Is being gay a choice?

"According to Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford sexual preference is a kind of lifestyle choice, the sort of thing we pick up as a hobby or extracurricular activity. Which gender you prefer to sleep with is just one of those decisions you make in life, like whether to play golf or tennis.

“I don’t think I’m intolerant, I just don’t condone the lifestyle,” Langford told The Birmingham News. “Your personal lifestyle should be nobody’s issue but yours. It’s not a civil rights issue; it’s a personal issue.”

Forget for the moment that the very act of the thing necessitates other people being involved. Langford doesn’t want to pass judgment on anyone’s “lifestyle” choices — except when he does.

Last week, Mayor Langford put his foot in a hornets’ nest when he said he would deny a parade permit for Central Alabama Pride, a gay rights organization that hosts an annual parade through Five Points South. Being a newcomer to Birmingham, the mayor evidently was not familiar with the event. Gay pride parades might not be so common in Fairfield, but in Birmingham this sort of thing has happened for years.

Of course, denying a permit was ludicrous. If ever the mayor had picked a civil liberties fight, he had one on his hands now, but Langford quickly backed down.

The city now intends to allow the parade to proceed. However, the city will not allow Central Alabama Pride to hang rainbow flags from light poles as it has most years, and the mayor will not sign a proclamation for the event.

Again, Langford doesn’t want to pass judgment on anyone’s “lifestyle” choices — except when he does.

Take, for example, the sackcloth and ashes prayer rally Langford hosted at Boutwell Auditorium. There, last month, he led more than 1,000 residents in a religious service that was less about crime reduction — its stated purpose — than it was the deification of the mayor himself. But perhaps I’m passing judgment on the mayor’s lifestyle choices.

With or without a proclamation, the parade will take place next month.

Still, the mayor’s position in this troubles me.

I’ve known people more homophobic than Mayor Langford. (And I have more than a suspicion that Langford is not nearly as gay-adverse as he pretends to be.) Years ago, I even met Fred Phelps, that lunatic preacher from the Westboro Baptist Church who protests soldiers’ funerals and runs Godhatesfags.com. Phelps’ hatred is astonishing and so far from the mainstream that it’s almost amusing. Only the media take him seriously. And it’s for just that reason that the kinder, gentler homophobia, like that the mayor preaches, is more troublesome. The difference between Phelps and Langford is the difference between the Klan and a restricted country club. One is ghastly hate speech while the other passes for conventional wisdom, the political residue of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. The first we dismiss because it’s absurd. The second, we accept offhand.

But it takes only a modicum of thought to undo the mayor’s line of rhetoric.

Sexual preference is no more a choice for homosexuals than it is for heterosexuals. Arguing otherwise perpetuates a subtle bigotry and lays a foundation for more aggressive rhetoric."