I want to return briefly as I can to Bob Schieffer's unanswerable question, "Is homosexuality a choice?" The question is loaded with ambiguity, because for starters there is no definition of homosexuality. Are we talking about mere homosexual desires, homosexual sex acts, or homosexual lifestyles? The answer would be very different in each case. To answer the question honestly, you'd have to ask every human being -- and every animal, really -- whether what they do or want to do is a choice. What is choice? In the broad sense, isn't being alive a choice to go on living? Depending on one's philosophy, anything having to do with life including breathing could be seen as a choice.

Isn't there something morally judgmental inherent in the use of the words "no choice" to describe homosexuality? Why would Bob Schieffer use that phrase? While I am vehemently opposed to judging people as human beings based on the content of their orgasms as opposed to the content of their character, I've wondered before whether there might be a greater moral stigma inherent in labeling homosexuals as automatons incapable of free will. Saying there is no choice implies that there is something wrong -- something to be forgiven or excused by that lack of choice, as if homosexuality is always an irresistible compulsion which "afflicts" people. Nonsense. It is a variant of human sexuality which, if there is to be freedom, may be freely chosen by anyone. And that is true even for those individuals who were born that way, or feel that they were born that way.

I happen to think some homosexuals were born that way, while others enjoy homosexuality for any number of reasons. For some, it's curiosity. For others it's enjoyed in the same way a man might enjoy a fetish. (I certainly don't think fetishes are inborn.) For others, it's money, a place to stay, or career advancement. And for others, it's a cheap substitute for the sex they'd rather have (maybe outside the joint). For others, it's love!

Human dignity is at the heart of this argument, and Kerry's answer makes me suspect that he sees homosexuals as fodder to be exploited for partisan political gain.

Here's Kerry's answer to Schieffer's thoroughly impossible question:

KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.

And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.

I think we have to respect that.

What about Mary Cheney? Why does Kerry assume to speak for her? Does he think she's one of his claimed minorities to be told that just as she has no choice about her sexuality, she has no choice about how to vote?

I think Kerry may be anti-choice.