Maryland Witness Cites Sex And The City Star During Anti-Gay Testimony
January 31, 2012 5:50 pm ET by Carlos Maza
During this afternoon’s Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee hearing, conservative activist Dr. Ruth Jacobs testified against proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. According to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, who also testified at the hearing, Jacobs asserted that “homosexuality is not innate,” citing recent comments made by former Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon as evidence:
[Sprigg tweet, 1/31/12]
[Sprigg tweet, 1/31/12]
Jacobs was likely referring to comments Nixon made during an interview with The New York Times Magazine, in which she said:
“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”
Days after the article was published, however, Nixon clarified her remarks, stating:
My recent comments in The New York Times were about me and my personal story of being gay. I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can’t and shouldn’t be pigeonholed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive (sic) and disempowering.
“However … I would like to clarify: While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.’”“I do… believe that most members of our community – as well as the majority of heterosexuals – cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex. [emphasis added]
Dr. Jacobs has a history of making ridiculous anti-gay claims during legislative debates over marriage equality. In 2009, while testifying in front of the DC City Council’s hearing about a pending same-sex marriage bill, she argued that black men spread AIDS through “down-low” gay sex and warned that “the anus was designed for exit, not entrance.”
Previously:
