Nobody is ‘born that way,’ gay historians say

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/19/nobody-is-born-that-way-gay-historians-say/

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An important point that is stressed in the article is these historians aren't saying that the inclinations that lead to people self-identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight aren't innate, but rather that the social constructs that lead Western societies to pigeonhole people into those particular sexual identities are a relatively recent phenomenon originating around 150 years ago.

Since a discussion of how we define ourselves is a core portion of philosophy, I placed this here rather than on the history board.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Left-wing humanities PhDs don't believe that biology influences society.  They have a large stake in that idea because they want to study society and language, instead of biology because they don't know how to study biology.  They have a bunch of dog-eared copies of Foucault books, not microscopes.  So, no surprise that they want to say sexuality is completely a social construction.  Obviously, that's garbage.

It's not only garbage, it's not what the article or the historians it refers to are saying.  What it is saying that historically, even in those cultures that were accepting of same-sex attraction or even in those that embraced it, there was no social construct that was analogous to that of "gay" as it is commonly understood today.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't really understand the point this author is trying to make.  He argues that people aren't born with a sexual orientation, yet he acknowledges that sexual orientation is something that is beyond the individual's control.  Even if nobody is "born that way," why does the social construct theory become the default position?

My take is that he's arguing is that these social constructs, such as the concept of "gay" as a distinct sexual orientation, or even the idea that there are distinct sexual orientations defined solely by sexual attraction and no other factors is a relatively recent phenomenon historically speaking.  Hence sexual orientation is something that is beyond someone's control only if one accepts that the LGBS pigeonholes are the way that society must categorize people.  With a different set of pigeonholes, some currently in the same hole would be in different ones and some now in the different holes might be in the same.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My take is that he's arguing is that these social constructs, such as the concept of "gay" as a distinct sexual orientation, or even the idea that there are distinct sexual orientations defined solely by sexual attraction and no other factors is a relatively recent phenomenon historically speaking.  Hence sexual orientation is something that is beyond someone's control only if one accepts that the LGBS pigeonholes are the way that society must categorize people.  With a different set of pigeonholes, some currently in the same hole would be in different ones and some now in the different holes might be in the same.

So what's the matter with that?  We may not yet have a clear understanding of sexual orientation, but it's far better than what it was two thousand years ago.  We know that homosexuality exists in animals (which I noticed the author doesn't touch on) and we have very advanced concepts of the body, mind, and sex compared to even a century ago.  I don't see what's particularly objectionable about the way we categorize people or how people categorize themselves, the latter being which society is starting to embrace.

Doesn't the idea that we are using sexual preference as a primary means of categorizing people strike you as potentially problematic?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It’s not as if society divides along hair colour, though there are issues of ‘preference’ involved even in that.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e11-ginger-kids

My unfamiliarity with Marxist philosophy limits my ability to comment on the rest of your post.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

That's kind of a cop-out though.  I think you mean TL;DR.  But, since you started this thread.  I'm curious what your interest is in this article and this subject.

No, I definitely read, but since he was throwing some philosophical terms around I hadn't paid much thought to, I didn't want to toss verbage around willy-nilly, lest I make some boneheaded mistakes with the jargon.  However, I will do so some of that later in this post.

I came across this as a link on a another website (I forget which one; I'm not a regular reader of the Daily Caller, so it certainly wasn't on that site) and thought it would stimulate some discussion here.

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Certainly not what I'm driving at.  I do think we tend to place an excessive emphasis on sexuality of all sorts in our culture and that as a byproduct this has led to undue emphasis being placed upon sexual orientation as a means of categorizing people. I don't have a solution to offer to that problem, and certainly as long as we do engage in this form of categorization, we need to ensure all categories receive equitable treatment.

Andrew described himself as an essentialist, one who feels that the categories we use are largely natural and contrasted that POV with constructionists who feel that the categories are largely social constructs.  Rather than being either constructionist or essentialist, I'd consider myself an existentialist who places emphasis upon people as individuals rather than as categories.  Regardless of whether the categories are natural or constructed, they are still arbitrary ways of organizing people into separate groups instead of an interconnected web of individuals.  So my concern about what I perceive as an undue emphasis on sexuality is largely because it leads to viewing people as objects belonging to a particular category be it blonde bombshells or burly bears rather than as individuals.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What do you mean by arbitrary?  Attracted to the opposite sex vs. attracted to the same sex vs. attracted to both sexes, those are descriptive categories that are applied to people based on discernible traits.  It's not arbitrary at all.

They're arbitrary in the sense that people feel obligated to include their sexual orientation as one of their primary characteristics.  That obligation is a main part of the arbitrariness I refer to.  What's also arbitrary is the idea that it is all versus rather than a continuum.

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Starting here, starting now, let me point out that even tho you claim to not associate certain other characteristics with what you consider to be a primary characteristic of yourself, being gay, others do because of the arbitrary association of certain other characteristics with that primary characteristic.  It would be nice if that weren't so, but it is, so not everything is going to come up roses or daffodils.

(Incidentally, I like show tunes and I am not gay.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You aren't born gay.....

Um... so are people born heterosexual?

What does that have to do with anything?  People are born sad because they've just been pushed out of the only place they will ever know where their every need is always cared for with out ever having to wait for anything.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

philosophical progressivism

Quick question: Is this the whole "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" thing?

Yup. This quote is one of the best summaries of my thought I've ever heard.

What is "justice"?

It certainly has been the case that society has grown more complex and nuanced as it encompasses a larger number of people.  That growth has been both contemporaneous due to improvements in communication and transportation as well just plain larger population and temporal due to improvements in record keeping.

But unless one argues that a more complex and nuanced society inevitably facilitates justice I fail to see any evidence that society has become more just (or less just). Rather what I see is a temporal bias that creates the illusion of a more just society because the groups we favor today are favored today more than at any other time in recorded history. But that's simply because those are the groups we favor today.  Groups that in the past were thought to be getting just favor then may or may not be favored today. Further, I see no reason to think that the groups we think today are being justly favored will necessarily retain that favor in the future.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Here's the basic reasoning that I disagree with:

Other and prior cultures did not understand there to be something known as "homosexuality."  Therefore, "sexual orientations are not innate." 

I'm totally fine with the first point.  I think it's illogical to make the leap between the two.

It depends upon what one means by "sexual orientation".  If one means by that simply the characteristics people gravitate towards when deciding who they would like to boff, then yeah it's an illogical leap.  But if "sexual orientation" includes other psychological and sociological characteristics that a society layers upon sexual attraction to construct a framework that provided individuals what is necessary to channel such feelings into spontaneous action, then it does make some sense.  Of course, things can still make logical sense without having any common sense.