At my fiancée’s family cookout last month, someone asked me,
When did you become a lesbian?
I gave the stock answer:
I didn’t become a lesbian. I was born this way. Nobody would choose to become a lesbian.
And that’s true: Nobody would choose to be a closeted lesbian in a heterosexual world dominated by the intolerant. From my own history, I know that a teenage girl or high-school-educated woman in a remote farm or town would not be likely to choose to be a lesbian.
The firebrand conservatives say that’s a good thing. Decriminalization, social acceptance, legal equality – make it easier to be a homosexual, encourage the spread of homosexuality.
There’s a joke:
Two guys are out golfing. A bolt of lightning kills them. At the Pearly Gates, St Peter is befuddled: These two guys weren’t supposed to die today.
St Peter says he has to send them back. As compensation for their trouble, they get to choose who they want to go back as. The two guys huddle, then come back.
Two guys: We want to be lesbians.
St Peter: Lesbians? Why lesbians?
Two guys: We still want to have sex with women, but we want to use the ladies’ tees.
That joke gives me a warm smile.
Loving a woman is glorious. Absolutely, utterly glorious. I love everything about it, about her.
Of course, I love a woman because I was born this way. I never got the chance to choose to become a lesbian.
But, now, I am glad I was born this way.
I would choose to be a lesbian.
In that sense – and in the sense that I have chosen to come out, chosen to meet a woman and fall in love with her, chosen to ask her to marry me, chosen to accept her request that I marry her – I have chosen to be a lesbian.
There was a time, and there are places, where no one would choose to be a lesbian.
Not back home, either – at least, not for my fiancée or me. Conservative Christians and Mormons may disapprove, may even tell me that I’m going to Hell. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve dealt with much worse disapproval and heard a lot worse things said about me – for things that I have chosen. There’s not much that they can do to us beyond tut-tut.
I can live happily and openly with the woman I love.
I choose to be what I am: A lesbian.
Family Values Lesbian 