Haven't we been here before? That is not a proper dichotomy here. However I will give you a true paradox in response at the end.
Yes we have. And I don’t believe you actually answered the question last time either.
If sexual attraction really is a choice, why would anyone consciously choose to be openly gay in a world where they know they will be treated with disdain and contempt by people who can’t accept others for who they are when they could easily just “choose” to be attracted to the opposite sex and be treated with respect and dignity?
There exists no reason what so ever to suggest that whatever is true of heterosexuality goes for homosexuality.
There exists no reason to suggest that whatever is true of heterosexuality does NOT go for homosexuality.
It may very well be that we are all born heterosexuals but for many reasons (including possible spiritual ones) a few deviate off course and reinforce the synaptic pathways in their brains with repetitive gratification until the end result was a compulsion to do what is unnatural. I have some experience with addiction but my particular issue had no physical component but it was purely mental. I had done something for so long I had rewired my brain to think it was not only normal but necessary and it was all I could do to break it. My few physical addictions pretty much evaporated when I was born again but that mental one was a nightmare to escape.
This view has no basis in reality. And it certainly doesn’t explain the people who say they knew from a very young age that they were gay, long before they’d ever engaged in anything you’d call a “homosexual act.” Never mind the genetic and epigenetic components involved.
Another reason would be that both may be choices where one is natural (maybe I could have chose to have homosexual desires) and one in contradiction to it but still with a similar path of actualizing.
Well then that brings me back to my question: When did you choose to be heterosexual? I really have to wonder how you can believe that sexual attraction is a matter of choice. Could you just decide tomorrow that you’re going to be attracted to men from now on? How would that even work?
[*]Another is the relative strength of those desires. Maybe homosexuality and heterosexuality are both choices but unequal at least when young. I'm being perhaps to candid here but I had many urges as a child I finally decided were ridiculous and did not gratify. Maybe I trained myself out of all kinds of adorations that others do not.
Experimentation is quite common in adolescence but to say you trained yourself to be attracted to a certain gender doesn’t make much sense to me.
Now let me throw my paradox at you. The positions commonly stated are perfectly natural and perfectly unnatural.
What positions, and by whom?
As far as we can tell, homosexuality has been around as long as human beings have been around, not to mention its occurrence elsewhere in the animal kingdom. So maybe at this point in time it’s a bit of a misnomer to call it unnatural, given its continued prevalence throughout human history.
But what about the very good evidence at least some of homosexuality is both not a choice and unnatural (meaning not normal). Studies I have read are al over the place but a few give great evidence that women who have many kids close together suffer chemical imbalances that produce a high rate of homosexuality. So in that case it would be non-choice and genetic abnormality like you mentioning Psychopathy above. They would not be right but be natural (in a sense). What do you do in the case that this is the same for homosexuality in general?
What you’re talking about is commonly referred to as the “fraternal birth order effect.” It says that the more older brothers a man has, the greater the likelihood that he will have a homosexual orientation. One explanation for it is that when a woman is pregnant with a male fetus, her body is exposed to a male-specific antigen (H-Y antigen, I believe), that causes her immune system to produce antibodies to fight it because it’s foreign to her system. Those antibodies remain in the woman’s system after the pregnancy has ended and build up with each successive pregnancy of a male fetus and after enough has built up, those antibodies can cross the placental barrier and break down the chemicals in the fetus’ brain that would normally produce heterosexuality. The odds are said to increase something like 33% with each successive male child.
If this is the case, are you saying the response from the mother’s immune system is unnatural or abnormal (since you equate the two words)?
(You were the one who brought up psychopathy, which is a personality disorder.)