This is a very sensible op-ed from yesterday's New York Times by Frank Bruni, making essentially the same argument I made last year in a blog post called "Is it effective to argue that homosexuality 'isn't a choice'?" As I discuss in that post, Jonah Goldberg also made the same basic point years ago.
Bruni writes:
BORN this way.This is something to watch out for (and not just as far as sexual orientation): people will claim to be on the side of freedom, equality, fairness, etc., but when you look closer, what they're really trying to do is exercise authority over others. What Cynthia Nixon said must sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to those who think they have the right to set the rules about how her private life is supposed to work.
That has long been one of the rallying cries of a movement, and sometimes the gist of its argument. Across decades of widespread ostracism, followed by years of patchwork acceptance and, most recently, moments of heady triumph, gay people invoked that phrase to explain why homophobia was unwarranted and discrimination senseless.
Lady Gaga even spun an anthem from it.
But is it the right mantra to cling to? The best tack to take?
Not for the actress Cynthia Nixon, 45, whose comments in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday raised those very questions.
For 15 years, until 2003, she was in a relationship with a man. They had two children together. She then formed a new family with a woman, to whom she’s engaged. And she told The Times’s Alex Witchel that homosexuality for her “is a choice.”
“For many people it’s not,” she conceded, but added that they “don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
It's also a tactical blunder to turn the discussion into "Oh, she can't help being gay!" — as if there's something wrong with being gay which can be politely excused. If (as I believe) there's nothing wrong with being gay, then it's of no concern to the general public why someone happens to be gay. (Of course, it may still be of interest to some people, such as psychologists and sociologists, but I don't see how the question has any significance for public policy.)
UPDATE: The New York Times piece may have been mistaken about how Cynthia Nixon describes herself.
3 comments:
This subject connects to your long-term interest in free will.
If it's not caused at some genetic or biological level, does it make sense to call it a "choice"? It seems that everyone making this choice is pre-determined.
What seems valuable about saying "choice" is that it's then a matter of personal expression, which we view in a positive light because we value individuality and freedom.
The "born this way" template invites us to feel accepting toward people who have a condition they can't control.
If it's not caused at some genetic or biological level, does it make sense to call it a "choice"? It seems that everyone making this choice is pre-determined.
Well, for those who don't believe in free will, they would have to say being gay isn't a choice, since they don't think anything is a choice. It might be more useful for those people to translate "choice" in terms of whatever most people mean by choice (but with a footnote saying it's actually all predetermined). By the way, the political/legal implications of disbelieving in free will are controversial and not necessarily obvious.
Of course, there are possibilities other than "biological" and "a choice." In principle, it could be determined, but determined by environmental factors at various points in one's life.
The "born this way" template invites us to feel accepting toward people who have a condition they can't control.
Yeah, that's fine as far as it goes, but what happens if someone does a study showing that sexual orientation isn't purely inborn? It's not even a good political strategy (let alone intellectual honest) to stake everything on an empirical belief that might turn out to be empirically disproven.
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