More A Way Of Life… Look, this is just between you and me

If Sexual Orientation Is A Choice…

People who are in my Google+ Circles will already know that I got rather depressed when I heard that the legislature in North Carolina had voted to put an amendment to the state constitution to their electorate which would enshrine an anti-same-sex definition of marriage into that document.  They're far from the first state to have done so, but given that same-sex marriage is already banned by statute in the state, this just feels unnecessary, vindictive and divisive.  It may not pass, of course, but whether it does or doesn't, the thing that depressed me is that there are people who hate me and others like me so much - people who've never met us and know nothing of our lives - that they want to see discrimination against us written into the documents which define the very nature of their union.

I think that a bit of depression is reasonable off the back of that.

But:  in the coverage of this I've seen that dull old saw about 'choice' in regard to sexual orientation has been trotted out again.  For as long as I can remember my standard response to this is to question why anyone would choose to be a target of prejudice, discrimination, abuse, violence and occasionally murder.  To ask what the questioners think is so attractive about being on the receiving end of their hatred that millions of people through recorded history would have 'chosen' it.  I've never had a response to this question that made even the smallest sense, so I still have no idea why on earth anyone would think I'd chosen to love men.

I also hear a lot about this 'lifestyle' I've 'chosen', as if something as fundamental as my basic emotional core is the same as deciding to live on a commune, or being vegetarian.  Or, I don't know, deciding to attend a church.  I know that for many people choices like those are deep and significant ones, but they are choices - lifestyle choices if you will.  That's not what being LGBT is.

Chief among the messages about lifestyle and choice I've seen in this debate is the view of Senator James Forrester, the leading sponsor of this amendment, who at a town hall meeting on the subject said "we need to reach out to them and get them to change their lifestyle back to the one we accept".

That's a chilling statement from any legislator in a democracy.  It's worse when uttered at an event organised by a group with a mission to get people across America to "vote the bible".  The fundamental (and I use the word advisedly) point here is that "changing a lifestyle to one we accept" is not a viewpoint which stops at the destruction of any security gay relationships might conceivably one day be afforded.  This is a viewpoint that will trample over any dissenting religion; that will go on to require women return to the status of possession in their marriages, and work to ensure that their reproductive rights vanish.  This is the viewpoint of tyrants, not democrats.

But returning to the point that I started from here several days ago, (contant distractions is my excuse), I'm left thinking that this thing about choice could all be looked at from another perspective.  If sexual orientation is a choice - it's not, obviously -  and I (for example) have chosen to be gay, doesn't that mean people like Senator Forrester have chosen to be (presumably) straight?  If it's possible to choose, then that choice must largely be between two or more equally viable options.  So all those straight people like the Senator and his ilk actually find men attractive, but have simply chosen to focus their attention on women.

Now that I think about it, that could explain why so many flaming homophobes turn out to be flaming queens :- )