Letter reflected small-mindedness

I am not about to get into a religious debate with Mrs. Nancy Bekeleski concerning homosexuality and her letter of Jan. 7. But I felt compelled to respond to Bekeleski’s offensive and crass statements about homosexuality being not only a sin but a conscious choice.

I am not arrogant and small-minded enough to claim to know whether or not being gay or lesbian is a conscious choice. My educated guess is that it is not a choice nor something influenced by one’s environment or upbringing, but rather part of one’s identity at birth. It takes a self-centered and simple mind to believe that God intended us all to be alike. Thankfully, we are not all alike. Otherwise, we’d all be doomed to be close-minded and judgmental like Mrs. Bekeleski.

Mrs. Bekeleski, did you chose to be heterosexual? The fact that some gays or lesbians might claim to have left “that lifestyle” serves not to illustrate that being gay or lesbian is a conscious choice, but only to illustrate that some gays or lesbians unfortunately feel compelled to abandon their true feelings and desires and to pretend to live their lives according to some deluded standards of “normalcy” espoused by bigots.

And if being gay or lesbian is a choice, who cares? I’m not a theology expert, but I’m pretty sure that, as long as we respect each other, God meant for each of us to choose the relationships and lifestyle that make us happy as individuals, not relationships and lifestyles of which Mrs. Bekeleski or anyone else personally approves. There is nothing Christian about the alarming intolerance expressed in your letter, Mrs. Bekeleski. You appear to be one of those people who memorizes every passage from the Bible but upon whom the message therein is completely lost. Mike Fanella

Arlington Heights