gay people! help me out!

A load of sensible answers to the daft question of 'choice'. What we are is a mystery. I look at myself sometimes and reckon it's like having been dealt a hand of cards in the game of life which one then plays as well as can be, not always with success but hopefully with kindness to myself and to others. I certainly didn't 'choose' the sexual bit, anymore than anything else that goes to make 'me'. In all probability there were factors - specially in childhood - that steered or developed me in one direction or another, but these again were 'givens', not choices: all part of the dealt hand.

It`s in the genes baby!

I love it when people say: "It`s a choice." Then I say: "So when did you choose to be straight?"
The puzzled looks that follow are priceless.

I don't think being gay is in the genes. I think everyone starts out as a clean slate, and it's just the way you are brought up affects your characteristics. The whole book 'Frankenstein' is about that: it's not your genes which affects the way you think about other people, it's your environment!
Like they say people who don't get on with their same sex parent are much more likely to be gay; therefore I think being gay is not something hereditory.

DC Deep,

Your post is right in line with how I feel.

People who say it's a choice have no clue. I will probably unintentionally offend someone, but if it was a choice, I would have chosen not to be attracted to men and cocks long ago. It has caused confused and depressed feelings, torment and pain in my marriage, and a host of other negatives that I would have chosen to avioid.

I still deal with the confusion at times.

That stuff about the same-sex parent is an old wives' tale (and an old husbands' tale)! As the science column in the Wall Street Journal recently quoted a scientist as saying, lots of factors play various and varying roles in sexual orientation, especially in gay men: genes, hormones, environment, etc. By the way, there are plenty of studies that show evidence of genetic differences between gay men and straight men, everything from gay men having higher levels of testosterone, going through puberty earlier, and having larger penises (separate studies that all are consistent with each other) to gay men being far more likely than straight men to have an index fingers and ring fingers of the same length.