caterfree10:

“Claiming that LGBTQ people are “born this way” has indisputably been useful for the equality movement. It’s helped our society as a whole let go of the misconception that queerness is due to a failure in parenting, or a trauma, or some other stumbling block in the road to heterosexuality that can be corrected for or removed. The Human Rights Campaign has used “being gay is not a choice” to argue against harmful conversion therapy practices intended to “cure” queerness. Several of my LGBTQ friends deployed it during their own coming out process to help their families move toward acceptance. But is that enough? There’s a huge chasm between “grudging resignation to what can’t be changed” and real support for LGBTQ people. If our equality is predicated on the assumption that it’s less good to be queer than it is to be straight, doesn’t that undermine the potential for creating our own, authentic, fully realized queer lives? Will we always exist in the shadow of the heterosexuality that could have been?”

— The Problem With ‘Born This Way’ | Lindsay King-Miller for Into 
(via gaywrites)