The Pink Pander

Much was made of the Dems' groundbreaking Logo "debate" this week, and I certainly don't want to diminish the significance of gays becoming an open dance partner for major party candidates. But I was a bit dismayed at how this particular event became less a substantive exchange than an opportunity to pander to an entrenched interest.

The widely derided comments of Bill Richardson come especially to mind. After responding to Melissa Etheridge that he thought homosexuality was, in fact, a "choice," rather than a product of biological destiny, Richardson was greeted with incredulous glances and asked if he had "understood the question." Now I think BR is a bit of a buffoon, and his apology the next day made it look as if he didn't have much clue on this issue period. Still, it's not a real debate if the candidates are all required to offer the same answer, one that reflects more on the ideological purism of the gay rights movement than any scientific or philosophical consensus. Is it too hard to say that sexual identity is a complex phenomenon that likely includes elements of biology, conditioning, experience, and (yes) choice? The claim that it is 100% biology is driven more by the imperatives of equal protection law (establishing an "accident of birth" criteria for strict scrutiny) and the desire to avoid the moral blame assigned to gays by conservatives than by anything else. If even racial identity can in some measure be chosen, why not sexuality?

I don't share the conservative view that "choosing" gay would be inherently sinful or blameworthy, and I suspect that gays a generation from now will be confident enough in their choices to acknowledge that biology is not necessarily destiny. After all, the American identity involves the effort to craft an individual identity that struggles both within and against the given. Calvinst predestination has always been an awkward fit and ironic influence here, whether we're talking salvation or sin. How strange that a liberation movement would adopt the logic of the Puritan.