When it comes to sexual orientation, I'm firmly in the Phil Robertson camp - vagina beats anus any day (or night) of the week, so in that regard, I cannot understand homosexual orientation. Having said that, I am a recovering alcoholic who will, by the grace of God, celebrate 10 years of sobriety later this month, so I do know a thing or two about compulsive, self-destructive behaviors. In that regard, alcoholism is in some ways like homosexuality. It is a deviant behavior, and I don't necessarily mean that in the negative connotation of the word, but in the clinical sense that it "deviates" from what is normal behavior. Alcoholism and homosexuality are also similar in that you can get a room full of clinicians, medical doctors, behavioral therapists, addiction specialists, etc. and find plenty of people willing to advocate either the nature or nurture side of the argument.
The problem with having that argument is that either side only serves to justify the behavior. For me as a (recovering) alcoholic, if I would subscribe to the "nature" (i.e. hereditary) side of the argument, I would simply accept that I was born that way, God created me that way, and there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well simply indulge the compulsion as there would be no point in resisting it.
On the flip side of the coin, if I treat it purely as a learned behavior, it would be all too easy to convince myself that I could "unlearn" it at will should I choose to. When I was in the depth of my drinking and friends or family would approach or confront me and ask if I had a drinking problem or if I was an alcoholic, my response was that I didn't have to drink, I simply enjoyed/preferred being drunk. It was a lie that I told them and myself, (deep inside, I knew I had to drink) and I thought it was a clever rejoinder to a question people seemed to be asking me with increasing frequency. Yet, once I started on the pathway to sobriety and started attending AA on a regular basis, it seemed that virtually every other alcoholic to a man (or woman) had come up with, and employed some variation of that same, "very clever" lie.
Point being, embracing either side of the nature v. nurture debate doesn't help the alcoholic, and I would suspect the same rings true for the homosexual. Only when the matter is dealt with in a third dimension, that is, as a spiritual deficit, can one truly find relief from the compulsion and the behavior. Regardless of whether it's a genetic or learned behavior, my natural will and inclination is to drink, and for the last decade, the only thing that has kept me from doing so is the willingness to subordinate my will to God's will, and I suspect a homosexual that wanted to normalize his or her life would have to take a similar approach.
It doesn't have to be limited to just homosexuality or alcohol. Almost ANYTHING can be come that way for a person. Any addiction.
Drugs, sex, rock and roll. Seriously.
Porn is an addiction, that affects people similarly as a drug. Adultery/fornication.
How many people are in abusive/ co-dependent relationships, that when the relationship is gone, the victim, no matter how bad the relationship, goes through a form of withdrawal.
A thrill seeker/adrenaline junky.
The sports fiend/fan.
The athlete.
The celebrity.
Basically, ANYONE who has allowed someone or something to grip their life in such a way, that they knowingly or unknowingly try to fill a hole in their life, that only God can fill.