Could you successfully sue someone for turning you Gay?

In the land where it is outlawed to say or do anything that makes Gay look good or attractive, Russia, a guy is suing Apple, claiming its iPhone made him Gay, according to a shoddy news flash. After you stopped laughing, let me tell you how, nevertheless, he could win this case.

But first, almost all people in the West by now, know that this is such nonsense. Sexual orientation is a given, especially in men. (For many women, statistically, sexuality seems more fluid. Still, as my teacher of sexology told me: Someone may live with a person not their preferred sex but when that relationship ends, they’ll return to their preferred sex.)

Our prime sexual ideals, hang-ups, fetishes and aversions (eye color, body type, etc.), therapy would reveal, come from our history, especially but not only, from subtle and not so subtle childhood molestations most grownups have suppressed very early in life. This catalog of likes and dislikes is supplemented throughout life when we are sexually aroused. We may also suddenly ‘fall in love’ because something about someone (subconsciously) reminds us of our favorite aunt, etc.

But the biological sex we prefer our spouses to have is hardwired into almost all men’s brains before we could walk or talk — just like our sense of gender (cis/trans). No assault can create it, no therapy can ‘cure’ it.

What psychotherapy may do is to make us less uptight about closeness, intimacy, and sex in general and less abhorred or fascinated with certain biological attributes in others. But therapy cannot take away our inborn need for a sexual deep union with at least one person in our lifetime.

And, fortunately or unfortunately, for over 99% of us, the biological sex of the person we can sexually become one flesh with is non-negotiable.

Many people (mostly women) can easily have sexual encounters and relationships with people of either sex. Such connections can be mutually nurturing, loving, thoughtful, and loyal and exemplary for all to see. Yet, deep sexual attachment can only be with one sex for most of us.

That is what I call sexual orientation. However, that is me.

Most therapists and researchers regard people for what they do. So for them, you have Gay sex, you are Gay. They may politely and politically correctly let everyone define themselves for themselves but honestly, for them, ‘you are what you do’ (or don’t, or feel or dream).

Of course, they are confused. (Try to explain to a therapist that s/he’s confused. If what you do is what you are, and therapy can change what you do (it can), then it could change your sexual orientation. Bonafide therapists know it can’t.) Anyway, most people know that no amount of Straight sex can turn a man off of being Gay. And especially he knows it.

However, Sages in the Talmud teach that Gay sex may make a Straight man leave wife and family and become (kind-of) Gay. How can that be?

Most men have high testosterone levels. It makes them lusting and not so picky. Many men can easily have sex without intimacy or commitment. Most of them are not hindered by periods, mood swings, headaches, childcare, or any lack of romance or love. Man meets man, bang bang, I scratch your back you scratch mine, mission accomplished.

That’s easy but … not really satisfying. Most Gay guys dream of more, of meeting the love of their life. It’s better than nothing but not really it. But most Straight guys may easily feel as if they had sex as with an object. Sex is meant to unite against existential unbearable loneliness. If he just connected to nothing, he enlarged his isolation and … drive for sex.

In other words, same-sex sex for a Straight man may easily lead to a sex addiction for men. (If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger addicted.) And because he easily can get his sexual needs met by having sex with men all the time, his need for (cumbersome) sex with a woman, kind of disappears. Only when he tries to live a monogamous life with a man, he may start feeling again that he lacks sexual union with a woman.

So here you have it. A Straight man can have sex with men all the time, be considered by specialists as ‘obviously Gay’ and even not get away from it anymore because he is now addicted. Just like the Rabbis warned and the Hebrew Bible condemns: [Men,] do not have intercourse with a man as you would have with a woman because that would be to’eyvah. The Sages explain, you to’ey bah – you will be led astray by doing so.

(Fifty years ago, most Rabbis understandably mistook Gay men for wayward Straight men. That was honorable. Their subsequent ongoing refusal to admit their error is Judaism’s greatest scandal in 2000 years.)

So, surely, a Straight man, by having sex with men, can turn into what psychologists consider Gay.

Yet, if, as the article mentions, he now lives with a steady boyfriend, and doesn’t miss sex with a woman, he was Gay all along. And maybe he didn’t know. If Gay is bad, Apple should pay him. He could have lived happily without being subjected to heavy oppression if Apple had not led him to his natural sexuality. It’s like suing a doctor for spoiling your life by telling you that you have an incurable untreatable disease.

Twist alert! Maybe he’s not really trying to get money from Apple. Rather, this may be a clever ploy, under the eyes of the repressive Russian regime, to bring being Gay into the public eye and discussion. Losing his case would really be winning it, for all to see: a judge ruling that no one can make you Gay and it’s not regrettable, damage to begin with.

For decades already, Apple is a Gay-friendly company. I hope they’ll seize this court case to spread throughout Putin’s empire the messages that:

* Nothing can turn you Gay.
* It’s great to be Gay.
* They’re happy if they have helped him find his natural love.

The report in the Moscow Times of only the filing of the lawsuit already quickly became its most-read article. May it be a lengthy trial (with many appeals!) with lots of publicity. (There is no such thing as bad publicity.) And may the best lose!