Sexual Orientation Debate: Born or Chose This Way

The advantage of the ‘born this way’ argument about sexual orientation is that there is no way around nature, and it is impossible to change a person’s brain chemistry or genetics. The disadvantage of the argument is that it is limited to issues of biology and does not allow for framing them in the social context. The advantage of the ‘chose to be this way’ approach is that it allows for arguing for freedom of choice and decision-making. The limitation of the argument is that it enables opposition toward ‘untraditional’ sexual orientation as a poor and unacceptable choice for people to make. When negotiating sexual orientation in terms of defining or developing it, using the ‘born this way’ approach is more beneficial because it takes away the possibility for close relatives and friends of an LGBT individual to undermine their choices as illogical or unacceptable. When advancing the LGBT agenda and fighting for the rights of sexual minorities, the ‘born this way’ argument is more useful because of the variety of evidence pointing to the biological underpinnings of sexuality and the need to recognize differences that emerged as a result of nature, which cannot be changed or reversed. On the one hand, the potential benefit of deconstructing sexuality is that it can allow to better understand the nuanced mechanisms by which sexual orientation facilitates certain values and behaviors that are unique to individuals. The risks, on the other hand, imply the possibility of further marginalization based on sexuality due to the increased focus on the peculiarities of sexual orientation, nuanced definitions, and perspectives, which can create a barrier between ‘traditional’ perceptions of orientations and the LGBT agenda.