I'm a LESBIAN but I wasn't born this way
are we born gay or is it possible to
make a positive choice to reject
heterosexuality and decide to switch
sides of course it is
sexual attraction normally comes about
as a result of opportunity luck or
curiosity for me it all began when I
developed a crush on my best friend at
the tender age of eleven but less than a
year later I was in love with Colin I
soon fell out with him and gravitated
back to my female friends but the
pressure on me not to be a lesbian was
enormous and I struggled with
self-hatred and low self-esteem so what
made me finally decided would embrace
lesbianism the feminists I met in the
1970s who helped me understand that
loving women can be truly Liberatore I
loved the feeling that I'd chosen my
sexuality but have we returned to the
essentialist notion that we are either
born that way or that we are
unthinkingly heterosexual we have given
up the pride in our radical sexual
identity for a medical diagnosis with no
scientific basis but a number of
scientists in the main gay men such as
Cassie Raman Glenn Wilson and dick swab
yes that is his real name have devoted
their efforts to proving the existence
of a gay gene take neuroscientist Simon
Levay who claimed in 1991 that gay men's
brains were more like women's then there
was the one that discovered that boys
with older brothers are 33% more likely
to be gay because they occupied a womb
where a male fetus had already been but
none of the science holds water and
let's face it bigots don't care either
way last January I went undercover to a
Christian counseling center in Colorado
posing as an unhappy lesbian who lost
her family in her church when she came
out my character Joanna underwent a week
of intensive gay conversion therapy
during which everything negative about
being a lesbian was rubbed in my face
but do you think my therapist Lydia
actually cared whether I could be turned
straight whether I'd been born that way
or made an immoral choice to become a
lesbian or was her mission really to
persuade me to stop having sex with
women so that I could be welcomed back
as a Christian
needless to say Lydia did not succeed in
her mission and I'm still very much
I'm proud lesbian but it is possible to
be against gay conversion therapy and
still argue against the existence of a
gay gene and yet the widely held view
within much of the gay community goes
like this
the estimated 3 percent of the
population who are gay were born this
way we do not make a choice those who
claim they choose to be lesbian or gay
are not real gays they're just
experimenting it is dangerous to say we
choose to be gay because then the bigots
will insist we can choose to be straight
look some gays might feel that finding a
gay gene will end homophobia racism is
not diminished because we know that
blackness or whiteness is genetic sexism
exists even though we know that sex is
genetic so when people ask if being gay
was a choice then why would we choose to
live a life where oppression violence
and discrimination are inevitability z'
it is obvious that they're confusing
anti-gay bigotry with being gay of
course no one would choose to face
prejudice and social exclusion but many
are more than happy to make that
transition if the right woman or man
comes along asking for our human rights
on the basis that we can't help how we
are is counterproductive let's put some
pride back into our identity and stop
apologizing for it being gay or lesbian
is obviously not a choice like which
source to have with your pasta but more
a mix of chance and quite frankly
bravery it is a positive choice and if
anti-gay bigotry disappeared tomorrow
many more of us would have the
opportunity to choose it for ourselves
I'm queer and I've realized the rest of
the world is too when I first understood
I was gay I didn't like being called
queer because I didn't like how naming
me that set me apart but I learned just
like being black or mixed-race that even
having the same rights as everyone else
doesn't mean being the same as them