"Homosexuality is a choice" and its paradox

[Neo-Scholastic]

Do you understand now?...(Though I don't see how foot fetishism got in there)

Perhaps my examples mislead you from the substance of my post. I made distinctions between sexual practices, gender identity, and biological facts.

You either have the XX or the XY chromosome to make you male or female. Sex cannot be altered in actually, although the body can be modified so as to give the appearance of the opposite sex.

Sexual practices are activities voluntarily engaged in to satisfy appetites. These can include traditionally accepted normative practices like kissing, petting and coitus or they can move into various perversions like oral sex, anal intercourse, role-playing, "watersports", sadomasochism. Sexual practices are chosen.

Evangelicals categorize homosexuality as a sexual practice. Gay activists treat it as a biological fact and, as such, consider it a part of their natural being. I question both positions.

Gender identity seems to sit somewhere between your fixed biology and your self-selected behaviours at the intersection between cultural norms, social constructs, personality, and genetic disposition.

For example, transgendered people experience a dramatic mis-match between their biological sex, which is fixed, and their gender identity that, to a large extent, makes reference to stereotypes of "maleness" and "femaleness". Both homosexuality and heterosexuality are considered gender identities because they mix objective traits and subjective experiences. That mix is a presumably genetic predisposition (objective) to have certain (subjective) emotional responses.

Everyone agrees that some people handle anger better than others and some are inclined to depression. And most people agree that the normal range for acting on those emotions is based on cultural factors. For grief, temporary social withdrawal following the the loss of a spouse or child is accepted. Suicide after the death of a pet is not. For anger, taking legal action after being defrauded is a normal response. Road rage resulting in violence is not. Sexual arousal is just one among many emotional responses. On what basis do you elevate sexual arousal to an essential part of your personal being and not so other emotions?

In short, gender identity cannot be reduced to a either normative behaviour or biology. It's much more complicated than either gay activists or evangelicals would like to admit.

As I was writing this, a curious idea came to me. I image that gay activists would favor evangelicals revising their beliefs about homosexuality. Since most gay activists are politically liberal and presumably pro-choice, I wonder how they would react if evangelicals revised their stance on abortion instead and advocated killing fetuses with the "gay gene".