It is not difficult to accept that sexuality of any persuasion is not a choice, but it is quite a stretch to attribute it to genetics. It is socially accepted that pœdophiles do not choose to be attracted to young children, that homosexuals do not choose to be attracted to persons of their own gender, and straight men do not choose to be attracted to women.
HEREDITY
If homosexuality were genetic, I suggest, we should see a lot fewer homosexuals now than in the past. Hear me out before making the obvious contention that in the past, homosexuals lived under the necessity of closeting their deviant sexuality and therefore disguised their numbers:
In the past, regardless of sexuality, it was an economic necessity for men to marry women and produce many offspring. George Friedman offers a cogent explanation this in The Next 100 Years. He furthermore describes the current trend, in which childrearing is a great expense with no hope of any economic return for at least two decades, generally. Populations are declining or preparing to decline in industrialized countries, and in second- and third-tier nations, population growth is leveling off.
If homosexuality is genetic, we can derive two ideas from Friedman’s observations: homosexuals of ancient days should have been marrying and passing on their genes just as prolifically as heterosexuals of their time; whereas in present day (starting 20+ years ago), homosexuals’ incentive to engender children is removed; ergo the current and rising generations should contain a paucity of homosexuals.
An acceptable theory which uses heredity as an explanation for sexuality might say that the explosion of the homosexual population is attributable to mass mutation (and why not? from power lines to processed foods, people point at almost everything in the modern world as a mutagen). But it is more than a little far-fetched to expect such a global uniformity in an anomalous phenotype.
CULTURAL DOCTRINE
The primary source of homosexuality, I postulate, is our culture. There is no intelligent debate as to whether sexual beauty is primarily (and by a wide margin) determined by culture. It is accepted fact. There is nothing inherently superior about full, sensual lips, for instance; it’s only a matter of cultural indoctrination.
When homosexuality becomes socially permissible or even a mark of progressive-mindedness or perhaps a social earmark (relating to the entertainment industry, for instance), then culture is teaching people that to be sexually attracted to someone of the same gender is correct. (‘Correct’ does not mean moral nor ‘the only correct mode’; it just means ‘correct’.)
SEX
In a society in which sex is not tightly bound to procreation, the myopic tend to think that the purpose of sex is pleasure and that any other view is unnatural or worse: intolerant. “Well isn’t it?” some readers will ask. Yes, that’s all it is for many readers. But for others, it is an exclusive expression of real love and loyalty. That statement perhaps begs an essay to explain what real love is; this is not the place for that discussion.
