Saletan makes the point that the more likely someone is to believe that homosexuality is not a choice, the more likely they are to have feelings of acceptance toward homosexuals. This is driving a lot of acceptance, which is a good thing. It's built on a crappy logic, which is a bad thing.

Personally, I don't think it matters on f*cking bit whether someone chooses homosexuality or not. I think it's about one person's right to engage in their sexuality with another consenting adult.

Making it about "choice" sets up this absurd scenario: it's okay for a gay man to meet another gay man and go have sex. However, when a bisexual man (for whom heterosexual sex is an option) meets another man an has sex...it's wrong? No way.

Focusing on "choice" allows people to cling to the idea that homosexuality is still very very wrong, but (poor dears) there's just nothing gay people can do about it. Bullsh*t. We won't have any real change on the issue until people drop this reactionary condemnation in the first place.

Absolutely. Everyone chooses whether to follow a religion or not, but that doesn't make religious freedom less important. Pedophiles and serial killers don't "choose" to have the overwhelming desires that drive their behavior either, but nobody advocates freedom for them. The difference isn't what is or isn't "chosen," it's what is or isn't so harmful to your fellow citizens that society is not obligated to tolerate it.

A countervailing argument, though, is that racism is wrong in part because it's BS. Science has pretty much debunked the idea of homogenous and strictly defined races as "branches" on the tree of evolution, as well as the innate superiority of some ethnic groups over others. King was saying was to judge people by what really counts, not by superficial divisions. But voluntary or not, the difference between gay and straight is very real and in the area of family and marriage law very relevant. The law treats maternity and paternity different because of fundamental biological differences in those relationships, and the differences between a same-sex and opposite-sex couple are no less real or relevant.