Friday Philosophy: Choosing happiness

It’s an old argument.  Old as the hills.  Older than some kinds of dirt.  But then, so am I.

The thinking goes like this:

Nobody could disagree with that.  Surely I don’t.  But as someone who taught logic for a quarter century, I am all too aware of human frailty in this matter.  Some people read that as having the implication that it would not be wrong to discriminate against someone because of what they did choose.

There’s the culprit:  thinking that it is okay to discriminate against people.

Outtake 1: It is okay to discriminate between people, so we can tell them apart, you know, and do things like honor heritage, since that seems to be part of our culture. Some people seem to have difficulty with the difference between the two concepts, but that’s another issue for another day.

Do we really thinking it is okay to discriminate against people who have made a conscious choice about, say, their spiritual beliefs?  

Outtake 2: There is an argument that parents impose their spiritual beliefs of their children, which is why that should be protected. That is, children are born into a religion. As someone who has different beliefs now than what I was raised with, I am curious why people never challenge those so-called “imposed” beliefs. But that, too, is probably another discussion for another day.

Do we really think that it is best to claim that GLBT people shouldn’t be discriminated against because they were born “that way?”  What does it say about being gay and how we are viewed in this society to intone the words, “Nobody would ever choose to be gay.”  Why wouldn’t someone ever choose to be happier?  You can trust me on this or not:  I could have chosen to (maybe) continue living as a man or I could choose what I did:  to undergo gender reassignment.  I chose the latter so as to improve the degree of happiness in my existence.  What the hell is wrong with that?

Am I saying that people choose to be gay?  My opinion is that some do and some don’t.  I say nothing here about “all,” or even you, dear reader.

When it really comes down to whether people are born gay or straight, I have one question:

Suppose for an instant that it could be scientifically proven that people were born either straight or gay.  For the sake of this argument, let us also assume that there was a scientific…probably medical…procedure that could determine who those people are who are born straight and which of us were born  lesbian or gay.

How cool would that be!  I mean, we would never have to waste our lives falling in love with the wrong people!

And we could go door to door deciding which couple needed to divorce immediately because there was an orientation mismatch.  Doesn’t matter whether or not they love each other and get along well together, science rules!  And we do want to make the world a better place after all.  Right?

No good is going to come from a man who is going to come out as gay when he is 40 having the experience of 20 years of being a husband and father.  It is an outrage that a woman might not know that she is a lesbian and be consigned to be happily married to a man with whom she finds comfort passing the years, raising some children.

Are there many lesbians in the latter situation?  Yes.  Many of my friends are, in fact, women who were formerly in heterosexual marriages.  And some of them have children.  And some lesbians don;t consider them to be “real lesbians.”  But the same ones don’t think I am one either, since I used to be a man.

Disaster is surely just around the corner if we et these sorts of marriages happen.  A queer person and a straight person should never, ever be allowed to marry.

Is that the message we endorse?  Or do we endorse the right of people to marry the person they love.

As for what “scientific proof” there is, one should realize that it is not hard and fast proof.  It is a story of correlations.  And it is mostly a tale of gay men and gay men only, with a little bit about transwomen.  As a transwoman, I’m supposed to have a portion of my BSTc which correlates more with that of women than that of men.  We could cut it open and find out, but then I would be dead.  To me, that seems to me to be not so good somehow.

Or we could test my androgen receptor gene and see if it is longer than that of other people born male.  Or, you know, we could conclude that I am transsexual because I changed my sex.  If I didn’t have a gene of the correct length, should I have been denied the process?  Or was my mental health what was truly important?

As a transwoman, I can’t believe that chromosomes are destiny.  As a human being, I believe that we can overcome our biology.

As a human, I have to wonder why the assumption has to be that even if we could choose not to be gay, we should have to do so to meet other people’s sense of order in the world.

Not until the gay/lesbian experience is artificially forced to be worse than it should be by maltreatment for outside forces does it even approach being annoying.

Being gay or lesbian is who we are.  And that is not a bad thing in my reality, any more or any less than being straight is a bad thing.

Coda

Our dear friend and colleague, Elena Scambio died on Wednesday.  

Dr. Scambio has been the Essex County Superintendent of Schools, the State Superintendent of the Jersey City Schools and an Assistant Commissioner of Education for the State of NJ.

Elena single-handedly created the Division of Education at Bloomfield College and was chair of that division upon her death.

Elena was a great woman.

Elena is survived by her wife, Angie.  If it is possible to be even more saddened, I am bereaved by the fact that among the last acts she witnessed were the decisions by voters in four states to establish that we should have something less than equal rights.

Here’s some words from Elena for National Coming Out Day in 2005.

For Elena Love and Happiness Twenty-one years out of the closet busy authentic productive happy self-assured peaceful in Love Happiness is when you really feel good about somebody Nothing wrong with being in love with somebody Happiness is having the choices and making them to spread more happiness Thank you Elena for your happiness –Robyn Elaine Serven –November 14, 2008