Simple, really: the gay fairy dropped by one morning in my hyper-masculine nursery, located at scenic Travis Air Force Base, California - male role models galore! - sprinkled the crib of the infant me with her gay fairy magic dust, and then bewitched the crib-side radio to play, agonizingly, only Barbra Streisand.
Oh, she also painted the walls a pleasing shade of pink.
Mom didn't like that at all, and my absent dad - out in combat over North Vietnam at the time - didn't much care for the unplanned improvements either, not after he had just won the struggle with his wife over whether to name his firstborn son 'Pierre' (her too-French-for-comfort preference) or the more assertive, reeking-of-masculinity 'Michael'.
A few years later, after a succession of flamboyant male music teachers, forbidding female gym teachers, the advent of disco, time spent in Margaret Thatcher's England, and a brief infatuation with the Church - altar boy, thank you very much - I really had little choice but to get sweaty with a scout master.
Voila, homo. A simple multi-step process following a basic input-output model. Any questions?
Needless to say, little of the above is actually true. I'm writing this here simply because some people have some downright odd ideas of how little boys and girls turn out that way. Apparently, there's even an app for that.
From Exodus International, 'The roots of homosexuality':
We don’t believe that homosexuality is primarily inborn. We base our beliefs on the Bible’s teaching about homosexuality, backed up by the lack of conclusive scientific proof for such a theory.
Even if homosexual tendencies were an inherited trait, we would not interpret that as an endorsement of gay or lesbian involvement. Many studies have indicated that tendencies toward alcoholism or depression are inherited. But we do not embrace alcoholism or depression as “acceptable alternative lifestyles.” Rather, we try to help people who suffer from these tendencies find healing and recovery. [...]
Modern science, particularly biology and psychology, is not especially friendly to the folks at Exodus and like-minded organizations like NARTH, The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. Mother Jones:
I wait until the foyer is empty before I head out to talk to Wayne Besen, a tall man in a polo shirt, who is pulling the props and costumes out of his car trunk. He runs Truth Wins Out, an organization devoted to debunking the research of the ex-gay movement. He minces no words about Spitzer's research—"one of the most poorly constructed studies in the history of science, a travesty"—and he calls reparative therapy "intelligent design for gay people." Besen thinks the stakes of the scientific battle are impossible to overstate. "Americans are not cruel. If they think that being gay is inborn and can't be changed, they are going to be very sympathetic to full equality for gay people," he says. "We win this argument, the gay rights struggle would be done." [Emph. added]
Besen is sure that science is on the verge of giving gay people their slam dunk. After all, he says, study after study shows that homosexuality is biological in origin. In the last 15 years, researchers have discovered differences in brain anatomy between gay and straight men—and found that the 6 percent of rams that have sex exclusively with other rams (just one of hundreds of species in which homosexual behavior has been observed) have a similar neuroanatomical difference; identified a gene sequence on the X chromosome that is common to many gay men; traced genealogies to show that homosexuality runs in families, on the maternal side; proved that a man's likelihood of being gay increases with the number of older brothers he has, which scientists attribute to changes in intrauterine chemistry; and learned how to use magnetic resonance imaging to detect sexual orientation by watching the brain's response to pornography. Findings in the field of anthropometrics have yielded intriguing results: Gay men's index fingers, for instance, are more likely than straight men's to be equal in length to their ring fingers; gay men have larger penises than straight men. [MB note: Yup.] These findings all seem to support Besen's contention that being gay is essentially biological and should remain beyond the reach of law, morals, or medicine.
The question here isn't so much the how but the why: not, how do we - myself, my boyfriend, a lot of my friends, and so on - become gay or lesbian, but why anyone should care.
The idea of a strictly biological origin of the genus homo Americanus homosexualis is no doubt pleasing to some and certainly, if verifiable, a help to achieving our equality under law. On the other hand, there is something chilling about the reductivist idea that biology is destiny. It's not all that long ago that homosexuality was pathologized as a mental disorder; I shudder to think of the consequences in a hostile world if it could be made to seem a physical ailment.
Claiming biology as a primary source of personality is also a bit of a cop-out, I'd suggest. Sexual and emotional orientation is arguably the most defining characteristic of the human condition. In fact, I'd argue that the very term 'sexual preference' is reductive; just because I prefer to the point of exclusivity to have sex with men, doesn't mean I'm engaged in same at every waking moment. I've tried that; it simply can't be done by mortal flesh. I am, however, from when I wake up next to him in the morning to when I fall asleep at night, in love with a man.
But what's really offensive to me is the idea that we would need to explain ourselves. And I really do believe that every gay and lesbian person, to say nothing of our transgendered brothers and sisters, has had this discussion at some point in our lives: "How did you become that way?"
Well, here's my answer: I have no clue. Nor does it matter to me, because, simply put, I like myself. I like who I am. I like being a man. I like being a gay man. Sure, just like every other red-blooded American male, I have my challenges. But being gay is not one of them.
I can't help but think that this, the intolerable idea of gay people being happy, is what drives the homophobic discourse on our origins and our broader role in society. We're not supposed to exist. We offend the natural order of things. We're a threat to marriage and the family endorsed by the deity of your choice. Some people think we have no souls. We belong in the shadows and margins. The least we can do, out of any sense of common decency, is be miserable about who we are. Certainly, that seems to be the point of so much of what our enemies do.
I say this: be happy with the fact that you are different, and special. Own it. Love yourself. Find someone to love you. And when, not if, you do, you can quote Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge:
He loves me. And that is worth everything.
Living happily is the best revenge. Don't worry about how you got there. Just be glad you've arrived.
[Update]: Thank you, everyone. I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to go spend some quality time with my buddies at GMHC. Remember: Love Life. Hate Aids.