On sexuality...

While making the morning tea today, I was listening to a local BBC radio station debating the issue of whether or not one's sexuality is fixed for life or is in fact changeable?  This discussion arose apparently from a recent Brighton conference where professionals discussed the possibility of someone who is 'gay' but unhappy with their situation, being enabled to move toward heterosexuality, if that was what they so wished to do.  From what I heard, it would seem that there are two camps (no pun intended) of belief; those who say that sexuality is fixed by genetics/DNA etc. and those who say that environment and social factors can determine or at least influence one's sexuality.  The latter therefore argues that if this is indeed the case, then sexuality is not fixed for life, as a new environment or experience may well cause a change to take place. The radio presenter appeared to present this as a new argument but I remember from my college days back in the 1970's discussing this very issue in what was known then as Liberal Studies.  This change of sexuality happens to be nicely illustrated in today's Observer Magazine where Mariella Frostrup writes about discovering that a lesbian acquaintance of hers was pregnant and living happily in a heterosexual relationship with the child's father.  On questioning her friend about this change, the friend replied by saying that she got a bit drunk one night in celebration of a career high, ended up in bed with the male friend she'd spent the evening with, and subsequently embraced her new-found heterosexuality. A year later the couple are still together.