Gay Pride week has finished in Toronto and I suspect some people are awakening this afternoon with sore heads. Or just going to bed now, with grinding jaws. I don’t really know as I never attend the event.

I’m a paradeaphobe.

I can still remember the first time I went to a parade. Being a child, I was very excited about it. But imagine my dismay when I learned that I was not actually in the parade. That I, Ryan Oakley, was supposed to just stand around and applaud other people. Never again, I swore. And I’ve done my best to avoid these things ever since.

As much as I dislike people taking pride in things they have no choice about, I’m unperturbed by gay pride. I suppose it’s because that while one has no choice in being gay they have quite a bit of choice about admitting the condition. They’re taking pride in having pride. Good for them. That’s the sort of pride I like.

But this issue of choice continues to bother me. I’ve often found that the debate about gays often hinges upon a single, stupid question. Do they have a choice? If they do, then homosexuality is wrong. If they don’t, then they can’t be blamed and should be pitied and tolerated as mental defectives.

The religious and otherwise encumbered try to paint it as a choice leading to a lifestyle. The liberal-set say they have no choice. Science favors the liberals on this one. Gays are born.

I think it’s totally irrelevant. Adults are allowed to make choices. As long as no one gets involuntarily or unreasonably hurt, it can’t be considered immoral. If I woke up tomorrow and decided to head down to Church and Wellesley to administer blowjobs to sailors, I would not be any more or less moral for it. They want head, I want to give it, everything comes up roses for everyone.

But, if a person is gripped by a compulsion to rape children and does, their brain chemistry does not render them blameless. They are dangerous. They are forcing themselves upon others. Choice or no choice, wrong is wrong and right is right.

All in all, motivation is usually irrelevant. The key question is not whether we can make a choice about things but whether what we do is right. And that’s easily settled.

Giving consent is the key.

Brain scans aside, you can tell when adults give consent because their lips say “yes, yes” while their eyes say “yes yes.” The emotional and neurological factors that led to that are none of my concern. Before I fuck a woman, I don’t need to read her biography, examine charts and psychological profiles, discuss her childhood and earliest feelings.

I actually try to avoid all that. It bores me.

It’s unfair to expect gay people to tackle the issues of fate versus free will every time they want to fuck. At the end of the day, you just have to let people put their dick where its welcome and lick whoever asks for it.

It’s one of the better things people do to each other. Let’s be content to leave it at that.