Nested Reply @son-of-satire

You put forth a cogent position. It appears to me that you have a bit of knowledge in the area of human psychology, vis-à-vis neuro-plasticity, a very interesting topic that I admittedly have little knowledge about.

Thanks for participating in this thought-provoking discussion, btw. I truly appreciate it.

I think for every person trying to fit in, there is another fighting for uniqueness, especially in today's world were the public education system cripples our sense of individuality before we even get the chance to see it develop. I strongly hold the position that a number of homosexuals and transgenders are driven to their decision by a desire to stand out amongst the crowd after leading a life of essential invisibility.

That first point, to which I wholeheartedly agree, is the culprit, regardless of whether sexual orientation is strictly genetic (choice is ruled out) or not. I think your next statement takes a rather large leap from that foundation, and I'm not so convinced that people would be able to physiologically change themselves to such a degree (completely flipping their sexual orientation) by mere will , but perhaps there is something to the neuro-plasticity case that you brought up later on in your post.

Where some would hear bigotry and and end up a bigot themselves, there are some who empathize with the victims of this bigotry more than with the bigot. If one has also suffered persecution or ridicule in their life, then that empathy can manifest itself in a strong connection to the victims (in this case homosexuals). Now for most, this would be nothing more than a shared understanding of the plight of life, yet for others, that shared persecution could create the illusion that one must also be gay and that's why they have suffered in the same way. What we consciously think about, is only 10% of what actually goes on in our mind. The unconscious mind makes more decisions for us than we are aware, and is for the most part, the true driving force behind our life choices and the path we take.

I agree on your statements about the unconscious mind, but I posit that the case you brought up about certain people being predisposed to "becoming" gay through their ways of empathizing with homosexuals are latently gay; that's to say, they were born with a predisposition to homosexuality. In other words, they may not have had any choice in becoming gay and this unique manifestation of empathy was perhaps only the circumstantial "gateway" to pass the message from the unconscious to the conscious. They may well have discovered it in some other way had they not done so via the empathy pathway.

Think of it like an urge that's dormant from the perspective of the conscious mind, due to applying various psychological mechanisms of suppression, but alive and dripping with anticipation to be realized and expressed at the unconscious level. There's a certain type of pressure there that builds up over time and must eventually be acknowledged, or else it will find some way to uncontrollably leak out. You could say empathizing with homosexuals is a type of "faucet" for that realization to leak into the conscious awareness, but there are a million and one other ways that it can happen.

And it's my position that the only reason people ever feel they "discover" their homosexual tendencies is because they were conditioned by their upbringing to hate, fear and suppress it. The truth of it rests in the unconscious, irregardless of conscious awareness of it, or lack thereof.

The symptoms of suppression can be so strong that a homosexual may not even realize that he/ she is such, whilst others around them are very aware of them being homosexual or, at the very least, exhibiting strong homosexual signals that leave them with little doubt. This is because, as you mentioned, the unconscious mind controls most of our movements (both of thought and action). The mind of a man in denial may not allow itself, for a time, to see the signs, but, for those not under such hypnosis, the signs can be overtly obvious. In any case, it will eventually come to the surface. How it's dealt with when it surfaces will depend a lot on how open one is to accepting it and this openness, or lack thereof, comes mostly down to what the person in question was conditioned to believe about it and how deeply rooted those beliefs became over time.