choose by reason, sometimes by intuition, sometimes we choose consciously and sometimes we choose sub-consciously. And our choices are governed by many conditions and circumstances that we do not control, and may not even be aware of.

So this idea that we are all choosing, all the time, and are therefor always responsible for our choices is very overly-simplistic, and I think, rather naive.

 

[Interplanner]

The more recent a concept is, the more true. Espcially if it relies heavily on computer models.

Facetiously,
Inter