Sarah Palin: If People Choose to be Gay, Do They Choose to be Shallow?

With each leak from Katie Couric's Sarah Palin interview, the damning evidence that the governor is supremely unfit for the VP job -- or any public office -- approaches flood level. If you're looking for consistency in this topsy-turvy world, look no further. She says she's well-situated "as Putin rears his head," as if foreign affairs were a turkey shoot, she's clueless about the current economic crisis, she supports censorship, and opposes choice even in cases of rape and incest. And even when you may agree with her -- she supports drilling in ANWR and going after Al Qaeda directly in Pakistan -- she doesn't know that these policies are diametrically opposed to her running mate's. As someone who thinks that my 13 year-old daughter would make a stronger candidate, it's been satisfying to hear Palin receive the predictable opprobrium her unfailing lack of knowledge inspires.

That is, until now. In the latest release from this telling head to head, Couric asks whether the candidate believes that people can pray away their homosexuality. To this, Ms. Palin responds with a touching tale of personal friendship, and her refusal to be judgmental. "I have, one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay, and I love her dearly," she says. "And she is not my 'gay friend.' She is one of my best friends."

Wow, I think as I hear this. For the first time, I feel like we've actually had the same experience and feelings about it as two human beings. I look outside to make sure that pigs aren't flying past my window. But then she continues, and reassures me that this isn't some parallel universe after all. "[My friend] happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I would have made," she adds. "But I'm not going to judge people." How kind she is. And how full of crap.

Her friend of 30 years made a choice to be gay? Exactly how old was this girl when she made her decision, and did she tell Palin about it at the time? Maybe she said something along the lines of "You know, this straight thing is okay, but I think I'm going to go with being gay, because gay people have it so great in this country, and everyone's so nice to them, and no one would ever make a wedge issue out of this most personal aspect of my life." The nice thing, I guess, is that if you realize you made the wrong decision, you could switch back again -- just like Palin herself could, if one day she concluded that things weren't working out with Todd, and she wanted to play for the other team after all.

The fact is, no one who has been close to a gay person would ever believe that his or her sexuality is the result of a conscious choice. In fact, one of the benefits of gay Americans coming out to their straight friends and family is that the loved ones see how homosexuality isn't a choice, it just is. If you're a religious person as Palin purports to be, you might even think that gay people are as God made them, like the rest of us, no more and no less. And that God didn't create humans in His own image just so they could be reviled by their fellow creatures.

As I've said, we expect this woman to make boneheaded statements. What is surprising to me is that no one on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning commented on it other than to pay lip service to the tightrope Palin walks for her base. So here's my real point: We cannot be so inured to Palin's babbling that we give her a pass on an issue that affects millions of Americans and their families. If you're a member of the media, I ask that you call her out on it. Or if you're just someone who cares about human dignity and civil rights, you could speak out, too.

Comments

[AngryAmish]

Ms. Handler: I'm returning to this excellent piece to urge you to write a follow-up addressing the handling of the gay marriage issue in last night's VP debate.

In that moment of the debate, America's banal contempt for gays and lesbians was put on full display, acted out by all three principles: Palin, Biden, and, sadly, Ifel.

Predictably, Palin repeated her gay-as-choice theory while insisting that some of her closest friends and relatives have made that unfortunate choice. Biden, while inelegantly defending Obama's support for seperate-but-equal civil unions, made no effort to challenge Palin on the fundamental wrongness of her underlying theory--no doubt because he has spent no more intellectual energy than his opponent on pondering the question of what it means to be gay.

Most offensive of all, however, was Ifel. After Palin, in her only direct answer of the evening, pointed out that both she and Biden oppose gay marriage, Ifel breezily declared: "Wonderful! You both agree on something!" and moved quickly on to the next topic.

Wonderful? Say what? Hey, Gwen, how 'bout a follow-up question to Mr. Biden: "Senator, how do you explain to your opposition to same-sex marriage to your many gay and lesbian supporters? Do you think they have a right to feel betrayed? To feel not so wonderful?"

Shame, shame, shame on you, Gwen!

[forwhatitsworth]

I did not choose to be. I chose to accept. Heterosexuality was not an option for me. My only options were to deny it, to repress it, to ignore it, or to accept it. After exhausing all my other options, I ultimately chose to accept it. I haven't looked back.

[realpolitic]

Where do these crazy evangelical conservatives get the idea that people choose their sexuality? Does Palin or George W. Bush remember the day they chose their sexual orientation? I mean, the way they distort the bible to tailor to a bigoted world view is frightening. I guess if gays do not choose their sexuality they are blameless. Therefore, Palin and other evangelicals must pretend that all of us do choose. At what point did many evangelicals choose to be non-thinking people who parrot what they are told by pastors? Not using one's own mind must be the ultimate affront to God.

[Herb1843]

I think the belief held by many people that gays "choose" to be gay is not so much rooted in conservative evangelical Christianity than in fear.

Aside from a study done several years ago that demostrated that a significant percentage of intensely homophobic men harbored traces of homosexuality themselves, I have nothing to hang this opinion on other than nothing else makes sense:

If they insist it's a choice, then it's something they can control. If they're faced with the possibility that it's not a choice, then they have no control. It's at this point that fear shoves logic aside and they think that if it's not a choice then it can't be controlled and -- horror! -- it might be catching. Safer, and more reassuring, then, to think they're in control and certain to remain straight because THEY choose.

[realpolitic]

Yes, and the sexual orientation therapy that the evangelical's advocate like Rev. Haggard participated in work so well. Such therapy does not work at all, as I am sure Haggard would attest to if he was being honest.

To me, as the article implies this attitude reflects more of an intellectual shallowness and perhaps some bigotry. None of us remember the day we choose any sexual orientation. The idea that evangelical's have that gays choose theirs when any evangelical can not remember when he choose his or her's is just plain slliness.

It also demonizes that sexual orientation and results in many otherwise well meaning people, like Rev. Ted Haggard, to live a lie.

[realpolitic]

Herb, you are right as well. It is fear. If evangelicals decided that God made some people gay, then it would be much more difficult for them to equate an immorality with that orientation.

[LHoney]

I always ask people who use the phrase "choose to be gay" this question: When did you choose to be hetero??? Usually shuts them right up!

[commentguy1234]

The idea that someone chooses to be gay suggests something about the person who believes that; it implies that every person has their 'price.' So, what's Sarah Palin's price? How much pain, heartbreak, money or desperation would be needed to turn her?

The truth is that calling it a choice is just a way to brainwash the sheep into thinking it's okay to discriminate, making gays responsible for their gayness. First, you define it as a choice; then you label it as immoral. Then you roll out your slippery slope arguments: today men marry each other, tomorrow they marry children, then animals, then inanimate objects. Goebbels would be proud of the social conservative movement.

[MamaBird62]

I couldn't care less if Palin has friends who are gay, or what she believes about the genesis of homosexuality in human behavior.

I DO care about what her policies would be if elected (heaven forbid). She did nothing as Gov. of Alaska to stand in the way of gay rights, from what I can gather. In fact she tried to block an attempt to limit civil unions. Why don't reporters ask her about THAT and make her answer the question? Stop letting her carry on with her ridiculous platitudes. Bush did this so brilliantly when running for office, gave the impression that he opposed gay rights and so foamed up the base, but really did nothing for that base once he got into office.
Palin is attempting the exact same thing. She's not about conservative Christian issues, that's the distraction to reel in the base.
Stop playing her game the way she wants. She's about raping the environment for what's left of carbon fuel sources.

[PATina]

I know I'm going to get blasted... but I do believe SOME people choose to be gay. For instance... the bi-sexual. If someone is born gay or straight... how do those who "choose" both fit into that understanding?? In another social forum... I actually asked a group of self proclaimed bi-sexual women if they were 'born' that way and many admitted that they were in same sex relationships simply because they wanted to see what it was all about. Some of them decided they liked being in a relationship w/ a woman and gave up men altogether... others chose to have it both ways... while even others decided it wasn't for them and went back to men. Those are choices that those particular people made.

I do think it's wrong to paint everyone with the same broad brush. Some feel the choice was made for them prior to birth... and that's cool. But to say that no one chooses to be gay is just as wrong as those who say no one is born gay.

[craigary]

Whether this is true or not, I guarantee you it's completely outside Palin's thought process. "Bi-what? Does. Not. Compute." Honestly, while this is one of the few moments where I at least appreciated Palin's honesty and she seemed like a human being for 1 minute, but it shows you her simplified, Church-oriented thought process that when pictured being used and other complicated issues is a serious cause for worry.

[AngryAmish]

Identity is socially constructed and therefore fluid. I get it. Unfortunately, we are not in one giant po-mo graduate school course. The strongest form of equal protection under the law in this country is afforded to people on the basis of immutable characteri­stic--race­, for example, even though the experience of being black is not the same across time and cultures.

Outside cultural studies programs, it's crucial, for the sake of civil rights, that we recognize the unchangeability of being gay, which is really just a deviation from gender norms that is not wholly expressed in the sexual act but in myriad ways: if you are honest, you will admit to knowing a number of children who you no doubt are gay, even before the age of sexual maturity. There is something hard-wired in them that you--that we all--are conditioned to recognize. That's why sissies get the pulp beaten out of them on the playground: it's the effort of tiny bigots to beat the gay out of them.

[artistgirl]

Here's the BROAD BRUSH...

As citizens, we are all individuals and it is our constitutional right that we have the privacy to conduct our private lives as we wish. If I am gay, straight, bisexual, or celibate it is my right to live that way.

I understand your question, but in all honesty, it's not your business. Nor is it my business to know yours.

[USexpat]

Sometimes it's a practical decision. In the case of bisexuality, it doubles your chances of getting a date on Saturday night.

[USexpat]

Great blog, but I went through a world class double take when I first saw the topic. I read it as:

Sarah Palin: If People Choose to be Gay, Do They Choose to be Swallow?

I'm off to see my therapist.

[AngryAmish]

Take me with you, b/c that's how I first read it!

[LexLuthier]

I'll call us a cab

[AngryAmish]

The media aren't going to "call her out" on her belief that being gay is a choice; that would create the appearance of taking sides, of abandoning (faux) objectivity, and really now, what self-respecting journalist, or self-promoting politician, wants to risk identifying too strongly with the struggle of a historically despised class? Unfortunately, what counts as good journalism on the topic of gay rights is a balanced view in which the bigotted view of same sex desire as a choice/pathology is given as much weight as the lived experience of millions of gay men and women. If it were different, we'd see much more savage analyses of this segment of the interview. Instead, we see endless clips of Palin struggling to answer Couric's "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader" questions.

[kevinlangendorf]

The questions I never hear asked of people who talk about those who chose to be gay, is "why did you choose to be straight?" or "When faced with the choice of being gay or straight, how did you choose heterosexuality?" or "How did you make the choice to be straight? What did you personally do to choose the heterosexual lifestyle?"

Since those who are gay choose it, it stands to reason that it works the other way. I just wonder how many gay experiences the average straight person has before they can properly determine their choice of sexual preference.