If you ask the religious right, they'll tell you that homosexuality is a choice. If you ask the Gay and Lesbian community, they'll say that sexuality is something we're born with. But what do Americans think? To find out, Scientific American Mind conducted an online poll of over 4200 Americans. The results showed that only a small minority believe that sexual orientation is a conscious choice.

Half the respondents believed that sexual orientation is not a choice but rather is 'innate, genetic or predetermined by other factors such as envirnoment.' Another 34 percent believed that 'sexual orientation is determined by both choice and other factors.' In contrast, only 11 percent agreed that 'sexual orientation is a conscious choice.' Six percent were not sure. The margin of error for the sample was plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

Not surprisingly, those that identified themselves as conservatives were more likely to believe that sexual orientation was a choice. Women were also more likely than men to believe sexual orientation is 'innate, genetic or predetermined by other factors such as environment.' - 60% of women agreed to that while only 39% of men did. Also, 66% of adults younger than 30 believed that 'all people have the potential to be sexually attracted to members of both sexes' whereas only 47% of poll respondents believed that.

While the poll results are extremely interesting, I have to question whether the sample population was really random. The editors admitted to worrying whether people might not be comfortable answering questions about sexuality - those who were not comfortable probably didn't fill out the survey. In addition, since the poll was done online, they're not getting the opinions of those not online or those that might not visit such websites.

Dr. Robert Epstein has an online survey that measures where you fit into the sexual orientation scale. Instead of seeing gay and straight as polar opposites, he sees a continuum. You can find out your own rating by visiting mysexualorientation.com. The scale runs from 0 to 13 with low scores being more heterosexual and high scores being more homosexual. My score was 3.

Source: Scientific American Mind April/May 2006 (subscription required)