Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Sexuality is influenced by God. Jesus makes us straight and people who have forsaken Jesus become gay.
I bet you that a new person to KMC would think you were the biggest, ultra-conservative, idiot to ever grace the internet. Rarely are your posts not full of sarcasm or parody. 🙂
Originally posted by dadudemonThe post you quoted being a rare exception.
I bet you that a new person to KMC would think you were the biggest, ultra-conservative, idiot to ever grace the internet. Rarely are your posts not full of sarcasm or parody. 🙂
...
😇
^That smiley's the closest thing you God-hating queers will ever see of a real angel.
Can Sexuality Be Influenced?
I can think of 2 real-life scenarios that give the basis for a "yes" & "no" answer.
Scenario 1: I knew of a person, now in his mid-30's, openly gay & works as a professional, full-time gay escort. As a child, he was abused & molested by several priests at his boarding school. He ran away from home (as his parents didn't believe his accusations) & turned to drugs & living on the streets as a rent-boy.
Suffice to say, in his own words, he never developed a heterosexual relationship (& hardly had sex with women). He went further to say, that the irony of being a rent-boy was that most of his clients were the same priests that abused/influenced his sexuality & that now they had to pay him for the act.
So, that's a yes that sexuality can be influenced.
Scenario 2: I p@ssed myself laughing when I heard this.
Middle-aged guy, grew up straight, married for over 20 years with several children. Anyway he found out his wife was having an affair & they divorced.
One night he decided to drown his sorrows with his best friend who was also divorced....
Suffice to say, they both woke up the next morning in each others' arms & have been happily in a gay relationship for the past 8 years.
So "no" to sexuality can be influenced.
Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Scenario 1: I knew of a person, now in his mid-30's, openly gay & works as a professional, full-time gay escort. As a child, he was abused & molested by several priests at his boarding school. He ran away from home (as his parents didn't believe his accusations) & turned to drugs & living on the streets as a rent-boy.
Suffice to say, in his own words, he never developed a heterosexual relationship (& hardly had sex with women). He went further to say, that the irony of being a rent-boy was that most of his clients were the same priests that abused/influenced his sexuality & that now they had to pay him for the act.
So, that's a yes that sexuality can be influenced.
What if that guy was gay and attracted to males all along?
Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Can Sexuality Be Influenced?I can think of 2 real-life scenarios that give the basis for a "yes" & "no" answer.
Scenario 1: I knew of a person, now in his mid-30's, openly gay & works as a professional, full-time gay escort. As a child, he was abused & molested by several priests at his boarding school. He ran away from home (as his parents didn't believe his accusations) & turned to drugs & living on the streets as a rent-boy.
Suffice to say, in his own words, he never developed a heterosexual relationship (& hardly had sex with women). He went further to say, that the irony of being a rent-boy was that most of his clients were the same priests that abused/influenced his sexuality & that now they had to pay him for the act.
So, that's a yes that sexuality can be influenced.Scenario 2: I p@ssed myself laughing when I heard this.
Middle-aged guy, grew up straight, married for over 20 years with several children. Anyway he found out his wife was having an affair & they divorced.
One night he decided to drown his sorrows with his best friend who was also divorced....
Suffice to say, they both woke up the next morning in each others' arms & have been happily in a gay relationship for the past 8 years.
So "no" to sexuality can be influenced.
I don't follow how those examples prove your point...
also, with scenario 2, you have fallen into the trap of thinking sexuality is static or non-contextual.
Originally posted by StyleTime
The fear of "coming out" to your parents isn't quite the same as them influencing your sexual orientation.Also, I love how you put a "no homo" disclaimer at the end your post.
Well whatever I was just answearing the thread.and if I did that so what?Does it really matter? 🙄
Originally posted by Darth Jello
So is there a consensus that Sexuality can't be influenced but aspects of sexuality can? Need I point out the possible evidence that there are physiological differences theorized between straight and gay people in the olfactory of all places?
there are actually a huge number of really unexpected correlations regarding the physiological differences between gays and straights (finger length, for instance).
it is fascinating, but they might represent a bit of a type I error (meaning that, in our search to find any sort of biological predisposition for homosexuality, any possible statistical difference in the "gay" and "straight" groups will be reported as possibly being related to being gay/straight, even though it might only represent a difference in the groups that would be due to chance). However, some, like the olfactory one you mention, deal primarily with systems that are known to play a role in sexual attraction in both humans and non-humans.
I'm not saying the correlations are wrong, just tempering it a bit. As far as your initial question though, there is what could be called a scientific consensus that sexual attraction is biological in nature, and that any changes, while environment probably does play some role, are related to normal biological development.
The problem is, a lot of the research on sexuality shows that it varies over time and context, especially in women, though even in 100% straight men. Certain aspects of sexuality, like a foot fetish or something, might be developmental, but those developments are going to be based on specific genetic expressions that come from experiences, not on a cognitive "reevaluation" of what people think about sexually or changing what they are attracted to.
The best argument for some type of non-biological difference would be essentially saying you could use classical conditioning to make someone sexually attracted to something. So, if every time you masturbated, you looked at a pen, it is possible future experiences where you see a pen would access that conditioned response, such that you now are aroused by the pen, but that would not be the same as being sexually attracted to the pen.
Think of it like this. If you watched a lot of porn, you would probably start to have a conditioned response to male genitalia, because you are used to seeing it in the context of straight pornography, and your experience with it causes the associated arousal. It would be inappropriate to say it is the penis itself that you are attracted to, much like you wouldn't say Pavlov's dog wanted to eat the bell. to take this a step further, think about how many people masturbate in front of a computer, yet get no sexual arousal from keyboards or mice.
sexuality is a hugely complicated topic, way more broad that the thread here wants to make it, but considering some of the responses, we are lucky people aren't just yelling "CHOICE, durrrr!!!!"
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
That one is a joke isn't it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Physiological
Some studies have found correlations between physiology of people and their sexuality. These studies provide evidence which they claim suggests that:Gay men report, on an average, slightly longer and thicker penises than non-gay men.[51]
Gay men and straight women have, on average, equally proportioned brain hemispheres. Lesbian women and straight men have, on average, slightly larger right brain hemispheres.[52]
The VIP SCN nucleus of the hypothalamus is larger in men than in women, and larger in gay men than in heterosexual men.[53]
The average size of the INAH-3 in the brains of gay men is approximately the same size as INAH 3 in women, which is significantly smaller, and the cells more densely packed, than in heterosexual men's brains.[28]
The anterior commissure is larger in women than men and was reported to be larger in gay men than in non-gay men,[27] but a subsequent study found no such difference.[54]
Gay men's brains respond differently to fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.[55]
The functioning of the inner ear and the central auditory system in lesbians and bisexual women are more like the functional properties found in men than in non-gay women (the researchers argued this finding was consistent with the prenatal hormonal theory of sexual orientation).[56]
The suprachiasmatic nucleus was found by Swaab and Hopffman to be larger in gay men than in non-gay men,[57] the suprachiasmatic nucleus is also known to be larger in men than in women.[58]
The startle response (eyeblink following a loud sound) is similarly masculinized in lesbians and bisexual women.[59]
Gay and non-gay people's brains respond differently to two putative sex pheromones (AND, found in male armpit secretions, and EST, found in female urine).[24][60][61]
One region of the brain (amygdala) is more active in gay men than non-gay men when exposed to sexually arousing material.[62]
Finger length ratios between the index and ring fingers may be different between non-gay and lesbian women.[56][63][64][65][66][67]
Gay men and lesbians are significantly more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous than non-gay men and women;[68][69][70] Simon LeVay argues that because "[h]and preference is observable before birth[71]... [t]he observation of increased non-right-handness in gay people is therefore consistent with the idea that sexual orientation is influenced by prenatal processes," perhaps heredity.[28]
A study of 50 gay men found 23% had counterclockwise hair whirl, as opposed to 8% in the general population. This may correlate with left-handedness.[72]
Gay men have increased ridge density in the fingerprints on their left thumbs and pinkies.[72]
Length of limbs and hands of gay men is smaller compared to height than the general population, but only among white men.[72]
its been on livescience too. I haven't read the research, so I can't comment beyond this