Be Yourself -- Thoughts on life from MsWolff

You can choose to live any way you want, but you cannot change who you are!

I can choose to be polygamous or monogamous, promiscuous or chaste, but I cannot change who I am attracted to. Herein lies the biggest pillar between gays and homophobes.

The people who speak out against homosexuality seem to believe that attraction is a choice. They think that people wake up one morning and randomly think "Hmmmmm - I think I'll be attracted to someone the same sex as myself today." It doesn't work like that.

Our bodies and minds decide who we find attractive outside of conscious thought. Society plays a role at some level - dictating fashion or taboos - but it does not control attraction at a basic level.

We hear a lot about how homosexuals are "recruiting" our youth - how seeing examples of homosexuality will make kids want to try the "lifestyle." Well - I suppose it could happen. Some girl, for example, might decide to experiment and call herself gay. However, if she does she is denying her true identity as much as are those gay people living a "straight" life out of fear. In either case it is unnatural.

The debate then ranges to the definition of natural. Christian fundamentalists would have us believe that the only "natural" sexual act is heterosexual sex between a married couple for the purpose of procreation. It seems to me that there are too many laws and rules built into this structure to call it natural. It isn't wrong - just not "natural." In nature, for example, some animals mate monogamously, some do not. It was humans that placed rules upon marriage and procreation, not nature. Also, despite what some groups would have us believe, homosexuality does occur in nature - across a wide range of species.

So why all the uproar against homosexuality. Fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of your own secret attractions. Fear of anyone or anything different from yourself.

I think all hate ultimately comes down to fear. We humans do not like to be afraid. I am not talking about the spine tingling chill of a horror movie, but the deep primal fear that the world is not what you imagine it to be. And when we find that this is true, we fear and hate the cause of this revelation.

I often speculate that one of the strongest reasons behind hatred of gays is fear of one's own sexuality or perceived sexuality. Unlike racism, where the hate is directed at physical appearance and you KNOW who your enemy is by looking at them, homosexuality is not shown on the skin.

Imagine a boy. This boy has always been told that being gay is BAD. And yet, when he hits puberty, he finds his body is aroused in the presence of a man. The fear arises - I must be bad. But, instinctively, the boy also knows that he did not petition this response (after all, during puberty the body is aroused by anything) and so he decides that the other man is at fault. He was led on. Someone tried to "turn him into a fag."

The fear that builds up behind this natural response is immense. It is a fear that shakes your faith in your very self. And yet, this attraction doesn't mean that you are gay or bisexual. There is often no explanation for your body's attraction to someone - or something.

It is your mind that truly reveals sexual orientation. What are you attracted to in more than a purely physical way? Who do you want to be intimate with? Who do you dream and fantasize about?

Even this is not cut and dried. I believe in the theory that sexuality is on a curved scale - with one extreme being heterosexuality and the other homosexuality. Most people lean towards one side or the other, with bisexuality being in the middle of the scale. Very few people exist at a complete extreme. So, when someone who has their sexual orientation fixed firmly in their mind experiences an attraction contrary to that orientation, the fear rises again. Straight people worry that they are gay and gay people worry that they have been living a lie.

Maybe the problem is that we are listening too closely to our bodies and not enough to our minds. Maybe it is too hard to work through the societal maze erected in our minds. Maybe we don't want to know our true selves. All I know for sure is, until we make homosexuality familiar and see gays as people like ourselves and not something to be afraid of, we will never be free.

(Article by MsWolff)

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