Sooo, my older brother is 25 and we both went inactive in college. Our parents are still super TBM. He always dated women (and I know he didn't do the whole "purity" thing because we used to live together and his girlfriends would stay with him) and never seemed gay. Now in the past year, he's had 2 boyfriends and suddenly says he isn't really attracted to women anymore, though he says that he used to be and thought he was in love with them (he was engaged before). So it's not like he never liked being with women; he says he just really did change. I've got zero problem with gay people, but can stuff like this really happen?? Can your sexuality just totally change like that, seemingly at the drop of a hat?? I'm glad he seems happy and I'm trying to help him out because our parents are obviously not supportive whatsoever, but this isn't the usual coming out story and I've just never heard of anything like this before--though I've been sheltered in the Morridor so I guess I haven't heard of lots of things.

I guess I'm also confused because he's 25, and it seems like somebody would be pretty set in their sexuality by then, but like I said, maybe I don't know anything.

and there are soooo many "degrees" of sexuality. Your brother may have just now acted out on feelings that has always had but denied...bi-sexuality is certainly not an aberration.
it sounds like you were/are caught off guard. Oh well...just love him for who he is...which it sounds like you are doing! the "rents" on the other hand...well hope that gets worked out...hey it is only sex...people in the US make way too much of what people do with their own lives!

Along with show tunes!!!

Indeed. President Kimball cleared that up a long time ago. It usually starts with self-abuse, then mutual masturbation, then other forms of depravity.

Some people have even been known to have sex with Raptors.

MARCIONITE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Indeed. President Kimball cleared that up a long
> time ago. It usually starts with self-abuse, then
> mutual masturbation, then other forms of
> depravity.
>
> Some people have even been known to have sex with
> Raptors.

I know some people who consider singing show tunes a form of depravity!

Or they can discover they've been in denial. Or they can free themselves from social and peer pressure so that they see themselves more clearly. Or they can be somewhere in the gray area of sexuality.

He may have been bisexual, but repressing his homosexual tendencies all these years. Or he could have been closing his eyes with women, and pretending they were boys.

The way it's been explained to me is human sexuality is on a spectrum moving from straight to bi sexual to gay. So it would seem some people are able to choose. For me there is no choice. I am straight. I can under stand what makes a woman attractive and I do feel jealous of it, no desire. I am more turned on in romantic movie scenes with first a man and a woman.... then a man and a man. If there's a romance developing between a woman and a woman... it doesn't affect me. I take that to indicate I am straight.

each person has their own unique take on what sexually flips their switches. Human sexuality is not in any way binomial - it is a continuum that is not at all well-defined by the terms in common usage: heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual (or straight, bi-, gay, if you will). People continue to discover their sexual interests throughout life: there is not hard, fast rule that says something must be committed to and stuck with from age 16 or whatever. The scenario you describe is actually not uncommon in Mormon settings, due to the very high cost attached to deviating from the all-encompassing social controls one is compelled to work within.

Here are some possibilities to consider:

* Maybe you are simply observing him becoming more comfortable in his own skin, some aspects of which he may not have been willing to look at within himself before.

* Maybe he got tired of pretending to be something he is not simply for the sake of convention.

* Maybe he wanted the experience but has decided to broaden his perspectives in another direction to see what that is like.

* If he enjoyed previous sexual encounters with women but now says he prefers men it may be because he thought that was what was expected of him, and it may be because his sexuality resides more in the realm of bi- or pan-sexual.

* Maybe he wondered what all the fuss was about in both cases (as seen on TV, daily life, etc.,) and has the intellectual/emotional capacity to try both to see which holds more interest for him.

In the end, it sounds like you are supportive of him, and I hope your brother is not encountering serious bouts of depression and self-destruction. If he is happy and learning to love himself for who he really is, then it is a net positive for him and everyone around him. The Mormon church really works hard to make all who do not fit their very narrow definition of sexuality hate themselves, which usually results in some tragedy.

Humans are sexual creatures and it's true our attractions can change over time...not just from one sex to the other, but think of how your attractions have changed over time to different body types, different skin/hair/eye colors, etc.

For many people it's not a case of being totally straight or totally gay.

http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/research/ak-hhscale.html

Does it matter?

understanding in the area since it affects someone I love.

A lot of us grew up so sheltered from reality that we don't know how much we don't know that everyone else takes for granted. This post seemed like a simple request for information.

We change physically, emotionnally, psychologically, I don't know why it could be different sexually.
We are such complexe beings that I wouldn't be suprised to find out that there can be such a change.

You have to remember that it's not all about sex!

I (female) dated boys, liked boys, married and stayed married for 28 years. Was never head over heels for the guy. Sex was okay. I wondered if I was gay, because I had crushes on women, dreams about women, etc. I would conclude that I wasn't because, after all, I was married and life was okay.
It took me all this time for things to build up until I couldn't stand it anymore. When I finally kissed a girl, good God! Life hasn't been the same.

I would have been doing good to figure this out at age 25! So do not question your brother. You don't make up this kind of stuff. yea, he's making a choice...a choice to follow his true feelings.

The church and society put enormous pressure on folks to play the straight game. And most of us try to do the "right thing" by towing the line. Please continue to support your brother.

I do know that George Michael was with women in his early years and then was gay later in life. So maybe it's possible, but I could be wrong.

You can change any part of your life at any time. I think everyone on this planet can "become gay". Any college girl is 2 Zima's away from it and any man is 1 year in jail from it.

I don't think it should matter what your brother prefers.

I'm not really qualified to answer the original question so I'll just contribute annecdotal evidence. Of all my friends and associates who are gay (probably 15 or so) none of them say it was a choice.

...Oh yeah, he reminds me of me when I first came out.

Once upon a time time I thought I was heterosexual because society told me that I would grow up, meet a girl and get married and that is what I was doing. I hadn't married but I was waiting and searching for the right girl.

I thought I was not gay because being gay was <insert long list of negative gay stereo types here> I was not that.

This sort of thinking lasted for some time after I started having sex with men. I was hetero because I still wanted to marry a girl even though I was no longer having sex with women, but I was not gay because I was not <insert long list of negative gay stereo types here> even tough I was only having sex with men.

Because I thought being gay was <insert long list of negative gay stereo types here> and I was not any of those things, I went trough a horrible, painful coming out process. It is one of the reasons I take such a hard stand on people that come here asking is so-&-so is gay because of <insert long list of negative gay stereo types here>. Such thinking is not helpful and is often hurtful. The point being, I had trouble fully admitting I was gay because I had a messed up idea of what being gay was.

It took a long time to figure things out. It took a lot of self examination before I could give up the notion that I was ever hetero. It took a long time and a lot of struggle against heteros and a lot of gays to get past the being gay means you are <insert long list of negitive gay stereo types here>.

My point is, just because he has started to acknowledge that he is gay, does not mean he has processed all of the ramifications of that admission.

+1 I am glad you wrote that MJ. I totally relate, but it also helps me understand a lot of your responses to some posts, which often times catch me off guard.

I worked 3 years on a gay and lesbian suicide hotline where almost every call related in some whay to not being able to live up to religious ideals. I also worked about 3 years with homeless gay and lesbian teens. Some of these kids were kicked out of their homes when they were 14 or 15 for being gay. Add in the bigotry I saw at the begining of the AIDS epidemic...

Most people that have gotten to know me and heard my story and my experiance come to understand my zero tolerance to anti-gay prejudice and reliance on sterotypes. Many, after learning what I have been trough adopt the same stance.

I am so glad there are people like you for those kids. It must have been rough.

post on this thread. I didn't know how to respond in terms of "NO" you can't change to being gay--I was happy blueorchid had answered.

I may not be gay, but I have untold anger inside because of what I've seen my ex go through and what the LDS church put all of us through. Just recently someone posted about a couple in some ward and they were involved in the music and had a baby and he/she knew the husband was gay. I will have been married 28 years come September and this is STILL going on. AND people think the lds church has made progress?

Being gay is a mind bender when you are young.

Being gay and mormon when you are young is a mind bender on acid.

By the time I was eight I was crazy for boys. I still got crushes on girls, but they were a head thing. The crushes on boys were a below the belt thing.

By the time I was fifteen or so I thought I was trapped between two worlds. I honestly thought I could only fall in love with girls but only be sexually attracted to guys.

It was a big problem because I am on the far end of the scale if there is one, and I could never ever stomach even the thought of anything sexual with a girl. I didn't even want to kiss them. Yet I would get these puppy love crushes.

I knew I was gay. But I was gay all on my own. Some of you will know what that means--especially if you were gay and mormon--what a combination!

I felt this way, caught between two worlds, all the way through my mission and most of BYU. Then, in the Wilkinson center, from across a crowded room at an art show I catch someone's eye--a really hot guy. And we held that gaze for that billionth of a second too long, and you know.

We were with other people and did not meet, a few more longing glances and that was it. I went through hell tracking him down, I can't believe I had the nerve. I was shy and introverted par exelance. I will never forget that nervous phone call, the first touch, the first real kiss. I woke up in love.

Finally I had the real deal and I was never turning back.

I think your real sexuality is always there from birth, but with the maze of rules society and the mormon religion specifically heap on top of it, there can be a lot of hide and seek on the way to finding it.

There is a tendency to say someone is either gay or straight. Why this should be a black and white issue when everything else seems to come in shades and continuums, I don't know. Frankly, I think people have varying sexualities. It's not politically correct to say that a person can wilfully guide it one way or another, but I think it can and is done.

The key is, that should be totally an individual choice, not forced by anyone. I feel good about living as straight, but have had same-sex experiences earlier. I am not ashamed of that at all and accept that I have felt same sex attraction. It isn't an issue that I even think about very much.

I once dated a man in college (we are still great friends now) who had a very brief relationship with a man. They had sex once. He (my boyfriend) had exclusively been with only women before and after the relationship. Right before the homosexual relationship, he had been rejected horribly by a woman he was in a long-term relationship with and desperately loved. He thought of trying to date men for awhile. He only dated the one guy, but after the sex, he realized he wasn't actually sexually attracted to men.

Masturbation makes men gay. Consult "Miracle of Forgiveness."

The more I think about it, provided it is genetic, homosexuality is probably the result of the chemical makeup of the brain. If you shifted the chemicals in the right way, you could probably make anyone change their preference. That said, the amount of drugs needed to do so, might be lethal.

Then again, back in 2011, there was a leaked report in the mainstream media that the Pentagon had developed a Gay Bomb, that could cause all the enemies in a given area to not only become gay, but unable to stop themselves from having sex with each other. Of course I believe the real story behind this was a propaganda stunt to try and make homophobic radical Muslims reluctant to join their brethren in the fight in Afghanistan.

? the thought that people might change their sexual preference seems to be somehow 'threatening' to some people...

I really don't understand why.

people change likes & dislikes all the time:

food, friends, cars, etc.

I think the idea that sexual identity 'must be' deeply imbedded in ALL people is erreoneous.

I can tell you that it is not the same as changing what I like in regards to food, friends and cars.

The false idea that people can change their sexuality has lead to this sort of stuff:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwUTVQ4mfNE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-8BmFwGIc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeMKmnMfNUo&feature=related

I became gay the night my mom took me to the ballet to see Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fontayne dancing Sleeping Beauty in downtown Rome. It was a Turning Point for an 8 year old boy who had never seen such a glorious thing as a young Russian dancer in white tights. OMG, I'm fanning myself in the memory of it.

But in all honesty, it could have been seeing Aida at the Baths of Caracalla when I was 9. Such a spectacle up close and personal at a tender age was bound to make me gay. Oh Aida, how I wish you wouldn't have died at the end because now I feel like I'm saddled with being a drama queen and a lover of flowing robes and fancy costumes for the rest of eternity.

La fatal pietra sovra me si chiuse. (The fatal stone now closes over me.) Morir! Si pura e bella. (To die! So pure and lovely!)

Yes, yes, one can be made gay by seeing ballet and opera at too young of an age when the delicate wiring of our brains to our sex organs is still in progress. Oh Rudolf, how I despise you for ruining my life with your white tights. Oh Aida, you have ruined me for now and all eternity. A curse upon you I cast.