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Valerie Jarrett has to apologize for the heresy of calling homosexuality a "lifestyle choice."

Oh, life is so unfair!

?I meant no disrespect to the LGBT community, and I apologize to any who have taken offense at my poor choice of words,? Jarrett said. ?Sexual orientation and gender identity are not a choice, and anyone who knows me and my work over the years knows that I am a firm believer and supporter in the rights of LGBT Americans.?

I remember back in the 1980s, in the radical enclaves of the University of Wisconsin Law School and similar places, when it was heresy to say that sexual orientation was inborn. I remember getting snapped at by a very prominent left-wing lawprof for referring without scorn to research that showed some evidence that sexual orientation was innate. It was all about choice back then, and the choice model was deemed to be the framework upon which gay rights would be built.

(If it was inborn, I was told, then it will be perceived as a disease that might be cured, and therefore there can be no talk among decent people about the possibility that it is inborn. But what about science? What about discovering what is true? The official left-wing answer to that question, I learned, is: shut up.)

By the way, are you aware that Justice Kennedy spoke of the "homosexual lifestyle" in his opinion for the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas?

The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle.

Oops!

Full post as published by Althouse on October 14, 2010 (boomark / email).