A reader writes:
The Slate article you featured touches on something I've thought for a long time – the fixation on whether gay is "a choice" is interesting but irrelevant. A person's religion is more of a choice than the person's sexuality, and yet we don't allow discrimination based on religion. I'm not allowed to put up a "Catholics need not apply" sign on my business because I don't approve of their choice. "Choice" is a red herring. The question is purely about discrimination.
Scott Long adds:
What if our model for defending LGBT people’s rights were not race, but religion? What if we claimed our identities were not something impossible to change, but a decision so profoundly a part of one’s elected and constructed selfhood that one should never be forced to change it?
That's why excluding gays from hate crimes laws is so wack – because religion is protected category. Of course, I don't actually experience my faith as a choice, in the usual sense of the word. It feels as deep a part of me as my orientation. Zack Ford makes an important distinction:
The bottom line is that there is a big difference between sexual orientation and sexual identity, even if it usually goes unnoticed. In other words, the language a person uses to describe how they identify does not have to perfectly align with what their natural attractions actually are. The Williams Institute estimates that about 3.5 percent of the population identify as LGBT, but as many as 11 percent of Americans report having same-sex attractions.
I think Nixon’s comments make it pretty clear that she did not choose her attractions to women — nor her attractions to men — she merely chose to identify primarily as a lesbian.
E.J. Graff, "about a 5 on the Kinsey scale", joins the discussion.
The Dish 