Being gay is a fetish.

[JuliaL]

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To the people I have offended with my post: abaris, thesummerqueen, One Above All, Kitan, and anyone else it offends in the future

I am truly sorry. The very last thing I wanted to do was offend the other gay people on this forum. It was incredibly stupid of me to post that sort of theory in the middle of a heated debate on the subject. It was meant as a stepping-stone to argument with Heywood; trying to find some common ground and showing that if there was any choice involved, as he claims, that it would be minimal at best and in any case uninformed.

I got defensive in my replies to your replies because I thought no-one was actually reading it properly, but fuck that, don't read it - it's a shitty theory and I'm sorry I even thought it up: I can find no conscious choice, whatsoever, in the development of my own sexuality. Being bisexual I can choose to look at gay porn or straight porn but that is the limit of my choice in the matter - it does not change my sexuality in the slightest or who I am attracted to and I did not mean to imply for a second that people could just change sexualities at the drop of a hat or choose to find someone attractive. I don't believe that at all.

Anyway I will not defend that theory and will direct future replies to it to this apology. Please forgive me.

I think I understood what you were trying to say.  I'm also bi, but I live as if I were straight.  I've molded myself into only dating men, even though I am still very attracted to women.  It's just easier that way.  I think because it's a spectrum, people who are toward the middle of the line sort of do have their choice in the matter; at least as far as acting on it goes.  

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I do, however, find it disgusting when people spout, "homosexuality is a choice!" as if, if true, it should have any bearing on whether consenting adults can carry on a relationship together in whatever capacity works for them.

My bolding.

Me too.  Then I get forced into the endless circle of determinism vs free will.
Unless the speaker (usually the case) is too dense to understand that there is an unanswered question there.

My personal take on homosexuality, marriage equality, denying cakes to gays conforms to my views of how replicating systems (life) make their way in the universe.  I don't subscribe to the naturalistic fallacy (after watching lots of homosexuality in cows and even inter-species horniness in pigs.)  Is doesn't make ought  It's just that some of us replicate better than others.  Those are the ones we see the most of.  It's kind of a tautology.
We're all just complicated replicating wet chemistry, whatever your self image might end up as.

I think that some homosexuality is probably advantageous in replication.  Why do super-models often have a bad body image?  For the same reason that talented athletes train.  You're more likely to win if you don't take the situation for granted.  In this case, winning means you have more offspring.  Now imagine you are a male who is revolted by males, all males, even yourself.  Do you have the self confidence to get laid?  Not if you think you are so repugnant that nobody should ever want to speak to you, much less touch you.  Somewhere there is an equilibrium.  Probably somewhere in the 10 to 20% gay area.  It's pretty amazing that the squishy bits between your ears are as good as they are at lining up male hardware with the male software.  Specially when you consider that the programming that gets your brain there includes DNA transcription to protein (and prions)  which have to self assemble into neural nets that interact with reality and come down mostly on the side of hetero (best replicators) sex.  It is amazing, but nowhere have we found it to be magic.

There's another idea, that homosex is what is left over for the non-harem masters in the troop.  It keeps the less privileged males around for protection and in case the Alpha male gets old, tired or dead. Could be, I don't know.  It doesn't explain homosexuality in animals who don't form groups.  There are too many wheels within wheels for me to get it.