Eglathren

“Antigay activists have historically maintained that same-sex sexuality is a lifestyle choice that should be discouraged, deemed illegitimate, and even punished by the culture at large. In other words, if lesbian/gay/bisexual people to not have to be gay but are simply choosing a path of decadence and deviance, then the government should have no obligation to protect their civil rights or honor their relationships; to the contrary, the state should actively condemn same-sex sexuality and deny it legal and social recognition in order to discourage others from following that path.
Not surprisingly, advocates for gay/lesbian/bisexual rights see things differently. They counter that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice but an inborn trait that is much beyond an individual's control as skin or eye color. Accordingly, since gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals cannot choose to be heterosexual, it is unethical to discriminate against them and to deny legal recognition to same-sex relationships.
(...)
Perhaps instead of arguing that gay/lesbian/bisexual individuals deserve civil rights because they are powerless to change their behavior, we should affirm the fundamental rights of all people to determine their own emotional and sexual lives.”
― Lisa Diamond, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire

“In the ensuing chapters, we will look in some detail at particular manifestations of the modern scientific ideology and the false paths down which it has led us. We will consider how biological determinism has been used to explain and justify inequalities within and between societies and to claim that those inequalities can never be changed. We will see how a theory of human nature has been developed using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to claim that social organization is also unchangeable because it is natural. We will see how problems of health and disease have been located within the individual so that the individual becomes a problem for society to cope with rather than society becoming a problem for the individual. And we will see how simple economic relationships masquerading as facts of nature can drive the entire direction of biological research and technology.”
― Richard C. Lewontin

“The study of abnormality is one of the main ways that power relations are established in society. When an abnormality and its corresponding norm are defined, somehow it is always the normal person who has the power over the abnormal.
The psychologist tells us about the madmen, the physician about the patients, the criminologist (or the legal theorist, or the politician) talks about the criminal, but we never expect to hear the latter talk about the former - what they have to say has already been ruled irrelevant, because by definition they have no knowledge (but that is code for not wanting them to have any power).”
― Lydia Alix Fillingham

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
― ursula le guin