Dom asks: If there was a pill you could take that would make you not-gay, would you take it?

My reply: Well an honest question and I think the honest answer is absolutely never as in not ever. I have always thought of the old Tom Robinson number "sing if you're glad to be gay" and he always looked so damned miserable when he did it. It hasn't all be "gladness" but I think of it as karma and not a bad one either. :2hands:

regards

G.

To answer your opening question, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I've though about it before, even wrote stories about the topic (discreetly, using a supernatural monster as a stand-in for homosexuality so as to not rattle my creative writing class), and I honestly don't know the answer. The thing is, I know that if I had the option to alter my unborn child to swing the sexual odds towards heterosexuality, then I almost certainly WOULD do it. While I don't know if I can give up my own identity, being gay for me has been a mixed damnation, and something I would spare someone else, if I could.

I'd feel guilty as hell for taking that choice, one I have said I cannot even make for myself, away from my child, but I would do it anyways.

Well. I had hit writer's block for my anthology story. This has spurred on a new possibility.

NO, I most definitely wouldn't take such a pill, and if anyone did give me one I'd be looking around for the "gay pills".

NO, I wouldn't change the orientation of my unborn child

And NO, I don't really care why people are gay. I never use the "but it's something people are born with and can't change" line of defense. To me the correct response if someone says "being gay is a choice" is to glare and them and ask "yeah, so what?".

Just my gut reaction; I get a little grumpy when people treat being gay as some kind of a curse. Maybe it isn't anything to be "PROUD" of (or maybe it is, whatever), but it certainly isn't anything to be ashamed of.

don't worry, Dom. Somehow I don't really believe we'll lose ground in the fight for civil rights, and even if we do we can all become Canadian or something

Take care and have an awesome day!

Kevin

I don't believe they'll be able to alter someone's sexual orientation after they are born so I guess the only debate left is whether to prevent homosexuality in an unborn child. Personally, I never would take those measures.... Why find problems with a kid before its even taken its first breathe? AND its not even a problem. Society just percieves it to be and that'll wear of eventually anyway.

don't worry, Dom. Somehow I don't really believe we'll lose ground in the fight for civil rights, and even if we do we can all become Canadian or something

Come to Autralia instead... sure we bann gay marriage, adoption by same sex parents etc. but HEY! An aussie gov is also waayyyy too science-phobic to allow any type of medication that will interfere with well.... anything really. Sleeping pills are prescription only and there is even a debate about how evil they are now.

If there was a pill you could take that would make you not-gay, would you take it? I mean, sure, it might be expensive, or an inconvenience. If it

I would never take a pill to be str8, ugh, I couldn't see them working long term if there was one anyways, you would get urges, plus, some things wouldn't change

God does have a sense of humor.

And if you don't believe that, Do as Carlos Mencia suggests. Go to Wal*Mart and look at people.

That is all.

God does have a sense of humor.

 

And if you don't believe that, Do as Carlos Mencia suggests. Go to Wal*Mart and look at people.

That is all.

Excuse me. I shop at Wal-Mart regularly...especially for groceries. Most thrifty people do. As a rule, however, I don't look at the other people there.

It's a desperate misunderstanding of the science if a person can think that sexual orientation is ever going to be a thing that can be simply ordered up the way you want it to be. When they do figure out the genetic component, they'll find that there is no "gay gene:" there are several different locations where different influences can be brought to bear on the sexuality of a person. Then there are other factors which are biological but not genetic: and other factors which are environmental -- and environmental breaks down into different things too.

I'd never even try to order up the sexuality of a person, even if I thought it could be done. There's just too much valuable cultural and personal material that comes from unexpected combinations of character elements. I'd genetically engineer a lot of things for my offspring if I could: their sugar and fat metabolism: their resistance to disease: their calcium metabolism: tendencies to auto-immune disorders, vulnerability to cancer, defense against vascular disease, tendency to develop dementias -- even their eyesight. But personality characteristics -- grit, maybe, and maybe altruism, but nothing else. Why should I try to determine who they're going to want to have sex with, or who they're going to love? Who knows bit what some love affair I could not predict might have a ripple effect to cause some huge breakthrough in the effort to save the world? Or just produce an operetta -- or a happy home. I don't know.

I can never forget that sixty-odd years ago people tried to rid the landscape of every vestige of people like me -- not just the Jewish thing, but also the communist thing (it's not genetic, but it sure is heritable, as my family proves). So I don't approve of ridding the landscape of types of people.

What an interesting question. This should be on the front page, and not in Dom's blog.

What would I do? Well, since I grew up trying to ignore my feelings and pretending that I could cure my sexual orientation by simply willing myself to be straight, it's rather complicated. I grew up thinking homosexuality was a mental disorder, so certainly I could cure it myself. If someone had offered me a pill when I was a youth, damn right I would have taken it. The only glitch would have been in getting up the courage to ask my parents or my doctor so I could get the pill. That is, assuming I could have even brought myself to admit I was gay back then. :wacko:

Now that I'm middle aged and married, the question almost seems moot. If taking the pill would eliminate my attraction to men and spruce up my sex life with my wife, I would be sorely tempted, but I would definitely hate to lose what I have here, and what I've found in writing gay fiction. I love my wife and I have no intention of ever having gay sex, so being able to "correct" my feelings would be nice. The very fact that my life ended up the way it did is reason enough to give this serious consideration. If my parents could have spared me the anguish I had growing up by doing something when I was in utero, I hope they would have done it. Of course, things were different growing up in the seventies. If I were growing up today, I'd like to think that my parents and I would have been more accepting.

Would I as a parent try to change a child's sexual orientation in utero? Sadly, I think I'd have to be selfish there. As much as I'd like to be open minded and accepting, it would be a lot easier to change one child than to change society. Until society can be as accepting as it should be, why would I want to put my child through the potential abuse they might suffer at the hands of the religious right and bigotry? This issue is not a whole lot different than the exodus of people to the suburbs. A lot of us believe in city life and in the goals of urban renewal, and the only way to truly improve the quality of city schools is to send children from stable homes there, but when our kids reach school age, the city house always seems to go on the market. No parent wants to make their own kid a sacrificial lamb.

Now the interesting thing to me is that if a scientific basis for homosexuality is actually ever found, wouldn't it be rather hypocritical for a man of the cloth to want to change it? If God designed us this way, why should we try to tamper with God's will?

If there was a pill you could take that would make you not-gay, would you take it?

When I was in high school? In a heartbeat. I was so terrified of being gay that I could absolutely not admit to myself that I really was, and was so guilty about the images that came into my mind during, ahem, night pleasures, that I made myself sick. If there was a magic pill to be normal, I would have done anything for it.

In college, after I admitted, to myself at least, that I really was "that way"? Almost certainly. Because I just *knew* my parents would be unhappy, that my mom would be sad at not getting grandkids, that my dad would never speak to me again.

After I was introduced to the person with whom I fell in love over the phone, and have lived with ever since? Not a chance. I'd never give up what I have now, and can't imagine not being "me".

(And my mom and dad both love him, and, by the way, had known - or at least suspected - I was gay since before I was in high school.)

- dfp

Topics like this always scare me because it always exposes the underbelly; that we haven't even accepted it for ourselves yet. Sure, we can come out, act on our sexual orientations, or just accept it as part of our lives that needs to be put aside, but it almost comes across as selfish. What about the future generation's choice in the matter? What are we doing on a daily basis, if there's general agreement that we don't forsee a normalization of alternative sexualities, all trauma and pain? We're kind of stuck between revelling in being on the edge and being treated like any other person, and everyone seems to have a new idea about what to do.

I, for one, don't think it's our decision to make so rashly, or have it hinged on the nature/nurture debate. It isn't a problem to be "solved" by regulating it. If it really was so difficult and we were able to cure it all by medicating it, it would only be fooling ourselves to think that it doesn't exist. Wouldn't there need to be someone to identify it, in order to be treated? Things like this aren't easily masked over, like it's some fad or fashion.

It's as if, I would rather never know why it happens, as I don't see its existence harming humanity or life on this planet. Really, it isn't that big a deal in the scheme of things whether it was induced naturally and/or artificially. It's like asking what life and all its profundities all exist for. Like we need it all to be filled with meaning, cause and effect.

We exist. These abstract defintions and developed parts of our identity exist. What we make of it is all we've got to go on.

Or maybe a patch. Hmmm...wonder where you would have to stick it for the greatest efficacy.

I wonder more what withdrawl and cravings would look like. There's a nagging voice in my head that doubts I would be marking my calendar to pick up a new pack.