Internatnal OCD Foundatn | How Do I Know I’m Not Really Gay/Straight?

Contents:

• IT’S NOT A GAY THG…
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• IT'S NOT A GAY THG, IT'S A GUY THG
• IT IS ‘A GAY THG!’
• SONG PARODI -> "I AM NOT A GAY"
• HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?
• "THAT'S SO GAY" IS JT SO WRONG

IT’S NOT A GAY THG…

A nsumer of current news might image that accs to same-sex marriage is the most ntted issue ntemporary fay policy, and that marriage is the only cure for the disadvantag lbian and gay fai face.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

The legal chang clud creased penalti on nonmaral sex, pecially an end to discrimatn agast children born to unmarried mothers; equaly between the sex; and no-flt advot of gay and lbian rights fed allianc wh others who challenged the primacy of marriage: divorced and never-married mothers, cludg those receivg welfare benefs; unmarried heterosexuals, both those nscly rejectg the baggage associated wh marriage and those who simply did not marry; and nonnuclear uns, such as munal livg groups and extend gay rights movement was part of broar social movements challengg the polil, enomic, and social stat quo and seekg to transform society to one which sex, race, class, sexual orientatn, and maral stat no longer termed one’s place the natn’s hierarchy.

Conservativ employed the rhetoric of “tradnal fay valu” to fight any proposal advancg regnn and acceptance of lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr (LGBT) people, and ed antigay propaganda to raise money and garner vot for a wi-rangg nservative the mid-1990s, two movements born of this history have placed marriage the public policy spotlight. Two natnal groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force, work to advance many LGBT rights issu and vote some of their rourc to marriage-related anizg and advocy. Four legal groups that challenge discrimatn agast LGBT people all areas, cludg employment, schools, immigratn, the ary, and fay law, have had primary rponsibily for the ligatn nttg rtrictns on accs to marriage: Lambda Legal (formerly known as Lambda Legal Defense and Edutn Fund); Gay & Lbian Advot & Defenrs, the Boston-based group that won the right to marriage equaly Massachetts; the Amerin Civil Liberti Unn Lbian Gay Bisexual Transgenr Project; and the Natnal Center for Lbian the movements foc on marriage.

IT'S NOT A GAY THG, IT'S A GUY THG

Accs to marriage will provi some gay men and lbians wh the enomic support and peace of md that e om knowg that all your fay members have aquate health surance, that a loved one n make medil cisns for you if you are ill, that your enomic terpennce will be regnized at retirement or ath, and that your children n be proud of the fay they have. This will disregard the needs of LGBT upl who don’t marry or register, LGBT sgl and hoeholds not anized around sexual timacy, LGBT parents whout partners, and the fai and relatnships of vast numbers of a gay rights strategy los and do not rult marriage, civil unns, or partnership registratn, the “special rights” given marriage will ntue to harm same-sex upl. Where a losg gay rights strategy rults a nstutnal amendment barrg regnn of unmarried same- and different-sex upl, as more than a dozen stat have, those upl may be worse off than they are now.

IT IS ‘A GAY THG!’

You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup. Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.

SONG PARODI -> "I AM NOT A GAY"

” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy. ”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns.

“Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy. ” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame. ”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay.

Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance. “It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists.

HOW DO I KNOW I’M NOT REALLY GAY/STRAIGHT?

Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure. The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors.

”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

"THAT'S SO GAY" IS JT SO WRONG

”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is.

” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc. I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.