I'm a lesbian, but I wasn't born this way.
Are we born gay or is it possible to make
a positive choice to reject heterosexuality
and decide to switch sides?
Of course it is.
Sexual attraction normally comes about as
a result of opportunity, luck or curiosity.
For me, it all began when I developed a crush
on my best friend at the tender age of 11
but less than a year later I was in love with
Colin.
I soon fell out with him and gravitated back
to my female friends but the pressure on me
not to be a lesbian was enormous and I struggled
with self-hatred and low self-esteem.
So what made me finally decide I would embrace
lesbianism?
The feminists I met in the 1970s who helped
me understand that loving women can be truly liberatory.
I loved the feeling that I chosen my sexuality,
but have we returned to the essentialist notion
that we are either born that way or that we
are unthinkingly heterosexual?
We have given up the pride in our radical
sexual identity for a medical diagnosis with
no scientific basis.
But a number of scientists - in the main gay
men - such as Qazi Rahman, Glenn Wilson and
Dick Swaab (yes that is his real name) - have
devoted their efforts to proving the existence
of a gay gene.
Take neuroscientist Simon Levy, who claimed
in 1991 that gay men's brains were more like women's.
Then there was the one that "discovered" that
boys with elder brothers are 33% more likely
to be gay because they occupied a womb where
a male feotus had already been.
But none of the science holds water and let's
face it: bigots don't care either way.
Last January, I went undercover to a Christian
counselling centre in Colorado, posing as
an unhappy lesbian who lost her family and
her church when she came out.
My character Joanna underwent a week of intensive
gay conversion therapy during which everything
negative about being a lesbian was rubbed
in my face.
But do you think my therapist, Lydia, actually
cared whether I could be turned straight,
whether I'd been born that way or made an
immoral choice to become a lesbian?
Or was her mission really to persuade me to
stop having sex with women so that I could
be welcomed back as a Christian?
Needless to say, Lydia did not succeeed in
her mission and I'm still very much an out
and proud lesbian.
But it is possible to be against gay conversion
therapy and still argue against the existence
of a gay gene.
And yet, the widely held view within much
of the gay community goes like this: the estimated
3% of the population who are gay were born
this way. We do not make a choice, those who
claim they choose to be lesbian or gay are
not "real gays". They're just experimenting.
It is dangerous to say we choose to be gay
because then the bigots will insist we can
choose to be straight.
Look, some gays might feel that finding a
gay gene will end homophobia but racism has
not diminished because we know that blackness
or whiteness is genetic; sexism exists even
though we know that sex is genetic.
So when people ask: "If being gay was a choice,
then why would we choose to live a life where
oppression, violence and discrimination are
inevitabilities?"
It is obvious that they're confusing anti-gay
bigotry with being gay.
Of course, no one would choose to face prejudice
and social exclusion but many are more than
happy to make that transition if the right
woman or man comes along.
Asking for out human rights on the basis that
we "can't help how we are" is counter-productive.
Let's put some pride back into our identity
and stop apologising for it.
Being gay or lesbian is obviously not a choice
which sauce to have with your pasta but more
a mix of chance and, quite frankly, bravery.
It is a positive choice and if anti-gay bigotry
disappeared tomorrow, many more of us would
have the opportunity to choose it for ourselves.
