Do People Choose to Have Same-Gender Sexual Attractions?
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaGenerally, most people don’t start out choosing to feel sexual attraction for persons of the same sex.1This doesn’t necessarily mean that people are born with these desires. Instead, same-gender attractions usually develop out of a combination of factors in a person’s background, often without a person being aware of when and why the desires came about.
Many studies and personal accounts suggest that same-gender sexual attractions often emerge in a context where children feel unaccepted by their same-sex parent. Whether it’s real or perceived, those who eventually feel sexual attractions for the same gender didn’t feel loved by or identify with their same-gender parent. What also frequently shows up in their stories are childhood sexual experiences with the same gender where they felt a strong yet rare sense of love. When these factors are combined, they can confuse emotionally starved children or adolescents about their sexual orientation.
Whether this process of sexual confusion has happened through sexual abuse or peer experimentation, the result is that, while growing up, their God-given desire to feel loved and approved by persons of the same sex were only experienced within a sexual context. Such rare times of feeling loved creates the misunderstanding that they have been destined to fill their desire for same-gender love and approval through sexual interaction. Therein lies the root of the confusion that has deceived countless individuals into feeling sexually attracted to the same gender.
While sexual desires for those of the same sex are not initially chosen, those who do experience these attractions eventually find themselves faced with a different choice. In general terms, they can either try to understand and confront the misunderstanding behind their sexual attractions, or they can accept and embrace their confusion as if it was their natural identity. With help from God and His people, those who choose to understand and confront the misperceptions behind same-sex attraction are most likely to heal from the wounds that led to unnatural desires. This choice will in time allow them to live more as the man or woman God created them to be and to be open to healthy, nonsexual relationships with the same gender. The other choice (accepting the confusion) keeps an individual from discovering God’s design for men and women and usually compels them to give in to their abnormal passions. This is what the Bible refers to as the sin of homosexuality.
Some adults (who never felt sexual desire for the same sex) can become so spent in a sexually promiscuous heterosexual lifestyle that out of desperation they willingly experiment with homosexual behavior with the hope of finding their next “high.” And like any addiction, the more they choose to indulge in the behavior, the more they will crave it. These are likely some of the people the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote:
- “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (Ephesians 4:19).
