I come across a lot of misconceptions and false principles set up by anti-gay bigots that systematically set out to cast this image of revile and ill repute upon the LGBT community. But it is even more disturbing and flat out infuriating when it comes from someone within the community. Because unfortunately, their twisted self loathing cast even more dank and archaic ideology onto us. Their words are seen as reason by the religious extremists because they have found God and have been “saved” from our “sinful” ways. And leads to even more pitiful attempts to “fix” or “cure” us.

So you can imagine my chagrined reaction when I stumbled across this article today titled ‘Yes, gay is a choice. Get over it.‘ I admit, before reading the entire article and interpretating the central context of his viewpoint, I can already tell I’m not going to like anything the author is about to say. And discovering that he is a bisexual man makes it even more jarring. The disjointed summation of gay men from the author seems to be a projection and self loathing.

Throughout the entire piece of this  so called reflection, the author, Robert Oscar Lopez, goes on this assertion that gay men are basically going through a phase and that everything, including the process of accepting ourselves and demanding respect and fair treatment is some form of attention seeking. It feels like Lopez is comparing us to some child that refuses to leave a toy store  and begins to have a tantrum in order to get what they want.

Further, Lopez insists our sexuality is not biology but rather a matter or preference as the point of this article was to support of Crystal Dixon, a staffmember from the University of Toledo fired because of her op-ed claiming gay was a choice and therefore LGBT rights were undeserving of  the title of civil rights. Dixon recently lost her case in court claiming she was wrongfully fired from her position.

In this not so eloquent diatribe, Lopez uses his own experiences to strengthen his vapid hypothesis by stating that gay men choose every action that they commit. Lopez also erratically hints towards attraction being one of them, as he recounts his eyewitness testimony and relegates us to sex dependent delinquents and likens our sexuality to those with an alcoholic or substance abuse addiction:

Dating and marriage don’t magically happen, like going to the bathroom or breathing.  They take conscious choices — where do you hang out?  What are you looking for?  What type of partner shares your goals?  Whether to hang out in gay clubs or straight clubs makes a huge difference; these are completely different cultures.  We choose the life we want to live (or leave, for that matter).

Even gay men still choose which sex acts they commit.  I hate to admit this, but I worked as a housekeeper in a gay sex club in Manhattan in the early 1990s, when I was desperate for work.  I witnessed, literally, thousands of men having sex in the open, with me having to go clean up after them.  Very rarely (thank the Lord) did they engage in anal sex.

I have known, personally, scores of gay male couples that barely have any sex at all after they have been together for a while.  (They start preferring Monday Night Football and hitting the sack early.)  A large portion of the sex club patrons came to watch and then went home.  If “Gs” can choose what kind of sex to have, they can also choose not to have sex at all.  It’s a choice.

In the lurid job I held in a Manhattan sex club, I learned some other things as well.  Many men get involved in the gay scene for unexpected reasons.  Many of them want fast and inexpensive sex, sometimes because they have trouble with women.  They can go to a bathhouse or a cruising zone and pick up men without paying the fortune they’d have to spend on a prostitute.

Moreover, a lot of times I saw people who were addicted to drugs and addicted to anonymous sex; the two compulsions were linked somehow, and there was no way for such people to quit their addiction without quitting their homosexuality.  These folks often ended up on the AA circuit or joining a church and getting baptized.

The first thing you need to be clear on Mr. Lopez is that there is a huge difference between sexuality, and acceptance of said sexuality (which you fail to make a clear distinction throughout this weak article but I digress). For over forty years, scientists, and those from the medical and mental health professionals have provided clear, substantial evidence that disagrees with your flailing assessment,

So Lopez states that we’re gay because we have problems because we have “trouble” with women. This is even more problematic, in fact it discounts the fact that most gay and bisexual men are not “gold star gays” and went on for years having pleasurable intercourse with the opposite gender.

Oh, but Mr Lopez decides to go deeper (or more shallow and ignorant depending on your viewpoint) that we spend too much time on the subject of activism and advocacy, as he states that we’re nothing more than disease ridden incestuous beings:

There’s no point in obsessing over my sexual ontology, never mind obsessing over other people’s.  I have to tend to the garden out back, as Voltaire would say in Candide.  We have better things to do with our time — especially “gay men,” who have chosen to go into a dating scene that’s small, often incestuous, vulnerable to disease, and sometimes cold.  If that’s what they want, I salute them and wish them the best.  If they want something else in life, I won’t judge them for it.

Crystal Dixon pointed out something that no amount of peer-reviewed research can disprove.  Gay is not the new black.  “Gay” is about sex and genitalia.  People we call “gay” make choices about what they do with their genitals; blacks do not make choices about the color of their skin.  Period.  If one is going to fire Crystal Dixon for harming gay men by reminding all of us that no penis is beyond the executive decisions of its owner, then one might as well fire all the humanities professors in the United States (starting with me), because it seems that millennia of human civilization do not count, and the most advanced nation in the world now expects men to live like rutting, uncontrolled animals.

In short, it’s time for gay rights activists to get off their high horses and let other people live.

Since Mr. Lopez loves to generalize, I’ll do the same for continuity. I am a proudly gay multiracial man, who is of African American decent. Gay us not the new black because racism still exists as does homophobia. I encounter each of them daily. And no, you can’t change race or sexuality. So while their premise are of different societal etiologies, they are both still rooted in ignorance and hate. The which one is worse argument is stagnant because hate in any form is ugly.

And I have known, at least on some conscious level, that I was gay when I shared a kiss with a male classmate during a solar eclipse at age nine. I had no problem with the women I had sex with because attraction is not needed to have intercourse; only arousal is required. I don’t care how many men you use to make your argument to state we are deviants because I can find just as many to gay and bisexual men that will prove you wrong. But I nor they need to do that. I can site a plethora of reliable articles, research, and sound reasoning, all of which is readily available to anyone with google search.

So you already know that your argument is weak at best, don’t know Mr Lopez. Relating homosexuality to us being receptive victims of molestors is mortifying and shameful. And when you speak of the LGBT community ignoring the bisexual aspect would have some credence if your statements didn’t sound like you hate that part of yourself. I’m not psychoanalyzing, as all of this is appreent without having to take a deep examination of your viewpoint.

Religion, as you cited in this article, is for the soul, not for empirical, biological proof Mr Lopez. If God wanted us all to be repressed, confused, self loathing hypocritical pieces of shit that demean and demonize the gay community, he would’ve made us all like you. And I am ever thankful, that God, using infinite wisdom, did the opposite. What bothers me most of all in your assessment of a movement to treat everyone equally as some squabble between a bunch of gossiping highschoolers with nothing to do. People have been beaten, ridiculed and bullied to the point of suicide.

I won’t ever say that we’re perfect. We have flaws just like everyone else.  Hell, I write almost weekly about the problems and issues within the LGBT community. But your myopic view on the actual biology of sexuality is appalling. Just disgusting. The fact you condemn practices you were once, and most likely still a part of makes you a sad,very aloof, superficial hypocrite..