At this point in the game, I am sometimes shocked when I discover a new argument for gay rights or any other position I've been engaged in mulling over for some time. After many years as Captain Gay of many a gay club, and far too much blog reading it's just not expected. And of all sources, I hardly expected it to come from Jon Stewart. In the video below, which I stumbled across via feminsting, he takes on Mike Huckabee on same-sex marriage. Most of the discussion is old-hat, though interesting to hear played out face-to-face. What struck me was the point that Jon makes that one is much more likely to choose their religion than to be gay and that we protect people's religious practice as a right.
Now, I'm not really one for the "is it a choice or not" debate. A good liberal arts grad knows that the answer is unlikely to be either/or but rather both/and. BUT I often hear that things such as sexual orientation and gender identity do not deserve to be protected classes because one can't prove them to be inborn and unchangeable in the same way that skin color is largely inborn and unchangeable. While I've always rejected the premise of the argument that rights ought to be doled out on the basis of provably inborn and unchangeable-ness it never plum occurred to me that one could counter that so very simply and elegant with the example of religious choice. Holy rebuttal, batman!
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as reported by a crunchy queer medical student
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