From gay libertarian Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish:
Leland de la Durantaye argued that it's not. David Link seconds my distinction between friendship and love, but notes how many on the right fervently want to describe gay relationships as chosen friendships rather than an unchosen orientation leading to romance:
Those who argue that homosexuality is a choice view us, and view our relationships, as friendships either perverted or at best gone wrong. We have often been called, even sometimes sympathetically, “friends” (Uncle Albert and his “friend” will be coming to dinner), but that was a nice way of avoiding the real subject. It kept the language of same-sex relationships in a closet of its own, a frame that helped everyone cope.
You don’t hear that kind of language from our supporters any more. Only our opponents are clinging to that outmoded notion of choice. They think the whole debate over same-sex relationships is about our choice of friends. They still can’t, or won’t, imagine that the flood of emotions and connections that they recognize as love can occur between two people of the same sex ... They want us to have friends. They just refuse to believe that the powerful and mysterious forces they remember and/or experience with love can happen, for some people, with members of their own sex, and are every bit as gratifying and amazing — are, in fact, the same thing they know so well.
This reminds me of a social occasion when Aaron and I bumped into former Senator George Allen. I introduced Aaron (not without extreme pleasure) as my husband. Allen asked where we had gotten married. When I said Massachusetts, he said: "So you all are trying to export marriage from Massachusetts to here." Nope, I said, because we cannot (this was before DC's marriage law came into effect). I then asked Allen why he would object to a committed, legally protected relationship in the first place. He answered, memorably, "I just want you to be friends."
Can you imagine anyone saying that a straight married couple?
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