“I am one of the people who don’t really agree with that lifestyle. I wasn’t brought up that way. It wasn’t how I was raised.” La’Porsha Renae, American Idol runner-up, 2016.

I don’t watch American Idol, and I’ve never heard Ms. Renae sing a note. But the show has been front and center on the pop culture scene in America since 2002. And millions of viewers follow the show and its contestants. As former NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said, in protesting the recent anti-LGBT law in North Carolina, “It’s my job, with the position of power that I’m in being able to be on television, I’m supposed to stand up for the people who can’t stand up for themselves. So I think the NBA should move the All-Star Game from Charlotte.” An American Idol runner-up has this responsibility, too, and this is a big miss for Ms. Renae.

How is her comment wrong? Let me count the ways. First, being gay is not a “lifestyle.” Eating junk food is a lifestyle (a choice). Enjoying traveling is a lifestyle (a choice). Going to baseball games is a lifestyle (a choice). It’s a lifestyle to homeschool your kids, or to wear sunglasses and flip-flops to church, or to live in a cave.

Being gay is not a lifestyle (a choice); it’s inherent. You’re either born gay or you’re not. You don’t “become” gay when you’re attracted to someone of the same gender. You’re attracted to someone of the same gender because you were born gay. The scientific evidence for this fact is voluminous and irrefutable. Homosexuality isn’t a subject for debate. It just exists—in our species and in thousands of nonhuman species as well.

Once we establish that homosexuality is not a lifestyle, then it’s faulty to claim not to “agree” with it. It’s like saying “I don’t really agree with freckles” or “I don’t really agree with being white” or “I don’t really agree with oceans.”

To say you weren’t “brought up that way” implies that you were brought up to be straight—or nongay. What does that mean? I would like to hear even one gay person say, “I was brought up that way. It was how I was raised.” Ridiculous. Homosexuality is biological; it’s not a decision, and it isn’t a lifestyle. One can be brought up to care for all living creatures—human and otherwise—and that is a choice for their children that we devoutly wish all parents would make.

And to those who would defend Ms. Renae’s comment with the words, “Everybody is entitled to their opinion,” my answer is simple. Being gay isn’t a matter of opinion or belief. It isn’t like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Being gay is not something to “believe in” or “agree with.”

It’s irresponsible and uninformed attitudes like Ms. Renae’s that advocates for LGBT and marriage equality have been in the trenches combating for decades. It’s glib dismissals like this that have constructed the brick wall that had to be demolished in order for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act to be repealed. It’s this sort of easy erasure of a whole section of the citizenry that activists countered relentlessly, in order to bring about national marriage equality in America.

And it’s this sort of entrenched homophobia and intolerance that are fueling the heinous backlash we are now being made to suffer. In 2016 alone, “35 state legislatures are or have been in session across the United States with nearly 200 anti-LGBT bills introduced in 34 states. More than 120 anti-LGBT bills are being or have been considered in just eight southern states: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Georgia.”

We should always remember that exercising “freedom of speech” (which many defenders of Ms. Renae are claiming) can put you very quickly on a slippery slope to hate speech, if you don’t think before you speak. And, as we all know, hate speech kills.