'Burly' straight guy has accident goes into a coma and wakes up gay?

[interesting]

This was very weird, I have a lot of questions for the guy, it's like something so innate come out after such a tragic experience doesn't make it so unbelievable, but then considering that being gay is not a skill one acquires or tap into, it certainly merits the weird factor.

[OrphanPip]

If you believe homosexuality is part of your genetic makeup than this story is bs. This kid was either gay from birth or went off the deep end mentally and adopted a "gay similar" lifestyle. It's seems impossible that your brain can be "rewired" so that anyone can be "transformed" from gay to straight or vice versa. But then again I'm not a doctor or psychologist.

It's not that simple, your genes and your environment contribute to producing your sexual orientation, and your culture and life experiences will effect how you conceptualize your sexual identity. After all, a culture without a conception of gay identity, can't express gay identity in the same way we do, even if same sex sexual desires exist in the population.

What I'm trying to say is that just because your brain can be "rewired" to change your orientation, does not mean that genes do not play a part in determining sexual orientation. In fact, I actually think it reinforces the idea of a physiologically determined sexual attraction.

It's difficult to map how all these things (genes, pre-natal environment, early childhood experiences, neurophysiology, and culture) work together to not only produce the phenomena of sexuality, but also our personal subjective understandings of that phenomena.

All of the more recent studies point at factors that take place in the womb, hormonal, chemical changes in mom while the fetus is developing leading to brain structures that are slightly different in ways we do not clearly understand.

This is why one brother sharing the same genetic code with the other can be born straight, while the other is gay. What went on inside of mom during pregnancy is setting the stage.

Thus it is a brain thing, in the case of this one man, we have an indicator that the brain can be rewired, changing a persons sexual preference. In the rest of us, the brain was wired before we were born.

We have to be cautious to avoid being overly reductionist in either direction. It isn't as simple as it being the pre-natal environment, thus not genetic. After all, what is determining the environment of the womb? Also, we are presented with the problem of genes not having a direct 1 to 1 relationship to phenotype, a gene can be expressed in multiple ways, depending on what other genes it is co-expressed with and the environment. Long story short, it's complicated, like all human behavior, and there's a lot of stuff at play in all of it.

Personally, I think the search for a "gay gene" as a matter of naturalizing homosexuality is problematic from a perspective of social liberty. Why should we care what is natural? Do we ask whether or not it is natural to prefer pepsi to coke? It all seems to go back to an archaic argument of disability, where we are expected to think of being gay as an unfortunate result of fate, so we should tolerate it in the way we tolerate and pity someone with Down's syndrome.

The fact of the matter is that even if gay were a choice, it wouldn't be anyone's business, and there would still be no legitimate reason to moralize it. Look at other societies that have conceptualized of sexuality differently. The Roman Republic viewed sex as act of dominance and submission, thus they allowed sex between men, but only if the bottom was not a citizen. So, if you were a citizen of Rome you were expected as a proper man not to be dominated, but otherwise all sex acts were moral. For the Athenians, it was a matter of excess and control, if you could control your sexual acts, that is make sure you produced offspring and didn't overly indulge in same sex acts, then that was permissible. These kinds of sexual moralities are somewhat alien to us, but they aren't that far off from modern Western values. If we step out of the West, we can find many different ways of thinking about sex that are completely different from how we think of it. These preoccupation with naturalizing sex is a modern Western preoccupation that we should look at as arising from arbitrary biases.

[TuxSky]

Am I the only one who thought it was weird how he was so gung-ho about it? I'm sure it wasn't that sudden but the way the article was written...

Anyways, one part of me just thinks that this is just a crazy way to come-out and "blame" it on a stroke while the other part thinks it's plausible since I believe orientation is determined by the brain. I wonder if they can do a CT scan or something and compare it to a heterosexual and homosexual man's?

[zeon]

One question id like to ask everyone is.... God forbid but what if we had a stroke and suddenly went straight??? Saying goodbye to your partner to be with the oppisite sex??? How horrible would that feel which makes me sympathise with the lad whos gone gay as he had a girlfriend and was getting married and now......... Its cancelled!

Kindest regards

zeon x

[Uke]

Well I think he just got the perfect excuse to come out of closet.

[baldurjonnson]

Well, that's interesting haha

[zeon]

You say he golt the perfect excuse but to me i often think why do people need an excuse to say something all along??? I have heard alot of people in reality say his got the excuse to admit his gay..

[posterpicture]

I love one of the comment
"Been banging my head on a brick wall since I read this. I hope I wake a up a millionaire tomorrow."
This is kind of BS lolll

[oldster]

i am reminded of a story in san fransisco where a lady was on the cable car and a car bumped the cable car it turned her into a total slut and increased he sexual appatite so mucch she would go wwith anyone at any time and any where .
of course her and her husband sued the city for turning her into a sex feind and he sued for aleination of affections caused no end of problems i really don't know if they won a monatary reward or not
i just put in my list of crazy events and let it slip from my mind

[East]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...ds-newsxml

Gonna be honest that is pretty insane. What do you think?

I think it is a load of crap. These are the things some preacher is gonna be quoting to "prove" whatever crap he is spewing...or the "you can change to being straight" clinics can use this story to "prove" the crap they are peddling....