It’s not that it must be immutable but rather that people tend to only want to provide anti-discrimination/human rights protections for things that people see as immutable (e.g., sex, race), on the one hand, and either innate and not chosen (e.g., sexual orientation) or deeply personal and central to one’s being (e.g., religion, political opinion), on the other hand.

That’s why “Born This Way” was such a powerful slogan. But we don’t need to have been born this way. It’s at least set very early in life, appears immutable, and is very central to our being. And being homosexual and bisexual operates and manifests very differently from sexual paraphilia.

We LGB people who migrated over from reddit after the banning of our sex-defined spaces have a wide range of views, political beliefs, and life experiences, and are pretty candid about how we have experienced the world as homosexual and bisexual people, and, as you would know, none of us ever “chose” to be this way. I’m honestly still often confused how I’m a lesbian. I was waiting for it to “make sense” and thought “why me?” and “how?” but regardless of how I have ever felt about my sexuality at different points in my life, I always just am. Even if I never told anyone and never dated anyone. And what makes me a lesbian is that this feels good and natural for me. When I tried to be in a relationship with a man, I even didn’t realize how exhausting it was on my mind, body, and spirit until I let myself leave. And how much I had to mute about myself to live that life. That wasn’t natural.

Anyway, I’m digressing, but I also want to point out that on the subject of innateness, the example of Laverne Cox. Laverne Cox has an identical twin brother. Both are sexually attracted to men, but only one of them was “born in the wrong body.” Makes you think. So same-sex attraction appears innate, but transsexuality clearly has social components, even the homosexual transsexual variety.