I believe that homosexuals have the right to choose. It seems like a controversial thing to say. For that reason, this is a personal manifesto. For so long, I have felt the need to justify my existence by saying that I cannot choose whom I love or desire. It felt important to be able to say that I am a product of chromosomes and DNA; that I am an immutable being who deserves to be acknowledged, and by that, I mean pitied. The years of being called a pervert, a child molester, a sinner in the hands of an angry God made me hold tight to the belief that there was nothing I could have done about it. I felt entitled to my sexual identity. I argued that the conservatives and liberals must accept me for who I am because I had no choice. Then the writer in me spoke up. I have imagined characters with agency that chose to go after the thing that they wanted most. I realized that I have robbed myself of that agency, that power to control my own life. I gave a God I no longer believed in, tenets I no longer uphold, the ability to define my body and my mind long after I abandoned them.
I believe that sexual identity is not so easily swayed. There is a force of nature and nurture that has set its design upon the individual that works to form and grow us into our personhood. The debate should not be framed as an either-or but as both. Professor Anne Fausto-Sterling has noted biology, sociology, and psychology should come together in an interdisciplinary effort to further our societies understanding of humanity (55) yet, despite the academics and despite personal feelings, I believe in the power of choice.
I believe sex is great. People should be free to explore and express themselves. I advocate for a form of personal protest that fights back against the self-entitlement of sexual identity. Start with saying it is okay to fall in love with anyone and open your mind to the full spectrum of humanity. Next, it is okay to say that it is “just a phase,” or that you “tried it, but didn’t like it” or even to say “I’ve changed my mind.” I believe that for too long we have let the opposition choose our battleground (Jakobsen & Pellegrini 76-77). Homosexuals say that they are born this way as a way to make excuses for their behavior, to try to gain acceptance in a place that does not want us. I want to take the political stand that Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini push for in their book Love the Sin, “But we need not to restrict our responses to this rhetoric to the assertion of immutability. Instead, lesbian and gay advocates could turn the charges of malleability to their own advantage” (100). This is done by establishing if homosexuality is a choice then it should be protected as a practice, just as freedom to practice a religion is protected (Jakobsen & Pellegrini 99).
I want the queer community to own their sexualities and to prefer to be lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans, or queer in a heteronormative society. From the moment I understood my sexuality, when I came to my mother and told her that God must have meant for me to be a girl, I chose to be straight. I decided to adopt a world of heteronormativity even though I felt like an outcast and faced rejection from my “righteous” peers. Now that I’ve decided to be gay—not as a result of biology or upbringing, but a personal owning of my identity—I would not have it any other way.
It is not enough that I want to be acknowledged or tolerated; I want full acceptance with the freedom to move in public spaces without the threat of violence. Amber Hollibaugh states, “We know we will have to survive that danger every time we enter a public space as sexual people” (15). As a form of social protest, I want to hold the hand of my lovers as I walk down the street. I want to flirt and kiss openly in restaurants bars, and theaters instead of scanning them for exits in case I need to make an escape. I believe open homosexual conduct (Jakobsen & Pellegrini 145) will bring about sexual liberation. I want the privilege of invisibility that heterosexual couples take for granted when they leave their homes.
I know this to be true, there comes a time in everyone’s life when the excuses we make for ourselves stop working. My faith, choices, life are my own. My purpose, my agency, is not a tool for others to use as they see fit. Social justice will not come because we asked nicely for it. I want a peaceful resistance that asks for nothing more than what is granted to my straight peers. Just like in the Civil Rights Movement, I argue that there should be peaceable assemblies in public spaces of queer peoples to engage in behaviors that will raise their visibility. Just like in the Civil Rights Movement there will be violence, but nothing worth having comes easily. It is a choice that each individual will have to make, to weigh risk versus reward. I chose to stop apologizing for who I am and the choices I make.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne “Frameworks of Desire.” Daedalus: the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Spring, 47-57. (2007)
Hollibaugh Amber. “Defining Desires and Dangerous Decisions.” My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Janet R., and Ann Pellegrini. Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004.
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