06 May 2009

Nature vs. Nurture: Homosexuality

During a break in class, I was reading a Huffington Post article about Joe the Plumber and his (extremely) ill-spoken views on homosexuality.

However, what I thought was most interesting was a comment from a reader who sought out to argue for the GLBT (gay-lesbian-bisexual-transexual) side. He tore into Joe the Plumber's comments by citing research from U.S. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, which found that most "homophobes" have gay tendencies.

Basically I believe the study sets out to get in the"Nature vs. Nurture" argument over homosexuality. Now the reader on Huffington Post definitely thought it to mean "See, we're born with it. And sometimes the people who hate it most, are actually gay and upset and confused."

But to me, this actually WEAKENS the GLBT cause. To me this study says, "Many men have these urges, but they choose not to indulge them."

Once again, I am far from being an expert, but like many people I am just trying to answer the question as to why some people are gay and some people are not. Why is it this way? Maybe what I just wrote about is part of the answer. Possibly, it enrages people who think differently.

Either way, I think both the religious-right and the GLBT community have not definitively answered the question surrounding sexual orientation. Something to think about.

1 comment:

Marge Bjork said...

so interesting. Maybe if we acknowledged more openly that some people have homosexual feelings but do not act on them and that's OK, we could have less animosity and more healthy discussions.

I also think it's funny that Joe was using the dictionary definition of queer to support his argument.