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Originally Posted by shimshimhada
I thought homosexuality was NOT innate, but in fact a choice. I don't recall reading about any evidence that homosexuality is genetic.
You are who you are today because of the environment in which you grew up in, not because you already had an "innate emotional orientation" from the moment you were born.
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You obviously aren't reading enough then. A possible cluster of genes have been identified and a book written on the matter. They just don't know how these genes are expressed yet, and are probably related to changing the female hormone cycles inutero (see below) because if you are gay you are 15% more likely to find other gay people in your maternal family line.
If you will speak to a gay person they will tell you that they knew from their first memory who they were, or discovered who they were during puberty. I grew up in EXACTLY the same environment as my brother, and he is straight, so how does your theory explain that?
You could theoretically make the same choice, and I bet that if you examined this question you would find that you agree that you were heterosexual from birth and couldn't possibly think of a situation that could change that.
There is also clear medical research, now generally accepted, that shows that gender and sexuality depends on 3 crucial hormone cycles inutero. Certain levels of the hormone testosterone are required inutero to masculanise the foetus at each of these stages.
First the foetus starts out female, but an early hormone cycle masculanises the body, but the brain is still left completely female. If you only get to this point you are transgendered, if you skip this point but not the others you are a Lesbian.
Second, another hormone cycle masculinises the general areas of the brain, but not sexuality. Skip some of this if you are male and you get a male (straight or gay) with feminine ways of thinking. Skip all of it and you essentially have a female brain in a man's body and will be likely to grow up wanting a sex reassignment operation.
Third, a final hormone cycle changes sexual attraction from males to females. Skip this and you are a gay man. Have this but not 1 and 2 and you are a lipstick lesbian.
Skip all 3 and you are obviously a woman.
They found this when they started looking at studies of the physical structure of gay vs straight male brains. They were concentrating on 4 interstitial nuclei of the hyperthalmus, which were found to be different in gay males. At first they were looking for a genetic explanation, but changed this view after they discovered a medication given to pregnant mothers in the 60s that years later it was showed produced 100% lesbian daughters. They started digging and their research led to this general finding I have summarised above.
They then went on to show that environmental factors during pregnancy such as stress could also interrupt the mother's hormone cycle producing gay children. Speak to most gay men's mothers and you will hear a tale of stress. Mine certainly was. This is because the stress hormone cortisol is made from the same progenitor as testosterone; perhaps it uses up supplies of this raw material, leaving less to be made into testosterone.
The uninformed "choice" comment leads many gay people to hate themselves, or is the justification for hatred and violence against gay people. If what you said was true then being gay would be a "condition" and could be fixed. Yet over the centuries there has been no process which could demonstate a permenant change to hetrosexuality. In fact Dr Evenlyn Hooker in the 50s nd 60s did research which prooved homosexuality was not a "condition" and had it successfully removed from the US Government's list of psychological disorders.
I certainly didn't choose to be what I am. In fact I was in denial for many years and the string of women I dated and slept with, and the one I nearly married after a happy 4 year relationship didn't alter who I was. Do you seriously think anyone would CHOOSE to be gay and live a life of being discriminated against? Many spend nights praying to God that they could be straight, because their dawning realisation that they are gay is too scary. I know I did.