Not Born This Way

So Cynthia Nixon, an apostle of post-modern hedonism and sometime actress, decided to be a lesbian. Should be smooth sailing, right? As we know, there is no greater or more wonderful thing that homosexuality, according to our Manufacturers of Culture, so she should be receiving universal huzzahs.

Except there is a problem. You see, the standard language used to describe the process of declaring oneself to be a practicing homosexual is to “come out”. The narrative that lies behind that term is fraught with subtexts, among them the claim that homosexuality is a) inborn and genetic and a “gift” and otherwise fantastic and good and noble and b) that the only possible reason once could question that narrative is because one is repressed, hiding from one’s true identity and refusing to accept the gift of homosexuality that the goddess or the universe or whoever is in charge of dispensing sexual identities wants you to have. In other words, it is vital to protect the fiction that practicing homosexuals are courageously defying an oppressor and simply behaving as nature made them.

The trouble is, Nixon refuses to say that she was, in the immortal words of Lady Gaga, “born this way”. Instead, she says she chose to be a lesbian and rather late in life. This threatens the franchise. So the Gay Brownshirts are on the March again, protesting these incautious words.

From a Catholic perspective, the issue is always (with homo- and heterosexuals) not in the hand God dealt you, but in what you do with it. One may well be, for all I know, genuinely attracted to the same sex–and one can take that cross and offer it to God and become a saint. Another can have the ordinary complement of heterosexual impulses and be an utter cad who selfishly uses people. It is our choices, not our natural makeup that determines who we are. Which means, by the way, that the deliberate choice to ditch your husband and kids and take up with somebody of the same sex is very gravely evil, but not for the reasons outraged gay think it is, but because you are adding deliberate perversion to your betrayal of your family. God help her.