Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you might call "understanding the universe", seeing how it works, the mechanisms by which conscious experience happens... a religious person might call that "knowing god" and both of these are reasonable views of the same whole, just taken from opposite sides.
I don't understand how your comment relates to mine. Are you saying that if someone wants to "know god", they are likely to conclude that god does, indeed, sit around saying " This one is gonna be gay! and this one will be straight!"?
The experience that you call "you" is the result of a direct, unbroken chain of physical chemical interactions all the way back to the beginning of time.
Religious people who think of the nature of things and remain religious call this complex interaction of the physical processes, this fundamental fabric of reality, "God"
If Mr. Cook gives the name "God" to this amazingly complex interaction of physical things that results in conscious experience, then it is rational for him to conclude that this process resulted in him being gay.
There is no big sky entity that points at a person and says "gay" or "straight", but there is a series of implications chained all the way from the beginning of things that directly results his homosexuality. And if you call that "beginning of things" God, then you get the conclusion he vocalizes, but with quite rational thoughts behind it: "I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."
This stuff gets very vague or very abstract quickly. In general it's probably a good idea to assume that people's beliefs come from reasoned thought, though some probably start from axioms we might find irrational.