When will you make up your mind? (I can’t stand it)
Smiler of the day: Joe Riddle at Ex-Gay Watch on choice:
We ought to begin every argument over gay rights on that footing: Do we choose to be gay? Absolutely! And we love it! Who the hell are you to tell us we can’t be happy?
For context, it might be helpful to separate two entangled notions of “choice.” Do humans have a choice about who attracts us sexually? No, of course we don’t. Attraction is a chemical, biological phenomena, not subject to conscious will. Do we have a choice about whom we have sex with? Do we make choices about our sexual conduct and identity? Yes, of course we do. To say otherwise is silly.
While it deserves to be pointed out that choice rhetoric is misused by gay activists, too–Virginia Postrel, when she was still editor of Reason, wrote a wonderful editorial on that subject–Joe clarifies things from the opposite direction. I think it’s great that programs exist for miserable people who want to change their behavior, but the mere fact that they’re using their sexuality for ill and pain doesn’t mean that more mature types can’t use it for good and joy.
Off to Shinjuku for vodka and fag talk with a friend.
Excellent post title! I haven’t heard that album in many years, though I’m sure I still have the cassette somewhere.
Thanks, man. Sometimes, the lyrics-as-post-titles are just laziness, but sometimes they really fit. Nice when someone notices. : )
(BTW, you haven’t listened to a peak-era Eurythmics album in many years and you call yourself a queer?)
Ouch! Just not *that* peak-era Eurythmics album, somehow it never made leap from cassette tape to the digital era. I have mp3’s only of “Sisters…” and “…Ball &Chain”.
But all their previous albums are in heavy rotation, in fact “Cool Blue” happens to be playing on the Shuffle right now. Really.
Okay, I trust you. You really should get yourself a copy of “It’s Alright (Baby’s Coming Back),” though. Talk about gay–a Dusty Springfield tribute by Annie Lennox! I will never get why America dissed that single. It was one of the best things they ever did, and the video was great, too.