I know I'm late to this conversation, but just want to add my perspective. I struggled until the 45th year of my life with strong feelings of attraction to men which were in conflict with an inherited belief that being sexually intimate with a man was an "abomination" before God. Ironically, it was a Christian psychologist who first explained to me that human sexuality is a continuum, with most people falling somewhere between the opposite poles of pure heterosexuality and pure homosexuality. I now tell people that I'm 2/3 gay and 1/3 straight, which makes me twice as attracted to men as I am to women, which feels about right. And pursuing sexual intimacy with a man rather than a woman feels right too, and I don't believe this is a choice. It is simply a fact.

Who in their right mind would make a choice like that?

No and why would anyone want to? However it is possible for gays to try to act hetero to fit in with family or religious values. It doesn't make them hetero, they are still gay. I think a lot of religious people are so adamantly opposed to LGBTIQ because they are closet homosexuals clinging to the belief that they can go against their own nature and be "normal". Why would any straight person take a vow of celibacy? That's ridiculous. It isn't a coincidence that priests sometimes sexually abuse children, most often boys...

I think it's possible to come out later in life after accepting your sexual fluidity. I believe this particular statement is something that religious fanatics use to push their own agenda.

No. I think a person is born with a particular sexual orientation and their place on the "Kinsey Scale" is fixed for life. I do think that different aspects of their sexual orientation may be expressed at different times of their lives, which may appear to change their orientations but I dont' define sexual orientation by current sexual behavior alone.

I think sexual orientation is best defined by those for whom you are capable of developing those feelings which refer to as "falling in love" for, rather than just those you are having sex with.

Most homosexuals have had sex with persons of the opposite sex and most heterosexuals have had at lest one same sex encounter. Most of this occurs from puberty yp through the early 30's, when hormones and sex drives are at their highest. your body will react physiologically exactly the same if oral sex performed by a man, a woman or Rover (although the dog will not have the same cognitive ability to get it just right or adapt technique to best please, it would still feel good). The point being that sometimes the need for just "getting off" by the most readily available means will outweigh a person's normal orientation. Convenience of someone to get off with is actually a pretty large determinining factor than most people think.

Thus, my definitions are centered around the gender a person falls in love with, rather than the gender one has sex with most often.

So, simply put, if a person only falls in love with persons of the opposite sex, they are "straight", if they only fall in love with persons fo the same sex, then they are "gay", and if they are capable of falling in love with either gender then they are "bi-sexual".

Now, getting to the question asked... "
Can a person train themselves to be gay?" Not really. people do not really choose who they fall in love with. I do think a person can train themselves to have sex with a gender that would not be normal for their orientation. Gays used to get married and hide thier orientation for many years when beign gay was less acceptable, and so it would be possible for a heterosexual to acclimatize themselves to having sex with someone of their own gender. It happens in prisons all around the world.

However, I do not think the orientation changes just because of a person's current sex partner(s). The person is still only capable of developing those feelings we refer to as "falling in love" with persons who fit their orientation.

Being gay is not a choice, the same as being heterosexual is not a choice you are born with your sexuality.The only choice you have is to suppress your desires and choose not to practice a gay lifestyle or to follow your sexual tendencies .This also goes for people who think being in prison can make a person choose to be homosexual . lack of sexual activity does not make a person change their sexual proclivity . These people were always homosexual.

I have a gay son. He knew when he was very young although he didn't come out until high school. It's not a "choice" or learned. It's just who they are like having brown eyes.

First of all, it’s not a “choice,” but a discovery. Hell, most of the people around me knew I was gay before even I knew I was gay. If you talk to just about any gay or lesbian person born before this new century, they’ll tell you they did everything they could think of to change. I personally spent over fifteen years in various forms of Reparative Therapy, which basically messed me up for life. I know a lot of men and women who dated, and even married thinking that would change things.

My favorite analogy about “choice,” is the computer, which works on two basic principles: hardware and software. The hardware is the computer itself. The hard drive, the box, the processor, the chip, the wiring. On a computer, those things technically cannot be changed without going into the box itself and even then it can be a challenge.

The software on the other hand is what runs the computer: the operating system, a word processor, graphics programs, apps. All these things help the computer do its work, and they can be added or removed as the user feels the need.

So in real life, we have height, eye color, hair color, genetic makeup, and gender. Our hard drive.
For software we have beliefs, which change from day to day. We can change where we live, what clothes we wear, friends… In other words, our religious beliefs are software, our sexuality is hardware.

I see a sexuality as a line. On the far left, “gay.” On the far right, “straight.” In the center, “Bi.” Most people are on one side or the other, but not necessarily all the way on one side or the other, but maybe not so far away from the center that they’re curious about what happens on the other side of the line. That curiosity may not actually change their sexual “location,” but that they were close enough so as to be able to try another location. I personally am so gay I can’t even think straight.

When I have this discussion, I will often ask the person debating this with me, “Be gay. Just for a week. Be gay.” The very look on their face says exactly what I already knew… they can’t.

Um... No. Not possible.

Hell no. I didn't learn to be a lesbian. I knew it, felt it, cries about it and almost killed myself because of it. I did marry my male best friend. So I tried to learn to be straight because of my Christian family. That marriage did not last long.

Nope. I tried to make sure I was straight for almost 20 years. The story is a long and convoluted one. But as a Christian I knew my attraction to both women and men was “bad.” After realizing I was a non-believer, I also realized my attraction was just part of who I am. I appreciate beauty and intellect, no matter the packaging.

IDK, the human mind is pretty powerful, but I think it would be hard to even do something that worked as teaching yourself to be gay. Maybe bi would be easier (you'd only have to change your attraction to one stimulus, not to all stimuli). More importantly, I don't think anyone would choose to become gay. It's an interesting concept though, so I'm going to try typing until something makes a little sense. Maybe if you started by just learning to appreciate the attractiveness of certain members of your sex to the opposite sex (basically thinking or saying any compliment you could give a fellow guy that could be followed with "No homo" except saying or even thinking that phrase would likely be counterproductive). Once that's a habit, learn the habit of imagining hot guys in sexy positions with girls. Ideally focus less (think less specifically) on the imagined girl than the real guy. If you did that, you might condition the sight of a hot guy to trigger feelings of arousal. Then maybe try imagining yourself in that position with him (or with him in the girl's position with you in his), focusing on/repetitively thinking about how sexy it is. At that point you could maybe test your enjoyment of gay porn (and arousal while watching). If it is high, the only way I could think of to really prove your success would be to go to a gay bar, try to find someone attractive, and do your best to get him to sleep with you. If you enjoy it, the experiment has successfully proven the alternative hypothesis, but if you find yourself incapable of any one step, then you have insufficient evidence to discard the null hypothesis (NH=can't learn homosexuality). Becoming asexual (or at least removing your attraction to women) could likely be achieved through the reverse of this, associating ugliness, awkwardness, discomfort, and/or fear with otherwise attractive women. Discomfort/fear could be achieved by thinking about lawsuits like the recent news and the idea that a woman who regrets having sex with someone could potentially call it rape. Fear could also come from the fact that when you undress, you're vulnerable, and women often have long hair in which they could hide weapons (and tbh a lot of women-well, people in general honestly, but that's irrelevant to this topic-are fucking crazy in ways that don't necessarily show in more casual relationships). Awkwardness might be achievable through treating them purely as friends (which then could make it awkward to consider a more physically intimate relationship). Alternatively, perhaps build on the discomfort of age differences-most young people don't like to imagine old people fucking, and obviously most people revile pedophilia (and rightly so). Ugliness would basically involve thinking in the "makeup=deception" way of those who post "Take her swimming on the first date!" and similar things, since even the most attractive of women usually use at least some makeup. The real test of this would be going to a strip club or something and thinking about how the women are performers who might not even enjoy what they're doing without thinking of them as attractive or sexual.

I think we all have a wider range of sexual attraction which is restrained or develped through socialization . Personally I don't know why we get so hung up on sexual preference what happens between other people is of little interest to me... just get on with it.

No. It is possible to be bisexual and choose homosexuality but even that is done for a reason. In my case I don’t get along with women very well beyond looks. I get along with men much better but admit I haven’t had a long running relationship with one.

Gonna go with no. People can pretend but not actually change sexual orientation. Look at all the alleged heterosexual leaders exposed in gay sex scandals. Some men practice being straight for years with their wives. Didn't change their natural orientation. The same would apply in the converse.

Ha! Can you teach yourself to be straight? Many have tried, I don’t think any have really succeeded. Some maybe on a temporary basis. It’s kinda like asking “When did you decide to be straight?”

The Christians maybe confused by bisexuality or the fact that some gay people were forced to fake being straight. Married with kids to hide the fact they were gay, then they’d look for gay sex on the down low. Keep in mind it is only recently that it almost safe to be out as gay.

I don't think so. I've seen too many studies where they found gay people to be "wired" different from straight people.

I'm a firm believer that 87%of lifestyles' are choices but being gay isn't one of them.