Baby, You Were Born This Way, So Live Your Life On YOUR Terms!

Baby, You Were Born This Way, So Live Your Life On YOUR Terms!

Which came first the chicken or the egg? Nature or nurture? Born gay or made a choice to be gay? Some great questions. There are very different answers to these questions, depending on who you speak to and what their own personal philosophies are. A person’s own personal experiences and morals also help them form their own opinion on these subjects. Of course the first question is kind of a silly question, one that doesn’t affect anyone’s life too much. The other two questions have been debated by many, many people over the years. My opinion on nature vs. nurture is that they both shape how our brains, our morals, our very lives are developed. In other words I don’t think either one is right or either one is wrong. Since I am a lesbian, the third question is one I have a very strong opinion on. There is very little doubt in my mind that a person is either born gay or straight.

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about that is as simple as one statement. Who would make the choice to be ostracized? Sometimes not only by people they don’t know but also by the very people who they’ve loved their whole lives, their families. If the possibility exists that your parents or your siblings may put you out of their lives, never want to see you or speak to you again, because of something you have the choice to be, would people really make that choice? If you knew that the possibility existed that you could lose a job, get violently attacked or be discriminated against in any number of ways, would a person really make the decision to live their life like that, if it was their choice? Let me say that I love my life. I would not change it at all. But all those years ago would I have made the decision to make my life more difficult just because of who I loved? I remember losing my first job because I was a lesbian. They never said that of course, even way back then they were smart enough not to say that. But I remember going from a model employee one who received excellent employee reviews, to getting a very bad review. My work never changed. I was not only there every shift but also when I got called in on my day off. The only thing that changed was they found out I was a lesbian. Someone did let me know what had truly happened. I was 17 years old and fired because of something that was as much me as my height, weight or hair color.

The second reason I feel so strongly about sexuality not being a choice is my own experiences. I remember being 16 and a friend of the family being at my house while my mom was out. She was an older lesbian, not old, but at 24 she was older than me. I remember there had been a few weeks when I had been getting these vibes from her that I did not understand. I was a very naïve 16 year old. Now back to my house when my mom was out. I remember her asking me if she could give me a back rub and I said yes. I wasn’t that naïve that I didn’t have a clue at that point, but I was very interested. Up until that point, I had never even thought at least on a conscious level, of being with a woman. In fact, I was about as boy crazy as they came. It wasn’t long though before I was remembering different things from when I was younger. The HUGE crush I had on my health teacher in junior high (Ms. Clarkson, she was HOT!) or the crush I had on a friend who lived down the street from my older brother when I was 14 or 15 (she had a GREAT ass.). It was after awhile of thinking about these things that I realized I had always been a lesbian; I just had not consciously accepted it. In fact I did the opposite. I did everything I could to prove to everyone, including me, that I was straight. Hence the being boy crazy as hell.

So if I was a lesbian all along and did not realize it, would I have ever realized it if my first love did not show her interest in me? If we are gay but in denial about, it are we still gay? The second question is the easiest one to answer for me. Just because we are in denial about something, it still is what it is. If a drug addict is in denial about their addiction are they still an addict? Of course they are. I am not comparing being gay to being a drug addict. I am comparing the denial of both in order to show that denial does not change what is. Denial is a funny thing, our minds can easily trick us into not believing something about ourselves. That doesn’t mean it isn’t so. The first question is a lot hard to answer, because how can we know how our lives would have ended up if another path had been taken or if something had not happened in our lives? I like to think that I would have realized that I’m a lesbian. In fact, I am pretty sure I would have. What I do know is no matter how my life may have been negatively affected by being a lesbian, I would not want my life any other way. Could I live happily with a man? Yes, I can. There were times when I was happy with my ex-husband. But would I have been as happy living a life that was not what I truly wanted as I have been living as an out and proud lesbian? I don’t think so.

If you are gay, no matter what you feel the answer to this question is, live your life the way you want to live it. Don’t do what I did and get married (even after I had been in a relationship with a woman) to a member of the opposite sex just because you think that is what your family would want. You have to put yourself first. You have to live your life the way you want to live it. Making other people happy may not make YOU happy. Or at least not as happy as you could be if you live your life the way you want to. Just concentrate on living your life in an authentic, honest way. Remember, be true to yourself and also remember if you are not happy, you’re not going to make anyone else happy either.

If you have a loved one who is gay, just accept them as they are. I’m not saying you have to approve of something that you may not agree with, I am simply saying accept the person you love. They don’t all of a sudden become a different person just because you find out they prefer the same sex to the opposite sex. They are still your child, your grand-child, your sibling, your friend, whatever the relationship may be. Nothing changes about a person when you find out they are gay. In fact their being gay would not be something that would affect you at all. So please don’t let if affect your relationship.

Janet Lee Smith

06/07/2011