That last paragraph really sums it up. I’ve tried to explain this to a couple of people I know. It seems more like she just doesn’t know any GLBT people (unlikely, but lets go with it for now) and therefore doesn’t know what it’s like to live in a society that is (generally) openly hostile to you.

As one commenter in an earlier thread put it: this is a public relations job.  She blew it.  The winner had a much firmer grasp about how to handle highly reactive topics, put your own feelings behind a barrier and punt artfully without offending anybody but the most strident - something people doing PR need to master.

I completely agree that being gay is not a choice.  However, I’ve often wondered if focusing on this fact is really a smart strategy for the gay rights movement.  First, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, so whether or not it is a choice is completely irrelevant in terms of morality.  Responding to bigots with “it isn’t a choice,” makes it sound like you’re admitting that there is something wrong with being gay, but hoping that you will be excused because you can’t help it.  Second, plenty of other groups have been persecuted by religious nut-jobs, even when it was clear that choice played no role in their status (blacks, Jews, women, etc.).

Unfortunately, Prejean’s views and her ignorance are probably closer to the “norm” than not.  She probably knows people who are gay, without knowing they are in fact gay.  Almost all of us outside the “Gay Community” do.  The stigma is such that it still isn’t common in many communities for there to be a lot of uncloseted LGBT people.  Which is a loss to us all.

This is one of the reasons I’m in favor of what the religious nuts fear most:  Acceptance of openly gay people and a “normalization” of their lives (or “boring-ization” - so common nobody even notices). 

Gay people are already a part of our lives whether we realize it or not.  And it goes way beyond just watching some fashion consultants on America’s Next Top Model, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. 

The good news is people like Prejean aren’t already so full of mindless toxic hatred of LGBT people that they can’t be reached.  There are worse things than a bunch of Americans being as clueless as she seems to be…

Second, plenty of other groups have been persecuted by religious nut-jobs, even when it was clear that choice played no role in their status (blacks, Jews, women, etc.).

Interestingly, if you look back, there was a feeling with those groups that there was some kind of choice, and you still hear echoes of it today.  Eve had chosen to eat the apple; therefore, all women were sinful.  You still get weird echoes of that with evo psych, where apparently the choices our ancestresses made 200,000 years ago mean we must be subordinate to men.  The Curse of Ham was cited as the reason it was okay to enslave Africans (after all, God hated them!)  Jews could convert to Christianity, but they stubbornly refused to, and even when they did, their conversions were not trusted.  (Weird how forcing someone to change religions under threat of death makes one suspect that conversion was not sincere.)  Declaring that homosexuality is a choice is just another in a long line of ways to blame people for their own oppression.

We still spend a LOT of time trying to prove that, say, women shouldn’t be denied abortions if they choose to have sex, or that black people living in poverty did not choose to be poor.  I think you’re ignoring the very real connections between all of these kinds of bigotry.

I agree with keptsimple. The choice issue about being gay is a potential shell game. I’ve had enough experience with this that I have no doubts - people will shift to accomodate their prejudice.

“Not a choice” is an inevitable counter to “choose to be perverts”, but as soon as you get consensus about choice, all that means is that it shifts to being a disease. People don’t choose to be psychotic, or sociopaths, or even neutral things that are inconvenient, like diabetes. All all that does is shift the discussion back to cures and to controlling behavior.

All you have to do is look at the Catholic Church - they never really went the choice route, diving right for the distinction between the orientation (morally neutral) and the behaviors associated with it (always sinful and therefore morally wrong.)

“Why would anyone choose this” is in fact admitting that it sucks. Which is the bigger lie. Gay people can be healthy, happy, and all the other wonderful things in life.

The real question people need to ask these professional Christians isn’t “is it okay to be gay” but rather “Gay people are your neighbors, how should you be treating your neighbor?”

The biggest problem with the “why would anyone choose to be discriminated against” is that the very people for whom that line of thinking might be most valuable are the least likely to have given any thought to the discrimination we face. Look at the “well, they can get all the same benefits by going to a lawyer and writing a will and power of attorney” people. They have no clue what we face, and so, have no idea exactly why we’d be idiots to choose to face it.

Add to that the idea that, once someone chooses to deny the saving power of Christ™ in their lives, all sorts of depravity follows naturally, and for a lot of these people, the answer to “why would gay people choose this” is “They gave their lives over to Satan, duh.”

(Weird how forcing someone to change religions under threat of death makes one suspect that conversion was not sincere.)

Weird how torturing someone for information makes one suspect that that information is not complete or verifyable.

People are also picking up on it, but the real fail was that she was tracking along to become Miss California over the course of the last year. The single biggest social issue in California over the last year was Prop 8 - played out nationally. It was utterly inevitable that the issue would come up - including, had she won, someone asking about the eventual Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8, whichever way it goes.

The question, in some form, was inevitable, and this is the best she could do with it. PR nightmare in a Miss USA.

Rex: Why would someone choose it, given that if you choose that, you get discriminated against?

I have asked that question, as a straight, white man probably a couple of hundred times over since the 1980’s.  Miss California is as inept with her answer as most everyone else that has opposed gay marriage—rambling and incoherent with undertones of bigotry and “gay sex is icky.”

I have also asked it in round-about ways, sometimes even pandering to their ugly stereotypes, like: “Why do gays get the freedom to play the field?”  “Why shouldn’t gays have to suffer the pain of divorce?”  “Shouldn’t gays be in committed relationships to prevent the spread of AIDS?” 

I’ve asked ironic questions, like “Dad, how is gay marriage a threat, after all, you’re on your 4th wife…?”  “Who is more a threat to marriage, some elderly gay-couple who want to tie the knot after 30-years or Newt Gingrich?” 

The answer I’ve concluded it is all just plain homophobia and/or ignorance.

Let me clarify - it sounded like I was minimizing diabetes by calling it inconvenient. I have several members of my family who have it, and it contributed massively to the death of my father. It is a big deal and a potential tragedy in many ways. What it is not is a moral issue, and you don’t get it by being evil. 

I used it as an example to contrast it with being psychotic or sociopathic, where the consequences of allowing people to act out the natural consequences of their “not chosen” situation is harm to self and others, as opposed to something that has significant lifestyle consequences without moral overlays.

Poor phrasing on my part. Apologies to all.

Sigh.  There was a big street fair in my town this weekend, and someone had hired out a plane to fly overhead dragging a banner that read “GOD BLESS MISS CALIFORNIA!”

However, I’ve often wondered if focusing on this fact is really a smart strategy for the gay rights movement. 

I think it is.  It’s saying “we’re just another type of normal.”  Sure, the homophobes will twist it…  But the fact that it’s “just another type of normal” (i.e. not a choice to be wantonly “immoral” as promulgated by the homophobes) has gone a long, long way into changing the people who need to be changed:  America’s youth, who will be America’s middle-aged and, someday, America’s oldsters.

Let’s look at interracial marraige as it plays through the generations of my family for an analogue:

My great-grandparents found it unthinkable.  My grandparents found it, to some extent, scandalous though thought it was “okay” for other people (but not their kids or grand-kids).  My parents were more open (to Asians, Jews, Hispanics, etc.), but still against the “black-white” mixing though they said they could “accept it” if it happened.  I don’t care, but it’s more of a “philosophical” I don’t care than a natural affect.  I’ll be the first to admit I still have the lingering-emotional baggage crap that was put into my head by people in my grandparents and parents generations and I have spent my life over-coming.

My daughter, she doesn’t carry that crap in her head.  And that’s a good thing.

And it’s not just me.  It’s also (to a greater or lesser extent) my brother and my cousins of this generation.  Sure, some are regressive.  It happens because you can’t fix everyone, every time. 

But, by-and-large, the old prejudices and fears are dying away because we’ve been shown that “it’s just another form of normal.”  As opposed to the formerly accepted social conservative point of view, of those barbaric times, that it was “immoral” and “abnormal” for the ‘races’ to mix.

Interestingly, if you look back, there was a feeling with those groups that there was some kind of choice, and you still hear echoes of it today.

Mnemosyne - I’m aware of this and I should have noted it in my original post.  Nevertheless, doesn’t your point just demonstrate that, even if you can convince the crazies that being gay isn’t a choice on an individual day-to-day level, they will just fall back to the position that gay people are being punished for some great Biblical “choice” made eons ago? 

As Lymis noted in his post, many in the Catholic Church have adopted the position that, while being attracted to the same sex isn’t a choice or a sin, acting on those attractions is both a choice and sinful.  Of course, they are right about the choice part in the sense that everyone “chooses” what they do.  This is what makes the “being gay isn’t a choice” argument dangerous from a gay rights perspective.  It allows bigots to treat homosexuality like a disease, which can only be “cured” by condemning gay people to a life of misery.

I’m speaking as a lapsed Catholic.  Based on the gay-bashing I’m familiar with, it doesn’t matter to the bigots whether being gay is a choice or not.

GBrundage -

I’m just not sure that most people (or at least people like Miss California) will equate “natural” with “normal” or “acceptable.”

Nevertheless, there have been significant gains for gay rights in recent years (despite some disheartening setbacks), so who am I to judge the prevailing strategy?  The differences between generations is astounding.  I’m 27.  I find that many people my age who are moderate to moderate-conservative on most issues have no problem with gay marriage.  By contrast, my parents, who are very liberal on most issues, took a while to come around on the issue.

This makes it obvious that she doesn’t have close friends who are gay or lesbian and in committed relationships back home.

OPENLY gay or lesbian.  Her circles probably discourage that.

Hector B = Reading my entire post FAIL.

Wow.  The jump from gay marriage to bestiality (as per Hector, above) must be the Godwin of these threads.

Double Internet points for uses of words like “destructive” and “deviant!”  Well done!

Hector B = Reading my entire post FAIL.

“Hector B” is a troll—the real Hector B. has a period at the end of his handle. Let’s not feed this hateful, bitter little attention whore, whose persistence at trying to imitate other commenters indicates some sort of mental derangement to me.

To me this is an opportunity for movement with her (and many like her) on this issue. If she’s not sure why someone would willingly put themselves in a position to be vilified and discriminated against, she hasn’t thought much about it.

Setting aside the fact that this very question is silly - would you ask her “Why would someone choose to be black?” or “Why would someone choose to be a woman?” - you could still find situations in which a choice with some negative consequences would still be desirable.

Why would you choose to be an illegal immigrant in the United States, for instance?  Immigration is most commonly a choice, after all.  Yet there are clear advantages (or perceived advantages) to immigration, or far fewer people would come.

And while being gay isn’t a choice, being out certainly is.  Why would someone choose to be out of the closet knowing the torment it would likely cause him/her?  This is the real question Miss California should be considering.  Having sex is a “choice” after all.  And you typically have a choice of partners - I’ve known plenty of gay guys with girls who would love to hook up with them.

The question Miss California should really be asking is that - knowing the social stigma that comes with it - why would anyone want to publicly consummate a relationship with a person of the same sex?  What sort of terrible pain would the individual endure to remain NOT married, if being married and potentially getting turned into a social pariah is the PREFERRED state.

Once you answer that question, marriage looks a lot less like a bummer sticker and a lot more like a standard of living.

Sorry, change “imitate” to “impersonate”—the real Hector B. may dissent on some issues, but not in this insanely bigoted manner.

If you like animals (animals are chattel without rights as humans), is that OK or is there an argument that this is a destructive and deviant behavior and no matter how much you would like to engage in it, society shouldn’t put its stamp of approval on it?

Oh FFS. ANIMALS CANNOT CONSENT.

...oh. Troll. Oops.

I once had some guy come to my door to hand out a flier for his church.  I’m sure he felt pressured to do it by other members of his church, and unfortunately, he wasn’t very well informed.  He wanted to hand out fliers and look like a good church member and then move on, but I didn’t let him get away so easily.  So I asked him what his church thinks of homosexuality.  Naturally, he said it’s a choice.  So I asked him when he chose to be straight.  The way he explained it is that you can choose to be gay but not straight, because being gay is like choosing to cut off your arm.  I’ve never known anyone to willingly cut off their arm unless it was stuck in a piece of machinery or if it were infected by gangrene.  Essentially, no one would cut off their arm unless there was some huge risk to leaving the arm there.  If homosexuality really is a choice, there’s no reason why anyone would choose it.  I can’t think of any situation where someone would be at risk for “choosing” to remain straight.

OT but, no trolls have tried to steal my name yet.  Maybe I just don’t post here often enough?  Also, I wonder if it is the same troll who keeps using other people’s names, or a whole gang of them.

I’m speaking as a lapsed Catholic.  Based on the gay-bashing I’m familiar with, it doesn’t matter to the bigots whether being gay is a choice or not.

That was my point—bigots never care if something is a choice or not, even when it’s something as obviously not-a-choice as skin color.  However, if you point out how ridiculous it is to think of skin color or sexuality as a “choice,” people who haven’t really thought their position through can say, “Hey, wait, yeah, it is pretty stupid to try and pretend that someone chose their skin color.”  Once you can convince the ones who are not hardcore bigots that being gay is not a choice, they can see the talking points of the bigots for what they are.

I think our disagreement here may be over how many hardcore bigots are out there versus people who just haven’t thought things through and can be won over to at least grudging acceptance by logic.  I actually don’t think there are all that many serious hardcore bigots who can never, ever be reasoned with no matter what—they’re just the most vocal ones.

Oh FFS. ANIMALS CANNOT CONSENT.

I’d be willing to bet that our deranged troll thinks otherwise. You know how it for anti-social boys who grew up on lonely dirt farms—no doubt he still thinks back fondly to his childhood sweetheart from the BigAgCo pork farm over the fence.

I’d caution that you can bring someone around to a different point of view, but if they return to their “natural habitat” and are re-exposed to their native groupthink any convincing you’ve done gets quickly erased.  Earnest, well-meaning people can have prejudiced points of view - and if they aren’t constantly shown a broader range of opinions they return to the “default mode” of the surrounding culture.

Furthermore, never underestimate the strength of one convincing and forceful bigot to carry many otherwise open-minded people with him (or her, I suppose.)  Many people’s opinions are malleable enough to be shaped by a forceful personality.

Unfortunately outside of sappy movies and after-school specials “breakthroughs” in opinion aren’t permanent.  That’s why - to some extent - people keep having to fight the same battles every few years.

Let’s say you’re correct. Does that mean that no one has responsibility for controlling destructive behavior? If you like animals (animals are chattel without rights as humans), is that OK or is there an argument that this is a destructive and deviant behavior and no matter how much you would like to engage in it, society shouldn’t put its stamp of approval on it?

Bottom line is I don’t think that whether this anomaly is a choice or not has much to do with how we, as a society, treat it.

Hey TrollHector, tell it to the Evo Psych rape apologists, who act like rape is an involuntary adaptation to enable the menz to spread the seed.  Gay people having consensual sex is not destructive and who cares if it’s “deviant”?  The vast majority of individual organisms have something about them that is ‘deviant’.

I completely agree that being gay is not a choice.  However, I’ve often wondered if focusing on this fact is really a smart strategy for the gay rights movement.  First, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, so whether or not it is a choice is completely irrelevant in terms of morality.

Why not. It’s the truth. And in the minds of people who may be persuaded on believing in choice vs. nature, people that may not seriously think about it, leaving them the idea that, “hmm ... maybe the can choose not to be that way and then they won’t get harassed,” doesn’t help advance our cause.

I think the right thing to do is to ask her whether she is unhappy that she was “disciminated against” because of her chosen beliefs about heterosexual marriage and whether being discriminated against makes her more, or less, likely to stop wanting heterosexual marriage for herself and her family members?  Look, her original point was stupid and childish and pathetic but she didn’t actually come out for outright discrimination did she? And that’s because, at bottom, the argument has shifted pretty dramatically from outright banning gay marriage to “not for me and my family.”  I think the right way to push people like this along is to affirm (even if they didn’t get it) their basic *libertarian* premise and say

“yeah, isn’t it great that in this great country of ours you won’t be forced to marry someone you don’t love and you can talk to, and argue with, your own family members as much as you want about who they marry!  Now, what’s wrong with offering gay couples and the family members of gay people the same right? If a mother and a father of a gay son or daughter wants to stand up and cheer at their gay marriage—who should stop them? I think that was your point, wasn’t it?”

And to follow up and say “its nice that you have such strongly held convictions about your unshakeable sexual orientation—why do you think that gay people don’t have the same strongly held conviction? And if you thought it was mean of the judges to dislike you, personally, enough to choose some other girl to win the prize how do you think Gay people feel being exposed to a yet higher level of spite and dislike by public figures publicly asserting they should have no civil rights at all?  Do you think that your not getting a prize in a voluntary contest is an issue of higher moral importance, or lower, to someone being fired from a job or being refused care in a life threatening medical emergency?

aimai

My daughter, she doesn’t carry that crap in her head.  And that’s a good thing.

And it’s not just me.  It’s also (to a greater or lesser extent) my brother and my cousins of this generation.  Sure, some are regressive.  It happens because you can’t fix everyone, every time.

But, by-and-large, the old prejudices and fears are dying away because we’ve been shown that “it’s just another form of normal.” As opposed to the formerly accepted social conservative point of view, of those barbaric times, that it was “immoral” and “abnormal” for the ‘races’ to mix.

That sound like Mother Avenger, she was very careful not to inflict what was programmed into her at an early age onto her children It was after her death that a cousin confided in me that she said Chinese thought of Koreans as “yellow N-s”(MA was Chinese on both sides of the family.)

Look, without calling her a bimbo, this Carrie Prejean is only notable for one thing - she’s more attractive than average.  Why should anyone care what she thinks?

She’s either slightly dimmer than usual, or ignorant, or both.  So?  Why is everyone treating her comemnts as if they had any relevance?  She’s been temporarily thrown to the top of the media heap by a beauty contest - her opinions are no more important than those of the Joe Bloggs sitting on the barstool next to you, or your next taxidriver.

Why in the name of God do we treat anyone with a bit of temporary celebrity as actually worth paying attention to?

Pho:

If Perez hadn’t acted like a dick afterwards, nobody would have.  It would have been one more “eye roller.”  If he hadn’t played the bitch and cunt cards wingnuts couldn’t play the “oh poor poor us/we picked on Christians” schtick.  I’d never heard of Perez Hilton before nor watched more than 3 seconds of a beauty contest for 30 years. 

I hope it is a growth experience for Ms. Prejean.

Setting aside the fact that this very question is silly - would you ask her “Why would someone choose to be black?” or “Why would someone choose to be a woman?” - you could still find situations in which a choice with some negative consequences would still be desirable.

Yep. And the question assumes that if gay people did have the opportunity to choose, they would. Which is not the impression I get from most of the folks I know.

To say nothing of what the question implies about bisexuals who choose to enter into same-sex relationships.

Re: gay being a choice.

I have seen statistics that show that people who don’t believe it is a choice are much more likely to support gay rights. I’m not sure what other things that opinion correlates to (level of religiosity, education, etc.), so it may not be an entirely direct relationship.

But I just thought I’d throw that out there. Sure, for some religious types, they’ll say people who are gay should be celibate, but in a broader context, whether it should matter or not, it seems to make a difference - a positive one - if people believe it’s not a choice.

Another problem with “Being gay is not a choice” and “If you had a choice, would you choose to be something that would get you discriminated against?” is the case of bisexual people. Lots of bi people do date and marry same-gender, and if they do they are choosing to be identified with the gay community when they could as easily have chosen to date an opposite-sex partner. That doesn’t mean either that being gay is a choice (it’s not) or that people who can be happy with either same- or opposite-sex partners should be discriminated against for choosing one or the other.

I think “It’s not a choice” can be useful, but “What about discrimination on religious grounds?” makes sense to me too. Especially if you are talking to someone religious. Could you choose to change your religion, even if it was hard? Yes. Should you be forced to? No. Even if other people think you believe awful things? If you’re not hurting anyone, go for it.

I’ve always framed the “it’s not a choice” line of argument by reflecting on my own situation. Could I choose to be gay? The closest I come to visualizing it is when watching Firefly where everyone is so damn sexy. But by and large, no way. So I figure it’s the same sort of thing for LGBTQA whatever; people don’t “control” what turns them on. (Or not, in the case of the “A” for “asexual”.) It would clearly be oppressive to me if society demanded that I pretended not to be interested in women, so I don’t want to put cruel limits on other people, in simple fairness.

Oddly the school of “thought” that says that gay people can and should choose not to be gay insists, pretty often and “authoritatively” (if one regards people like James Dobson as “authorities,” which they tend to do) that “normal” sexual development includes a homoerotic “phase.” A phase I have no memory whatsoever of going through; for me “sexy” has always been associated with “feminine,” long before I had any idea what sex itself actually was.

Maybe I’m just “dangerously abnormal” myself. Which only makes my support of gay rights all the stronger. They could indeed be coming for me too, no matter how much I like the women-folk. Actually because I like them too much, I guess.

Anyway I don’t think of it in strategic terms at all, just simple truth.

Isn’t sexuality in general something that develops over time? So does the brain, and height and weight, and puberty. Lots of things are influenced by genetics and the environment. Sometimes these things don’t show themselves until later in life.

Isn’t sexuality in general something that develops over time? So does the brain, and height and weight, and puberty. Lots of things are influenced by genetics and the environment. Sometimes these things don’t show themselves until later in life.
Emily on 04/28 at 08:57 AM

Sure, which is why it’s so remarkable to me that reflecting back to when I was as young as three, I already had some feelings and reactions that were, in retrospect, clearly sexual, and oriented pretty much the way I am now. Later there was more of it, and I was told what it was about, more or less. But the basic focus never shifted much.

The purely physical aspects definitely needed some learning. The first time I kissed it was weird, more than anything else. But it was like a switch that gradually closed; the next time was much nicer.

I imagine a lot of my libido was shaped by cultural messages, but these are kind of free-floating, pervasive at least in our society. Who knows if it could have been different for me? But then, who cares either? By the time a kid is old enough to reasonably consider holding them accountable for these feelings, I imagine they are pretty much set, except for the possibility of expanding. But I don’t think it’s possible, and certainly not a good thing to attempt, shutting down well-established erotic patterns.

In other words, maybe everyone can and perhaps should learn to be bi, but I don’t think people should or even can stop being attracted to those they already are.

*sigh*  Nobody chooses to be attracted to the same sex.  Apparently, this makes me nobody, good to know.  If my husband dies before I do, I have a plan to never have another heterosexual relationship, and to actively pursue relationships with women only.  But I guess that’s not a choice, that’s some sort of innate thing.  I was born to be fed up with male bullshit and it’s just taken me 30+ years to realize it, right.

See, focusing on choice versus innate really does harm actual people.  Making blanket statements about the 6 billion people who currently comprise humanity is a really asinine thing to do, even when you think you’re being helpful.

‘Carrie: I think it’s a behavior that develops over time.

Rex: Why would someone choose it, given that if you choose that, you get discriminated against?

Carrie: Um, because obviously Perez Hilton doesn’t think that there’s anything wrong with it.

Rex: No, but if being gay is a choice, rather than something you’re born with, why would you choose something that’s going to lead to your being discriminated against? What would be the motivation?

Carrie: I’m not sure what the motivation would be.

Rex: OK. Me either.’

This is the most common bullshit argument put forward by homophobes; that somehow gays and lesbians are the only human beings who ever lived WHO CAN CHOOSE THEIR SEXUALITY.

It’s like saying they can choose their eye color and height as well; what a load.

while I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, I agree with the article in that to say you believe something becasue that’s how you were raised is very shortsighted and quite frankly, a cop out.
nj drug possession charge