How to avoid making yourself pathetic

It must be terribly, terribly hard to be self-loathing. I mean that with utter sincerity. It must be truly awful to hate a part of one's self that simply cannot be changed, that is innate and immutable. Shedding any residual internalized homophobia was a nice part of growing up, and the memory of said internalized homophobia is one of the myriad reasons I have absolutely no time for fundamentalist Christianity.

I have a certain degree of pity for California state Senator Roy Ashburn, who was picked up for a DUI after reportedly leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified male companion. Sen. Ashburn apparently has quite an anti-gay record, and his decision to act out his personal drama by making the lives of gays and lesbians in his state markedly worse blunts my sympathy to a great degree. But he must surely be a miserable man, all the more so now.

First of all, can we all take a moment to observe that a man like Ashburn would surely have chosen not to be gay if it were subject to personal choice. Can we lay to rest the notion that being gay is something for which people can opt in or out? If this were a choice, this man would not have checked the "Homo" box.

On the subject of personal choices, however, Sen. Ashburn has made some confusing ones. If you have hitched your wagon to the anti-gay agenda so ardently that the world is your petard, you should probably avoid the more well-trafficked gay night spots. And you should definitely ask your new friends to drive themselves to your assignations. And you should definitely, positively always obey all relevant driving laws when driving around with your new friend. (That one should avoid drinking and driving should go without saying, and applies to everyone everywhere.) To behave otherwise (a pattern I like to call Foley's Folly) is a perfect example of hubris in the classical sense of the term, without the benefit of a Greek chorus to wander around and try to talk you out of it.