Queer by Choice People versus AlterNet
I stopped reading the AlterNet RSS feed several years ago, mainly because I got sick of how every queer-related article they ever publish is completely pro-"gay gene" biased. But I found my way to one such article today because of the queer by choice people who left comments on it, critiquing AlterNet for this tendency. I loved it! I even recognized davelwhite there. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the comments.

From someone named Michelle:

Hmm, that's interesting. The heterosexual man, kenadrian, confused about the difference between the various beliefs he listed above, claims interest in diversity. At the same time, he defines being gay as biologically-based, thus erasing the subjectivity of all gay people who may feel either that it is not biologically based for us or that this kind of crappy argument is not necessary because we are human and there is nothing at all immoral about being gay, period, that's all we need to say.

Diversity, Mr. Straight Person, means taking into account ALL of our subjectivity, not just the subjectivity of those gay people whose subjectivity fits into your confused and blurry framework.

So to be clear about the actual real diversity of our experiences and perspectives: Some queer (gay men, lesbian and bi) people feel that we are born this way, others feel it is a choice, others feel it as a combination.

Cut across all of these groups are various perspectives on political strategy: Some feel that it is strategically necessary to defend and justify ourselves by addressing whether we are born this way. Others feel that the "we are born this way" argument is unnecessary, reactionary and has the implicit statement that we are only fully human if we can prove to the heteronornative, heterosexist, homophobic power structure that "we can't help it" (the implication being that we would be straight if we could.)

As for me: I am a lesbian who feels that the "we are born this way" argument is politically ugly and that it's none of heterosexual people's business how any of us are or came to be queer. I could have passed my whole life as heterosexual, but made the choice to NOT DO THAT because it was hurting my soul and my body. I currently live in a household where there is diversity/difference even between my partner and I on our feelings about whether we were "born this way" -- but we are in 100% agreement on the political strategy question and both believe that the pandering and justification of arguing that "we are born this way" supports homophobia in the end.

I guess our actual realities and perspectives and experiences as actual living human lesbians don't fit into the kind of "diversity" that Mr. Hetero Guy kenadrian claims to support.

From davelwhite:

You know what, maybe this particular study won't turn out to have serious methodological flaws and bad statistical inferences, like all the other ones have turned out to have. But, both the study itself (from what I see in the article anyway) and Alternet's depiction of it avoid any of the obvious, scientific facts that contradict the notion that the gay gene (if it exists at all) is an iron-clad thing that "forces" you to be an out gay person. I will save that evidence for the end, since I have relayed it to Alternet before and it seems to have no effect.

So today, my main question is why, whenever Alternet does a piece on the Gay Gene or gay marriage, they get me and usually bunches of other queer-identified people writing to them telling them that not all of us believe we were born that way, or identify marriage as a goal for us, they just come out again with the same exact article a month later?! And they don't even do that journalistic balance thing, like having a sentence that says "Some queer people dispute this or have other goals." I think I can tell you why, and it isn't pretty: Either the writers at Alternet, or the audience they imagine reading Alternet, views themselves as "progressive" and likes to think of themselves as "supporting gays" but cannot actually deal with the real diversity of the queer community (which, in fairness, often cannot deal with its own diversity very well either). And so they need to not only focus on the normally very fishy (but potentially, in theory, correct) science about the gene, but also the completely bogus notion that if there was a gene we would have no control over what we did about it, we would be forced to come out regardless of our cultural surroundings.