revealing more of my pinko nature

I admit it. I have not studied queer theory or had extensive training in gender issues. I am only speaking as an individual, who perhaps needs to go stick her head into a book to understand the bigger picture.

My issue is this: it seems like a big part of the political debate about queerness or homosexuality or other “alternative” lifestyles (when the day comes when we don’t have to use that term, we’ll see a brighter day), is whether or not being homosexual is a natural part of who you are or if it’s something separate from that and it’s something you can choose. I see several things wrong with this viewpoint, but as I’ve said, I’m undereducated in this.

The first of my problems is that I am frustrated with the obsession with “natural” versus “unnatural”. To me, this fixation, which extends to medicines, medical philosophies, religious philosophies, and a multitude of other things, is absurd. People argue for marijuana because it’s “natural” and people have used it for ages. I don’t stand in the way of marijuana because its pharmacological effects, both long and short term for comparable use, is far less severe than alcohol, not because it’s natural. I mean, opium is natural. So what? It’s useful in some forms, but stupidly addictive and harmful in many. I hate when people talk about natural supplements. I have nothing against the fact that things that have existed in nature have had a much longer time to be tested by the human race and that man-made drugs or substances may reveal unknown side effects; thallidimide (crap on my spelling!) babies come to mind. I have no problems with driving my car, which is really quite unnatural. But I do have a problem with people not understanding that it’s not simply a matter of natural == good and “unnatural”/man-made/etc == bad. Labor and birth without drugs, natural but unnecessarily painful. The ability to graft skin on burn victims, extremely unnatural but good.

And so the first part of my problem is that people think natural is good and natural is the only right way to go about things, so that they think that homosexuality needs to be judged in the same way. It’s not like that. A lot of things in life don’t fall into those neat little boxes.

The second part is on why we think that if we can choose to be gay or not, it is ok to discriminate again them. There are other life choices like religion which are protected rights, something we are supposed to be allowed to choose in this country, and if you persecute people based on their religion, it is a hate crime, which I think is the way it should be. Sure, you can’t choose what race you are born as, and discriminating against race is wrong, but we also generally accept now that we ARE allowed to decide what race you marry (er, grammar, but you get the idea), and discriminating against mixed race couples is wrong too. To me, it’s not dissimilar to gay relationships. Say homosexuality is a choice for every single person, and not something they were born as. So what? So why should it be ok to persecute gays and marginalize them, even if you think it’s a choice?

My personal take on being gay or queer (or any other life variable, actually, including such mundane things as career, housing, people you want to be friends with, etc.) is that I don’t care who you love, who you want to sleep with, if you wanna be a top or a bottom or what you like you pretend is in your underpants, as long as it involves full aware and consenting adults. And I don’t care if you are doing it because you want to or because you think that’s who you are and you have no ability to go about things another way. If I like you, I like you, if I hate you, I hate you, because in the end, I only care if people are nice and funny.

So, in the end, if you aren’t nice or funny, get the hell away from me. 😀