Over the past several days, print, television and Internet news outlets have flocked to assess the status of gay America. The stories point to the new shows on Bravo — “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Boy Meets Boy” — and a gay public high school opening in New York, and the decision that California governor Gray Davis will be replaced by Richard Chamberlain, who will assume the title of queen.

Just checking you’re awake.

Such developments, combined with the Supreme Court decision on the Texas sodomy case and Canada’s move to grant gay marriage, have not just reporters busy but world leaders too. When asked during a news conference his opinion on homosexuality, President Bush responded, “I am mindful that we’re all sinners.” Then he played the compassionate conservative card and urged Americans to respect gays. Then he played the staunch conservative card and said marriage is for heterosexuals only, and his lawyers are working to enshrine that.

He indulged in his favorite card game: the conservative shuffle.

Many people, including me, heard in his first words an infuriating equation of gayness with sin. No wonder the man holds so few press conferences, poking his head out into the media spotlight about as often as Puxatawny Phil.

The next day the Vatican issued a 12-page document whipping up the faithful, and even the non-faithful, to oppose gay marriage and gay adoption everywhere. Gems in the document included, “Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.”

So as gays become more visible and our rights grow, and the debate over gay marriage intensifies, the pope and the president have drawn a line in the sand: If you’re gay, you’re immoral.

I’m a sinner all right, but not because I’m a lesbian. It’s my lust for chocolate, not women, that borders on the unholy.

As these two leaders advance the love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin philosophy, I’ve arrived at my familiar confused place. How can they dismiss me as an immoral being when I didn’t choose to be gay?

Like many, I fought being a lesbian. It didn’t fit in with my plans at all. If I was going to reside outside the mainstream, I wanted that to be for my views, not my sexuality. I was prepared to be and wanted to be hopelessly conventional in my lifestyle. A sort of Mother Hubbard meets Mother Jones.

But fate, biology or maybe even God had other plans. I didn’t choose to be gay; it chose me. Eventually I realized being a sister of Sappho was so natural and right for me that it was worth putting up with the hullabaloo it causes.

A hullaballoo that is mostly baseless. The homophobes argue that being gay is immoral. Isn’t morality about the choices you make? I no more chose to be gay than I chose to have blue eyes or an ancestor by the name of “American Flag Robinson.”

Apparently it doesn’t occur to the pope and the president and legions of others who want to believe gays opt to be gay to wonder why on earth anyone would choose such a thing. And not a few people, but millions upon millions of us around the globe “choose” to position ourselves as social outcasts. Goodness, we’re not only immoral, we’re stupid.

The pope and the president call us sinful just for who we are. They vilify us for something as natural to us as heterosexuality is to them. They persecute us for being different. So, for a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni and Turtle Wax, answer this question: Who’s really being immoral here?