Is Being Gay a Choice

Via Truth Wins Out:

From big93scott: Is Being Gay a Choice:



Transcript:

Today we’re going to talk about a notion that’s the backbone for a lot of the arguments against homosexuality. The argument that being gay is a choice.

I’ve answered this question before in a video, but I felt my answer was not personable enough. I thought this question could be better answered if I shared with a you part of my life that I don’t like reliving---to an extent that I have never before made public---before this video. I thought the question could be better answered if I took you back to the end of the summer between grade 6 and grade 7, and the beginning of grade 7. And it was in and around that time that I first realized that, well, I had very strong feelings for guys, and none for girls.

It was at that time that first realized that I might be gay. I never told myself that I was gay definitively. I felt that I couldn’t be. Not that it was impossible, but that I just…I couldn’t be. I never had anything against gay people, it’s just, I knew other people did.

I told myself that it was just a phase. I told myself that it was just a phase, and if it wasn’t a phase, that I’d change. Because growing up, I’d always believed that being gay was a choice. You hear so many people say it is, on TV, on the radio, on the internet. You hear so many people saying it’s a choice, that you believe them. Why wouldn’t you? It’s only those who go through it that really know the answer.

And so from about half way through grade 7 to half way through grade 8, I tried my hardest to not be gay. I tried my hardest to make the feeling go away. It was when I came to the realization that these feeling wouldn’t go away. It was when I came to the realization that the only choice I had about being gay, was acting on my feelings. It was when I came to that realization, that I lay before me two options. Option A) I could suppress my feelings, never tell a soul that I was gay, could marry a girl and have kids like a normal person and live a normal life, while secretly suppressing my feelings. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to suppress anything about me, and so that lead me to option two, I could kill myself.

There was no option three. There was no, I could be true to myself but I could be gay, I never, I never wanted that. And so one day, in the dead of winter in grade 8, I came home from school, was home alone, and I took a knife from the kitchen, and I went upstairs, and I sat on the toilet across from my bathtub. I set the knife down on the counter beside me. And I cried for what must have been an about an hour.

I was so close to getting into the bathtub and cutting my wrists that day. I was so close that it scares me even today, but I realized something when I was sitting there contemplating my own death. I realized that I hadn’t given my family a chance.

I knew that the only way that I could ever accept myself, would be to tell my family and see if they accepted me. And so about a couple months later, I told my sister, and if you’ve seen my coming out story, you know that from there, I told my brother, and from there I told my parents, and they were all as accepting as you can possibly imagine. And that’s why I can tell you, without a doubt, that without my family’s acceptance, I wouldn’t be making this video today. Without my family’s acceptance, I would be dead.

You see, it was the notion that being gay was a choice, that almost killed me. ‘cause I believed it. And I put so much hope, I put so much hope in one day being straight, and one day not having to fear the things I feared. That when I came to the realization that I would never be straight, I was thrown off the deep end. I never accepted the fact that I was gay, until I knew that all of my family accepted me.

And so for those of you who say that being gay is a choice, I ask you this; if you approached me in my state of desperation as a thirteen year old contemplating suicide--if you told me that I didn’t have to fear getting kicked out of my house by my parents. If you told me that it is an act of fear, people who I used to call my friends, looking at me with disgust. If you told my I didn’t have to fear being physically assaulted or even looking at a country’s laws before traveling there with my future spouse. I you told me that I could be straight, do you not think that I would have said yes. Do you not think I didn’t try?

You see, it’s the notion that being gay is a choice that almost killed me. It’s the notion that being gay is a choice that kills thousands of gay teenagers, gay young adults. It leads them all to suicide. It almost lead me to suicide.

When someone stands on a podium, stands in front of a microphone, sends it out over the airwaves of the radio into peoples homes. When someone says that being gay is a choice, it’s nothing but another nail in a desperate teenagers coffin.


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Exodus International on the suicide of gay youth: