Is Homosexuality a Substitute? The Contradictions Behind the Theories That Try to Explain It

One of the hardest things for some people to accept is that sexual orientation actually exists. Not simply sexual behavior, not sexual practice, not habit, but something involving attraction and the way a person experiences desire.

Perhaps even harder is accepting something else: homosexuality is no longer considered a psychiatric disorder.

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. The World Health Organization removed it from the International Classification of Diseases in 1990. It is therefore not a pathology that contemporary medicine considers something to be cured.

For some religious communities, this created—and continues to create—a serious problem. If homosexuality is not an illness, it becomes much harder to speak of “healing.” And yet, particularly in some North American evangelical circles, so-called reparative or conversion therapies continue to circulate, despite the consensus of major scientific and medical organizations that sexual orientation is not a pathology to be corrected.

This is where a whole series of alternative explanations begins.

One of the most common is that homosexuality is, essentially, a substitute.

The reasoning seems straightforward: when a person cannot have sexual relations with the opposite sex, sexuality will nevertheless seek an outlet. Hence the sailors spending months at sea, all men, confined together in a limited space. Hence prisons, where people are forced to live together, often under harsh conditions. Hence convents and monasteries, where men and women live separately and sexuality is supposed to be restrained.

In the absence of the opposite sex, according to this interpretation, desire simply finds a replacement.

The same reasoning is sometimes applied to people who supposedly have greater difficulty finding a partner: the shy, unattractive, socially isolated young man; the woman considered undesirable by men. If the opposite sex is unavailable—or consistently rejects them—desire will supposedly find another outlet.

But it takes only a little attention to reality to see that something does not quite add up.

What happens when the gay man in front of us is handsome, confident, socially desirable, and exactly the kind of man who could easily attract plenty of women?

And what happens when the lesbian woman is beautiful, charismatic, desired by men, and perfectly capable of participating in the conventional heterosexual dating world?

This is where the old stereotype of the ugly, awkward, shy person who is systematically rejected begins to fall apart.

If homosexuality were really a refuge for people who cannot succeed with the opposite sex, then an attractive gay man who is openly desired by women would have very little reason to resort to such a “substitute.” And an attractive lesbian woman who is desired by men would have even less reason to do so.

Yet homosexuality does not disappear as physical attractiveness increases.

In fact, the mere existence of homosexual people who are perfectly aware that they could be desired by the opposite sex creates a major problem for the substitute theory.

If you have every opportunity to obtain what the theory says you ought to want, why do you continue to want something else?

The question does not, by itself, prove the origin of sexual orientation. But it is enough to undermine an overly simplistic explanation.

Perhaps we are not dealing with someone who cannot obtain what they want and therefore settles for something else.

Perhaps we are dealing with someone who actually wants that thing.

And that apparently minor distinction changes the entire problem.

A prisoner may have sex with another man without being gay. A sailor may have a homosexual experience during a long period at sea and continue to be attracted to women. A person may engage in a sexual act that does not correspond to their sexual orientation.

And this is where the argument becomes more complicated.

It explains behavior, not necessarily orientation.

If homosexuality were simply a sexual outlet caused by the absence of the opposite sex, we should expect the attraction to return automatically toward the opposite sex once the obstacle disappeared.

But even that conclusion is not so simple.

Because the obstacle is not always actually removed.

A person who has spent years being excluded, rejected, marginalized, or convinced that they cannot succeed with the opposite sex may develop expectations, habits, and mental patterns that end up reinforcing the original belief. The prophecy can become self-fulfilling: I believe I am undesirable, I behave like someone expecting rejection, I interpret ambiguous signals as confirmation of rejection, and I eventually accumulate precisely the experiences that reinforce my original conviction.

At that point, the explanation can easily be modified.

It is no longer merely the original “substitute” that supposedly produces the behavior. Habit, the strengthening of neural connections, reward mechanisms, cognitive biases, and the tendency to seek confirmation of one's existing beliefs all enter the picture.

And this is where an apparently simple theory risks becoming remarkably elastic.

If a person changes, one can say that the therapy worked.

If they do not change, one can say that the habit was too deeply ingrained.

Or that their cognitive patterns were too firmly established.

Or that they were unconsciously seeking confirmation of their identity.

Or, more simply still, that they did not want it badly enough.

And this last explanation creates a serious problem.

Because attributing the failure of reparative therapy to a patient's lack of will can turn the theory into something that is virtually impossible to disprove.

If it works, the theory was correct.

If it does not work, the patient is to blame.

It is a logical mechanism that resembles a familiar kind of rhetoric found in Neuro-Linguistic Programming: if the method produces the desired result, the method works; if it does not, the person apparently did not believe strongly enough, did not try hard enough, or did not apply the technique correctly.

But a theory capable of explaining every possible outcome risks explaining nothing at all.

It is like building a door that always opens, provided we are allowed to decide afterward what “opening” means.

And this brings us back to the starting point.

If homosexuality were merely a behavior produced by an obstacle, then once the obstacle was removed, the behavior should gradually lose its function.

If the answer is instead that the obstacle may remain inside the mind, that habits can become entrenched, that neural pathways can become reinforced, and that people can unconsciously confirm their own identities, then the explanation becomes considerably more complicated.

But above all, one thing would still have to be demonstrated rather than simply assumed:

that the homosexual behavior originated precisely because of that obstacle.

Otherwise we risk using the consequence as proof of the cause.

And this brings us to the most delicate point in the entire argument: sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity are not necessarily the same thing.

A prisoner can engage in homosexual behavior without being gay.

A gay man can be a virgin and already know that he is gay.

A heterosexual person can have a homosexual experience without becoming homosexual.

And a homosexual person can have numerous heterosexual experiences without becoming heterosexual.

Sexual practice, therefore, does not appear to be some kind of stamp certifying one's orientation.

And this leads us to the simplest—and perhaps most devastating—question:

If you have never had sex with a man, how do you know you're gay?

The answer becomes immediately obvious when the question is turned around:

If you have never had sex with a woman, how do you know you're straight?

A virgin boy can fall in love with a girl. He can desire her. He can fantasize about her. He can know that he is attracted to women without ever having had sex.

Nobody would tell him, “You have to try it first. Then you can decide.”

Why should it be any different for a boy who falls in love with another boy?

Why, in the first case, is attraction considered sufficient evidence of orientation, while in the second, physical experience is demanded as proof?

Here, however, another question becomes even more interesting:

Why is this asymmetry so deeply rooted?

There is no need to invoke religion to explain it. Religions have certainly played a major role, in many historical periods and societies, in defining legitimate and illegitimate forms of sexuality. But the phenomenon is older and deeper than religion.

Human societies have been organized for thousands of years around reproduction, family, and lineage. The heterosexual couple constitutes the biological structure through which sexual reproduction occurs and, in traditional societies, the basis for filiation, inheritance, the transmission of family names, property, and social status.

Heterosexuality, therefore, was not merely considered “normal” in a moral sense. It was built into the very structure of society.

This helps explain why a heterosexual teenager is rarely asked to prove their orientation.

Their attraction to the opposite sex corresponds to what society expects, to what the traditional family has historically been organized around, and to what ensures the continuity of lineage.

Homosexuality, by contrast, did not fit the same reproductive framework.

And for precisely that reason, throughout history it has often been interpreted as an anomaly, a deviation, a vice, a sin, a disorder, or something to be hidden and suppressed.

This does not mean that every society has regarded homosexuality in the same way, nor that history can be reduced to a simple opposition between “tolerated heterosexuals” and “persecuted homosexuals.” Cultures have produced very different—and often contradictory—attitudes.

But one historical pattern is difficult to ignore:

heterosexuality has generally been the social and reproductive norm; homosexuality has often been treated as a deviation from that norm.

And perhaps this historical legacy helps explain some of the questions that are still directed at homosexual people today.

“When did you realize you were gay?”

“Are you sure?”

“Could it have been an experience?”

“Have you ever tried being with the opposite sex?”

Questions that appear to be seeking information.

But often they already contain an assumption.

They assume that heterosexuality is the default state from which we begin, while homosexuality is something that needs to be explained.

And so we return to the earlier question.

Why do we grant a heterosexual virgin the right to know their own orientation, while asking a gay virgin for evidence?

Perhaps because one orientation has historically been regarded as the norm and the other as the exception.

And when something is treated as an exception, there is an almost irresistible desire to find a cause for it.

If it is an anomaly, someone must have caused it.

If someone caused it, perhaps it can be corrected.

If it can be corrected, then the failure to correct it must have an explanation.

And so the circle closes.

Wrong upbringing. Pornography. Abuse. An “initiator.” Habit. Neural pathways. Trauma. Cognitive bias. Lack of willpower.

The circle closes.

But perhaps that is precisely the problem:

the circle has been designed to close no matter what happens.

If orientation were produced by sexual practice, we would have to explain how a person can desire that practice before ever experiencing it.

If, instead, desire precedes experience, sexual practice cannot automatically be regarded as the cause of orientation.

This does not mean that experiences have no influence on sexual life. Of course they can. Experiences can shape behavior, habits, fantasies, fears, preferences, and even the way a person understands themselves.

But influencing behavior is one thing.

Manufacturing a sexual orientation is another.

This is also where the discussion of pornography becomes more complicated. A person may encounter images, stories, or sexual experiences that amplify an existing curiosity, or may experiment out of curiosity, pressure, circumstance, or simple opportunity. But that does not automatically mean that they have “learned” to be homosexual.

Otherwise we would have to reach some rather strange conclusions.

We would have to imagine that every heterosexual person became heterosexual because someone taught them how to be heterosexual.

And we would have to ask when, exactly, that learning took place.

A theory that seeks to explain homosexuality as learned behavior would therefore also have to explain how heterosexuality is learned.

And perhaps this is the most revealing point of all.

We often fail to notice how asymmetrical the questions we ask homosexual people really are.

The experience can give a name to something that already exists.

It can also be the way someone discovers something about themselves.

But it does not necessarily mean that the experience created it.

Perhaps, then, the real difficulty is not accepting that some people engage in sexual behavior that differs from what religious morality considers permissible.

The difficulty is accepting that not everything we desire was chosen by us.

And that is a question much larger than homosexuality.

Because if sexual orientation is not a disease, not simply a vice, and not necessarily the result of learned behavior, then it becomes much harder to maintain that therapy, prayer, or moral discipline can simply transform it.

A person can choose a behavior.

They can choose whether or not to have sex.

They can choose marriage.

They can choose celibacy.

They can even choose to live their entire life without publicly expressing their sexual orientation.

But none of this means they can choose whom they are capable of desiring.

And perhaps this is precisely the contradiction that some theories are desperate to avoid.

Because if homosexuality were merely a substitute, removing the problem that supposedly caused it should be enough.

If it were merely a habit, it should be possible to unlearn it.

If it were merely an addiction, one should be able to detox from it.

If it were an illness, it should be possible to cure it.

But if none of these explanations is sufficient, a much more uncomfortable possibility remains.

That sexual orientation is a dimension of human experience that we can try to understand, interpret culturally, and judge morally, but that we did not simply choose.

And at that point, the question changes.

It is no longer:

“How do we make it stop?”

It becomes:

“What do we do when the reality of human beings does not match what we would like them to be?”

Science can help us answer part of that question. But ultimately, it also concerns morality, religion, society, and individual freedom.

And perhaps that is precisely why, even today, it remains so difficult to confront without reaching for reassuring explanations.

General Anesthesia and the Mystery of Consciousness: What Science Knows—and What It Still Doesn't

Every year, millions of people undergo an experience that seems medically routine, yet raises one of the deepest questions about human existence: what is consciousness, really?

General anesthesia is one of modern medicine's greatest achievements, allowing complex surgical procedures to be performed without pain or awareness. And yet, from a philosophical perspective, it presents one of the most intriguing mysteries of all.

Almost everyone who has undergone general anesthesia describes the experience in remarkably similar terms. One moment they are awake, listening to the anesthesiologist counting backward. The next, they open their eyes in the recovery room. There are no memories, no dreams, no perception of time passing. It feels as though an entire segment of existence has simply vanished.

But where does consciousness go during that interval?

Is it simply switched off, like a light when the power is cut? Or does it continue to exist in some form that we are incapable of remembering once we wake up?

This question naturally leads to an even more profound one: if consciousness appears to disappear under anesthesia, what actually happens at the moment of death?

Does the Brain Produce Consciousness—or Merely Receive It?

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have struggled with this question.

The French philosopher René Descartes famously distinguished between the res extensa—the physical body—and the res cogitans—the thinking mind. To Descartes, the mind was not simply another physical organ but a fundamentally different kind of reality.

Modern neuroscience has largely moved away from this dualistic view. Today, the prevailing scientific perspective holds that consciousness emerges from the activity of the brain. Alter the brain sufficiently, and conscious experience disappears. General anesthesia appears to support this view.

Yet even this explanation leaves one fundamental question unanswered.

Philosopher David Chalmers refers to it as the "hard problem of consciousness."

Science can identify which regions of the brain become active when we feel pain, recognize a face, or listen to music. But none of these discoveries explains why these physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience. Why does brain activity produce an inner world at all? Why isn't the brain simply processing information like a sophisticated computer?

According to Chalmers, this remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in contemporary science.

Penrose, Popper, and Eccles: Looking Beyond Conventional Models

Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose has also questioned whether consciousness can be fully explained by conventional neuroscience.

Together with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, he proposed the controversial Orch-OR theory, suggesting that quantum processes occurring inside microscopic structures known as microtubules may contribute to conscious experience. The hypothesis remains highly debated and far from universally accepted, but it illustrates how incomplete our understanding of consciousness still is.

Another influential perspective was developed by Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist John Eccles in collaboration with philosopher Karl Popper.

Popper described reality as consisting of three interacting "worlds": the physical universe, subjective mental experiences, and the world of human knowledge, culture, science, and ideas.

Eccles went a step further, proposing that the mind might not simply be produced by the brain but could interact with it while maintaining a degree of independence.

Whether these ideas are ultimately correct remains uncertain. What they demonstrate is that even some of the twentieth century's most distinguished thinkers believed consciousness could not yet be fully explained by current scientific models.

Near-Death Experiences

The debate became even more fascinating with the study of near-death experiences (NDEs).

In the 1970s, psychiatrist Raymond Moody collected hundreds of accounts from people who had been declared clinically dead for a short period before being successfully resuscitated.

Many described strikingly similar experiences regardless of culture or religious background: leaving their bodies, moving through a tunnel, encountering an intense light, experiencing overwhelming peace, or meeting deceased relatives.

These accounts are undeniably compelling.

However, they do not constitute proof that consciousness survives death.

They can be interpreted in different ways: as the result of oxygen deprivation, neurochemical activity, memory reconstruction during recovery, or as experiences generated by a brain under extraordinary physiological stress.

Yet they continue to raise questions that science has not definitively answered.

Sam Parnia's Scientific Investigations

Among contemporary researchers, Sam Parnia has become one of the leading figures studying near-death experiences using rigorous scientific methods.

His research focuses on patients who have been successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest. Rather than accepting extraordinary claims at face value, Parnia has attempted to investigate whether some reported perceptions can be independently verified.

So far, his findings have not demonstrated that consciousness survives bodily death.

However, they suggest that the relationship between brain function, consciousness, and clinical death may be more complex than previously believed. Some patients have reported memories corresponding to periods during which measurable brain activity appeared to be severely impaired, raising questions that remain unresolved.

The scientific community continues to debate these findings, and no consensus has yet emerged.

A Mystery That Remains Open

General anesthesia seems to suggest that when the brain's activity is profoundly altered, conscious awareness disappears.

Near-death experiences, on the other hand, have led some researchers and philosophers to wonder whether consciousness might not be entirely reducible to brain function.

Which interpretation is correct?

Perhaps neither provides the complete picture.

History reminds us that science continually revises its understanding of reality as new evidence emerges. It also reminds us that sincere personal testimony, however meaningful, is not the same as objective proof.

Perhaps the truly scientific attitude is neither to insist that death is unquestionably the end of everything nor to claim with certainty that consciousness survives beyond it.

Instead, it is to acknowledge the limits of what we currently know.

General anesthesia does not prove that death is the end of consciousness.

Near-death experiences do not prove that consciousness survives death.

Both, however, remind us how little we still understand about the very phenomenon that defines our existence.

We live in an age capable of observing galaxies billions of light-years away, editing the human genome, and developing artificial intelligence that can engage in meaningful conversation.

Yet one of the most fundamental questions remains unanswered:

What, exactly, is consciousness?

Until science can answer that question with confidence, every absolute claim about death, the soul, or the survival of consciousness remains, to some extent, an expression of belief—whether materialistic or spiritual—rather than a definitive conclusion.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of all is not that we must choose between certainty and mystery, but that genuine wisdom begins with the humility to recognize how much remains unknown.

Is Free Will an Illusion? Toward a Theory of Probabilistic Determinism

Free Will Is Probably an Illusion

The belief that human beings possess genuine free will has shaped Western philosophy for centuries. Yet a closer examination of how we actually make decisions throughout our lives raises an unsettling question: do we truly choose, or do we simply follow the path that was always the most probable given who we are?

Every decision emerges from the convergence of factors we never chose ourselves. Our genetic makeup, upbringing, cultural environment, life experiences, personality, emotional state, and the information available to us at any given moment all contribute to the outcome. None of these elements originates from an autonomous act of will. A decision may therefore be nothing more than the endpoint of a causal chain that began long before we were born.

This perspective echoes the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, who argued that people believe themselves to be free only because they are conscious of their actions while remaining unaware of the countless causes that determine them.

The Past Could Not Have Been Otherwise

If this view is correct, it fundamentally changes the way we look back on our lives. We often revisit decisions made years earlier and conclude that we should have chosen differently. Yet this judgment is based on information we possess only today.

At the time the decision was made, our knowledge, maturity, emotional condition, and life experience were entirely different. Under those circumstances, the choice we made may not have been merely one possibility among many, but the only decision that was realistically available to us.

Even inaction, procrastination, hesitation, or fear are not exceptions. They are themselves decisions produced by a particular psychological structure interacting with a particular environment. Regret, therefore, may be little more than an illusion created by hindsight.

Personality Narrows the Range of Possibilities

Personality plays a decisive role in shaping our decisions. Two individuals facing the same situation rarely possess the same practical range of options.

A perfectionist is likely to postpone action while waiting for ideal conditions that may never arrive. An impulsive person is more inclined to act immediately. An anxious individual will often avoid risk, whereas an adventurous personality is naturally drawn toward uncertainty and exploration.

Although countless alternatives may exist in theory, each individual can realistically access only a small subset of them. Every person carries a unique probability distribution that makes certain decisions highly likely and others almost impossible.

Destiny Becomes a Matter of Probability

From this perspective, destiny takes on an entirely different meaning. It is no longer a mystical force directing our lives, but the statistically dominant trajectory produced by the interaction of biology, psychology, environment, and personal history.

If it were possible to rewind the universe while keeping every relevant condition exactly the same, there is good reason to believe that the same individual would make exactly the same decision once again. Not because of supernatural fate, but because the variables governing the decision-making process would remain unchanged.

Destiny, then, may simply be the name we give to the most probable outcome of an extraordinarily complex system.

Parallel Universes Become Less Relevant

This interpretation also reshapes the way we think about parallel universes. If, at every moment, one trajectory is overwhelmingly more probable than all others, then alternative histories remain largely theoretical possibilities.

Even if parallel universes exist, they would represent scenarios built upon events whose probability, given an individual's actual history and psychological structure, was virtually zero. The universe we inhabit would still be the one in which the statistically dominant sequence of events unfolds.

An Implicit Critique of Nash's Game Theory

This perspective also raises an interesting question about John Nash's game theory. Classical game theory assumes that rational players evaluate a set of available strategies and choose among them according to expected payoffs.

Real human beings, however, do not experience every strategy as equally accessible. Some options are psychologically unavailable, while others emerge almost automatically as a consequence of personality, habits, and past experiences.

Treating all strategies as equally viable may therefore overlook an essential feature of human decision-making. A more realistic model would incorporate not only the payoff associated with each strategy but also the probability that a particular individual is actually capable of selecting it.

Toward a New Theory of Decision-Making

These considerations suggest a possible reformulation of decision theory. The true decision space is not the set of all logically conceivable alternatives, but the set of alternatives that are statistically accessible to a particular individual.

Each person enters every decision carrying a unique history of experiences, beliefs, fears, motivations, biases, and cognitive limitations. This personal history filters the available options, making some choices overwhelmingly likely and others practically unattainable.

Decisions therefore do not arise in a vacuum. They emerge from a probability distribution shaped throughout an entire lifetime.

A Philosophical Consequence

The ultimate implication of this perspective is a radically different understanding of human nature. The individual is no longer an independent cause capable of freely interrupting the chain of events, but rather the point at which countless prior causes converge.

Every decision becomes the provisional outcome of an entire personal history. Freedom no longer consists in the unlimited ability to choose among all imaginable possibilities, but in expressing the biological, psychological, and cultural structure that one has become.

Perhaps free will is nothing more than the subjective experience of a process determined by innumerable factors operating beneath the threshold of conscious awareness. And perhaps what we call destiny is not a mysterious force guiding our lives, but simply the statistically dominant path along which our existence almost inevitably unfolds.