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Open letter to Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck and people of his ilk

The following email was sent to ken@buckforcolorado.com earlier today with the subject line: "Homosexuality".

Dear Mr Buck,

I was very interested to hear your recent comments (includes video) about the fact that gay people have a choice.

While I would agree that people can accept or refuse to be who they are and decide or not to have same-sex relationships, I am more than a little concerned that you should imply that sexual attraction is a matter of choice.

As gay man, this is clearly not my personal experience. I would also find it quite surprising, as you surely will too, that so many people would chose to be gay thus opening themselves to all sort of violence and discrimination (and I am not even mentioning the various countries around the world where such people could be given a death sentence by the state).

In any case, if we follow your logic, I think we should all start asking ourselves the question: when did you yourself decide not to be gay?

At the end of the day, whether homosexuality is a choice or not, you was running to be a senator, a representative of the people of the country that claims to be the land of the free. People should be allowed to chose who they want to be (as long as it doesn't actually harm anyone) and not suffer discrimination and violence from it.

I hope you will forgive me to say that your position is not only ridiculous and ill-informed, it is most of all irresponsible and dangerous.

It is reasonings like yours, that seek to maintain gay people's position as second class citizens, that create the sort of environment where teenagers (some of them simply perceived to be gay) feel they have to kill themselves rather than face constant harassment. It is words like yours that allow people to find justification for for turtoring fellow human beings in a New York City garage for being gay.

For this alone, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I am looking forward to hearing your comments on this (please note that such comments will be published on my blog).

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