Choice

Scott Lemieux points out something that I should have thought of:

From a liberal standpoint, the correct answer to the question of whether sexual orientation is voluntary or not is "who the hell cares?" To argue that gays and lesbians "have no choice" or whatever is to implicitly accept the frame of bigots; the underlying assumption seems to be that if people did choose to have sex people of the same gender then legal discrimination would be perfectly acceptable.

And of course, he's absolutely right. In light of the landmark decisions in the past couple of generations on the right to personal autonomy, beginning with Griswold and going all the way through Lawrence, it's obvious that "nature or nurture" is irrelevant. I've sort of skirted around the logical inconsistencies of the anti-gay position -- after all, religious belief is a choice, and they don't seem to have any problem with laws protecting that (at least for themselves) -- but I never quite made that jump. Thanks to Lemieux for pointing it out.

So the correct answer to the next bigot you meet who's spouting off about "choice" in sexual orientation is "So what?"

Read the post Lemieux links to by M. Leblanc at Bitch, Ph.D. It's brilliant.

Here's Alex Blaze of Bilerico Project weighing in on the question at Pam's House Blend.