Recently it came to my attention that a very good friend has been struggling to have his family accept the fact that he’s gay. While his family is Roman Catholic, I don’t buy the fact that it is his family’s personal faith – despite the church’s teachings one can see in poll after poll that Roman Catholics support gay marriage by a larger margin than American voters. Tens of millions of devout Catholics have concluded that the church is out of step on this issue.
I’ve concluded (perhaps incorrectly) that his family must view his sexuality as a matter of choice, which really sets my head spinning. I can’t figure out how one comes to such a conclusion. It seems like such an illogical argument. Do heterosexuals struggle with their sexual identity so much so that they think its a choice we all make? If that is the case, I would appreciate the chance to lobby Ben Affleck and George Clooney to reconsider their choice. I can make a persuasive argument to stop choosing to be heterosexual – but I digress.
Really the only choice a gay / lesbian / bisexual person has is will they be honest to themselves and those people in their life. Whatever the outcome of my friend’s on going dialog with his family, I applaud him, and I hope he finds peace.
BosGuy 
The truth of the matter is that our behaviors are clearly impacted by decisions (choices) that we make. While gays may not choose to BE gay, they do make a choice to ACT on their orientation … hopefully by living openly, honestly and without shame. This, I believe, is the basis of the haters’ argument.
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I do think some people that object not because they view homosexuality as a choice, but because they view it as abnormal. We live in a hetero-normative world where anything to the contrary is viewed as not normal. And most of what these people know about homosexuality is not loving, lasting marriages and relationships, but rather their view is characterized by sexual behavior. They cant envision the kind of bond that heterosexual couples have because to them, it doesn’t fit into their picture of normal – and therefore must be wrong.
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I think it confuses people that most gay people, if they could go back, would not change and be straight. I think that the not wanting to change confuses them. They don’t understand the struggle it took/takes to get were you are and by going back and changing your orientation you are also changing all the adversity you have overcome, the friends you have made a so much more that made you who you are today – it is not just changing your orientation, it’s everything.
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I’m firmly in that camp. Knowing what I know now, I would not go back and “change” my sexual orientation. The only thing I’d change is I would’ve come out earlier; louder and prouder.
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Yeah – a lot of people think it’s a choice until you ask them when they chose to be straight. They can’t answer it and then they realize the folly of their reasoning.
Part of the reason I no longer speak to my father is because of his anti-gay shit.
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One reason I believe people think it is a choice is that the anti marriage equality organizations make it a point to peddle this line of reasoning in their attempts to distort the issues. They seem to believe that that is a way of somehow seperating our struggle for civil rights from those of African Americans or at an ealier time women. If folks hear it enough times these organizations hope people will belive it in the face of all the medical/scientific evidence to the contraty and unfortunatley some peple do..
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I didn’t choose to be gay, but I chose to be openly gay.
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