The cultural acceptance of homosexuality as morally benign or morally good has happened at an alarming speed. While there is a complex of reasons for the shift, one of the most influential is the meme that being gay is not a choice. Admittedly, for most people who engage in homosex, this is true. Their same-sex attractions are not chosen. They come naturally to them, just as opposite-sex attractions come to naturally to a heterosexual. What is chosen is whether or not the person who experiences same-sex attraction acts on those desires to actually engage in homosex.
The “gay is not a choice” meme has been so important for the acceptance of gay rights that when Sex in the City star, Cynthia Nixon, stated publicly that she simply chooses to be in a lesbian relationship, the gay community was in an uproar. They feared that her comments would negatively affect their fight for civil rights.
Now that the “gay is not a choice” meme has brought general acceptance of homosexuality as morally benign/good, I predict that it won’t be long before Cynthia Nixon’s message will be embraced by the gay community. Soon, the rallying cry will be reversed to “gay is a choice.” Think about it. To say “gay is not a choice” implies that no one would want to be gay. It portrays same-sex attraction as an aberration that no one would choose willingly, and the gay man or woman as a victim to those aberrant attractions. That does not accurately reflect the gay community’s own self-perception. For them, being gay is not an aberration that should only be accepted because one has no other choice, but a good sexual lifestyle to be celebrated in and of itself. If being gay is a good thing, why wouldn’t someone want to choose to be homosexual? Homosexuality will be celebrated, not only as a choice, but as a good choice that even heterosexuals ought to give a try. So don’t be surprised when the homosexuality marketing message shifts from “Accept us as we are because we did not choose to be this way” to “Join us. Homosexuality is great!”
Thinking to Believe 
November 20, 2013 at 10:42 am
Jason never a Dulle moment eh?
Your extrapolation because of one person’s comment is exceedingly presumptive if not outright ludicrous; your conclusion that the meme “homosexuality is a choice” will never happen, fornever and never.
The simple reason that “homosexuality is a choice” is untrue and will remain untrue even if genetic manipulation reached the point when homosexuals might demand the right to manipulate their own unborn children, a right they will never gain but even if that were to happen, it shall continue to be “homosexuality is not a choice”, whether a gestational anomaly or genetic manipulation in the unborn child: some effect or some one being the cause of the effect resp.
Having said that however, when the genetic re-doers arrive en masse homosexuality will inevitably diminish as many anomalies will be reversed; until then, live and let live, love and let love.
OMG you are like the Republicans with the Affordable Care Act, Pit Bulls that will not give up the bite, will not let go even in the face of progressive revelations. Homosexuality, to those opposed despite the evidence, is like Obamacare to the Republicans, “it’s the tail wagging the dog”, ma.
Come into modernity and get a love-on for all humanity and stop for the love of life trying to denigrate your cohabiters. Take “earth”, put the “H” in front of earth instead of at the end and get a h…eart-on for eart…h and all inhabitants of goodwill.
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November 20, 2013 at 11:48 am
My “prediction” was not based on anyone’s comment, but rather on the contradiction I see between the message of “gay is not a choice” and “gay is great.” I’ve often heard homosexuals say things like, “Who would ever choose to be gay?” That sort of message makes it sound like they are a victim to something bad. That’s not the message gays want to send. They want to send the message that gay is great.
And in case I was not clear in my post, I’m not saying that the homosexual community will one day deny that their same-sex attractions are not chosen. They will simply deny that one must have a homosexual orientation in order to be gay. One could choose to engage in a gay lifestyle simply because it is a good, alternative lifestyle.
Surely you realize that in various cultures in the past (and some even in the present), homosexuality of some sort was widely practiced. The Roman aristocracy, in particular, often had young male lovers. Surely this was not because the majority of those who happened to be in the upper levels of society just so happened to also have a homosexual orientation. It wasn’t about their orientation, but about their preferences, and about cultural expectations. The same is true of the tribe (can’t recall name) in which a husband was expected to have sex with his wife’s younger brothers, and ejaculate in his rectum, because it was believed that inserting semen in the boy is what turned him into a man. This had nothing to do with sexual orientations. It was a cultural choice. Even today, there are people who engage in same-sex relations simply out of curiosity, who would not describe themselves as having a homosexual or even bi-sexual orientation. So the simple fact of the matter is that there are people who are not homosexual, who nevertheless do choose to engage in homosex. And if homosex is morally benign or morally good, why shouldn’t non-homosexuals try it? Why not promote it as a choice as well?
Jason
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December 2, 2013 at 7:05 pm
The famous former women’s college basketball star and WNBA player, Sheryl Swoopes, said the very same thing; gay by choice.
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December 2, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Phillip:
I suppose one might conclude the following account as Swoopes saying “straight by choice” but this is not expressing the “meme” that Jason is referring to.
Around her 40th birthday, Sheryl Swoopes found happiness in her personal life again—this time with a man, Chris Unclesho. They’ve since married. Her reversal of sexual course has taken some criticism in the LGBT community, but Swoopes is as steadfast about her love of Unclesho as she once was about Alisa Scott, a woman.
“I’m not confused,” Swoopes told Granderson. “I’m in love with who I am supposed to be in love with.”
She also said something a little unusual – she didn’t believe she was born gay. For most people in her position – had a child with her highschool sweetheart, separated and fell into a long-term relationship with a woman who she met through basketball – the narrative would be of someone who had always been gay, and had hidden it from herself for most of her life until this moment. But that’s not what Swoopes said to ESPN:
“I can’t help who I fall in love with. No one can.…I didn’t always know I was gay. I honestly didn’t. Do I think I was born this way? No. And that’s probably confusing to some, because I know a lot of people believe that you are…Discovering I’m gay just sort of happened much later in life… I’m content with who I am and who I’m with. Whether people think that’s right, whether they think it’s wrong, I don’t care.”
Or later, in an interview with Outsports:
“I’m not bisexual… I don’t think I was born [gay]. Again, it was a choice. As I got older, once I got divorced, it wasn’t like I was looking for another relationship, man or woman. I just got feelings for another woman. I didn’t understand it at the time, because I had never had those feelings before.”
In 2005, Swoopes was described as “the first African-American professional athlete to come out while at the top of her game.” Six years later, she doesn’t seem to be the out-and-proud lesbian face of basketball that many had wanted. But maybe she’s something else, something that could be even more groundbreaking. Even minor gay characters in media or TV used to be viewed as major progress, but now there are major gay storylines in shows as mainstream and popular as Glee and Grey’s Anatomy. Now the boundaries are being broken by characters like Franky in Skins; where pop culture once was barely ready for men with lisps, now they’re taking on a genderqueer pansexual kid. In 2005, seeing a successful and wildly talented woman risk everything she’d won by being honest about who she loved was big news. But in 2011, maybe we’re ready to see this as a story about being honest about everyone you love and have loved, being honest about the weird and indescribable ways love works inside you by refusing to really try to describe them at all. For a culture as obsessed with labels as ours is, that’s truly brave and transgressive. And for anyone else who doesn’t feel like they were born into a label, Swoopes may now be a real role model – the question is whether everyone else will be able to accept those terms, or whether “not so gay anymore” is the story we’re going to stick with.
SOURCE: http://www.autostraddle.com/lesbian-wnba-player-sheryl-swoopes-is-now-engaged-to-a-man-99696/
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