By Troy Williams
When presidential candidate Bill Richardson said he thought being gay was a choice, the
gay media and blogosphere exploded in outrage. During a recent RadioActive, I invited queer theorists, Ann Pellegrini and Michael Cobb to weigh in on the “born that way” debate. Pellegrini is an associate professor of religious studies at New York University. She co-authored, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance. Cobb is an associate professor of English at the University of Toronto and the author of, God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence.
I’ll start with a transcript from the Logo TV presidential debate with the Human Rights Campaign. Melissa Etheridge is questioning Richardson.
Melissa Etheridge: Do you think homosexuality is a choice or is it biological?
Bill Richardson: It’s a choice.
Etheridge: I don’t know if you understand the question. Do you think a homosexual is born that way or do you think that around seventh grade we think, “oh, I want to be gay”?
Richardson: I’m not a scientist. I don’t see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency. I see it as a matter of love and companionship…
Troy Williams: The media went crazy – all the queers were furious with Richardson for committing a big gay heresy. But despite the fact that he was stumbling, I actually liked what he had to say.
Ann Pellegrini: I actually found his response extremely refreshing. I know he’s been attacked. Some gay bloggers even called it, I think outrageously, his “macaca moment” – once again drawing an interesting and I think problematic parallel between arguments of equal rights for gay people with arguments for civil rights for African-Americans and people of color. Later Margaret Carlson followed it up and persisted with this line of questioning. The only way Carlson and Etheridge can see grounding an argument for queer equality was in the language of biology. Richardson responds to Margaret Carlson by saying it’s not a matter of preferences it’s a matter of equality. He actually turns and uses the moral language of democracy, which is a much better than appeals to science.
Michael Cobb: I like the fact Richardson is introducing other elements to the discussion. I kind of enjoyed the outrage from Etheridge and others because it starts to produce a necessary and complicated conversation that has to happen. I like the fact that Richardson refused to indulge a scientific explanation for the differences and distinctiveness of queer sexuality.
AP: He came much closer than anyone has in terms of a public figure to say it actually doesn’t matter how someone came to be gay. They shouldn’t be discriminated against.
TW: I have girlfriends who are lesbian – and they have told me they have chosen this lifestyle as a preference – and of course we have bisexuals. The “born this way” argument is so gay male-centered and it’s imposing itself upon the whole spectrum of sexuality. How did that come to be and why is the idea of choice such a heresy?
AP: This line of questioning was pursued by both Carlson and Etheridge, so at first glace it might seem that there is a counter-argument to you suggesting that this is a gay male-centered argument. But historically there has been more room, certainly among lesbian-feminist in the 60’s and 70’s for talking about lesbianism as a choice, very much linked to a feminist politics. And there hasn’t been the same kind of conversation among gay men. I think this also has to do with the fact that feminists thought for a long time about the ways supposedly innate sexual differences between men and women were used as a moral and legal justification to deny women equal rights. So feminists recognized that an argument that turned to nature could also as much be used against you as for you.
MC: What is interesting about Richardson, that is very different than say a Fred Phelps, is that he is refusing to say choice means you can opt out – he instead wants to think of choice as another kind of life one is leading. He is taking us away from the inevitable discussion of biology. He went right in and said, I’m not a scientist — this is an issue of human rights.
AP: There was an unrehearsed quality to the way Richardson responded. As if he was befuddled that this was even an issue how someone got to be gay. He tried to elaborate, “I don’t like categories, it’s a matter of how people love”. I thought that was a really fascinating way to think about what is at stake. It’s thinking about protecting forms of life and how people make lives together. He’s actually providing a lot more room for legal argument in his vague response.
MC: I like the idea that he doesn’t know and professing not to really know. Because I also agree that we might not know even if we think we do know! This was a question asked of me by Kathryn Bond Stockton: “do you believe you are born that way or not?” And it was like this incredible heresy –I am very well versed in the concerns around biological arguments. Of course I want to open up the possibility of choice over biology. But because she then asked me that question, my response was, “I don’t know”. I have certain narratives I tell about why I am a sexual minority. I have certain clues and ideas, but I can’t necessarily figure it all out. In some ways I liked the hesitation that Richardson had. This is an open question. The origin is not going to give us a clear path on how to proceed. He’s not trying to explain it away. What he does know is that this is an issue of human rights.
TW: Why the gay outrage? What is this doing to us collectively to create this kind of panic?
AP: Certainly for the past two decades the argument for gay and lesbian equality has been grounded in the “born that way” argument that sees homosexuality as analogous to racial difference. There are lots of reasons why this particular analogy has developed. It seemed like the only one strategically effective enough to deal with those who want to say homosexuality is a behavior based identity. They argue: it’s about choice and a bad choice at that. We assert: no, we’re born this way, we can’t change, it’s an immutable difference like being black or being a woman. What I don’t like about the “born that way” argument is that it’s amnesiac. It forgets that natural differences have been used to justify discrimination historically in this country. I also think it’s morally bankrupt because it seems to imply that if you could change you wouldn’t therefore deserve to have equal rights. And finally the emphasis on being “born that way” is ontological — it’s about identity. It doesn’t make the kind of social space available to act one’s difference. You could imagine someone saying, “Okay, fine your born that way, can’t change, can’t help it — so we won’t discriminate against you because your gay, but we’ll discriminate against you if you act gay.” Which is effectively what Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell does. You can be gay, but you can’t do gay.
TW: Ultimately what do you see as the potential of queer politics?
MC: I want queer politics to allow a bit of unruliness. There is an enormous amount of pressure to be public in a certain kind of way. And I kind of want rest and relaxation and pleasure to be part of this conversation. One of the things I like about sexuality is that it is sexuality.
AP: Michael you are onto something so important. We live in a culture that for all of the ways in which sex is used to sell every product, it is profoundly ambivalent about sexual pleasure. Queers of various sorts have been raised in this culture too and we struggle to affirm the value of sexual pleasure. And if queers cannot affirm it as a value that does good in the world, we can hardly expect hetero-normative culture to do so.
MC: Exactly.
AP: I think that making space for pleasure is actually deeply political. We need breathing room to recharge our batteries (take that as a vibrator reference if you like) to actually go out in the streets, to deal with the endless frustration of committee meetings and leafleting. Politics is about the long haul. It’s not a progress narrative of inevitability. This is about a long-term fight. Nothing is guaranteed. And the curiosity that Michael is talking about, the fact that we don’t know, can actually inform us and animate us. It doesn’t have to demoralize us.
RadioActive airs live M-F, from noon to 1pm on KRCL 90.9 FM.
Troy – awesome approach to what had queers across the country grasping.
A couple of authors come to mind when considering the “sting” of Richardson’s choice comment. Wies’ piece “Queer by Choice” looks at narratives of orientation choice, but as you noticed, it is predominantly among women. Perhaps this is a throw back to Golden’s “female sexual fluidity.”
The other major issue is the interconnectedness of homosexual and racial identities. This leads me to an author I actually met yesterday. Siobhan Somerville, author of “Queering the Color Line”, addresses some of these issues by looking at the ways in which gay identities not only borrow “the race card”, but develop in reaction to the racial climate of the early 20th century.
Just my two books! Keep up the good work.