I…am…a…hetero…sexual.

There! I said it! You can’t imagine the relief. I didn’t choose to be this way, I just AM. Some fateful decision was made before I was born, not by me, but by whatever forces that conspired to create me, to make me straight.

And somehow that choice is made for me every day because without any conscious decisions of my own I continue on this path of attraction to…girls.

Believe me! I have showered around men and they just don’t do anything for me.

I wrote a column in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier (http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/columnists/in-a-republic-the-majority-doesn-t-rule/article_2cce4f4f-548b-58b6-a916-94c78cc42f86.html) where I mentioned my disgust for the proposed legislation in Arizona to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people if their religious principles so dictated. I have written many times, here and in the paper, about gay rights, the unconstitutional movements to restrict gay marriage, and in this particular Courier column concerning the definition of a Republic, I wrote of the duty of our representative democracy to defend their rights.

I wasn’t surprised that there would be discord from some people regarding my words, but one particular Letter to the Editor stood out:

“Gary Kroeger’s comments in Sunday’s Courier are typical of the left-wing portion of society. So, let us ponder the following questions: Are all women born women? Are all blacks born black? If you have a sex change operation, does it change your DNA? The answer is NO! None of us had a choice as to where, when, sex, physical attributes or race when we were born. But moral values are something we decide every day! Being gay/lesbian is a matter of choice…..Is being forced to do business with people that want to be gays/lesbians a moral question or not?” -Dennis Xxxxxxx

(For the sake of venting, I’m going to address Mr. Xxxxxxx in the first person)

I’m not going to pull any punches here, Dennis. I don’t have a full thimble of respect for your reasoning. In fact, it is classic ill-logic.

Just as I didn’t choose my sexual orientation, how is it that gay people get to choose?Never mind asking why anyone would choose an orientation that leads to persecution or a life that many people want to deny basic human and civil rights to, like loving, monogamous matrimony. Ask this: Why are gay people wired to make choices about what attracts them physically (and emotionally) and we are not?

Maybe….they didn’t make a choice either, and they are as they were intended to be.

Dennis, I know that you believe that your religious freedom gives you the right to make moral judgments about people who are different from you or who don’t believe as you do, but Dennis, this is where you have really lost your way. And it isn’t just you, there are millions of people just like you, trying desperately to force their will on everyone else. But the “free exercise of religion” granted in the First Amendment does not imply that you have the right to deny others their rights.

People like you, Dennis, always seem to miss the Founding Father’s prefatory clauses and just before “free exercise” they wrote that the Constitution “prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion.” That means that even Christianity, the predominant religion in America then, and now, cannot determine our laws according to adherence to its doctrine.

That’s what freedom really means.

Or deep down inside, Dennis….is there a “bad” boy that wants to be heard?

We’re here for you over on the “left-wing portion” when you’re ready to come clean.