Now That's Huge!...That's What She Said,..or He Said, Your Choice.

 

If you were given a choice to be straight or to be gay, what would you choose? For arguments sake, let’s forget about the debate for a minute of whether homosexuality is a choice or not. Just think about the question.  Assume for a moment that you actually could choose.  I’m not talking about choosing whether you would have sex with a person of the same sex as you. You could do that regardless if you are gay or not.  I’m talking about making a choice to love, have feelings, a relationship with a same sex partner just as you would with an opposite sex partner. Think about all the implications surrounding that decision, if it was truly possible to choose one lifestyle over the other, and the implications it would have not only on your life but on the friends and family around you as well.  Forget for a moment about your own personal feelings and prejudices or lack thereof about homosexuality and just focus on society and how your life would be depending on which choice you would make…Seriously think about that.
 
Now, let me ask all of the straight people a question.  When was it that you chose to be straight?  You see, you cannot answer that, can you?  For me I just knew that my seventh grade English teacher was “I’m hot for teacher” hot and I would have gladly given up my new Atari Pong console to get into her skirt!  I never thought about it, never made a choice between her and my gym teacher, never questioned which sex I preferred, I just always knew.  And that’s the answer to the debate.  You just know.  Sure maybe some people are confused, they question what they feel, maybe they even experiment just to confirm one way or another what their feelings tell them, but the bottom line is at some point we all just know.  If you still doubt me, think about for a moment what homosexuals in this country have to endure just to be who they are.  Their lifestyle is continuously ridiculed, questioned and spat upon by members of society that claim the religious higher ground.  They are demonized by homophobes too intolerant of others and too insecure with their own masculinity or femininity to accept those different than they are.  They are made victims of hate crimes, beatings, and social network bullying to the point that they commit suicide.  They are shunned by parents who can’t love their children unconditionally, by politicians who say they can’t marry, and they are forced to hide who they truly are from a military who won’t ask, and who says don’t tell, because if they do they will be treated like a criminal, and discharged dishonorably.  So, if you could choose, if your choice was not predetermined for you, which choice would you make?  The bottom line is you can’t choose. And even if parents dress their boys up like girls, have them play with dolls, and force them to watch Liza Minnelli videos, they will never turn a straight kid gay or turn a gay kid straight.  The bottom line is there is no debate, there is no choice. We are who we are and nothing can change that, and anyone who believes different is just plain wrong. Our sexual preference is something that is ingrained in all of us from birth, just as is our eye color, our skin color, and our desire to watch Glee.
 
On Thursday, President Obama, during a town hall style meeting with college students said, when asked by one student whether he thought homosexuality was a choice or not, “I don't think it's a choice. I think people are born with a certain make-up.  We're all children of G-d… We don't make determinations about who we love. That's why I think discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong."  WAIT! (Screeching tires…Record player scratch!)  Did I hear that right? What was that he just said?  Did the President of the United States just come out and publicly state that he thinks homosexuality is not a choice?  Holy S#!t!  I hope you can grasp how huge this is.  This is “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” huge.  This is Regan saying the word AIDS for the first time, huge! This is Oprah taking me to Australia huge! (Yea I’m going, jealous? I’ll you send pictures.)  You see, maybe you didn’t know it at the time, but this is what we asked for.  This is what we voted for.  This is the Change we counted on when we put Barack Obama in office.  Oh you thought he was going to walk on water and instantly we’d be manufacturing TV’s again?  Sorry but that is not the way it works.  To change the problems of a nation that are as monumental and diverse as what was handed to us by our last administration takes time and much more than twenty two months.  Why is it that what President Obama said is so huge?  Because it is indicative of the change in attitude that we need in our leaders.  We have a President who for the first time, regardless of politics, regardless of his religion, which by the way is Christian if you were still trying to figure it out, has publicly stated his view on whether homosexuality is a choice or not, and he has said, quite clearly, “I don't think it's a choice.”  And he is right, and if you don’t call that “Change”, then I don’t know what is.
 
We have an election coming up and what all of us who voted for President Obama need to remember is that we voted for Change.  We voted for Change because where we were at, at the time, was so unbelievably messed up, and the party in power had eight years to fix it but instead only made things worse.  When Bill Clinton left office, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that we would run an annual budget surplus of $800 Billion from 2001 thru 2012.  Then George Bush took office and as of today the deficit is expected to run a 1.2 trillion.  Sure you can argue that President Obama’s economic policies and huge amounts of spending are causing this deficit to go even higher but the facts, according to the New York Times, are that only 7 percent of this deficit is from President Obama’s stimulus bill, and only 3 percent is from Obama initiatives such as health care, education, and energy.  The largest percentage of the remainder is a combination of the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country under Bush, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the tremendous spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars during the Bush administration and the recession that followed 9/11.  We forget that Bushes economic policies and his blind ambition to invade Iraq at all costs put us in the economic mess that we are still in today and if anything President Obama and the democrats in congress, with the passing of the stimulus bill saved our economy from nose diving into a much deeper depression then what we were currently facing at the time.  Under President Bush 600,000 private sector jobs were lost, the average income dropped $2000, mortgage and bank deregulation flooded the market with home loans that were not worth the paper they were printed on and today we are seeing the result of this reckless behavior.  Manufacturing jobs went overseas due to the increased deregulation on the free market and the elimination of tariffs, and health care insurance premiums outpaced the average income by light years, except of course the income of the health insurance executives.   Under Bush we became a nation that makes nothing, and rewards executives regardless of the negative impact their decisions have on our economy.  And for some reason, we expected the Democrats and President Obama to turn all of this around in less than two years. 
 
Hey I get it.  They say the recession is over but we just don’t feel it.  We are still seeing massive unemployment and foreclosures.  We see a ton of spending with no guarantees of the outcome.  Were we guaranteed an outcome when Bush spent billions each year on Iraq and Afghanistan?  Were we guaranteed that we would capture every Taliban and get those elusive weapons of mass destruction?  No but somehow we went along with that.  I get it.  Things still suck so we do what seems natural and blame whoever is currently in power and that is the Democrats, even though they’ve only had twenty-two months to fix eight years of mistakes.  I get it, we have no patience, and like a five year old who keeps whining from the back seat, “Are we there yet!” we want our change NOW! Well you’ll get your change soon young man so stop your complaining or the GOP is going to give you a time out, and then you’ll be sorry! But before you stomp out of here on November 2nd, pouting and vote for a Republican or whatever ding-dong the Tea party is endorsing ask yourself if things were better for us under George W. Bush.  Ask yourself if you want insurance companies to be able to deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions due to a repeal of health care insurance reforms.  Ask yourself if you want a ban on stem-cell research that could cure countless medical conditions.  Ask yourself if you want “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” to be eliminated or if discrimination should continue in our military.  Ask yourself if corporate executives should be rewarded while jobs continue to be shipped overseas, while banks are denying small businesses loans that could help grow our economy, while insurance premiums double, coverage goes down and health care cost go up, because that is all the Republicans have proposed, the same old policies that the Bush administration used to bring this country to its knees.  Ask yourself if you remember why you voted for Barack Obama and keep in mind that Change has come, maybe not as fast or as sweeping as we would have liked it too, but it has come and given the opportunity it will continue to come.  Maybe not overnight, but it will, and it will come with a President who has the courage to say, “I think people are born with a certain make-up.  We're all children of G-d… We don't make determinations about who we love.” I get it.

 

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