Articles like this concern me quite a bit. Scares the shit out of me, to be honest. Why?

First, it reinforces stereotypes. Yes, I realize stereotypes exist for a reason, but they are very very dangerous, for all of us. Could you tell by my walk I’ve got a crush on your sister? Would you bash my skull in because you thought you were the sex I was attracted to? Could you tell if I was with a man or a woman last night by the way I held my hand? Maybe it’s obvious. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s practiced, maybe it’s learned.

I realize how alluring it would be for a gay person to see genetic evidence of their sexuality. The Gay Gene. To be able to flip that DNA test in everyone’s face and shout, “See! God made me this way!” God makes babies with cleft pallets, and we’ve taken it upon ourselves to “correct” them, too. What about including homosexuality in a genetic counseling questionnaire? They didn’t find Down syndrome in the amniocentesis, but there is a 95% chance that your baby will be gay. How many parents will jump up and down at that news? Are there parents that would abort a gay baby? Yes, there are. There are parents that will abort a baby based on their sex alone.

So what, they could have the baby anyway, clinging to their 5% chance of heterosexuality, and from day one the baby could be put in therapy. Conditioned to be “straight” from birth and denied their right to experience life in a naturally dysfunctional way and to find and define themselves on their own terms? It could happen. It does happen. Parents send their children to therapy when they come out to them. Like they were ill or dysfunctional. Churches preach that homosexuality is an abomination.

If you were gay, would you like people thinking your genes were an abomination, anomaly, or defect?

I really don’t think it is genetic…and I say this because gay parents do not consistently produce gay children the way blue eyed parents have blue eyed children. Children of gay parents are probably much more comfortable expressing their identity so every time you see an out gay child of gay parents it is assumed the parents made him/her that way. A large portion of the population is probably too chicken shit to admit how they really feel or to even examine it with any honesty, anyway. So maybe we’re all gay and just haven’t realized it yet. If I am wrong, and it is genetic, then that is fine too, but it really takes all the fun out of discovery, no? And God forbid that out members of the LGBT identity be denied, not only the right to marry and adopt, but the right to reproduce.

There is no genetic test to tell me why I prefer marinara over alfredo, denim to corduroy, books to people, or Ani to Alanis. I just do. I didn’t make a conscious decision, it just fits and no amount of anything is going to unhappen who I am. I hate to relate it to something so simple, but our sexuality is such a small part of the whole that it really doesn’t do any of us justice to focus on it.

It should be focused on when someone is not being treated fairly because of it. Anyone ever seen Gattaca? The genetically “unfit” were 3rd rate citizens. And, lets be honest, gays & trans individuals are some of the most amazingly talented, intelligent, creative, loving, masterminds on this planet. They should totally be able to get health insurance, marry whoever they want, and smoke pot in their basement.

At the risk of sounding like a liberal dipshit, we should embrace our differences as part of the human experience and then forget them. I do not care if you like to suck cock or lick a lily or do everything all at once. I care that you are a good person, that you swerve for squirrels, that you don’t push old ladies down stairs, that you think Hitler was a total asshole…

I, myself, have made a conscious decision to not identify as straight. I have been willing to consider all applicants for love of my life. After Hugo is gone, I’ll might shack up with a nice girl and we’ll raise goats for the sheer joy of having them. Maybe. Maybe not. But I can’t limit myself because it makes other people feel comfortable to label me and I refuse to believe that who I am is merely a result of 2 random bits of DNA colliding.

Of course, if you’re an Atheist or whatever, you’re going to think that is BS and what are we if not that? Well, then, that’s just how I see it and you’re entitled too, my friend.

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