Being gay is a choice? These 14 Twitter users have thoughts.
In last week’s Pick of the Twitter, we asked you, cherished Queerty reader, to picture sexuality being a choice and people choosing queerness every single time.
It was a hypothetical, of course, but we’ve all known people who believe we’re choosing to be gay and could simply choose to be straight. (These misguided souls are often the same people who say things like “gay lifestyle.”)Related: His psychoanalyst told him being gay is a choice, and the Internet is outragedThe Southern Poverty Law Center covered the misconception of gayness as a choice in a 2011 roundup of anti-gay myths. “If people are born gay—in the same way that people have no choice as to whether they are black or white—discrimination against gay men and lesbians would be vastly more difficult to justify,” authors Evelyn Schlatter and Robert Steinback wrote at the time, debunking the myths in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report magazine. “Thus, anti-gay forces insist that sexual orientation is a behavior that can be changed, not an immutable characteristic.”As Schlatter and Steinbeck added, a 2008 study of twins determined that “homosexual behaviour is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors,” with the American Psychological Association noting in 1994 that homosexuality is simply not a matter of individual choice.Anyway, Twitter users have had a field day with the idea of people “choosing” to be gay, and straight men, you’ve been put on notice.
Here are some of those Twitter users’ thoughts…If being gay were a choice I'd still choose to be a raging dyke wouldn't give it up for the world— Rebecca Benson (She/They) (@RebeccaLBenson) May 14, 2022If being gay were a choice, Andrew Garfield would have picked it.
