Being gay IS a choice.

There's been a lot of talk in the recent weeks leading to the election next Tuesday about how gay people have a choice about being gay. I'm here to set the record, pardon the pun, straight about that. As a gay man, I believe I am qualified to comment on this particular subject. This may sound as if I am giving credence to those who make the "gay is a choice" argument, but rest assured loyal Hamsters, I am not.

Being gay is a choice. Being homosexual is not. The only choice I have is in deciding whether or not to live my life as who I am. To live a free and open life or one that is constrained and closeted. To accept that part of me that is undeniable and intuitive or to continue a life of self-recrimination and loathing. To realize that being a gay homosexual is not who I am, but one of the many parts that comprise my public and personal selves.

In most people's paradigm, that last sentence contains a redundancy. Gay homosexual? You can be one without the other; as in a homosexual who doesn't identify as being gay, or denies his or her sexuality. There is no comparative phrase for heterosexuals that I can come up with. Straight is heterosexual, hetrerosexual is straight. Some in the gay community might call them "Breeders", but that isn't always the case. Not all heterosexuals procreate, and not all prcocreation comes from  heterosexuals. And, simple biology here, if it weren't for all that procreating, there wouldn't be any homos, either. Both of my parents were, oddly enough, heterosexual. And science has shown that gay/lesbian parents do not necessarily pop out drag queen babies. It's a matter of random chance. My parents, when first confronted with the news of my impending birth, had no idea what they would end up with. It's not like they went shopping at Sears to pick out the baby of choice. I might be a rocket scientist, a rock musician, a rock breaker, or a rock around their necks.

I could also have been a rocket scientist with a rock band that rocked the world, like Tom Scholz of the band Boston. Sadly, that was not the case. (Scholz was actually a mechanical engineering graduate at MIT, but I think the point is still valid).

In concurrance with the social agenda vendors on the right, there is a cure for being gay. It's called a closet. To their chagrin and angst, however, there is no cure for homosexuality. No amount of prayer, denial, or drug abuse can alter that fact, a fact that I can attest to having tried all of those and more. The (un)-Christians like to refer to their older text when arguing against us, which only proves that we've been around for just as long as they have, and are as much a part of the human race as they.

The Right loves homosexuals. It's gay people they hate.