“Being gay isn’t a choice”. “Gay people are born that way”. We’ve all heard these statements a million times. They’ve been repeated and reiterated to the point that disagreeing with them will bring nothing but scorn in the ultimate expression of political correctness. But why do these statements exist? It seems that these statements (which don’t really have any conclusive scientific evidence to support them, although that never seems to stop something from being widely accepted as fact nowadays) are generally used to defend someone who is gay. But doesn’t using one of these statements sound more like an excuse?

The truth is, using statements like this is copping out and belittling gay people. Their use is akin to taking the easy way out when combating the Neanderthals that gay bash by telling those homophobic intolerants that gay people don’t have a choice in their sexuality and are “born that way, so please don’t hold this defect against them”. It’s making an excuse so as to appease the bigots instead of confronting the true heart of the matter which is the anti-gay prejudice itself. The reality, however, is that it’s not the gay person who has the problem, it’s the intolerant person unwilling to accept another person for who they are and who they choose to be, and we should stop making this excuse for why gay people even exist in the first place and address the issue head on.

Why can’t being gay be a choice? If an individual chooses to be gay, why is it that society can’t respect that decision? And more importantly, why does society feel compelled to make an excuse on behalf of the gay person by saying “being gay isn’t a choice”? Human beings have every right to choose their road in life, and at least in this country, to pursue their own happiness.  So why do we continue to tell the anti-gay crowd that they shouldn’t hold being gay against a gay person because after all “it’s not their fault, they were born that way”? Sure sounds like a humungous insult to the gay community.

It’s time to stop dumbing down this explanation in an attempt to appease the haters. Being gay IS a choice! And it’s a beautiful (and in the current world, brave) choice. And it shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of the gay person to have to defend this choice, and certainly not by saying that the gay person “cant help it, that’s the way they were born”. As if it were some unfortunate birth defect. How insulting! We as a society have created this explanation to placate the aggressor instead of standing up to the aggressor as we should. These excuses that we use place blame on the entire gay community simply for being gay while at the same time failing to stand up to the bigotry and hatred that the gay community faces from such a wide swath of our society.

Instead of making excuses for an individual’s sexuality, we should be supporting the gay community in their absolute right to not only be gay but to CHOOSE to be gay if that is what they desire! To simply be as gay as they choose to be, and to not be told their choices are less protected or less important than other members of society. Only when we accept people for who they are and who they choose to be will we be supporting a society of inclusion, fairness and equality for all.