Frank Bruni, the New York Times opinion columnist who just happens to be gay, wrote a succinct, lucid rebuttal to the volumes of critics - mostly gay - who have been jaw-droppingly aghast by Cynthia Nixon's announcement last week - in that same paper of record - that her decision to leave her husband of umpteen years and move in with a woman to start a new family was completely by choice. (She later recanted by saying, begrudgingly, that she may have always been bisexual.)
The fear by many in the gay community is that by suggesting that being gay, or bisexual, is somehow a choice than we somehow will forfeit our rights and set the gay civil rights back decades.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As Mr. Bruni points out, there is no religious gene and yet Religion has some of the most protected and cherished rights in this country:
"Our laws safeguard religious freedom, and that’s not because there’s a Presbyterian, Buddhist or Mormon gene. There’s only a tradition and theology that you elect or decline to follow. But this country has deemed worshiping in a way that feels consonant with who you are to be essential to a person’s humanity. So it’s protected."
But on a more basic forensic level, Mr. Bruni warns of pinning our hopes to what he calls "a moving target":
"By hinging a whole movement on a conclusion that hasn’t been — and perhaps won’t be — scientifically pinpointed and proved beyond all doubt, they hitch it to a moving target. The exact dynamics through which someone winds up gay are “still an open question,” said Clinton Anderson, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns Office of the American Psychological Association. “There is substantial evidence of various connections between genes, brain, hormones and sexual identity,” he said. “But those do not amount to a simple picture that A leads to B.”"
And on a more fundamental and humane level, Bruni appeals to fundamental goodness that resides within all of us by making an appeal to our basic humanity:
"I know that being in a same-sex relationship feels as central and natural to me as my loyalty to my father, my pride in my siblings’ accomplishments and my protectiveness of their children — all emotions that I didn’t exit the womb with but will not soon shake. And I know that I’m a saner, kinder person this way than trapped in a contrivance or a lie. Surely that’s not just to my advantage but to society’s, too."
Perhaps, I'm simply too much of an idealist to believe that pinning our hopes on this notion that somehow we have to explain our biological predisposition - We were born this way! - is a humiliating but necessary evil.
© 2012, Victor Hoff. All rights reserved. Menofcolor.blogs.com
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Posted by: Anabel | April 24, 2012 at 06:50 PM