Miley Cyrus has definitely been one to make headlines over the years. From her time spent shedding the "good girl" image of hers on "Hannah Montana" to her (now incredibly hypocritical) Happy Hippie Foundation, Miley is definitely no stranger to public headlines, both positive and negative.

(And, just as a side comment, her Happy Hippie Foundation is supposed to fight injustice in this world, especially for members of the LGBTQ community. You can view their mission statement here.)

Needless to say, her supposedly shade-throwing comment to ex Liam Hemsworth, claiming that being gay is a choice has given her some serious backlash, which is honestly well deserved. In a video posted to her Instagram, Cyrus said,

"You don't have to be gay, there are good people with dicks out there. I always thought I had to be gay, because I thought all guys were evil, but it's not true."

I'm pretty sure that it's obvious how incredibly insulting this is to members of the LGBTQ community, but as a straight woman, I find this comment incredibly insulting, too.

First off, someone's sexuality is not now nor will ever be a choice. As human beings, none of us can possibly help which sexual category we fall under, (i.e. gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian, asexual, pansexual, etc.) Secondly, because I'm sure we are all aware of how much this country of ours just loves to stigmatize, marginalize, and outright hate members of this community, it's fair to say that no one chooses to put themselves in places to where all of these negative and downright deadly consequences on themselves.

One horrific case of the deadly consequences of hate against a member of the LGBTQ community was the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, an out freshman student at the University of Wyoming who was found tied to a fence post and beaten almost to death by two men who appeared to hate him, simply because he was gay. (Shepard sadly later passed as a result of these injuries.)

Being gay is not a choice.

I'm also pretty sure that the 44 cases of reported hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ community in 2019 so far would speak to this point.

Even though Miley's comment might not seem like that big of a deal to some, it's actually an incredibly big deal, because this kind of rhetoric and this kind of ideology just perpetuates the notions that members of hate groups get in their heads that it's OK to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community because it was "their choice" to live that lifestyle.

I think it's time that she takes a step back and truly understands the repercussions of her comment.