Is there Such a Thing as a Gay Lifestyle?

Is there really such a thing as a “gay lifestyle?”  It is a phrase used over and over again by both those within and outside the LGBTQ community.  A “lifestyle” is the manner by which a person chooses to live their lives.  The key word is “choose.”  Do LGBTQ people choose their lifestyle?  It depends on how one is using the phrase contextually.

In a general sense we all have a lifestyle that inherently belongs to us, and is one that we choose to live.  My lifestyle involves waking up in the morning, having my morning coffee while I surf the web and chat with friends on gay.com.  I go to work, earn money to pay the mortgage and other bills and hopefully have a little left over.  These are all voluntary actions and are part of what comprises my lifestyle.

However it is an erroneous assumption to carry this logic to one’s sexuality.  It is not a choice.  The insistence of some that being LGBTQ is a choice and that one can change the way they were born causes, many times, irreparable damage to one’s psyche, self-esteem and their sense of who they truly are.  It causes one to live a life that is not theirs, to create a façade, a lie that envelops the true essence of who they are.

Denying one’s very being is epitomized in a quote that I often reference.  “The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force leaking away in wasteful self-conflict.”  Many LGBTQ persons live two lives.  They are in prison not due to their own doing but for what society dictates them to be and how they should act.  They waste their lives, their inherent potential, and their vital life force, on worrying about hiding themselves.  Wasteful self-conflict is being torn between those that say we can choose who we are versus living our lives as we were born to as out, proud, productive individuals who just happen to have many of the same lifestyles as everyone else, except that we love another of the same sex.