At least, if you look at me, as a youth, and maybe even now, you might come to that conclusion; in fact there are those who have, and thus deprived me of things thought I ought to have had, given me things I didn't want, but more of that at another time. I am not now, nor have I ever been, or even thought of myself as, a Gay person. As an actor I've played gay characters, which of course is what led others, gullible others, to think I really was gay, er, am gay. But No, I'm not gay. I've experimented with homosexual acts, and found them wanting, of intimacy, of sensuality, of, ok, naturalness if you want to get biblical. Yet I am not afraid of gay, nor do I care much anymore if people think I am or don't, for I know what I am, and am happy with that.
But I realize there are people, strict biblical adherents, who are basically afraid of gay-ness, of homosexuality, to wit the movements in various states against gay "marriage" or civil unions. I also realize that if we who are "born" gay can claim so, we throw up a heavenly defense against such arch-anti-activists, using their own scripturalness as our shield. "God made me the way that I am." That's it.
I don't buy it. I still believe what you do (leave out whether you are this or are that), the way you approach life, love, sex, is a matter of choice, and even if you want to put a name on it, still your choice. It's a free country, isn't that what we all believe? So if we choose to be gay, straight, lesbian, bi-sexual, or celibate, it's nobody's business. Nobody's. And if we want to form a lifetime union with another person capable of making the same decision, okay. You choose your person, I'll choose mine. What counts is the legal rights of what follows such a union. Ay, there's the rub, does the partner have not only conjugal but legal rights such as survivorship, family insurance, or obligations of debt and liability? The rub to be sure.
In our make-your-choice world either of super-macho ballplayers or nerdy information technologists, of the cartooning of everyone from jet pilots to hamburger flippers, "gay" or "straight" are convenient boxes in which to store images of personalities when one's mind is not of a diacritical nature, and used to simply classifying and storing away icons for convenience. That's the kind of world we live in, here in the good old USA, where advertising rules the way we think, if not advertising, then the situation episodes that surround it. TV is boss, no matter if one watches news, sports, "reality," discussion, late-night, early-morning, after all it's just what's happening, and it's all happening at light-speed, in high-def. Hey, the real story of who we are is in the ads, where we are told what we might want and how to get it, what we might have and the pills to cure it, what we might get later and how to plan for it, our entire life, if we believe what they say, and the sad part is, when you come right down to it, mostly we do, when they are just ways to part us from our cash.
Back to this "born"-ness, this defense against those who would suspect that those who are of another mind than their own, might proselytize their offspring to get them to make a "decision" to be one way or another, a way not in concert with their own wishes. Frankly, I believe "born"-ness is a cop-out, a rationalization by gay people about the path they have chosen, when such a decision could just be made on its own merits, and to hell with the rest of the world and the way they might think. It's easier to say "Oh, I was born gay," i.e., "Born the way I am." - "and my circumstances had nothing to do with it." Please. Circumstances have everything to do with it, where you are born, where you grow up, how old you are when you start school, how big or small you turn out to be at different ages, all of it (Read "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell). Born is only one circumstance, one among thousands. Stand up, be a man, or a woman, and say I'm in charge of my own destiny, and I choose this or that, and I'll live with it. If you want to hire me or fire me, if my performance is more or less than you want, fire me for that, not for some silly none-of-your-business-ness.
The increasing examples of gay or lesbian couples raising children lends credibility to the argument that it is a decision, not a predetermination, that directs a person to either lifestyle. After all, wouldn't those raising children in a gay or lesbian home be the first to declare, and be even more firm in the declaration that the child has the right to decide, that the "parents" don't make any indication for the child as to how the child was born, only get to determine how the child is raised. The child thus has the opportunity to see first-hand whether the gay lifestyle is right for him or her, and that's the way it really is, until the "born that way" - ers muck it up with their theory of how God made us. How easy it would be for two homosexuals living together parenting a child, to lead that youngster into believing he or she was "born" this way or that, and thus indicate a direction for that young life. So you would think that gay persons raising children would be the first (and second) to deny the "born gay" rationalization, no?
Henry Francisco, Special to
