Vault101 said:
So I guess the obvious question is: can your [sexual] orientation be influenced by outside..um things, or are you just born that way?
Here's the deal:
When people talk about
homosexuality they are generally talking about one of two things.
Liberals, hippies, human sexuality experts, professionals from the psychiatric sector and human rights guys from Geneva or Hague are talking about
sexual orientation which is about what you want, id est, the sex of the partner (or partners) that will most fulfill you sexually.
The sexual orientation of humans falls into three categorys. They're either
heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex),
homosexual (attracted to their own sex) or
bisexual (attracted to both sexes), and this is determined usually by a number of natural factors, including genetic predispositions and number of older siblings.[footnote]The more elder brothers (surviving or not), the more likely a son will be gay. I don't know what the stats are regarding daughters, or sons had after daughters.[/footnote]
Regarding
bisexuals, their own orientation can vary from
mostly prefers men to
mostly prefers women, and can change over time (and generally does). There's a lot of conjecture amongst human sexuality experts that a lot more people are bisexual than we let on.[footnote]Bisexuals get hate from both sides of the fence, so they have much reason to hide. Homophobic communities treat known bis as gays who steal from the straights, and gay communities regard them as traitors to the cause. Both sides presume that bis are indecisive sluts who are incapable of being monogamous. None of this is fair or necessarily true, of course.[/footnote]
Conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, The Roman Catholic Church,[footnote]This has actually changed since the new papacy when it comes to the priesthood. The Vatican has now excluded from the seminary male students who are naturally attracted to other men. This wasn't regarded in the past, since priests take a vow of celebacy anyway, but now they have to be specifically resisting temptation of female flesh. Go figure.[/footnote]reparative therapy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparative_therapy] advocates and various other pro-normativity groups, when they speak of
homosexuality, are regarding only
behavior. To them, it doesn't matter if someone has a sexual preference for their own gender, so long as they are not actually having gay sex, they are not gay.[footnote]These groups also assume that if you have gay sex once that you
are gay until cured or exorcised or something. The
queen for a day rule that applied during DADT may apply depending on the society. Generally, it's a good idea to not get caught.[/footnote] It is this way that they can have statistical success with reparative therapy, so long as their patients don't relapse.
As
behavior, homosexuality is a matter of nature
and nurture. Someone can be outright gay, yet pressured not to act on it, and thus abstains from sex entirely. He'd be counted as straight until proven otherwise. A woman who is bisexual but, due to societal pressures, is only actively sexual with men would count as heterosexual until she was caught with another woman. The intrinsic desires along with the psychological well being of the individual are not considered since humans are a depraved sinful lot, and but for our savior Jesus Christ, fallen from God's grace.
Likewise, someone thought to be straight can be
affected by a corrupting influence (say, a community in which acting on gay desires is permitted and even welcomed) and that would be seen as having been
turned gay via an element of nurture. If a
successfully treated lesbian was persuaded via reparative therapy to give up her sinful ways, and then was courted
tempted by a like-minded cutie
minion of Satan sent straight from the charnel depths of Hell, it would be evident she was
corrupted back to her evil ways by an
outside force of darkness, i.e. again by nurture.
This latter scenario, it turns out, is fairly common, as folks with inhibited homosexual desires often will seek out a less constraining community in which they can express their sexuality fully, rather than stay miserable in the society in which they were raised, even if doing so means exile from their family.
238U.
