I'm a guy and I like girls, but I don't judge gay people. It's their choice, so I respect it. I think it is a choice

Okay so I'm just putting it out there: I'm homosexual. Entirely.

That being said, I am extremely offended by one specific poster's absurd comments, but we all know who that is. This topic hits home pretty hard for me, obviously, and I'd like to get the air cleared a little. Firstly, I agree with those who are saying that you cannot blindly follow the words of the Bible. I was raised Catholic, but after 17 years of it, I decided to believe in God without the smaller "rules" listed in the Bible. I am not saying they are any less important - I am simply saying it was my own belief to not follow them anymore. So I still believe in God, but I no longer follow any religion.

As a 20-year-old, gay university student, I have encountered countless cases of discrimination against homosexuals, especially from my hometown. I was raised in a very conservative, anti-gay community in California. Believe me, if being gay were a simple choice, I would have made it easier on myself and "changed" a long time ago. Also, being gay, I probably know more homosexuals and bisexuals than any of you. I will admit that there are a small amount who have told me that they used to be straight, but "changed" after experimentation. However, I'd say about 95% or so have told me stories about how they had so much difficulty when growing up because of their different sexuality. The same goes for me. I didn't develop my first "crush" (where I knew I was attracted to the same sex) until fourth grade but my mom has told me there were clear signs of my same-sex attraction since age 4 or so. So in my case, can you really say that as a 4-year-old boy, I decided to be gay? No. That's just part of who I was and still am. As a previous poster mentioned, I also tried dating girls in high school, but to no avail. I simply couldn't shift my physical and emotional feelings to the opposite sex, no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted to.

So ultimately, from my own experience and from all of my close friends' experiences, I feel that being homosexual is primarily determined before one can choose it, but there are exceptions where choice is involved.

Now, heavily-based Christian community, tell me how wrong I am...

bdfalc0n07 : Well, we can talk about the Bible and how to interpret it somewhere else, but let's just be pretty clear here.
This isn't really a heavily based Christian community. At least I think so. Just look at all the people who post in the "Christian Conservatives" forum. There's so many who disagree with our beliefs. I think there isn't enough people to speak out about true Christian beliefs.
That being said, I hope you're not feeling like you're being ganged up on with this sort of topic, but I think the major consensus for Christians is that homosexuality is wrong in the Christian life.
Now, that being put aside, this isn't a Christian discussion. It's not. It's about whether or not homosexuality is a choice. And I respect that you come to this thread and talk about it. I started this thread in order to find out what people think about if it's a choice or not. I didn't start this thread to verbally assault people who are homosexual. So please don't take it that way.
And please don't also take it out on us Christians. What we believe is what we believe, but you don't have to throw it back at us. Please understand.

bdfalc0n07 : "Now, heavily-based Christian community, tell me how wrong I am..."

how about you stop being a victim? Just because many of us disagree with your lifestyle choice doesn't mean we're going to personally berate you and make you feel less than human simply because of our beliefs.

I personally don't care if you're gay. You go on being gay if you think it's working out for you. But I'm sick and tired of people like you who announce they are gay and then expect special treatment in some way or another. You expected that once you announced you were gay you would be attacked by the "heavily-based Christian community".... why exactly is that? What do you get out of this? Would us attacking you justify your choice to leave the Catholic church? Does it make you feel less guilty about being gay? There has to be a reason why you did what you did....

geeogree : I'm not sure you would understand, but I'm going by experience. When people discover that I'm gay - whether it be friends at school, family, or even my own parents - I get a lot of heated backlash. It is a natural response for me to put my walls up like this given society today, can you blame me? I know you don't care if I'm gay and I don't care that you're straight. But when you say "You go on being gay if you think it's working out for you", the if implies that I have the choice to stop, and I don't.

Let's get one thing straight (pun aside): I'm not asking for special treatment. I'm simply sick and tired of being treated like a disgraceful, shameful excuse for a person by so many people simply for my sexuality. I've learned to bear with the insults and whatnot, but it's the bigger hatred that causes violence that needs to stop. People like me simply want to make a small difference in the minds of others they encounter so this social barrier can eventually come down. I'm sorry if you take it as otherwise.

As for my reason to renounce Catholicism, that hardly has anything to do with my being gay. I simply didn't believe in many of the aspects of the religion, so I left it. The only reason I brought it up in the first place was to explain that I understand where many religious-based views are coming from, and I don't feel it is fair to judge others' lives by something like their sexuality. But perhaps that is how the God I believe in would view it.

And I don't feel guilty about who I am and never will. I am proud of what I have come to be, and nothing in this world can change that. I have grown stronger than ever, being a double-minority.

mdynasty926 : Sorry this has all gotten off-topic and out of hand, but after a background description of my own story, I gave my opinion on your initial question in my last post.

As a final note to this comment, obviously I don't know any of you personally. I have been posting here and there on the board but when I read this thread, I posted from a personal standpoint because of its direct nature about my lifestyle. I'm posting because I just want to get it out there that we are significantly less different than society tends to believe we are... Make good friends with a gay someday, and you'll find that out!

bdfalc0n07 : Yes, I appreciate your opinion about this topic. We're not using this thread as a means of saying that homosexuals are lesser being in society or something.
But I have to say, when you were talking to geeo about this, you said "given society today."
Well, actually, isn't society today more fitting for homosexuals? Since before there wasn't as much freedom for homosexuals.

As a member of the Jewish faith, we are raised to grow, get married, and raise children, when we go against this patter its considered sinful, however, many of our communities still do not find gay couples to be sinful, for he fact that they can use a surrogate to reproduce and continue the cycle.

I know it may sound strange. And there is a lot more to it but I'm trying to make this as short as possible. X3

With out breaking out the Hebrew lol

mdynasty926 : Yeah, that's true. In comparison to the past, there is much more tolerance now and significantly less hatred about homosexuality. But I wasn't really comparing to the past by saying "given society today", I just meant that the overall acceptance of homosexuality, even in today's society, is still pretty low. I look forward to the future, where it will be even more accepted... where hate crimes will nearly cease to exist.

It's not a choice to be gay. It's the way your brain got formed when you're in the womb. If you ever talk with a homosexual, they never say "and then I chose to like the same sex", no, they discover they like the same gender, just as heterosexuals discover they like the opposite gender, for example, the day you stop thinking they have cooties and realize how much you want to touch them.

What really bugs me is when someone who either doesn't support the gay lifestyle or doesn't really care either way gets labeled as this horrible, terrible, intolerant evil person. If we aren't allowed to have our opinions on people's sexuality, are we supposed to support pedophiles, necrophiliacs, and bestiality? No one freaks out if you don't choose to support a necrophiliac lifestyle. I'm not saying that they're the same, or comparable on any close measure at all, but we shouldn't attack (or be attacked) for our opinions. There's a difference between hating the gay lifestyle, and not supporting it.

Today, freedom for homosexuality is very dependent on where you live. For example, someone who is a homosexual in San Francisco would feel a lot more comfortable than a homosexual in Alabama. We're doing a lot better on acceptance now than in the past, but there's still a lot of places living in the cruel past.

What I've begun to see now is hatred from the homosexuals towards heterosexuals and to christian communities. When prop 8 was up to vote, churches were burned, vandalized, etc. and people's lives were threatened. If you want people to accept the way you live, physically assaulting them isn't a very good method. So many christian churches were slandered and assaulted, whether or not they supported prop 8. There's so many powerful feelings and emotions brought up by the topic of homosexuality, and society really needs to get over that. Someones sexual orientation isn't their choice, neither does it affect who they are nor make them inferior or superior to anyone in any way. A human is a human is a human. If we're going to direct our hate at something, why not mosquitoes or spiders. Filthy little bloodsuckers. What do you need that many eyes and legs for? Seriously, they must be up to something bad. Better to pick something out of our species to discriminate against. Human pride!

Trying to judge this without giving in to our own biased opinions is hard, because of how touchy a subject this is: For everyone. Many Christians feel that it is an abomination against God, and many people(of all beliefs) feel that gay rights are being crushed.

I side with the people who say that it is something we just don't know yet. Evidence seems to point every which way. Some showing that it is genetically based. Some that it is based on environmental causes. And some that it is based on choice. But who knows for sure?

I have met many gay people in my time, and have yet to meet a single person who claims to have decided to be gay. Most of them faced significant adversity from their family and friends, and I have a hard time believing they "chose" that route for themselves.

Personally, I am a straight man who has, one several occasions, fooled around with other men. I was more than open to myself being gay or bi. As it turns out, I am indeed a straight man. I simply do not have feelings for other men, and cannot bring myself to see them sexually. There was no "choice" for me to be gay(at least none that I was aware of).

For those who say that God made us man and woman for a reason, I would like to point out that homosexuality does occur in nature(In birds, bonobos, american bison, amazon dolphins[who actually go so far as to have orgies] and many more).

Also, the argument that a homosexual gene would die out isn't necessarily true. Gay people could have been reproducing because of social pressure, religious beliefs, and self loathing for a long, long time. And since genes can skip generations, it is very possible that a very large percentage of the world carries the gay gene(even if they themselves are not gay).

Personally I don't think it is a conscious choice. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest this is the case. And almost every single "gay camp" has horrible results(suggesting that trying to "will yourself straight", or "pray the gay away" does not work).

There is an absurd amount of information out there on this topic, and I would encourage anyone interested to look for it.

It is a choice, to say otherwise is to say that same sex or opposite sex relationships are both neither right nor wrong. To think that a same sex relationship is just as natural as an opposite sex, I believe is a corrupted way of thinking. It makes me wonder what else you would be omitting a distinction from.

Its both a choice and not a lifestyle. Everyone is born with the possibilty of being gay. It is up to the person wether or not to choose homosexuality or not. Some may believe that you born gay or straight but its completely a choice.

to all of you who think being gay is a choice:

Go make that choice and see how difficult it is. Go try and choose to be gay. And I'm not simply talking about performing a homosexual act.... but try and be attracted to someone of the same sex, developing a relationship and eventually having an intimate love for that person in a similar way that you would to someone of the opposite sex. I find it highly unlikely that any of you could.

Everyone is born with a conscience, I suppose some people's conscience tells them that homosexuality is natural and some not. Or you can debate the existence of a conscience.

In my opinion, there's really nothing wrong with being homosexual. People choose to be homosexual, because it's their choice. I myself am not homosexual, but some people are, others aren't. It's just the way the Earth goes.

So many people are coming in and claiming homosexuality is a choice. Why are you making these claims? Is there anything to support them?

On the other hand, credible psychological associations such as the APA are in agreement: sexual orientation is not a choice.

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx
"No, human beings cannot choose to be either gay or straight. For most people, sexual orientation emerges in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed."

Traduweise : Thank you!

There is a big difference between having homosexual feelings and engaging in homosexual acts.

On one hand, if you have homosexual feelings it doesn't make you a homosexual; it's the act that determines your orientation. As such you can choose not to do the act.

On the other hand, if you have homosexual feelings then by all means, you must be a homosexual. But what if you choose not to have those feelings, does it make you straight? Or is it that you don't have power over your feelings?

For me, I have heterosexual feelings, so I suppose you would say I was born straight. However, I can choose not to have any feelings at all. So it is a choice for me, and I think that homosexuals have predetermined that it's not a choice simply because they can't control their feelings.

Well some can control their feelings. So I suppose then it must be a choice for some and not a choice for others. Which in reality makes sense because some have self-control and some don't.

Incorrect. How you act is irrelevant to your sexual orientation. Heck, in the APA link a clear distinction is drawn between orientation (what you are attracted to) and behavior (how you act).

Traduweise : I gave 2 separate scenarios, while leaning more towards the second. Alas, you have taken my 1st and criticized that one.