Why Am I Gay?
For some time I have answered this by saying, “God made me that way, for a reason.” I expect that for many of you that is a kind of turn-off. In other words, I lose credibility and become uninteresting when I offer that explanation. What I am really trying to say, without the religious or spiritual angle is:
I am, at least part of the time, glad that I am gay
My homosexual experiences have not all been immoral. Maybe none of them have been.
I could not change my sexual orientation and really shouldn’t try to.
There is something good about being gay.
I didn’t choose my sexual orientation.
I am not alone or unique.
I should do something about it while I still can.
My dictionary offers the following definition of “destiny:” “The seemingly inevitable or necessary succession of events.” This goes a long way toward explaining why, after many years pretending I was heterosexual, I came out again. I could not bear the thought that I might die with no one around me knowing who I really was. At the age of 55, and in reasonably good health, I am not likely to die anytime soon, but I just couldn’t take the chance. So coming out was, as the dictionary says, inevitable and necessary.
DB, M.D., a local psychiatrist, told me a war story that illustrates this nicely. DB, M.D. was a combat psychiatrist in Vietnam. One day an infantry soldier came into his “office” (probably a tent). He had obviously just come in from the field, and he announced that he was gay and then left immediately. He might have been trying for a discharge but I have another idea. Perhaps the he just couldn’t bear the thought that his secret might die with him if he were a battlefield casualty. It was “necessary and inevitable” that he should tell someone.
For some it is helpful to sum this up in terms of a deity. But it is unnecessary.