"Born that way"

A recurring debate in the Gekko household is the issue of homosexuality and whether it's a "choice" or not.

It's a particularly sensitive issue because there have been three people intimate to our family who have come out as gay.

Yet, within in a year, two of those three ended up in totally heterosexual relationships and the third, in my humble opinion, is simply hanging out in Lady Gaga land until he probably gets married and has kids.

I don't profess to know what makes people attracted to the same sex anymore than I know why I seem to be attracted to a certain type of woman. But I've always rejected the whole "born that way" stuff because it doesn't explain bisexuality or people who believe they're gay but go back to heterosexual relationships as has happened to people close to us. What do you exactly call "switching teams"?

Mother Jones, not exactly a right wing publication, has a really good article on the issue........

That's the usual interpretation of reparative therapy—that to the extent that it does anything, it leads people to repress rather than change their natural inclinations, that its claims to change sexual orientation are an outright fraud perpetrated by the religious right on people who have internalized the homophobia of American society, personalized the political in such a way as to reject their own sexuality and stunt their love lives. But Aaron scoffs at these notions, insisting that his wish to go straight had nothing to do with right-wing religion or politics—he's a nonobservant Jew and a lifelong Democrat who volunteered for George McGovern, has a career in public service, and thinks George Bush is a war criminal. It wasn't a matter of ignorance—he has an advanced degree—and it really wasn't a psychopathological thing—he rejects the idea that he's ever suffered from internalized homophobia. He just didn't want to be gay, and, like millions of Americans dissatisfied with their lives, he sought professional help and reinvented himself.

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