I found this opinion piece on bisexuality
by Matthew Parris in The Times of London:
In my Notebook column in The Times I have been recording, in an
occasional way, candidates for inclusion in a speculative list of
truths or nonsenses staring us in the face that we somehow cannot see:
things future ages may dismiss with a snort — just as we look with
incredulity at our forebears’ faith in the theory of the four bodily
humours or possession by demons. Here is another modern candidate: the
idea that there is a set of males called homosexuals, and another
called heterosexuals, plus a handful in the middle called bisexuals who
can’t decide. This, we shall one day realise, is a distorting glass
through which to look at male sexuality.
...
Make a horizontal line whose left margin represents a sexual
orientation so completely heterosexual that such men have never felt,
however fleetingly, any sexual attraction to another man; and whose
right margin represents gay men utterly unteased by any other interest.
Mark 30 million dots between these two poles, representing each of us
men in Britain, located towards left or right depending on the balance
of the attractions we’ve felt in our own life. How will the resulting
scatter look as a shape?
If popular talk is to be believed, the shape would trace the silhouette
of a wine glass lying leftwards on its side: long, thin stem in the
middle, opening out to a big bowl on the left and a small base on the
right. The large cluster (at least 80 per cent, the bowl) would be the
“straights”. A much smaller but distinct cluster (perhaps 5 to 10 per
cent, the base) would be the “gays”. The stem would be a thin scatter
of “bisexuals”.
But if only we knew it, the true shape, I believe, would be closer to
that of a champagne bottle lying rightwards on its side, its base to
the left, tapering gently towards its mouth at the right. I think a
substantial preponderance of men are more heterosexual than homosexual,
but scattered fairly evenly between 100 per cent and half-and-half; and
that the smaller number who think of ourselves as gay are likewise
quite evenly distributed along the spectrum from the halfway point.
...
If I am right, why have both the gay and the straight worlds so
fiercely resisted the ambivalent and perhaps fluid analysis I propose?
...
Secondly — and this is very important — the idea that many of us have a
potentially variable sexuality opens up the uncomfortable possibility
of personal choice; and we gays have lived in a transitional era in
which we have very much wanted to believe and claim that “God made us”
like this, and “we can’t help it”. Whether or not this is true, it is
comforting for those troubled by suppressed guilt, and has provided a
knock-down argument against those moral conservatives who say we could
choose, and therefore should choose, not to be gay. It has also seemed
to rebut the complaint that homosexuality could be “promoted” or that
gay men might “corrupt” potential heterosexuals. What, however, has not
yet dawned on still embattled crusaders for equality is that true
equality — equality of self-regard as well as public esteem — will have
arrived when we are as careless as a blond or a redhead might be
whether or not we were made that way.
Does “I can’t help being black” strike you as a self-respecting
argument against racism? That “I can’t help it” is a subtly
self-oppressing argument for acceptance does not seem to have occurred
to supposedly liberated gay activists, for whom it has always been the
easiest way of ending the argument.
But it is intellectually sloppy (would you accept it from a child
molester?), calculated to close off troubling thoughts about
might-have-beens, and no answer to the Christian evangelists’ insulting
talk of cures for our “affliction”. We retreat into a simple, bipolar
world of can’t-help-it straights and can’t-help-it gays. We push these
feelings and people into closets marked “latent” homosexuality,
“in-denial” homosexuality and “confused” homosexuality.
I think sexuality is a supple as well as subtle thing, and can
sometimes be influenced, even promoted; I think that in some people
some drives can be discouraged and others encouraged; I think some
people can choose. I wish I were conscious of being able to. I would
choose to be gay.
I do think that sexual orientation is largely innate. How we express our
sexuality is a matter of choice. We should indeed be able to make an
unfettered choice of which consenting adults we wish to love, to share our
lives with, and to fuck.
It is wrong to discriminate on grounds of inborn characteristics (race,
gender) and on chosen categories (religion, political affiliation).
Religious identity is clearly a matter of choice, although far too many
people uncritically accept the religion of their parents.
Like Parris, I don't care for the I-was-born-this-way defense of sexual
orientation. We should be arguing for the freedom to live our own lives as
we see fit.