Homosexuality is a choice

Not so long ago, we looked at how homosexuality has become ‘normalized’ in modern Western society (‘How we went gay’, Briefing #221/2). We closed with a promise to return to the issue, and in the following article we begin to do so. Andrew Lansdown looks further at the changing face of the gay movement. In particular, he shows that all the current talk of the gay gene, and being ‘born gay’, was rejected by the generation of gay activists who led the charge in the 70s and 80s.

Many people believe that homosexual behaviour originates from a homosexual orientation over which a homosexual person has no say. According to this view, a homosexual is either born or bred ‘that way’. Homosexuality is determined by nature or by nurture—it’s in the genes or the upbringing—and either way, it’s beyond the homosexual’s control. He or she ‘can’t help it’.

Homosexuals themselves have fostered this view over the past decade, since the advent of AIDS; and they have done so to escape blame for their major role in the spread of AIDS through their unhygienic sexual practices. However, they did not always hold this view. During the heyday of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s and early 1980s homosexuals vehemently opposed the notion that homosexuality was determined by genetic or childhood factors. They insisted that homosexual behaviour is a choice. Consider several examples.1

In 1980 the NSW Planning Committee of the National Summer Offensive for Gay Rights produced a Gay Information Kit. In one article the writers state:

Lesbians at some stage of their life make a choice about whom they most feel attracted to i.e. women. They make such a choice at age 10, or 50, sometimes even at 75. They make such a choice consciously, sometimes unconsciously.

The article then implies that most lesbians are superior to most heterosexual women because they consciously and deliberately choose their sexual identity, whereas heterosexual women often unthinkingly adopt the sexual identity that society offers them. To emphasize the point, the kit contained a song sheet, which includes this chant:

2-4-6-8 gay is just as good as straight
2-4-6-8 gay is TWICE as good as straight.

In 1978 the Melbourne Gay Teachers’ and Students’ Group published a book for use in schools called ‘Young, Gay, and Proud’. The authors tell high school students: “If you find anal intercourse a little hard, it may be because it is not your thing. Or it might be that you need to practice a bit for the pleasure to come through just like anything else that’s new.” These homosexual authors, who presumably know what they are talking about, leave us in no doubt that homosexual sex is a learned and chosen behaviour.

Writing in the homosexual magazine OutRage in June 1985 one homosexual declared that he “got started” (at the age of 15) not because he was plagued by homosexual desires, but because his girlfriend refused his sexual advances. On his way home he stopped at a public toilet, where he met and had sex with a homosexual. Some time after this first encounter, he began to “do the beat”—i.e., tour public toilets in search of sex:

I found the whole toilet-block thing really exciting … In the morning when I woke up, I couldn’t wait to get out and start looking for men …”. Yet even after years of sex with other men, this homosexual claimed a strong desire and preference for sex with women: “I think if there was a toilet-block full of women, where you could go in and [have sex with] them, I’d prefer that. But sometimes, if I pick up a girl in a pub or something, after I’ve had sex with her, I’ll go to the park and look for men … Gay sex is great because once it’s done it’s all over … If I had a girlfriend that I could have good sex with, I think I’d give it up …

Homosexual sex is easy, uncomplicated and immediately gratifying; and that is why many men choose it.

Some people—and this seems to be especially true of women—choose to experiment in homosexual sex for ideological reasons. In a booklet titled Sexuality, published by the Australian Union of Students (1977), for example, several women writers claim that they changed their sexual behaviour from heterosexual to homosexual (lesbian) because of the influence of feminism. It is a contradiction, they say, for a woman to relate primarily to other women and yet stop short of sexual contact. Their choice of ideology affected their choice of sexual behaviour.

Writing in Gay Community News (October 1981), one woman outlined her gradual conversion to lesbianism over several years as follows: Firstly, she read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, “which,” she claims, “had an electrifying effect”. Secondly, to explore the ideas generated by Greer’s book, she enrolled in “a women-only course on Women and Society”. Through the course she was “exposed to more ideas on women’s liberation and introduced to gay liberation”. Thirdly, she joined the Women’s Liberation Movement. However, at this stage, she declares, “Gay Liberation I didn’t see as an option, my feelings about my sexuality were both repressed and confused”. Fourthly, she attended a Women’s Liberation conference, where a paper on lesbianism challenged her to examine herself. “The conference,” she says, “was the beginning of my activism and the beginning of my awareness of myself as being a lesbian”.

In another issue of Gay Community News (July 1981), a high school teacher explained how she was converted to lesbianism by a potent combination of ideology and role modeling. In Year 10, at a time when she was sexually active with several boyfriends, she became friendly with a lesbian teacher, who took her to feminist seminars and introduced her to feminist literature. She states:

With [my teacher’s] encouragement (and to my parents utter dismay) I attended a few seminars on ‘girls in education’. I also eagerly devoured The Female Eunuch … My rapid politicalisation made me examine my own life more and more. In International Women’s Year I began going out with her … I especially remember the day we were at her friend’s house. The subject of homosexuality came up. I raved on about how ‘they’ were perfectly OK, but I was a bit scared of meeting one. Everyone started laughing and when I innocently asked why, a woman remarked “But everyone here is homosexual!” … I became really interested in homosexuality and was always asking her who ‘was’ and who ‘wasn’t’ … Over the months I realized that I was becoming increasingly preoccupied with my teacher… Finally it dawned on me! I was in love with her! … I told her that I thought I was a lesbian and I really, really liked her. She was great! She was really supportive, hugged me, kissed me and promised to see me when I liked … We went out often, and by [Year 12], I wanted to spread my wings a bit. My [female] biology teacher was incredibly beautiful and very, very friendly … Eventually it happened—we started an affair at school … It’s the fact that I was confident and exposed to lots of proud homosexuals that gave me the chance to examine and feel secure in my sexuality. It was only the fact that I had access to so much positive material and resources via the women’s movement that gave me the courage to ‘come out’ in school.

In Sexuality, one woman offers advice on how to get started with homosexual sex: First, she writes, “decide whether this is what you really want to do in your very inner self … Second, understand that this may not be where your guts are at yet, so go in stages that are fast and risky enough so that your feelings can actually change, but slow enough that you don’t scare yourself so badly that you want to give it up”.

In another publication by the Australian Union of Students titled Homosexuality: An Action and Resource Guide For Tertiary Students (1977), a male homosexual explains how he is troubled by the fact that “My mind’s eye still views me as straight much of the time”. That is to say, he still has heterosexual desires—women are still sexually attractive to him. To solve this problem, he says, “I need to feed it new material to help change its outlook—say through pictures of myself making love to a guy”.

It should be evident from these examples that homosexual behaviour is a chosen behaviour. Certainly, some people lust to be homosexuals, while others learn to be homosexuals; but all in the end elect to be homosexuals. As the prominent homosexual academic and activist Dennis Altman says in his book Aids and the New Puritanism, “being gay is a choice” (Pluto Press, 1986, p.188).

Through its prohibition of homosexual acts and its condemnation of those who practise such acts, the Bible confirms that choice underlies the homosexual lifestyle. The biblical prohibition on homosexual behaviour is based upon the conviction that the forbidden behaviour is also a voluntary behaviour, otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense to forbid it. The biblical condemnation of homosexual behaviour also points to choice, for Scripture does not condemn someone for behaving in ways that he or she cannot help. By defining homosexual behaviour as sinful, Scripture also implicitly defines it as wilful.

Ironically, Altman and Scripture are in accord: “being gay is a choice”.

Interestingly, Scripture also indicates the reasons why people make such a choice. And those reasons are the same reasons homosexuals boasted about during the 1970s and early 1980s: lust and ideology. Romans 1:24 speaks of “the lusts of their hearts”, while Romans 1:27 speaks of homosexuals being “consumed with passion for one another”. Romans 1:21 states that “they became futile in their thinking”, while 1 Timothy 1:9-10 says that homosexual behaviour (like other sins) is “contrary to sound doctrine”.

Homosexual behaviour—along with the identity that is built upon that behaviour—originates from free and deliberate choices. Homosexuals choose to be homosexuals. It is important to understand this truth for three reasons.

Firstly, the question of morality depends upon the question of choice. If homosexuality is closed to the will, then it is also closed to moral debate. For someone cannot be condemned for being what he or she is or for doing what he or she must. If a man cannot control his sexual urges any more than he can control his eye colour, then plainly he cannot be condemned for those urges any more than for his eye colour. However, if homosexual behaviour is a chosen behaviour, if it is subject to the will, then it is open to moral evaluation. If homosexuals choose to do what they do, then non-homosexuals have every right to debate the rightness or wrongness of their choice, and to hold them accountable for it.

Secondly, it is essential to understand that homosexual behaviour is a chosen behaviour in order to be fair to homosexuals themselves. Nothing is more cruelly dehumanising than to say that homosexuals cannot help themselves. This may exonerate homosexuals from blame, but it also removes them from humanity and makes them akin to animals. For the ability to choose, the ability to exercise the will, is a distinctive characteristic of our shared humanity. Homosexuals may be wrong, but they are not subhuman. Like ourselves, homosexuals are human beings who make choices in sexual matters. To be fair to them, we need to recognize this. For while we have every right to condemn a person for behaving in a wilfully evil way, we have no right to dehumanise him.

Thirdly, if homosexual behaviour is wilful, then the incidence of that behaviour will increase in proportion to its visibility and acceptability. People can be influenced by pro-homosexual propaganda and positive homosexual role models. In short, because it is a chosen lifestyle, the more homosexuality is promoted, the more it will be approved and adopted.

Endnotes

1 Some of the examples are taken from my book, Blatant and Proud: Homosexuals on the Offensive, available from Life Ministries, 4/334 Wanneroo Road, Nollamara, WA 6061

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