Sunday, July 24, 2011

Gay as a choice

A few weeks ago I joined a group of new friends on their podcast, Amateur Skeptics.  It's been a lot of fun and there have been many interesting discussions.  I'm psyched to be accepted as a regular member.

In our last episode, #38 Atheists for Humanity, we got in a discussion about a lesbian couple who had a child together and then one became a Christian and went straight, taking their daughter and fleeing to Nicaragua so that girl would not grow up exposed to a deviant life style.  The original article is interesting enough and demonstrates the standard bigotry shown by religious people (yes, I'm making this a blanket statement - deal with it), but that is not what I want to talk about here.

In the discussion I believe it was Bryan who said something like "this religious bigotry will go on until people finally accept that being gay is not a choice."  I had some words about that which I wanted to elaborate on.

First I want to say, I don't believe it is a choice.  I don't think I could manage to be entirely straight any more than a straight person could manage to choose to be gay.  I enjoy Dan Savage's recent focus on slamming back at "choicers" by suggesting that if homosexuality is a choice to prove it right there by sucking his dick.  While funny and poignant, I think his argument is flawed and stil great.

My point is a bit different -- while I don't think it is a choice, I don't really care whether or not it is a choice.  Although I'm all for science, I'm not sure how comfortable I am with a Gattaca-esque understanding of the human genome so that we can one day point to a gene that made you gay.  As much as I reject the notion that "God made me this way" as an excuse to be gay, I don't feel like it would be really helpful to show that "my DNA made me this way".  Besides the inevitability of a eugenics convenient excuse for the religious to reverse their position on abortion, I just don't like the direction this goes in.

Much like I despise the new term for intersex being Disorder of Sex Development (DSD) (more on this hate will eventually show on it's own post), the idea of identifying and justifying being gay because it is some naturally occurring genetic flaw seems to miss the point for me.  Being gay is no an unfortunate disease or condition.  It is not comparable to being born blind or deaf.  Likewise anyone convinced to not be a homophobic bigot simply because someone proves I can't help it is both an idiot and an asshole.  I know we're not supposed to ever turn down allies, but seriously, fuck anyone who comes over from the dark side because of a silly reason such as this.

And besides, I think our bigots will change their tune just like they always do -- they'll simply rephrase their bigotry and hate to accommodate this new information.  For being idiots who dismiss Darwin, they have proven themselves adept at evolving to maintain their status quo of dispicability.

I think homosexuals should not be discriminated against because there is no reason for the prejudice, that simple.  I shouldn't have to have a scientific excuse or be unable to change in order for people to not be assholes.  Again, I don't think it is a choice, but even if scientific proof one day declares with certainty that there is no gay gene and for some reason we are all choosing this because we enjoy being second class citizens, nothing will have actually changed.  We deserve to be real citizens right now - the "it's not a choice" argument is simply a distraction from the real issue.  Anyone who implies or is convinced that they shouldn't be a bigoted hater if only the science could prove that the gays didn't choose to be a sinner and that they would change their mind and feel bad for someone so afflicted is simultaneous lying to you, themselves, and are an abject fucktard.  Dismiss them and refuse to even argue such stupidity with them.

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