I think what really gets me about the issues of gender and sexuality is that the societal attitude and material from the American Psychological Association seem to communicate that being gay or being transgender is just who you are. You just need to embrace it. It is a defining characteristic like race or birth sex or eye color.

That seems so limiting to me. Freedom is something we Americans embrace and celebrate. But when it comes to gender and sexuality, you are dictated to by how you feel or think. It would be disingenuous to not identify as gay or transgender if that’s how you feel.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that there are genetic propensities towards issues of gender and sexuality. I’m fully aware that there are environmental stimuli and triggers. I’m fully aware that most people don’t just wake up one day and say I think I’d like to be gay. I think I’d like to be transgender. Those are not the choices to which I refer in my title.

What I’m getting at is that it seems people are told that if you have genetic propensities, or environmental stimuli, or triggers, or a combination of some or all of those, that it is certain who you are and how you should live that out.

True diversity to me celebrates a full range of differences, allowing for a lot of freedom and choice. And freedom, in turn, helps us make decisions about how to live, how to think, and even how to adapt our feelings based on our experience, beliefs, and inherent traits and qualities.

Today I’m arguing that your genetics, your environment, the triggers in your life, and chance, do not define you. You define you. 

I am an extreme, passionate, opinionated, stubborn, obsessive, critical, yet optimistic person. I believe those things come from my nature AND my nurture. They are inherently true about me. But they don’t define me. I define them.

The trait of being obsessive, along with my exposure to drinking alcohol as an adult, and the trigger of stress in my life might come together to cause alcoholism. But I have choices to make to ensure I don’t go that direction if I don’t want to.

As a passionate person gifted with musical ability, I could have pursued a highly competitive career in classical piano, committing so much time and energy to that pursuit that if I had also had a family at the same time, I might have destroyed it through overworking and obsession. I chose a different path, because getting married and having a family was prioritized over my passion for studying music. I knew that if I chose that path, I would likely have been alone. That wasn’t a choice I wanted to make. My passion and my musical talent didn’t define me.

I’m not saying that these challenging topics of gender and sexuality are equal to my examples. They are not easy to work through, not easy to make choices about, not easy to understand. But I am saying there are choices. These are not immutable characteristics in which you have no choice.

I’m sure I’ll offend some by saying I’m not really bothered by the equal marriage amendment. I think it’s fair to say people have choices in how they choose to live and how to express themselves. What I think is a disservice to individuals, churches, and society in general is that if you experience same-sex attraction, there seems to be certainty to the conclusion that you are gay and need to embrace that and live it out. I think it’s a disservice to say if you experience gender dysphoria, there seems to be certainty that you are transgender and need to embrace that and live it out.

I think we are a country formed around the concept of freedom. Honestly, I believe Christianity is a faith formed around freedom. In both instances, pursuing truth as part of pursuing freedom is the wise course of action. But in freedom, we allow people to have all of the information and then to make choices, whether we agree that they are wise or not. We protect the rights of people to make choices. We protect the people when they make choices. We cannot prevent natural consequences of choices, whatever those may be, but we can prevent abuse of people based on their choices. We can also prevent a lack of knowledge from contributing to uninformed choices.

Understanding more about what makes us who we are, the inevitable things that come from heredity, and the amazing ability of people to surpass their circumstances, is invaluable. Understanding one’s power to define their own character and to make choices about who they are and how they live, will allow everyone the opportunity to experience freedom based on knowledge and encouraged by wisdom. I think we should educate and empower choices, rather than label and define.

I am not a statistic. I am not a foregone conclusion. I am the product of my heredity, my history, AND my freedom to define myself. Let’s figure out a way that everyone feels so empowered.