Are you telling me that you can decide not to not like someone (without lying to yourself) on a whim? Or that you can decide that you, truthfully, hate your current favourite smack, also on a whim?
There’s a difference between working for or against something, and making a choice between two equal or nearly equal choices.
If your mind changes, then yes, you can say you hate it. I’ve done it several times. Not on a whim, but gradually, things like that can come about.
You can say it, but it would probably be lying to yourself. If you’re deciding <i>arbitrarily</i> to reverse your feelings towards something with no good <i>cause</i>, then it is on a whim. If you’re working hard to achieve it, then you’re working towards it, not just suddenly making a choice. If it’s something that just develops, then you made no choices; it just happened to be an aquired taste with age or mental development.
You seem to confuse reversing a condition or decision and making a choice. A choice implies some kind of crossroads or fork where you have multiple, equal or nearly equally plausible choices that are as easy or hard to decide to do as any of the others. For example, you can choose to eat muffins instead of cereal for breakfast, but if you hate muffins, you can’t “choose” to like muffins for that morning and enjoy your meal.
The only problem with this scenario that you are defining is lust. Cala, I hate to hit you in the face with the truth like this, but love is only about a quarter of sexuality. Lust, unclean, raunchy, carnal lust is what its really all about.
A friend of mine, Darryl might be a good example here. He truly and genuinely loves another friend of mine, Anna, and has for years, but has never lusted over her once. As best I can assume however, he has lusted over a boyfriend of his, or two.
Love truly is blind to all barriers, but unfortunately, once we define ourselves by a particular sexuality, we tend to ignore certain emotional attachments that form because of artificial barriers. So in that sense, yes, you can beat your emotions into a bloody pulp and ignore what you really feel, and most people do because for whatever reason it doesn’t fit into thier proper concept of love. And by that, yes we have choice in who we love. Its a sad and cold state of being that denies our own emotion.
But that has nothing to do with getting horny over seeing a picture of a hot naked {insert appropriate gender here}. Which is what sexual identity ultimately boils down to.
Your mind doesn’t create the love. What you end up calling love is your mind’s interpretation of how you are feeling.
The entire point of this discussion is that there isn’t this option, thus no choice.
The option regarding homosexuality, as I already stated, is whether or not you choose to ACT on those feelings. If you’re gay, you can choose to go against your hormones, despite having these feelings, and not go and butt sex every guy you come across. The flipside is true with heteros; you may have feelings for someone but still not act on them (examples being people waiting until they’re married, the clergy, etc). We have control over what we DO but not how we FEEL. We can choose whether or not we want to follow through with what our heart wants.
I think there’s more choice in homosexuality than people recognize. Most people would say that homosexual activity is by choice, while feelings are out of our control. I disagree: we constantly try to control our feelings, and often succeed. Have you ever met someone you at first disliked, consciously tried to get to know, and ended up befriending? Your own action, trying to meet the person, made changing your feelings possible. It’s the same idea, that someone who tries harder at life will eventually enjoy it more. The idea that we’re helpless creatures being led around by arbitrary feelings is silly: we’re rational creatures in control of ourselves, ultimately even our own feelings.
From my perceptions of love, there’s nothing to prevent someone from having heterosexual feelings and tendencies. Think: What’s to prevent a gay man from become intensely acquainted with a woman, so much that he wants to live with her? Nothing, really. And isn’t the pleasure of the act of sex still there, whatever triggers it? Sure. So, what makes gay people gay? Ultimately, on some level, it must be a rational decision. The appetitive part of sex works, gay or straight; the emotional part of sex works, gay or straight; so what’s left to our control is the reasoning process by which we decide our sexual orientations. Think, straight people: when homosexual images pop into your head, do you not actively suppress them? If any homosexual feelings rise, say, in your dreams at night, do you not doggedly suppress them after you wake? Your sexual orientation is the result of actions on your part.
This isn’t to say that environment has no influence on the matter; but not in the uncontrollable way that people describe. Rather, it seems to me that your environment tends to <i>convince</i> you of your sexual orientation. “It’s wrong to be gay,” society says, and since you want to go along with society, you decide to be straight. “Straight people act this way,” society says, and since you don’t act that way, you decide to be gay. People usually go with the crowd: whether they’re in largely heterosexual modern America, or homosexual and bisexual ancient Greece; still, they must make their own choices.
So did you make a conscious decision to be heterosexual?
But if you’re saying that homosexuality is defined by actions and not feelings, does that also apply to heterosexuality? Are you only a heterosexual if you’ve actually had sex with a member of the opposite sex?
You’re confusing two things, which I’ll clear up. First, there are external actions, like having sex. If someone forced you to have homosexual sex, would that make you homosexual? No, obviously not–so it’s not the external action that matters.
Then, there’s choice, which is an internal kind of action. You’re able to suppress and encourage different feelings by choice (albeit it with difficulty–at the very least, you can ignore your feelings). Ultimately, it’s you who will say to yourself, “I am straight,” or, “I am gay,” and you who will shape your behavior accordingly.
What does it mean to be gay or straight, then? It’s just a continual act of will. Of course, you don’t have to exert this willpower. You’re free to not use your rationality, and let your unharnessed passions lead you. But you still <i>can</i> use your rationality to control those passions.
That doesn’t change a natural tendency, unless you’re willing to argue that it is just as easy or difficult to be heterosexual as homosexual for any person?
But here’s the thing - ultimately, in order to exercise your will in one direction or another, you must have the desire to do so. What if you simply don’t have the desire to be heterosexual? Are you still making a choice to be gay?
It’s not that simple, though. Consider a person who says, “I had to work up a desire to do [whatever].” What he’s done, then, is examine his desires and choose among them. The idea is that some desires can supercede others. By using your rational mind to slow down and compare all your desires, you allow yourself to discern the “best”, or most compelling, desire.
Moreover, homosexuality isn’t a desire in itself. The desires are simple: the appetites, like hunger, thirst, and lust; the emotions, like happiness and anger; and the rational desires, like inquisitiveness and interest. Being gay or straight, I meant to point out earlier, is completely okay with the appetites or emotions. It’s the rationality that says, “This is what good/bad thing homosexuality does,” or, “This is why any sexual orientation is okay.” To use your rationality is itself an act of will–perhaps the most basic act of will.
Edited, to reply to Cless Alvein:
That’s one possibility, but it seems to go against all evidence. What if, rather, the rational mind has concluded that heterosexuality should be the norm–not in a moralistic, condemning sense, but purely by reason? Have you read the <i>Symposium</i>? Plato’s Socrates doesn’t condemn his companions for their gay behavior, but still decides not to partake himself (if you haven’t read the <i>Symposium</i>, do. His argument is interesting).
the problem with your evaluation, X wing, is that it ignores the very fondations of biology, which would be why do people want to reproduce in the first place. You don’t think you’re thirsty or hungry or lusty. YOU ARE hungry or thirsty or lusty and that need is something you want to satiate. You can choose to not satiate it, but what you need to satiate it doesn’t change.
Because separate but equal is bullshit. When you call your wife’s work up and demand to speak to your wife…even if she isn’t allowed personal phone calls, you get action. The words wife and husband grant huge benefits that aren’t in any lawbook. That’s what gay people want.
Well unfortunately, what you refer to as “real marriage” isn’t the topic of any debate. More importantly, “real marriage” is pretty much worthless. It doesn’t have any real benefits and isn’t what we have been discussing.
Many gay men, to this day, get married to women and have families.
Yes, like in the 1920’s. That line of thinking hasn’t been taken seriously since the First World War. Seriously, in the 60s and 70s….we did a whole double take on homosexuality in this country. We’ve had gay movie stars, gay sitcom stars, gay performers and musicians, etc. This didn’t just happen when Clinton came into office…its been around for decades. What has happened in the past decade is the “coolness” now attributed to homosexuals. At first it was just limited to women, but now its extending to gay men as well.
In a way. You can’t decide whether or not you’re gay, but you can decide to have gay sex. So, even if you are straight, you can have sex with whoever you want however you want.
Damn right. I never chose to love pussy….its more like it chose to love me.
I wouldn’t argue against anything you’ve said, so I wonder where exactly we disagree. Are you saying that homosexuality is a natural desire of its <i>own</i>, rather than a combination of ordinary lust, emotional attraction, and (possibly) a rational decision? That seems very odd to me. People say, “I’m getting hungry,” or, “I’m getting horny,” but not, “I’m getting homosexual.” Something as abstract and <i>perpetual</i> as homosexuality or heterosexuality really doesn’t strike me as an inborn desire; more of a rational way of <i>guiding</i> bodily desire.
I think Sinistral’s point is that people would say “I’m getting horny for women” if you were a man, and “I’m getting horny for men”, if you were a woman, not “I’m getting homosexual”…
Because separate but equal is bullshit. When you call your wife’s work up and demand to speak to your wife…even if she isn’t allowed personal phone calls, you get action. The words wife and husband grant huge benefits that aren’t in any lawbook. That’s what gay people want.
So simply for the meaningless pleasure of being called “husband” and “husband”, or “wife” and “wife”? Somehow I think that this movement that concerns <i>civil rights</i> is about more than that.
Sorry, I added something in my last post to clarify only a moment after you posted. What I’m getting at is that it’s the “I’m getting horny” part that’s the appetitive desire. Genitals don’t know where their stimulation comes from. They’re stimulated, they respond. The “for women” or “for men” part is more complex. For instance, a man could have a series of bad experiences with women, and decide then to stick with other men. This sort of behavior is rational, as opposed to a simple bodily appetite like lust. Sexuality is like a guiding principle for bodily desire, rather than a bodily desire itself.
Those are not meaningless benefits. And that was only one of the more powerful benefits marriage gives.