“Sexual orientation” describes a part of who you are—not how you behave:
Straight / Heterosexual — Gay / Lesbian / Homosexual — Bisexual
You don’t get to decide your sexual orientation. You can’t choose it. You just grow up with it.
“Lifestyle” describes what you do. Straight or gay, you can be celibate or trashy, or somewhere in between. Knowing a person’s sexual orientation tells you nothing about that person’s character or how he or she behaves.
A person can, of course, choose how to behave.
Sexual orientation cannot be changed. You can’t just will yourself to start getting turned on by what repulses you, or to stop being turned on by what does. (Note: the exploitation of people who chase the elusive promise of change is a thriving business, as other articles discuss.)
There is more to sexuality than just what turns us on, of course. Sexual orientation and identity run deep to the core. Studies show it’s biological, quite likely genetic, just as with many other traits we grow up with. Renowned researcher Alfred Kinsey devised what we call the “Kinsey Scale” of sexual orientation. People fall anywhere on this scale from exclusively homosexual to exclusively heterosexual. With a great deal of effort over a long period of time, a person’s orientation can shift a point or two on the scale, but not significantly enough to make a practical difference in real life.
Religion, and just plain ignorance of what homosexuality is and is not, has clouded the issues relating to the topic. For just one example, fundamentalists claim everybody is straight but some people fall to temptation and choose to be gay. If they chose to “become” gay, then they can simply choose to change back, they say. Such notions are overwhelmingly contrary to our scientific knowledge of sexual orientation today, yet these notions are still marketed (they are great money-makers), and so the topic remains murky and controversial. All of these issues are discussed on this site.
“That lifestyle” ...Whenever you hear anyone use that phrase in connection with gay people, call them on it! There is no such thing as a “gay lifestyle.” All human beings, straight or gay, demonstrate a huge variety of lifestyles. A rich person might own a yacht and love sailing. Another might be a homebody. Some people live for sports, others for church.
The reason you should interrupt any speaker using the phrase “that lifestyle” is because the speaker usually intends to disparage gay people in general by implying they’re all alike and all of loose morals. It doesn’t fly, and we should always speak up to disallow it.
If you are straight, and the whole thing just seems repulsive, consider this:
For Beginners Only
The ABCs of sexual orientation
by Larry Hallock