Why I Think it's Funny when Someone Vehemently Claims that Homosexuality is a "Choice"

Why does it seem such claims are made most forcefully by the Paul Bunyan types — outdoorsy, with a thatch of whiskers you could lose a Hungry Man TV dinner in — or by "ex-gays" on a holy crusade who can only hint coyly in the form of religious koans that as long as they keep shucking the bearded clam they'll have tricked the sky pixie into letting them into the great country club of the hereafter?

I don't need to refer to scientific studies or quote passages from scripture in exploring the hangups these raving bigots have in defining sexual orientation as a choice. I only have to consult the single best authority on sexual preference that I know: me. And all I know is that if Brittany Spears and Ricky Martin are on the same stage, gyrating on my TV (which presumably has the "mute" setting engaged) my eyes will be drawn magnetically to the bead of sweat on Ricky Martin's face as it arcs down his sculpted cheek to the impish, upturned corner of his mouth where a flash of his hypnotic smile urges the droplet to the edge of his chiseled jaw where it darts under his chin and down his muscular neck, slowly curving around to the front to finally come to a rest in the hollow at the base of his throat, the whole time his sinewy body undulating like he's going to climax with the explosive force of firecrackers going off inside a stick of dynamite inserted in a cannonball that's in the nose cone of a nuclear missile detonating under a volcano that's on a planet hurtling to the center of a sun that's about to go supernova. And that alone is enough to nullify the most emphatic "choice" argument.


I've seen enough interviews with
Ricky Martin to know it's the only way.

If one is making a choice between options, one is making a conscious decision. I find my attraction to the same sex automatic, unconscious, natural. I think this is why most thinking people find this insistence on "choice" so fundamentally preposterous. Because it doesn't matter if you are attracted to someone of the opposite sex, someone of the same sex, or sometimes one and sometimes the other — the attraction itself is not a choice.

Take, for example, the Al Franken Show blog troll "LeftWinger" who once claimed he chose his sexual orientation every minute of every day. Note how he unwittingly proves my point for me in this comment:

If I wanted to, I could sleep with a male, but I have chosen to have intimate relationships with females all of my life. If I wanted to, I could easily sleep with a male at sometime in the future, but I really have no desire to do so.
Posted by LeftWinger at 06.17.2004 09.09 PM
(emphasis added)

His "desire" for the opposite sex prevents him from "choosing" to be attracted to the same sex. Neat how that works out.

Which leads me to why it's funny when one of these love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin hypocrites sits down to pound out a little "choice" screed with one hand while picking bits of salisbury steak out of their facial hair with the other.

If I find sexual preference a natural and automatic process based on my personal experience, I can't help but think that the knuckle-draggers' unwavering insistence that sexual preference is a choice is based on their personal experience. Which can only mean that they feel they must choose that which does not come naturally.



This goes a long way towards explaining the "lady doth protest too much, methinks" behavior exhibited in ostensibly "traditional values" blogs and websites so obsessed with homosexuality that they end up being much more about gays than about "traditional values" ("pastor" DL Fister), the voyeuristic tint of lurid sex descriptions which allows these tortured souls to indulge their fantasies under the pretense of condemning them (A Breaking Wind), and even something as simple as providing web links to graphic images or pornography complete with warnings in order to absolve the author of any responsibility (another one out of the DL Fister playbook).



Ultimately, the more vigorously they complain about homosexuality, the more suspect their protests become.

Dubya Bushytail

Nitwit Tidbit III

LaShawn the Barbarian proves once again why she is the Language Fartist...

Just as many witnesses to John F. Kennedy’s murder died under suspicious circumstances, so have witnesses to Slick Willie’s, including Vince Foster, who was the White House deputy counsel when he supposedly blew his brains out in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia.
(emphasis added)

Is there a note of panic in her post? Did she let slip some top secret intel? Does LaShawn possess some terrible knowledge that has doomed her to the same fate as many of the witnesses to JFK's murder? Or is it just that she's a horrible writer?


Two-Fer-One Tuesday

I just noticed this, shall we say, howler on the homepage of the Language Fartist:

"A yawp is a sharp cry or yelp, and the first place I’ve ever saw the word was Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself"

Phew! Somebody open a window! LaShawn's been writing again!

Write Your Own Caption



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For my birthday, my S/O got me the first few seasons of Red Dwarf (a show which I had never before seen, but had heard about). So we've been disappearing into the far reaches of time and space every evening after work to see how Lister and Rimmer and Holly and their cat are doing.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Pinky and the Brain, except that I figure we might have some fun writing captions for the picture above until I'm smegging ready to reenter the world of current events.

Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun!