Homosexuality and Choice

Everyone knows that being gay is a choice. It's not determined by your genetics, or hormones, or life experiences, or anything else like that. Because it's a choice you can be "fixed" if you are gay, that is to say, you can become a heterosexual again. (Now I think all I just wrote is BS but bear with me.)

For this topic I chose this short but biased (everything is biased, haven't we concluded that?) article: Homosexuality and Choice. (1)

Being gay isn't like being black, or white, those things don't "wash it off", but apparently being gay does. (2) Alveda King (daughter of the late Dr. MLK Jr.) claims that being gay is not a question of being, rather a question of choice, saying "...if behavior or other aspects of personhood may be altered, then those aspects fail to meet civil rights status. Homosexual practice clearly falls into this category. As my mother, Alveda C. King has said, "I have met many ex-homosexuals just as I have met many ex-husbands, ex-wives, ex-drug addicts and ex-lawyers. Yet I have never met an ex-Negro, ex-Caucasian or ex-Native American." The politics of preference does not jibe with civil rights legitimacy...^[15]" This section is similar to what Brown and Herndl discuss on page 226 where they say "this is the rhetoric of group solidarity, not of deliberation or proof." Indeed the language used in the passage, invoking the followers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to rise up in favor of equality based on unchangable facts of life rather than those facets of human life that are malleable.

"...one has to consider that homosexual acts between consenting adults are, by definition, done by choice." This is indeed true, but fails to explain that heterosexual acts are between consenting adults are also done by choice; yet it portrays heterosexual acts as a choice, but not address heterosexuality itself as a choice or not.

The article discusses that homosexuality is similar to any addiction saying that "psychiatrists often concede that spirituality provides the most effective cure for those who are willing to try it." And conclude that any addiction, like alcoholism, and in turn homosexuality, are bad for society. They say that "the chief 'scientific' reason given to deny a link between homosexuality and choice is that major American mental health organization deny think link. In other words, scientists have voted on it, and they disapprove (see politicization of science)."

On page 232 Brown and Herndl conclude that "our analysis suggests that their rhetoric emerges from the relationship between their habitus and the cultural market, a relationship between their identity and the dominant hierarchy of value and social power." This can be seen in "Homosexuality and Choice" in the sections where Conservapedia repeatedly uses phrases such as "ex-homosexuals" and say "people with homosexual tendencies in their genetics can still resist the temptation to commit sin," invokes the bible, claims that homosexuals/ality have an agenda, cite words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, and use polls to show that most Protestant ministers "agreed with the statement 'homosexuality is a choice people make.'"

I personally find the fact that Alveda King clearly pulls homosexuality away from the civil rights movement because it is a "changeable" aspect of our lives, something we can make a choice about. I feel that the social and psychological motives behind Conservapedia's article idealize the heterosexual relationship, use rhetoric to condescend to those who believe that homosexuality is a choice, and evaluates homosexuality as something that is a product of cultural choice that can ultimately be avoided if the person has enough determination and will to abstain from a sinful life.

(Now, to my tangent. Homosexuality is not a choice. Experts have determined that there are genes, and hormones (and other stuff) that show that sexuality is set and innate. We have discussed how homosexuality was removed from the DSM. I believe it is a life-long struggle for some, like it was for my (favorite) uncle.(3))

1. http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexuality_and_choice.
2. http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/10/20/348823/herman-cain-doubles-down-that-being-gay-is-a-choice-washes-off/
3. http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/opinion/hormel-shorter-gay-not-a-choice/index.html