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Yes, it is completely impossible for someone who is gay to turn straight. The American Psychological Association came out with a 138 page report fairly recently which showed that there is no evidence suggesting that it is in any way possible for homosexuals to change their orientation. In fact, they found a great deal of evidence showing that attempting to do so is actually very harmful for gay people; the gay people who they studied who tried to change their orientation suffered from incredible depression and anxiety. When gay people try to will themselves into becoming straight, it just doesn't work. It's impossible to do and it's stupid ideas like the one that gay people can change that makes gays so much more likely to become depressed or suicidal. You may not think about it that way, but all of this hateful "gays can change" speech is literally harmful to gay people. If everyone would just accept gay people for who they are, then gay teens wouldn't be become as depressed as they do. A 1997 study showed that of the high schoolers who attempted suicide that year, 40 percent of them were gay, which is an awful lot considering that gay people only make up 3 percent of the population. And I completely blame stupid, hateful homophobes who claim that these kids can change and that they just aren't trying hard enough.

I can also speak about this from personal experience. I am a lesbian, I've always been a lesbian, even when I was little it was obvious. Nobody told me to be one and I never knew any other gay people to encourage me to be one. I just am. And since I was raised a conservative Christian and was always told that it's wrong to be gay, I tried to change. I prayed constantly, begging God to help me change. And when that didn't work, I sank into an awful depression and became next to suicidal. And looking back, it wasn't really that I was depressed about being gay; it was all of those assholes who told me that I was wrong and that I could change that made me depressed. When I finally started making friends with people who accepted me for who I was, I stopped being so depressed and I started thinking about who I am rationally. It was only when I accepted that being gay was just how God made me that I actually learned how to be happy for the first time in my life. And please don't suggest that I just didn't try hard enough not to be gay and that I would be happier if I somehow changed; you have no idea how hard I tried and if I had kept on trying I probably would have killed myself a long time ago.

And I know you're thinking "but there are people who used to be gay who are straight now." Well, there aren't. Maybe they call themselves straight and they have spouses of the opposite gender now, but just because you change what you do doesn't mean that you can change what you are. That's like saying that a short person who wears high heels is actually tall; it just doesn't make any sense. I've met people before who've claimed to be ex-gays and maybe I just have a hightened sense of gaydar, but if I'd never met these people and knew nothing about them, I would just assume they were gay. Because the fact of the matter is, you can fake it and go through the motions, but you can never change you you truly are. All articles I've read before by ex-ex-gays talk about how they could pretend that they were straight, but they could never actually change who they are. And I can't think of anything more depressing than living a lie, and that's exactly what "ex-gays" are doing.

Anyway, if you want anymore evidence than psychological studies and personal experience, then I just can't help you. If you are at all an open minded or rational person, then I'm sure you can see that whether or not it's morally acceptable to be in a gay relationship, being gay itself is not a choice and not something that can be changed.

It's sad because I think it's healthier to just accept who you naturally are than to want to be something you're not. Imagine a teenage girl who eats healthfully and exercises but feels she's overweight. Now, either she can obsess over her weight, dieting to an extreme, over exercising, and even getting surgery. Or she can just accept that her normal body weight is more than other girls. From a psychological point of view, it just seems healthier for her to be happy with who she naturally is than to go against nature to make herself thin. It's the same with being gay; even if gay people could change, that doesn't mean they should. Just like how there's nothing wrong with weighing more than average so long as you're healthy, there's nothing wrong with being gay so long as it's who you naturally are. And in both cases, even if the teenage girl can lose weight and the gay person can become straight, they aren't the ones that should change; society should change. Once society starts looking at issue like weight or homosexuality or whatever rationally, people won't feel like they need to change and they can finally start to accept who they are and be happy about themselves. Anyway, if there was a way for gays be to become straight and they chose to take it, then fine, it's a free country, go ahead, just like how my hypothetical teenage girl has the right to obsessively become thing. It's just that I wouldn't advise it and I would never under any circumstance do it myself. I hope that made sense...

If anyone's interested, I found the American Psychological Association's website, with information about sexual orientation. I thought it would be appropriate to post it, since many people are bringing up the ideas of if homosexuality is a choice and why people are gay, which are definitely important to understand if you want to be able to debate about the morality of homosexuality.

Here's their article about sexual orientation in general.