What Cynthia Nixon (remember? the redhead in Sex in the City) really said was: “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.” And then came the shit storm.
It was pointed out, correctly, that what Nixon is, is bisexual (a word she does not like), and that is not precisely the same as gay. But it was not a poor choice of words that set things off. It was the implication of choice which so inflamed some gay people.
Why is choice so threatening to some people?
Evidently it is. The blogosphere is simply boiling with resentment. You would think “I can’t help myself,” is the best thing people can say about being gay.
Nothing better illustrates the difference between LGBT Equality and Gay Liberation than the issue of choice.
Choice, or the lack of it, is the heart of LGBT Equality. The argument goes that LGBT people do not have a choice. They do not have as much choice as people have over their skin color or their ability or lack of ability to walk. Being LGBT is genetically determined, as much as Down's syndrome or the color of one’s eyes. Therefore, a humane and just society out to provide adaptations so that LGBT people can be as nearly equal to straight people as possible — just as such a society should provide kneeling buses and wheelchair ramps, sign language and foreign language interpreters, talking books, and other adaptations so that people who are different through no fault or no choice of their own can participate in society on as nearly an equal basis as possible.
On the other hand, choice is entirely irrelevant to Gay Liberation. The position of Gay Liberation is that being LGB or T is a fundamental human right. It is a right as much as the right to religion or speech or the right to vote. It is a right to intimate associations so much as the right to other associations is a right. Society has no more right to impose conversion therapy on LGBT people than it has to impose conversion on Catholics or Moslems or Jews or Mormons or Libertarians. It does not matter whether it is a choice, an immutable component of identity, a lifestyle, a phase, or a fad. People have an indelible human right to their intimate associations, however they choose them or whether they choose consciously or not.
Choice is irrelevant to Liberation. You may think you choose. You may think you had no choice. You may not be sure you remember whether you chose. You might have chosen something else which entailed an outcome you did not expect. It does not matter because you have a right to be what you are.
Moreover, rather than the no-choice position of the equality advocates, which is that for good or bad, being gay cannot be helped, the liberation position is “Gay is just as good as straight!” It is not making the best of a bad situation. It is not merely as good as it can be given its limitations. It is positively good in itself. Gay is good.
Really scary thought to the no-choicers, right?
Those who just want equality, of course, cannot bear the thought that sexuality could be a choice. To them, the immediate implication of choice seems to be that they can become equal with straight people by becoming straight people. They delude themselves with the thought that if they have no choice, then at least they can beg to be as much like straight people as possible. But, of course, there is no real equality when it is charity, meted out from the majority as a gift and the best wheelchair ramp in the world is not so good as the ability to walk.
Equality is not really equal, and is nothing to aspire to in place of liberation.
Baby steps. Baby steps. The first thing is to try to get the equality people to stop mistaking being the same for equality.
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