Uh-Huh

Seeing the Forest’s Dave Johnson, commenting on the Frank Rich piece in the Times I recently recommended, writes:

I'll say it a little clearer: The rabidly anti-homosexual wingnuts are obviously gay and ashamed of it.

Why else would they be insisting that the presence of gay people risks "luring" straight people to become homosexual? This wouldn't even occur to a person who is not fighting such urges.

Why else would they be insisting that being gay is a "lifestyle choice?" These are people who think they can act straight, and are fighting their impulses every minute of their lives.

It's obvious. And it's why so any of them DO turn out to be gay and living double lives.

Exactly right. The entire idea that homosexuals somehow seduce others into being gay is patently absurd to anyone who is even remotely secure with his or her sexuality. Even straight folks who fall somewhere more toward the center of the spectrum know that their occasional same-sex attraction isn’t the result of some Homo Siren Song, but an intrinsic part of one’s sexuality, as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. Very few people are 100% straight or 100% queer, and most of us aren’t especially bothered by that fact. We accept our sexual idiosyncrasies and do our best to find someone who finds them appealing (or at least tolerable), from the strangest of fetishes to the most uptight and inexplicable of inhibitions, and much like the rest of our inner selves, our sexuality is a fluid and mutable part of us, affected by everything from changes in hormones to seeing something for the first time that will leave us with a sexual preference for it thereafter.

Rigidity imposed on one’s own sexual expression, or the attempt to oppose it on others, is clearly an indication of a discomfort with one’s own sexual nature, one’s own urges. That we often treat such a conclusion as unfair, presumptuous, or little more than a joke, does a disservice to our own capacities for common sense and intuition.

As for the tightwads who try to legislate what goes on in the rest of the country’s pants, just lighten the fuck up already, will you?

(Hat tip to The Fixer at The Alternate Brain.)