I'm gay, and I've never been abused, molested, experienced trauma, or been promiscuous.

I said most, not all.

It all depends on a number of stimuli you experience growing up. In Milo's case, he wasn't raped or traumatized either, but chose to engage in consensual sex with a priest at the age of 13, so promiscuity was a factor.

George Michaels had some sexual experiences before the age of 18 that eventually led him to choosing to live strictly as a gay man.

Different strokes for different folks based entirely on a number of factors.

Without knowing what your childhood was like, what you were exposed to, what your first sexual experiences were, etc., it's impossible to simply conclude why your preferences are the way they are.

If you can't be born gay because neurotransmitters don't develop until puberty, how do you explain straight boys and girls who have crushes before puberty?

Crushes don't have to be sexual. Where did you get that from?

Men can have a crush on other men for being successful, it doesn't mean they want to have sex with them. They can be fascinated by the lifestyle, the prestige, the fame, etc.

Women can have crushes on other women for a number of reasons, from beauty to style to career, to home life, etc., it doesn't mean they want to have sex with that woman.

Men and women can have crushes on each other because they like something about that other person, it doesn't always mean it has to be sexual.

Also, in my previous comment I mentioned that the pituitary secretions happen in an intermittent manner, even during formative years. So it's structuring your neurological senses and physical genitalia for the growth spurt during puberty, which is why there may be some initial sparks of attraction during prepubescent years, depending on the stimuli.

Additionally, attraction is based on qualitative elements people perceive as being enticing, engaging, enlightening, or entertaining. There is a layer of complex neurophysiological processes that can affect and/or be reactive to psychological stimulation and/or experiences related to attraction, but it doesn't always have to be derived from or relate solely to sexual stimulation.

Also, scientists came to the conclusion that sexuality is caused by both genetics and epigenetics.

Left-wing scientists keep repeating this lie. If I asked you what allele strand these mysterious gay genes are located in during the neonatal process you couldn't find me one study that says.

That's literally why I addressed that point in my comment. The only genetic factors they have found have been in those who already identified as gay.

That's why I used the MMA/heroin examples; they're measuring genetic factors AFTER gene expression has already been made apparent through epigenetics.

The whole born gay myth was originated back in the 1980s, specifically by Marshall Kirk and Dr. Hunter Madsen. Try to look up the article in Christopher Street titled "The Gay Agenda", where they basically outlined how using the "born gay" talking point helps redirect the argument against the lifestyle to an argument about civil rights. It also managed to get the Religious Right off the backs of the Rainbow Reich because if you can argue that being gay is genetic then obviously gays were just "made that way".

If you have time, all of the agitprop used in media and faux science to trick people into believing such nonsense is outlined in the book you can read here: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen/08a/born_gay_hoax/TheBornGayHoax.pdf

Sadly, the propaganda worked for the most part, and any neuroscience that should dispel the propaganda is either buried or the research never gets off the ground. You'll also notice that the "born gay" maxim only works in one direction.

According to the Left, if you're straight you can very well be converted to being gay, as evident with all the hetero-conversion media out there. The CW Network and other stations have no shortage of shows where a character (usually female) is converted from heterosexuality to homosexuality, from Black Canary in Arrow to Supergirl's sister, to the one character in Wyonna Earp, etc., etc., etc.

You'll almost never find any lesbians or gays in recent media being converted into heterosexuals, with the rare exception of the recent James Franco movie based on a real-life gay man who turned straight.

You'll also find plenty of Left-wing media encouraging straight men to have gay sex: https://archive.is/wip/XPTah

Or plenty of media praising straight women for trying lesbian sex: https://archive.is/ZgBBI

The Left is partially right about one thing: sexuality is definitely on a spectrum. It can be influenced greatly by experiences, desires, infatuations, and traumas. But it's not a switch you can flip, and it's not something that's strictly defined at birth due to the stimuli factors involved.

As mentioned, most men have their orientation fairly set in place by puberty, but it can be altered by certain experiences, such as heavy drug use, or in the case of prison, being raped: https://archive.is/wip/UeVM7

Now to directly address why being born gay is so absurd from a neurophysiological perspective it's because attraction needs stimulation.

Your senses have to be developed enough for you to be able to ascertain the fundamental elements of attraction. Just as I mentioned above: You need to be able to see, touch, smell, taste, or hear something that makes you attracted to something.

The basic concept of how cognition works is outlined here so you have a brief understanding of the neural process: from stimuli, to conceptualization of the stimuli, to forming a synaptic response to the stimulus: https://science.jrank.org/pages/1577/Cognition-How-cognition-works.html

Those senses aren't fully developed at birth, and there are no neurotransmitters to somatically develop those sensations during prenatal development because the hypothalamus isn't secreting those kind of hormones yet, because your gonads aren't developed enough to need them, because you're still in the womb.

So if you can't see, touch, smell, or touch something to incite the stimuli for sexual attraction, how can you be perceptive that you are attracted to it when you can't even cognitively construct the identification of what you're supposed to be attracted to? Your limbic system is still in its infancy and so you're not even capable of higher cognitive functions such as delineating attraction at that point.

The actual process of cognitive development that leads us to recognition, cognizance, and the structure of thought processing is outlined in this report here, which clearly breaks down when those processes develop during the stages of human maturation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296669291_Executive_Function#pf5

Do you understand now? This is why I said physiologically it's impossible to be born gay because neurophysiologically the human brain literally does not have the capacity or tools to PERCEIVE attraction, because at that stage you can't even perceive yourself. The literal physiological matter necessary to develop the neurotransmitters for that stage of development doesn't even exist at that point.

This is why there are no peer reviewed studies that examine the actual neuroscience related to the development of sexual attraction during neonatal years, because it completely debunks the myth that you're born gay. If the physical matter that stimulates the impetus for that function doesn't exist at that stage, how can you be born gay?

As a cognitive exercise for you, specifically, just so you can better understand my point: try to describe something you find attractive that doesn't require any of your five senses.