In the same week that a woman’s publishing a book about her experience of going gay for a year, one straight guy has powerfully summed up why being gay isn’t a choice.
We previously brought you the story of Daniel Pearce, the 19-year-old boy from Georgia, USA, who was chucked out of his house after a ‘pray the gay away’ session held by his family. In the violent altercation – all filmed by Daniel and then uploaded to YouTube, his family said that being gay ‘is a path that you have chosen’.
Now, Chris Thompson, who’s a famous YouTuber for happier reason – he has over 3million views for one of his parodies of a Pitbull song – has re-told the story. Pointing out how ‘enraging’ the video is, he explains in a video post that ‘this is a human issue, no human should be treated the way this person was treated’.
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He also added that though he gets Daniel’s family are really religious it doesn’t excuse their behaviour. ‘Whatever you choose to believe is your choice. However, if your religion makes you feel righteous in kicking your own child out of the house over something that they have no control over, then I’m sorry, I don’t need a book to tell me that that’s wrong.’
He then asked all his followers, who he knows include loads of LGBTQ people, if they, at birth, could have chosen to be gay or straight, what ‘path’ they would have gone down. And the answers were totally mixed, as you can tell from the video below.
If you can’t watch the video right now, the responses are a little something like: ‘Growing up I would have chosen straight so that the ass kicking would stop.’ One particularly on-point response was ‘Nobody would choose to become a second class citizen and to get death threats and not be accepted by their own family.’
After reading them out, Chris breaks down in tears.
Chris ends his video with a simple message: ‘Whatever your sexuality, be proud of who you are.’
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There are plenty of arguments for whether being gay is a choice or not. And ideally, we could live in a world where, if you wanted to choose to be gay for a bit, just to try it out, you’d be totally within your rights to give it a go. Where the Australian woman Brooke Hemphill, a straight woman who’s written about ‘going lesbian’ for a year (called Lesbian For A Year), could be utterly justified in making that choice.
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However, we live in a world where too many people believe that to be gay is to choose a lifestyle that’s wrong and damaging to others, like stealing or arson. People like Daniel’s family who think this choice can be undone, sometimes through brute force. So, just a gentle reminder, if you ever find yourself thinking that fancying someone of the same sex is something you can just switch on, ask yourself: when did you decide to be straight?
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This Grandma's Reaction To Her Granddaughter Coming Out Is Hilarious
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.