Being Gay Is Not a Choice Funny
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Being gay is not a choice but who cares if it is?
When it comes to acceptance and LGBT Canadians, the race for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is like a broken, erratic clock: one hand inches into the future while the other jumps back, Emma Teitel writes.
When it comes to acceptance and LGBT Canadians, the race for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is like a broken, erratic clock: one hand inches into the future while the other jumps back. Peter MacKay, Marilyn Gladu, and to a certain extent, Erin O'Toole, are candidates presently riding the forward moving hand. Social Conservatives Richard Décarie and Derek Sloan are riding the other hand into an ugly past.
MacKay and Gladu revealed this month that they intend to walk in Toronto's Pride Parade. (O'Toole will not walk unless uniformed police join him.)
Meanwhile, Décarie and Sloan went on television to discuss what is on almost nobody's mind in the year 2020: whether or not being gay is a choice.
"You think that's a choice?" CTV host Evan Solomon asked Décarie on TV last week. "I think it's a choice," Décarie said. "I think government has a responsibility to encourage the traditional values we have had for the past years."
Solomon posed the same question to Sloan who said "no" being gay is not a choice, in his opinion. Then came the caveat: "But this is a complicated issue and I am not a scientist," he said.
I'm not a scientist either, Mr. Sloan, but I'm pretty sure I can attest to the fact that it's not all that complicated, because though I got a D in high school biology I have an A+ in firsthand lesbian experience. I did not choose my sexual orientation anymore than you chose yours.
But even if I did, who cares? More specifically, even if I did choose to marry a woman when I could have been just as happy with a man (this is a hypothetical question; I'd be miserable with a man), why should I have?
In the aftermath of social conservative candidates' outdated comments this month, it was extremely heartening to read condemning responses from reasonable voices within the CPC.
"Being gay is not a choice and nobody should be running for office on a platform to roll back hard-won rights," MacKay tweeted in response to Décarie.
What's frustrating though, is that because of people like Décarie, the current conversation around LGBT rights in Canada is centred not on acceptance of diverse identities but on the origin of and reason for those identities. Are people born gay or do they end up that way because they watch too much Ellen? It's a question that well-meaning people — Lady Gaga among them — tend to counter: "Of course they're born that way!"
But the truth is that we may not be. There is no fabled gay gene (at least not that we know of). Not everybody knows from the moment they hit puberty that they are queer. My wife, for example, was a seemingly contented heterosexual before we got together. She had meaningful relationships exclusively with men before we fell in love. She didn't have an "oh no, I'm gay" existential crisis. This doesn't mean she chose to be attracted to women, but it does mean she chose to pursue that attraction rather than (as Décarie might prefer) suppress it.
It's important to note that when social conservatives suggest there is a choice element to being gay, they're not usually suggesting same-sex attraction is a choice. They're suggesting same-sex attraction can be successfully suppressed. That for example if you're a cisgender, bisexual or pansexual person, you can choose to strictly pursue members of the opposite sex and snuff out the part of yourself that desires someone of the same sex.
But why should you have to? Choice is good in all things, romantic love among them. (What scares social conservatives more than fixed queer identities are unfixed ones. LGBT youth are increasingly rejecting labels.)
The best way to respond to Décarie's argument isn't to assert that being gay isn't a choice, but that it doesn't matter either way. The question itself is stupid and harmful. Whoever they are and however they got there, just let people be.
To her credit, Conservative Party MP Michelle Rempel Garner made a statement in response to Décarie's comments, in which she managed to condemn his ideas without legitimizing the "choice" question.
"I vehemently reject this message," she tweeted. "I will not serve under someone whose leadership pitch is that someone's sexuality is something to be "fixed". I am full on tired of this type of shit defining the conservative movement in Canada. Giddy up, you're going to have to go through me."
Way to go Michelle. Make that clock run on time.
Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/01/29/being-gay-is-not-a-choice-but-who-cares-if-it-is.html
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