Well whaddya know?
It turns out that, typically speaking, homosexuality isn’t merely something that happens to people (although, in some cases, it may be largely that), and that behaving as a homosexual person (just like behaving as a heterosexual person) entails choices. That life as a homosexual isn’t simply a matter of inborn drives but, inevitably also, of morally significant decisions. And that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, like many other religious and ethical traditions, is correct to distinguish between engaging in homosexual acts and merely being homosexual.
I might also add that it seems likely that, while they’re not exhaustive or wholly determinative, social and cultural factors — approval/disapproval, encouragement/discouragement, and so forth — play a role in decisions regarding sexual behavior, just as in other decisions. (There was, for instance, probably no massive genetic mutation that made sexual relations between adult men and younger boys so prevalent in classical Athens. While a few Athenian men and boys might have been naturally predisposed to such relations, most were presumably influenced much more by cultural and societal role-expectations than by genetically-driven urges.)
This shouldn’t be earth-shattering news, but, in some circles nowadays, I have the sense that it might be received as such.
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