Hi

I did some research about homosexuality. It seem like humans it has been around for an extremely long time. In each culture - there is some evidence of men an women taking sexuality amongst there own gender. This was much often seem in Roman and Greek cultures.

So to the original post - is it for a past life occurrence- it could be. For those who want more information search en.wikipedia.com - under homosexuality.

homosexuality is a condition (or status) of ones mind. it has been shown to be present in several animal groups (supposedly not having a conscience)and they have no such thing as social ostrcism. and like in humans, it stays with someone all their lives and for some it is just a passing phase. in certain apes,it is a pressure valve to release pent up sexual urges in males with no access to the females. I also have read that in certian human communities, where the menfolk travel for months away from their women to herd their amimals, it is accepted for them to have sex with their animals or among themselves. i guess this is natures way of making sure that small communities rremain close knit and dont break up by infighting cused by pent up feelings.

I certainly hope that homosexuality isn't something that carries over from one lifetime to the next.
And I highly doubt that anyone in their right mind would choose to be different, no matter what their religion. There are some gay people out there who cannot stand to be what they are. These people are battling against it every day! So I do hope that they can find peace in their next life and be happy and straight if they choose to be. I do however think that it might be a gene, and as a gene there has to be a cure. Although no physician is trying to find one, because they veiw it to be a normal thing! That it would be like finding a cure for eye color or left-handedness. Well guess what? They found a cure for eye-color! It's called contacts! So I truly hope that they find a cure for this as well! You can try to bash it into their heads, yell at them, shake them about, but still they won't accept it! Some people really can't live like that, and actually commit suicide or try to commit suicide because of it. And still they don't find a reason to try to find a cure for it... >.<
I know that some people don't veiw it as an illness, but it truly is if it goes so far as to do that!

What an interesting discussion. Apparently there are a lot of thoughtful and well informed people on this board. I've studied this problem for a long time and I have a couple of contributions.

Homosexual and hetrosexual might be more of a social construction than an objective reality. We like to label other people and ourselves and we tend to use the dominant paradigm. In our society, the climate of hostility and oppression has framed that type of sexual behavior in a very categorized way that fails to address the sheer sexual opportunism that often guides our personal behavior. If the evidence we get from comparing cultures where homosexuality is promoted or accepted with cultures where it isn't can be generalized, the capacity for sexual response appears quite maleable for the most part. As Gore Vidal has said, "There are no homosexual people, there are only homosexual acts."  

I doubt if preference is a choice, but choosing to act on one's inclinations is definitely a choice.

As for past life influences on preferences OR choices, I can't imagine how your past life experiences COULDN'T influence everything you are and do. I'd think that strongly identifying with a past life of the opposite sex could incline one to same sex relationships in this life. I also think there may be a variety of other factors that can trigger it... oppressing gay people in a past life could create a life where a soul is correcting by experiencing this problem from the other side for example.  

Karma, as near as I can grasp it, it VERY complicated and can be very hard to comprehend. I doubt if most of the simplistic cause and effect type stuff people wonder about when they talk about past lives is all that accurate.