Re: Homosexuality
no professional scientist in the last 40 years has even claimed to have found any evidence that queerness is always genetic in all cases. Even the highly publicized identical twin studies by Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard, which were so often touted as evidence for a "gay gene," never found that any more than 52% of the identical twins of queer people were queer. The other 48% of identical twins of queer men were not queer. This leaves at least 48% of the queer community unaccounted for by genetic theories. Is it so hard to imagine that a few of those 48% might want to lay claim to having made a choice?
It's also very possible to argue (although certainly not all queer by choice people would argue this) that even the 52% of identical twins of queer people who were also queer themselves can be accounted for by entirely nonbiological causes. Identical twins are exposed to extremely similar social environments and besides, in a world where queerness is so widely believed to be genetic, if your identical twin comes out to you as queer then that's got to drastically increase your likelihood of intensely questioning your sexual preference, and which in turn must surely increase the likelihood of discovering same-sex attractions which you might never have discovered if your identical twin hadn't caused you to look for them.
If a person freely chooses to have no children, that is not a defect and no one should attempt to "cure" the person of their decision. But if a person is biologically incapable of having children, then it's perfectly understandable that scientists would try to cure them of it. The same goes for queerness. If a person is born biologically incapable of being attracted to the opposite sex, it's virtually impossible to deny that in evolutionary terms this is a defect. But if a person freely chooses to love the same sex, then this choice should only be judged on the basis of whether it makes themself and the one they love happy. When we tell the world that people choose to be queer, we are saying that queer people aren't afraid to have their choices judged on this basis. they know that we and our lovers are happy in our love.
Perhaps the most important contribution of queer by choice people to the fight against homophobia is that when they say that they chose to be queer, they force people to realize that it's possible to want to be queer. For too long homophobes have painted homosexuals as one-sided creatures who experience nothing but nonstop pain. To paint them this way is to paint them as something less than full and well-rounded human beings, and they paint them this way specifically to scare others into repressing their own potential queerness. The reality is that there's much to enjoy about being a member of the queer community and those who are queer by choice want homophobes to realize and acknowledge that.
I think it is horrible to make homosexuals feel like they were born a specific way and "couldn't help" being the way they are. no one questions heterosexuals and asks them why are you the way you are. i think that one can be queer (homosexual) by choice and that is more liberating than saying "i was born this way" there is no one genetic component to homosexuality.