Gay Rights Debate: Being Gay Is a Choice, But It Is Your Choice

As I peruse PolicyMic, I notice story after story about the LGBT community, and its fight for equal rights. I sympathize with the LGBT community because they are human beings and Americans the same as you and I. They should be entitled to every kind of tax benefit, death benefit, or any other benefit afforded to a couple that is man and woman. We may not agree on the terminology that should legally define a life partnership, whether heterosexual or homosexual, but we should all agree on equal rights for everyone.

What I am tired of hearing is that it is not a choice to be gay, bi, or straight. The same people that will point to science and proclaim that the Bible is fiction, will ignore science when it shows that sexuality is a choice.

Many studies have been conducted over the last two centuries and none of them have been able to locate any appreciable difference biologically between a gay person and a heterosexual person. One such study detailed that fewer than half of identical twin births resulted in gay siblings. If the twins are identical, then they should both be gay. Conversely, another study detailed that fraternal twins, who are no more similar than other siblings, were twice as likely to both be gay than other biological siblings.

In this article, the subject, Aaron, details how he was a gay man who underwent reparative therapy. He explains that his tendency to be attracted to men was born from his lack of nurturing from his father. Once he came to terms with those feelings he actually no longer felt those attractions. In fact, he began to notice women.

Actor Cynthia Nixon even famously explained earlier this year that being gay was a choice. She says that there is no other way to look at it. The fact is that she wants to be in a gay relationship. Her belief is that bisexuality is inherent in every human being. She says that is why science cannot find a difference. The choice to be straight, bi, or gay is ours and only ours.

Ron Gold, one of the founders of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, agrees. In his famous letter to PFLAG ( Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), Gold writes "As a long-term PFLAG member and an early gay activist (I was one of the five original founders of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a principal lobbyist for the removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association sicklist), I thought I might add my two cents to the discussion.  I'd appreciate it if you'd share my views with the board.

First, about the science of the thing. My reading of the literature gives me no cause (despite highly publicized research by Simon LeVay and others) to believe that there is any physical, chemical or genetic difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Indeed, I think the current data leads to the inescapable conclusion that all human beings are born with the capacity for both homosexual and heterosexual responses. Preferences for one or the other seem, in most cases, to be fairly fixed by the age of six, but within the species homosexuality and heterosexuality do not appear to be discrete entities, with preferences running the continuum from exclusivity at both ends to genuine bisexuality in the middle.  Even within individuals there is ample evidence that people can and do change, whether situationally (as in same-sex settings like prisons) or culturally (as in virulently homophobic societies)."

The fact is, whether they will admit it or not, all people have sexual urges that they may find alarmingly contrary to their beliefs. Their choice is whether or not they want to act on it. I choose to believe, as a Christian, that God gave us all the gift of free will. We all have choices and those choices will ultimately determine our spiritual fate.

Whether you are of religious faith or not, we all reconcile our lifestyles by a set of values that we have. The bottom line is that your choice is yours and yours alone.