Cynthia Nixon Choice

The key factor driving the courts' decisions about whether to strike down discriminatory laws has not been immutability but something more basic: whether a law discriminates on the basis of a trait that has no bearing on a person's ability to contribute to society.

When actress Cynthia Nixon declared that for her, being gay is a choice, she received much negative backlash from the gay and lesbian community. But I appreciate her giving us an opportunity to discuss a very complex concept of sexuality.

We should be thanking Cynthia Nixon for giving us an opportunity to talk about sexual orientation for what is really is, a complex human trait that is not fully understood, and not a simple gay/straight binary but a spectrum of behavior and identities.

The best analogy for the question of choice and sexuality is not race or gender but religion. Among defenders of Cynthia Nixon's "choice" remarks are those who say that, just as Americans choose their religion, why can't we choose our sexual orientation?

If the right wing does use Cynthia Nixon's words as a way to attack our community, I don't think it will be any more vile than what they already do. They try to "cure" us and deny our civil rights no matter what the basis of our true selves.