If you're going for maximum body count, sure, but if you're only looking for a single partner, sometimes a same sex partner is going to be more expedient, depending on circumstance.
Yet its common to be the only out gay kid in a school or community. Or to not know any others. Yet people still are gay in those situations.
You have dozens of countries in which even attempting to find that single same-sex partner is lethally dangerous, while finding an opposite-sex partner would be inarguably more feasible. Yet people are still gay in those situations.
This could honestly go both ways, as the sort of family that throws you to the curb is probably already not a healthy relationship. One of the most religious families I've ever met not only took their son back in after he came out (they didn't kick him out, he moved out as an adult and then came back), they took in his partner as well.
Cool anecdote. Meanwhile, homelessness rates are significantly higher for gay people due to disownment.
Of course it's not a healthy relationship for love to be conditional on the harmless characteristics of the child. Yet for millions of kids, that relationship is the only lifeline they have, or the only guarantee of a home and support network. Yet people are still gay in those situations.
I mean, the more detailed I get, the more speculative it gets. I can point to the well-known trend of late-teen to early 20s girls going through their bi or lesbian phase (the very concept of "experimenting" implying a rational decision making process)
Stop, no, that doesn't imply the people are deciding what their sexuality is. It implies they're finding out how they feel and what works for them.
When a scientist conducts an experiment, do you think that term implies they're "deciding" which outcome they'd prefer? No, they're trying something out to see what the response is. The nature of that response isn't a result of their decision.
and while most of society makes jokes about it being some sort of fake rebellious streak, I can't help but notice that's exactly the age range where men are objectively terrible. Choosing to be with women over a 20yo man seems exceptionally rational to me.
...its also the age range of raging hormones, which directly explains both of those upticks.
I could point to men with particularly effeminate tendencies partnering with men, and while 99% of femininity and masculinity are arbitrary cultural things that are in no way inherent to the sexes, those gender roles are complementary like the sexes, so there is a logic to someone of feminine traits seeking out a complementary masculine partner.
People who don't fit the traditional expectations of their sex are more likely to be comfortable with gender-transgressive behaviour, yes.
We could rationalize 1000 reasons why someone may choose something and still get nowhere close to explaining everyone, but at minimum it would be a better perspective than "nobody would ever choose that!"
That's not really the argument I made, and you know it. I didn't say "nobody would ever..." -- I'm sure that if it were a choice, some people would.
What I said that even in situations in which it is overwhelmingly beneficial to be straight, in every conceivable respect, and being gay doesn't provide any expedience at all... People are still gay.
And then when they get out of those situations, and can be open, they overwhelmingly report that they felt the attraction all along, but couldn't act on it or be open. They had to hide it. But the feelings were still there.
And in that context, the "choice" argument makes zero sense whatsoever.
But all this is aside from the fact that gay people overwhelmingly are telling you they never made the choices, and you can't point to a single causative decision, just complete speculation.
www.theguardian.com
www.politico.com
