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The Bully Pulpit

It is painful to read and listen to all the nonsense about sexual orientation.  Now a Representative from Oklahoma, James Lankford, thinks it ought to be legal to fire people from their jobs because people, he believes, choose to be gay or lesbian.

Obviously, if people can choose to be gay or lesbian, people also must choose to be heterosexual.  I do not remember ever choosing to be sexually attracted to women.  It is only the "choosing" part I do not recall.  The attraction itself was never in doubt.

I do not know anyone who chooses to be attracted to another person, like the little train that thought it could.  To the contrary, the attractions that we feel are often so powerful that we have trouble managing them.

In a similar way, the lack of attraction that we feel is just as automatic, and often just as powerful.

And what is this baloney about firing people because they are gay?  Should we--just to be fair--fire people because they are straight?  What mindless nonsense!

What we can control is how we behave toward straight people or gay people.  The stupid stuff should stop!  No more ganging up on heterosexuals and cutting off their hair!  People who do things like that are turning their own internal battles into acting out.  James Lankford ought to be quiet for a while and try to figure out what he feels the way he does.  Mitt Romney needs to ask himself why he did what he did, as a young man.  He needs to ask himself about himself.  Instead of pretending he does not even remember what he did, he ought to tell us that he has been trying to understand it; trying to understand himself.

Nobody chooses to be born male or female, tall or short, Asian or Caucasian.  Or anything else.  It just happens, and we can make the best of it, or the worst.  For that--for what we make of it--we are responsible.  

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