Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 38, Ed. 1 Friday, February 3, 2012 Page: 18 of 48
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So what if being gay is a choice?
Despite some activists' outrage
over actress Cynthia Nixon's recent
comments, it doesn't really matter
how we became LGBT
After four decades of watching people
Struggle to keep up with the politically
correct standard of the day in discussing
LGBT life, I'm beginning to think it's time for
everyone to relax a little.
I reached that decision this week when I read
about activists getting in an uproar oyer Cynthia
Nixon, an actress who starred in Sex
and the City, telling the New York
Times Magazine she preferred being
gay to straight because she had lived
both types of lives. Her remarks cre-
ated a furor among those who de-
mand we frame all of our speech in
a way they think best advances the
LGBT rights movement. A few days
later Nixon softened her stance in a
Daily Beast interview by saying she
was a bisexual by no choice of her
own, presumably in an effort to
quell the controversy.
Frankly, Nixon's first remarks in the New York
Times Magazine article made sense to me, and so
did her later remarks about believing she never
made a conscious decision to be a bisexual. It's,
just that I regretted she felt compelled to revise
what she had said earlier to appease her critics. I
got what she meant the first time without her fol-
low-up explanation, and I imagine most other
enlightened people did as well.
Nixon, who gave birth to two children with a
male partner, probably did make a choice to live
a gay life when she became sexually involved
With a woman. If someone is attracted to both the
opposite and the same sex, there probably does
come a point when the individual might need to
make a choice in terms of permanent or semiper-
manent partnership.
Certainly Nixon ought to be the best judge of
what happened in her own life, so what's wrong
with her telling the truth as she sees it?
Nixon noted correctly that many LGBT ac-
tivists shudder every time they hear the word
"choice," "preference" or "lifestyle" because they
fear it supports conservative religious arguments
that homosexuality is a perversion practiced by
degenerates who get their kicks out of being
wicked. As the theory goes, that gives credence
to the evangelists' claims thatbisexuality, homo-
sexuality and gender variance can be cured by
the administration of a good dose of Bible verse,
in quantities sufficient enough to scare the holy
bejesus out of the sinner.
As we all know, that doesn't work. Actually,
David Webb
The Rare Reporter
even most straight people realize that won't work
because most of them have also suffered the
wrath of the evangelical community in condem-
nation of some aspect of their lives, such as the
urge to masturbate or engage in sexual activity
before marriage. In reality, the only ones who
truly believe a pack of Bible thumpers can trans-
form a person's sexual orientation are people
who are lying about it, have been brainwashed
into believing it or are just too ignorant to under-
stand scientific research.
Decades of scientific evidence make it clear
that every aspect of a person's physical and men-
tal makeup — which certainly includes sexual
orientation—comes about as a result
of heritable genes and the impact of
sex hormones on the brain and other
body parts of the developing fetus.
In his 2011 book Gay, Straight and
the Reason Why, neuroscientist Simon
LeVay outlines decades of scientific
studies that all point to the same con-
clusion: In essence, people are what
nature made them.
LeVay, who served on the faculties
of Harvard Medical School and the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies,
has pointed this out in various arti-
cles and books he has authored over the years.
The results of a scientific study LeVay published
in Science in 1991 showing marked differences in
the brain structures of gay and straight men is
credited with helping spur the two-decade wave
of scientific research aimed at determining a bio-
logical basis for sexual orientation.
What the body of scientific evidence does for
most reasonable people is confirm what common
sense had already told them. There's just no way
certain people with obvious mental and physical
characteristics could have been anything other
than what they became—namely gay, lesbian or
transgender.
With others in the LGBT community it's a little
trickier because they display either few or none
of the obvious characteristics identifying them as
anything other than straight. Environment might
have played some role in their development, but
again the scientific evidence points to biological
factors. What's more the individuals usually re-
port experiencing feelings since their earliest rec-
ollections that set them apart from heterosexual
people.
Still, the unpredictability of humans makes it
impossible to categorize all people. Some mem-
bers of the community undoubtedly did feel an
attraction to the LGBT lifestyle and chose to em-
brace.it for that reason. The very size and the di-
versity of the world's LGBT community is. so
staggering that if we Come across some people
who are merely practicing free will, it shouldn't
be soBurprising.
I
Cynthia Nixon
That's why I liked Nixon's earlier remarks that
it didn't matter how people came to be a part of
the LGBT community. As she said, it doesn't mat-
ter how each and every person got here, and
words will never sway the opinions of bigots and
opportunists. It will require life experiences —
such as coming to realize they have a child or
grandchild who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans-
gender — to hopefully educate them about the
realities of life. ■
David Webb is a veteran journalist who Itas re-
ported on LGBT issues for three decades for theimin-
stream and alternative media. He can be reached at
dairidiiiayneiveblMhohmil.com.
18 dallasvoice.com
02.03.12
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Wright, John. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 38, Ed. 1 Friday, February 3, 2012, newspaper, February 3, 2012; Dallas, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth239205/m1/18/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.