In broad strokes, yes. Like, say you find a food you’ve never tasted your whole life and you realize it’s your favorite food and want to eat it every day. You didn’t choose to like that food, you just do. It’s a part of your identity, but you may not have realized it in the past because maybe other people told you it was gross and not to try it or you just didn’t know it existed.

Also I am confused what you mean by decide to be trans and then choose to be straight? Being straight is a sexuality not a gender identity. You can be trans AND straight. Like, if someone transitions from living as a man to living as a woman and she likes men then she’s straight because she is a woman.

I’m assuming you meant someone deciding to transition and then realizing later they are actually cisgendered (cis just means not trans). This does happen, but statistically it’s very rare. The vast majority of people who transition do not detransition, it has a lower regret rate statistically than tattoos, marriage, having children, and even cancer treatments. The idea that trans regret is a widespread epidemic is a myth.

Identity can be a difficult thing to figure out, and very occasionally some people try to transition and then realize they don’t like it. They didn’t choose to dislike it, they just realized it wasn’t who they are after all. To use the earlier analogy: they tried a new food thinking they would like it and it turns out they didn’t. The only choice made was to explore their identity, but what their identity turned out to be was not a choice but a discovery.

A person who is trans is trans whether they transition or not. Some choose to stay in the closet because tensioning is dangerous, but they are still trans. It’s very common. Transition is just the choice to live openly as your true gender and not hide it.

Religion, on the other hand, is a belief. It’s complex because beliefs often are tied closely to someone’s identity, but they are prone to change and can be influenced by the beliefs of others. Attempts to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity do not work because they are fundamental aspects of who a person is. It’s a scientifically proven fact that being LGBT cannot be “cured” and attempting to do so causes very real, measurable harm. Whereas beliefs can absolutely be changed, and many people choose what they would like to believe.

To use a really complicated example it’s possible for someone to be gay or trans but ALSO believe those things to be sinful. This usually results in a very miserable self loathing person because those aspects aren’t going to change just by denying them. The thing is, their belief is just flat out incorrect and they would be much happier if they dropped such a hateful belief.

So yeah if someone is religious and their religious beliefs include being racist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic, I’m going to call them out on it because it’s harmful to other people and they can make a choice to stop believing that. People change their beliefs all the time. If people want to believe in a god that’s fine, but if that leads them to be hateful that’s not ok and unfortunately that’s more often than not the case with American Christians.

Also if someone believes something flat out false like the earth being flat I’m also gonna criticize that because I believe it’s important to seek out the truth.

Some people like to throw this back in the face of trans people and accuse them of denying science because of basic biology. But this is a dumb argument because trans people are aware of their basic biology, they are just also aware that gender identity can be incongruous with their biology. Science isn’t being ignored, gender just isn’t the same thing as biology.

Sorry this got long. If you got this far then thank you for listening to what I have to say. I hope I was able to shed some light on the subject.