Sexual orientation as identity

The question of whether sexual orientation constitutes an identity — something you are — or a behavior — something you do — has enormous stakes, both political and personal. Most people who have experienced same-sex desire with depth and persistence know, from the inside, that it is not a preference among equals but a fundamental orientation of longing. That this orientation was pathologized, criminalized, and used to justify enormous harm says more about the societies that did so than about the people who endured it.