Cynthia Nixon: ‘For me, being gay is a choice’
Former Sex and the City star and openly gay actress Cynthia Nixon has revealed that she believes being gay was a choice for her.
During an interview with The New York Times about her new Broadway show, a revival of the Margaret Edson play Wit, Nixon said it was a belief that no one could take away from her.
“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice,” she said.
“I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
Nixon said she believed a certain section of the gay and lesbian community is concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then people could ‘opt out’.
“I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not,” she said.
“As you can tell, I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.
“I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”
Nixon and her female partner Christine Marinoni have been together since 2004 and announced their engagement at a marriage equality rally in New York in 2009.
They had a child together last year and Nixon has two children from her previous relationship with English professor Danny Mozes. They split in 2003.
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I imagine ‘lgbt for truth’ would have spent Australia Day practising the walking on water trick.
The only choice she made was to call it a choice. What she (and the rest of us) should be indignant about is that for heterosexuals the question never arises.
Many people struggle for years to come to terms with their sexuality often culminating in suicide. To say it’s a choice – like do I want chicken or beef for dinner – trivialises a very serious issue.
Whatever got Cynthia “there” is a matter of her personal views and semantics. Semantics plays a role in many same sex attracted peoples’ journeys for all kinds of reasons – protecting their self image, protecting their family’s self image, protecting their new ‘out’ life. Ask 50 same sex attracted people about their coming out and you’ll get 50 different experiences, mainly defined by semantics. This is for one simple reason … we can produce no other evidence for our sexuality and how it came about. One day we will live in a world where that evidence is not required, but that will be long after us and Cynthia.
Well, lgbt for “truth” (yeah, pull the other one), this gay had no emotional trauma during childhood and his parents are still happily married. Nor am I the only gay person with this background.
We don’t know what causes homosexuality and we probably never will. Anyone who tries to push the trauma theory or crap on about the need for repentance is either a liar, ignorant, a bigot or probably all three.
Homosexuality just is. Spare us pseudo-scientific quackery about trauma and neglect.
[…] to the New York Times, Cynthia said, “I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line […]
How about this Truthy. Most people identify with and practice heterosexuality because it’s pumped into us every minute of every day from the second we leave the birth canal. There’s not much choice in it and that’s pretty god damn traumatic. In a society where there was no political, economic or social policing of sexuality I’m sure most people would try a bit of the same-same.
Being supportive of the basic civil rights of gays and lesbians does not require a belief in the false notion that people are born gay. They are not. Homosexuality is caused by emotional trauma – from childhood neglect, abuse, or any number of traumatic causes.
If we love someone, we want to see them healed (from the emotional trauma connected to the homosexual feelings), not see them get married.
In the Netherlands where gay marriage has been accepted for quite awhile now, has seen no decrease in gay suicide – in fact, some studies show an increase.
If you do not promote emotional healing and resolution and instead choose to ignore it for your own selfish reasons, their blood is on your hands.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2009)
“One half of the victims…often linked their homosexuality to their sexual victimization experiences.”
“The age at the time of the molestation ranged from 4 to 16 with a mean age of 10.”
In homosexual men ther appears to be a disconnect between them and their fathers as well as an overconnect with them and their mothers…there is the perception of the father being distant, uninvolved…”
Author and AIDS victim Jerry Arterburn said: “I was involved in the homosexual world as a blatant attempt to obtain the affection from other men that I did not receive from my own father.” Due to his sensitive nature, he was more deeply affected than most boys when his own father rejected him early in life. Without a loving father figure, he yearned for affection from other boys by the age of six. His yearning became sexualized at puberty. He said being abused or severely neglected in childhood was “too common a thread to ignore” in the gay community and his female mannerisms were due to his mother, his only role model. He was NOT born gay. But he was saved and transformed, just as the Bible promises all of us, whether gay or straight, as we submit to Christ by repentance and faith.
I think she’s probably a bisexual who has found women make better parents then men. I don’t blame her.