Born that way... a thought

Whenever someone makes the claim that people are “not born gay” I am tempted to remind them that people are also not born with beards or buxom breasts. These characteristics are not “natural” in that they are not natal. They develop. And if the secondary sexual characteristics develop, so too does sexual orientation — without doubt under the guiding interplay of “nature” (what one is born with) and nurture.

I am also tempted to remind the religious-minded opponents of marriage equality that people are neither born Christian nor married. Both are estates into which one enters, the former sometimes without ones consent, but the latter never properly without it.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
who was reminded of this when reflecting on the fact that some in the early church, such as Clement of Alexandria, regarded a grown man shaving off his beard as a peculiarly serious moral failing