I have known Rachel since we were in third grade and she’s been a close friend for most of that time. When we were in high school she told me that she was a lesbian and that she had known since we were children. She has tried dating men but doesn’t feel the kind of attraction for them that she had and still has for women. In a conversation we had nearly two years ago she told me, “I’m almost jealous of you. Sometimes I wish I could be attracted to men, it would make my life so much easier.” That comment has stuck with me ever since. She does not have it easy as a lesbian in a society that looks down on her for being an openly gay woman. People make snide comments at her and for the longest time her mother absolutely refused to believe she …show more content…

In 1988 Rebecca Wight and her partner Claudia Brenner were camping in the Appalachians. After a series of accidental meetings with a man named Stephen Roy Carr, he followed them to their camp and shot them as they prepared to make love. He later said it was because their lesbianism sent him into a rage. Brenner was hit five times and Wight twice, Brenner survived but Wight did not (“Rebecca Wight”). Claudia Brenner went on to write a book about the ordeal, but even nearly dying from an act of anti-gay violence did not change her attraction to women: “Brenner has a regular life now… She has a new love, Dana Jacobsen, of San Francisco” (Valdes). Even after that deadly ordeal she is still a lesbian. She was nearly killed by someone who was trying to punish her for her sexuality, and yet it didn’t change. It is difficult to find something more compelling than that as evidence that sexuality is innate.
More proof of this is a survey of people who underwent sexual reorientation therapy: “Of nearly 100 people surveyed, only 11% reported a move towards heterosexuality. But no one in the study reports becoming fully heterosexual… even the 11% group "did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated” (Sanchez). Even after these people went through therapy to change their sexual orientation willingly, they still weren’t completely heterosexual. In fact they still had