Actually, You Can Choose Who You Love

WEST JORDAN, Utah (AP) -- A principal who wants gay couples to get permission slips from their parents before they can attend school dances promised to re-evaluate the policy after protesters held four days of protests.

Copper Hills High School Principal Tom Worlton issued the policy last month but agreed to revisit it Friday. He said he saw the policy as a way to alert the parents to the dangers their children might face.

Jason Atwood, 17, his boyfriend, Tom Tolman, 15, who attends another school, and small circle of friends held protests across the street from the suburban Salt Lake City school before they met with Worlton. The protesters said they were subjected to insults, obscene gestures, egg throwing and snowballs from passing cars during the four days.

"I'm so proud of you," Tolman's mother, Patricia Gilley, said after dropping him off. "You can't help who you love."

This sort of thinking is prevalent in our society, but absolutely false. You CAN help who you love. Why? Because love is a choice, it's not a feeling. The modern man has it backwards. We treat the warm fuzzies as love. When we have them, we're in love. When they're gone, we're not. Hence all of the shattered relationships (marriages, families, communities, etc.) around us.

We also confuse what we want with what is right. In other words, if we feel like doing it, it must be right. "I was born that way" is the usual mantra. The problem is that we are all "born that way." I was born an adulterer. I have adulterous feelings and urges. Yet I CHOOSE not to indulge those "natural" feelings because it is wrong. It's a struggle, but I choose not to be governed by what I "feel", but by what God requires.

If I did what I was "born to do" - i.e. what my flesh requires - I'd destroy my life and the lives of those around me. I hope this young man, and his mother, realize that before they destroy their lives.

But then again, I'm "intolerant". So I'm sure my advice will be ignored.