Born Gay?

by Sam87 67 Replies latest jw friends

ackack

Abaddon, love? You have a strangely idealized view of sex. :)
ackack
Abaddon

ackack
I do?
Cool...
I think...
Rabbit
Abaddon
Away from the arena of research, anecdotally we find many homosexuals feel they always were homosexual from when they first had sexual or 'pre-sexual' feelings.
Is it important to you whether homosexuality is choice or not?
I love science, have studied human sexual behaviour, but couldn't give a flying act of copulation whether it is choice or not. I've just had these discussion SO often it's rather easy to trot out the facts.
Homosexual and heterosexual sexual intercourse is, from the ages of consent set by law, sexual activity between two (or more) people who can competently consent to the activity.
Such sexual activity between two or more people does not harm uninvolved parties, whether that sexual activity is homosexual or heterosexual.
Thus even if people were choosing to be gay or straight, it doesn't matter a damn as they do no harm to uninvolved parties by that choice.
Thus, no matter what the conclusion of science is, what's the big deal?
Exactly..."what's the big deal?"
Can anyone somehow 'look' in the mind of another human -- and determine what the 'correct' sexual attraction should be for them ? NO ! You can only project your own beliefs and experiences on others or not.
So how can anyone possibly disagree with a persons intimate, unique and very personal knowledge of their own emotions, likes & dislikes -- in their own brain ?
It's like someone telling me I cannot like apple pie or carrots...when I know I do.
Rabbit
dorayakii

personaly i think we are all born straight and everyone makes their own choice on where they go after that.
Sam87.
Well i know you weren't being critical, but i don't agree that i was "born straight" and then somehow made a conscious (or even unconscious) decision to be gay. It's just something that happens. Just like at a certain age a straight person starts having feelings for the opposite sex, at the age of about 9 i started having feelings for someone of the same sex. (At even the age of 7 in retropect i noticed i had a special... shall we say "affinity" for the same sex - i used to enjoy sniffing boy's hair in the dinner queue )... No one around me was gay, in fact i hadn't even heard of the word. I grew up in a very sheltered JW houosehold, and everybody i knew was a Witness. The subject wouldn't even come up to a 9 year old. Of course i'd heard the word "homosexual" at a meeting or two, but this word meant as much to me as did the other long words: "adultry", "coveteousness", "fornication" and "idolatry". I obviously certainly never applied the word to my innocent neo-pubescent feelings... i didn't feel guilty about it, in fact i didnt even think of it as a big deal, it just felt extremely natural to me, and i never occured to me that anyone else felt any differently... i assumed it was the way all guys felt about their close friend UNTIL...
...at the age of 11 i heard the word "gay" mentionned in the classroom at the end of a sex-education video. it was something along the lines of: "...so this is how babies are made [...] STDs are dangerous, so always use a condom [...] many young people stroke their sexual organs, this is called "masturbation" and is perfectly healthy [...] people who are attracted to the member of the same sex are called 'gay', if you are gay it is perfectly natural and healthy"...
Well when i heard this one-and-one came together in my head on that day and i realised in retrospect, that all my friends had been boasting about girlfriends (up until then i thought i was just a really extra-pure J-dub kid doing all the right things and immune to impure thoughts).. at that point i realised that i shouldhave at least had a slight interest in girls... but it still didnt *click* until my brain had worked it out a little more... then at the age of 11, at a meeting i heard the word "gay"... thought about it for a bit, then started to panic a little bit. I realised that the feelings a man was supposed to have for a woman, were manifesting themselves in my feelings toward another boy (although i didn't indeed couldn't put it so eloquently). Now, that shocked the life out of me and i began to realise that what i felt was "wrong"... Whereas before i used to feel 2 inches tall when the scripture about "being obedient to your parents in union with the Lord" was mentionned, now i began to wince at the scripture about "men who lie with men not inheriting God's Kingdom"...
...but even then i didn't apply the term "gay" to myself, it still felt innocent, even though at the meetings i heard it was wrong. I prayed to Jehovah each night to stop these thoughts from coming into my head, but of course, as puberty raged on, the feelings got STRONGER... in the next 7 years i had crushes on 4 different guys of the same age who attended my school, all of which lasted more than a year each. I never even tried dating a girl coz it didn't feel... natural... It was on my third crush at the age of 15 that i finally accepted that the term "gay" as applied to myself, even though i had not slept with or even kissed another male... but i still felt tremendous guilt and even toyed with the idea of taking my own life before i commited any "wrongdoing". This continued throughout my fourth and final of what i call my "teenage crushes"...
...then at 18 still believing in the veracity of the WTS's teachings and the sinful nature of my own self, i got baptised hoping that at last i'd have mental protection from sin... Obviously it didnt work because a month after my baptism, i discovered... THE INTERNET... Strangely enough, i thought that if i only glanced *momentarily* at apostate websites, then i wouldn't be comming any "thought-crime". Well, a year of *momentarily glancing* at apostate sites gave me enough courage to break away from ridgid JW thinking... and almost exactly a year after i got baptised, i decided to lose my virginity......... and felt like a piece of horse manure. I prayed to Jehovah immediately after the act and cried uncontrollably... i knew there was somthing wrong with the Watchtowers view of God, but still believed it in a vague kind of way, grasping onto straws for it all to be true, yet desperately hoping that the apostates were right, my mind was a right mess, i didn't know what was right and what was wrong, i thought: the WTS must be right because they predicted 1914 and if Armageddon came while i was in this state, surely i'd be swept away... but they're wrong about so many other things... During those years, doublethink was a thought process i became very familiar with... i bottled everything up and used cognitive dissonance to block out anything that caused me pain. I wanted to have my cake and eat it, i wanted (1) the securityof the comforting WT beliefs about resurrection and paradise, but i also wanted (2) freedom of thought and action...
...but then after that my healing process began. I made my decision between the two, i chose freedom of thought and action. Having just turned 19 i decided that the New Year (2002) would be a new starting point... i decided that i would not feel guilty about going on apostate sites, afterall, if the Truth is the Truth, i will be able to prove it with evidence. That same year i would also be starting university and would have a better access to reasearch materials, and a new set of friends to try my new identity out on...
...unfortunately i still didnt have the courage to "come out" to ANY of my new friends, for fear of being judged, but i did make great use of internet research materials... (as well as online dating sites)... and gradually cleared my mind of all doubts as to the flasehood of the WTS. In June 2004 i made my first post here on JWD, still believing in the Bible tentatively, but retrospectively a "just-in-case" agnostic... and sometime between June 2004 and June 2005 (whilst i was living in Paris, away from the numbing effects of weekly congregation meetings) i stopped thinking "what if it was all true" and turned into an atheist... and my last feelings of guilt for being gay dissolved in the emancipating parisian air...
I believe that you can only be proud of what you chose to do or be:
I did not chose to be black, therfore i cannot be "proud" or "ashamed" of it...
I did not chose to be gay, therfore i cannot be "proud" or "ashamed" of it...
I chose to be an atheist, therefore i can be proud of my decision...
Te reason why being an atheist is different is because its been one of the few choices i've made in my life, and its been a long arduous journey trying to find who i really am... and i feel that at the age of 23 i've finally begun to trace the first few pencil-drawings of that "me"... and one of those pencil strokes is knowing that i was not born straight then "make my own choice on where i go after that"...
(sorry about the long post, i just felt a sudden urge to answer the question with a life story, lol)
Dorayakii(of the "Society for the Re-introduction of a First-person, Lower-case "i" into the English Language" aka "SRFLIEL")
nicolaou

Did you ever wake up one morning and ask yourself "Hmmm... should I be gay or straight?" No, you didn't. I didn't either.
That's the point I was going to make. And anyway, what if individuals do make a choice to be gay? I don't believe that is what happens but suppose for a moment that it does - so what? What difference does it make how someone arrives at their sexual preference? Everyone needs love, if someone finds it in a place that makes you feel uncomfortable why not try a little understanding and be happy for them.
oldflame

personaly i think we are all born straight and everyone makes their own choice on where they go after that.
Ditto :
zeroday

There is also a strong possibility that the level of hormones in the womb play a strong role in determining sexuality;
I have read that but I have 2 cousins (boys), fraternal twins, one is gay and the other is not. I tend to believe behaviour and environment have a lot to do with it.
dorayakii

In the same way as gay relationships provoke a strong negative feeling in hetero people, thinking of hetero relationship provokes a strong negative reaction in me. (However, being distinctly in the minority, it would be foolhardy for me to engage in heterophobicrhetoric. Besides, fortunately i'm openminded to these wayward sexual deviants who unnecessarily increase the population of the planet... I jest, i jest...)
FlyingHighNow:Mother Val, the priest in our church is gay. She didn't know she was gay until she was thirty. She says she always knew something wasn't quite right about her relationships with men.When she fell in love with another woman, she finally understood. She is still friends with her ex husband and his family: they all think the world of her.
This is quite a common experience, and in this case, it seems that the person has made a conscious choice, being an adult and all. However, many people, (myself included) recognised this at a much earlier age, and didn't even attempt to form sexual relationships with females, it seemed the most unnatural thing to me. Even though i knew a heterosexual relationship was "right" and perfectly natural according to, like, everyone, all my intuition and instinct said "no, that's wrong, its against nature"...
Unfortunately, even into advanced adulthood, some people just obliviously start heterosexual relationships, thinking its normal, but always having niggling doubts about their relationships. Many even wonder why sex to them doesn't feel like the strong feeling they hear everyone else talking about, and shrug it off thinking that there must be something wrong with them either physically or emotionally due to their upbringing. Many dont even get that far to analysing it all, thinking that what they feel (or don't feel) is normal, and that love, relationships and sex are all just media hype... Being gay doesnt even cross their mind. Until they fall in love.... THEN all the questions are answered...
Sam87: personaly i think we are all born straight and everyone makes their own choice on where they go after that.
oldflame: Ditto :
Ok, prove it. I've just given my own experience of not having chosen being gay. It having been imposed on me before i even knew about the existence of sexual relationships. Yet, you've agreed with the statement above. Please provide some proof for your theory.
These kind of statements really agravate me, because how can neo-pubescent, pre-adolescents "choose" who they're attracted to?? Indeed, WHO would want to choose to be attracted to the same sex when the whole of society and religion is mostly against the orientation?? Indeed, many gay people spend a great deal of their child and even adult lives trying to change to being straight. How is it possible to chose something and not want it? Yes its true that you do choose who you sleep with, but you cannot choose whom you are sexually attracted to (or whom you are sexually repulsed by). Some people who are gay by orientation may choose to marry and even have children with a woman, but that does not make them straight, any more than the mere act of sleeping with the same sex makes you gay. Its much more profound and complex than that... For example saying that being gay is a choice is like saying that my ancestors "chose" to be born black and into slavery. Try this one: "I think we are all born free and everyone makes a choice as to whether to be a freeman or a slave"... Ridiculous i think you would agree?... Goes right alongside:
"Though once as black as charcoal, the Rev. Mr. Draper is now white. His people say that his color was changed in answer to prayer." (Can Restitution change the Ethiopian's Skin? - Zions Watchtower 1900 October 1st p.296-297 - WT Reprints p.2706)...

I certainly prayed fervently to be straight, but Jehovah didn't see fit to answer me...
Dorayakii (of the "Society for the Elimination of Grammatical Gender as a Noun-Class System in European Languages" aka " SEGGNCSEL ")
PrimateDave

Dorayakii, what an excellent post! Thanks for sharing! I, too, have experienced many of the same feelings as you in my own way.

I believe that you can only be proud of what you chose to do or be

I have often thought the same thing when I have heard others express "pride" in something for which they made no choice, which was a mere circumstance of their birth.

I believe that being attracted to the same or opposite sex is not a conscious choice like chosing between steak or shrimp at dinner. I found myself attracted to the same sex before I was ten. As a teen I engaged in some mutual masturbation with a friend, something I later confessed to a JC. I had a great deal of guilt, brought on by the dominant culture and my JW upbringing. Years later, as an adult JW, I made many friends with openly gay men, but I still kept my feelings inside so as to "not bring reproach on Jehovah's name". Well, I don't care about that anymore. Should I come out?

Dave
Forscher

Back in the mid 90s, when much ado was being made about certain studies which alledged that Homosexuality was a gentetic, rather than a learned behavior, I checked those studies out.
Most of those studies were, and still remain, twin studies which compares idenetical twins who were separated at birth and grew up separately. The well-known problem with that methodology is that such pairs are so small in number that it is statistically impossible to definatively assert anything from them. What was found was that enough such sets of twins engaged in homosexual conduct to suggest that further study was in order.
A very famous study, which was trumpeted all over the media as proving Homsexuality as genetic, was a curious study conducted by a Gay scientist who was out to prove a genetic link. What he did was to measure a small region of the brain which he considered linked to the behavior. He asserted that in the his comparison of that region in the corpses of both known gay men and known straight men, he found that region of the brain larger in the gay men. He thus reasoned that the difference in size proved a genetic link to the behavior. The problems with that study follow two paths. The first path is the problem of deciding just where the boundaries of that part of the brain are and identifying those boundaries. The medical community considers that more than difficult enough in that instance to make the measurment useless for the purpose to which the professor was putting it. The second path is the old chicken and eggs dilemma, which came first? Did the man already have a larger portion of the brain? Or did the behavior cause that portion of the brain to grow larger in the homosexaul much like playing a musical instrument has been documented to cause another portion of the brain to grow larger?
The problems with such studies have all been difficult enough that a number of recent Gay scholars have stopped asserting a genetic component to the behavior and have been publishing works celebrating it as a lifestyle choice, which is better suited to the evidence avaible. Look around, and one will find that most of the studies are still twin studies. The animal studies are problematic as well since they run along materialistic assumptions. But then, folks will believe what they want.
Forscher

Born Gay?

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