Insightful and clearly communicated. I have a fondness for “conversion stories” and I suppose this qualifies as a gay conversion story.
The question on my mind is – how can we grant civil rights to a group of people whose population is not fixed, but fluid. Isn’t identifying as “gay” more of a political and social identifier, rather than anything having to do with innate characteristics or even sexual attraction?
This post has been elaborated here.
1. Just because an argument is politically strategic, does not make it true: A couple of years ago, the Human Rights Campaign, arguably the country’s most powerful lesbian and gay organization, responded to politician Herman Cain’s assertion that being gay is a choice. They asked their members to “Tell Herman Cain to get with the times! Being gay is not a choice!” They reasoned that Cain’s remarks were “dangerous.” Why? “Because implying that homosexuality is a choice gives unwarranted credence to roundly disproven practices such as ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapy. The risks associated with attempts to consciously change one’s sexual orientation include depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior.”
Cynthia Nixon (right) and wife Christine Marinoni (left)
The problem with such statements is that they infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire…
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