Homosexuality.

[Chrissi]

I believe queerness is a combination of environment and personality (personality being, of course, a combination of genetics and environment, but an important enough factor to warrant its own mention). I'm bisexual, so I might provide a bit of a different view than most people.

I don't believe it's genetic. Sure, people can be or seem gay from birth or from as long as they can remember. Personally, I remember being interested in the pictures of female underwear models in the Sears magazines, moreso than the men, from a very early age. However, I didn't recognize that I was bisexual, since I still liked the men, and I didn't know what "bisexual" meant.

But this doesn't mean that I was always bisexual or that I was born this way. I think it means that I was curious, and NOTICED my attraction, and the noticing and accepting is what makes me bisexual.

Let's make this clear: a person is only gay if they think they are gay. You cannot know that somebody is gay before they know it themselves, because being gay is a state of actually being attracted to the same sex. It's not something you can tell about a person unless they feel it themselves.

I've personally noticed that certain personality types tend to be more likely to be gay. For example, liberal-minded people are more likely than conservative-minded. That's probably just because the conservative-minded with homosexual tendencies choose not to recognize these tendenies. And that's okay too.

Don't take this to mean that gays "choose" to be that way. If you think about it, choosing to be gay makes no sense. Why would anyone choose to be something that will permanently outcast them and make finding a relationship far more difficult? Why would anyone choose such a horrible fate upon themselves? The answer: nobody in their right mind would. You'd have to be crazy and masochistic. Also, implying that it's a "choice" of some sort makes it seem like anybody who wants to can be gay. This also implies that humans by nature have homosexual tendenies. All humans. Since anyone can be gay if they want to be.

So I think it's an environment thing. Genetics doesn't really make sense, since a "gay" gene would, naturally, die off. Again, saying it's not genetics doesn't mean that people choose, or that some people aren't gay their entire lives. It doesn't mean they have ANY sort of control over it. It just means that there isn't any DNA marker that makes you straight or gay or bi or whatever.

Also, if it has anything at all to do with conditions in the womb - that is environment, not genetics. Genetics refers specifically to what your DNA encodes.