Sexuality and Sexual Identity

Sexuality and sexual identity is a multi-faceted reality. People like to think that a man is a man and a woman is a woman - but this simply isn't so. I can't give a definitive account of the matter, of course. Apart from anything else I can't imagine what a transgender individual feels like when they come to believe that they are a woman trapped in a man's body or vice-versa. I don't feel like a man trapped in a man's body - I feel like me, who happens to be male. I imagine that if my body suddenly changed gender it would be a shock, but one that I'd adapt and get used to it.

I suppose that gender identity is determined by some area of the brain; and if it so happens that this is "wired" as female while the body is phenotypically male, then one would feel like "a woman trapped in a man's body". The soul is the life of the body and would have its gender identity fixed by the wiring of the brain.

Sexuality is a much easier question. Being male is nothing to do with who one finds sexually interesting. I am very definitely male,
by which I mean that I have a male body and am happy about this.
Of course, I have some "feminine" personality traits - as do most men. Again, I would put all this down to brain-wiring. Whether it is genetic or congenital-developmental or a result of early socialisation, I neither know nor care.

The question "why would God have made or allowed some people to be gay?" is no different in from from "why would God have made or allowed some people to be left-handed or negro or short or blond?" It only seems different if you start off with the idea that being a breeder is "morally normative", but this is an unsupportable premise.

Forgetting God, for a while, the better question is: "given that being gay clearly reduces the chance that one will have offspring", how is it that there is such a high proportion of gay people in the human population? Even 1% would be huge, for such an evolutionary disfavoured variation. It seems to me that either being gay indirectly favoured the genes of gay individuals (via some advantage to their family or tribe) or else the genes for being gay (or else those genes or memes which encourage parental behaviours that make children gay) have some accidental evolutionary advantage - like the gene that gives rise to sickle-cell anaemia.

I think the idea that one "becomes homosexual" sometime after one is an infant is ridiculous. That would imply that one "becomes heterosexual" at a similar time. No-one ever recalls such a process. Lots of people remember discovering the truth about themselves.

Being gay is not a "sexual preference" it is a fact about oneself. Being left-handed may be a "preference to use the left hand", but not in any normal sense of the word "preference", more in the sense that you and I have a preference to walk on our feet rather than our hands. As far as I am concerned, all the physical characteristics of women that breeder men find attractive I consider to be defects of form and aesthetically unfortunate.

The "unaffectionate father" theory is really silly. I admit that my father was not affectionate towards me (he was a good father, though) and neither was the father of my partner affectionate towards him - but this is very common and proves nothing. My partner's two brothers (one his twin) are both heterosexual.

I had no desire for my father to be more affectionate towards me and I have never looked for a father substitute in my life. My preference is for men who are younger than me, who I can look after. I have a well developed "mothering" instinct :-)

As far as I am concerned, it is easier for homosexual activity to be moral than for heterosexual; because heterosexual vaginal intercourse always risks conception, which may not be an appropriate outcome. Hence heterosexual intercourse is more liable to be imprudent than homosexual intercourse. Hence the conventional requirement that heterosexual intercourse should only take place within marriage. It is far from clear (I take no definite position on this) that a similar restriction should apply to homosexual intercourse.