On the undertone of the "choice to be gay," in this thread. Stormnut and others, please try and change your sexual orientation on a whim and commit the sin of being gay. Start being attracted to other men. Report back to the American Psychological Association and see how it goes. If you can turn yourself from 100% straight to 100% gay (hint: this would be a statistical anomaly as most humans are at least partially bisexual but sway mostly one way or another), I bet they will give you a Nobel Prize. Or keep praying that your god will alter a person's sexual orientation so that they wake up one day being more attracted to the opposite sex. Good luck with that.
EDIT: last block of text, more not mpre. Damn fat fingers.
How do you go about being "partially bisexual", as the APA says most of us are. Seems like you either are or you aren't. And if you can't choose your sexual orientation what's with B & T people? Don't they know they're born one way or another? Furthermore, what about all these people who are like "I used to be straight" or "I was gay for a while in college"? Does the APA think these people are psychologically troubled, since they just switch whenever?
If you want more information on the sexuality scale, the Kinsey Institute can explain better than I can:
http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-hhscale.htmlAs for the "you either are or you aren't" thought, this is a common misconception about sexuality. It's not a black, white, gray process. There is a vast spectrum of sexuality.
Transgendered people stem back to the diffefencd between gender and sex. Just because you are born a boy does not mean you automatically identify with the male gender. Some people then choose to have a cosmetic operation to become transsexual and have a body that matches their gender.
Finally, on the people who "changed their orientation," it appears likely that the majority of all these cases are from social pressures to conform to heterosexuality. The homosexuality did not leave the person, they just do not act on it publicly for fear of social scorn. This leaves a person in a repressed state, never a good state.
As for "being gay only in college" 1. Performing homosexual acts is not the same as being a homosexual, just the same as performing heterosexual acts does not make a person heterosexual. 2. Again, sexuality is complicated, it doesn't fall into neat boxes. It is entirely possible that the person is attracted to the se sex se but the opposite sex more. Thanks to social pressure after college, they repress the lesser side.
