I had a particularly heated discussion once, with a hetero woman that was sympathizer of gay rights, she was VERY convinced that sexual orientation was fixed, she told me that there is no such thing as "ex-gay", and all "ex-gay" are just closeted homosexuals and will become gay again given enough time.

I gave her some articles about ex-gays complaining about receiving MORE flak after becoming ex-gay than when they were gays (including there is a existance of... closeted hetero, people that were gay, and do not assume to be hetero because both hetero and homosexuals then attack them, assuming he is still a sort of traitor gay), this still did not convinced her.

Then I showed a discourse by Luiz Mott (leading gay rights activist in Brazil), where he claims that he was hetero, and now is gay by his own choice, and that he was NOT born gay.

This STILL did not convinced her, she told me that Luiz Mott was a liar, but only in that case (and that everything else he says is true).

Sometimes people disappoint me.

That is a truly remarkable claim that a person with one sexual orientation could choose to change it and become a different orientation.

However, when I examine the discourse in question, I find that the claim is false: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive//ldn/2010/may/10051...

"Although Mott attributed change to people who were "not 100% homosexual," he made it clear ... that he believes that "all human beings have, as Freud said it, a bisexual desire," and that sexual preference is something fluid and changeable."

The claim that people are by default bisexual and choose between two preferences is very much different from the claim that people with one well-defined sexual orientation may arbitrarily change it. The latter doesn't hold up.

When I was coming out, uniformly the response from mature members of the LGBT community was that defining myself was not useful, and that it wasn't important to stress out over whether I self identified as straight, bisexual, gay, queer, or whatever. What's important is that you're happy, that you're not preventing yourself from forming romantic and sexual relationships with people you want to do so with, and that you're not facing discrimination for those relationships.

I've personally had probably a dozen friends who thought they might be bisexual later decide that they were straight (and many who decided they weren't). I applauded them for their open mindedness in seriously considering it, and experimenting to see the truth of the matter (we were all scientists and engineers, after all). After that process, I am certainly more confident that they are actually straight than if they'd just assumed it to be the case without evidence.

So yeah, in my experience people are "born gay" "born straight" or "born flexible". Some people "born straight" experiment with bisexuality, and end up the better for it. Some people "born gay" experiment with heterosexuality, and end up the better for it. And unlike some, I do believe in bisexuality, or being attracted to someone based on personality alone. It's much more rare than a fixed sexuality, but I've definitely met people who very legitimately are interested in both men and women.

Trying to pigeonhole people as 'ex-gay' or 'gay by choice' doesn't seem like a useful exercise.

The concept of sexuality being fluid can be a touchy topic to gay activists and also some gay people is because of the religious people. If everyone starts to think that sexuality can be changed, the bigots and crazy religious people will put more effort into the conversion therapy. In the current state of the world, that will do more harm than good.

I sometime wonder if sexuality is fixed and if a gene is found for it (and hence a "cure" is available) that the bigots and crazies would be even more vocal.

To give an interesting example, how would you classify a male who is mentally a woman (had not yet had the operation) and into BDSM with both genders? (For the record, I don't do hypothetical examples ...I know enough interesting people that I don't have to.)

In general, if you have a simple model of how people work, it is almost certainly wrong. And if it is both simple and in accord with your personal politics, the likelihood of it being wrong goes way up.

What about a post-top-op, no-bottom-op, FTM that is only into lesbians or bi-women?

yay for stringing adjectives!

You basically presented a collection of anecdotes. That hardly constitutes compelling evidence.

I'm sure there's no shortage of people who will swear quite convincingly that faith healing ceremonies are legit. Doesn't mean I would accept their testimony as evidence, though.

As with any other data, the credibility of anecdotes depends on the credibility of the reporter and evidence.

Anecdotes are not adequate for conclusions that require data, but a single credible anecdote is adequate to counter a universal statement.

What constitutes a credible anecdote?

Obviously the more credible the reporter, the more evidence, the more witnesses - the more credible the anecdote.

Are you implying that no story from a layman can be considered credible, but scientists have some magical power that makes them credible?

Data is mismeasured, misinterpreted, misremembered, or simply made up in studies all the time.

Scale matters. You're basically arguing that because evidentiary errors occur in scientific studies, that all evidence from all sources is therefore equivalent. That's simply not the case.

However, if you insist on maintaining this stance - we'll just have to agree to disagree.

The only discussion then is around the credibility of the example. Scale is completely irrelevant to disproving a universal statement with a counter example.

Which ones? Besides the unnamed one you mentioned, I mean.