We bought it. We were fed one simple, reasonable-sounding lie, and we bought it. And that changed everything.
To wit – sexual orientation is innate. It is not something one chooses. And if someone is innately homosexual, he is powerless to change. He can no more change his sexual orientation than his race. Like it or not, he is stuck with both of them.
What a crock.
Before presenting evidence of the sheer falsehood of the claim, let me point out that the result has been like a rolling, never-ending train wreck. One result is that we have legitimized the notion that one must look to his sexual orientation to determine his most significant life choices. Goals and aspirations, where to live, whether to marry and/or have children, the role each partner would assume in a long-term relationship, especially one involving children – all these are affected directly by that one decision. Nearly all of those choices become more complicated and less well settled both as a matter of law and of society when one chooses to be gay.
In the custody case involving former lesbian couple Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller, the biological mother of the child has renounced the lesbian lifestyle, declared it “fundamentally wrong”, and attempted to keep her child away from Jenkins. It’s a complicated case, involving both Vermont and Virginia, but the somewhat bizarre current status of the case is that Jenkins has been awarded sole custody, even though there is no biological connection whatsoever, and Miller is now a fugitive, having disappeared with her daughter in order to avoid turning her over as the court had ordered. How’s that for justice?
While there are many ramifications of this case, the one I want to concentrate on is that Lisa Miller is no longer a lesbian. So much for the idea that sexual orientation is innate. My guess is that there are far more cases of former gays and lesbians than there are of people who have surgically and hormonally changed their gender. The GLBT community does not want this to become public knowledge.
Yet organizations of ex-gays are springing up all over the place. One group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (http://pfox.org/default.html) knows that people can change. Sadly they also know that those who become ex-gay face persecution from their one-time friends and allies – the GLBT community itself! They say “formerly gay persons are reviled simply because they dare to exist!” And “The demonization of ex-gays by gays themselves is a sad end to the long struggle for tolerance by the gay community.” Gays, who have been clamoring for “gay rights” apparently are not so charitable as to extend rights to – or to be tolerant of ex-gays.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality is “a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.” It is obvious that people do have “unwanted homosexual attraction”. Some of them seek therapy to deal with the struggle between that attraction and their desire for something else.
Exodus International is another group who helps those wanting to leave the gay lifestyle. Could they and others, like People Can Change exist without plenty of people wanting to renounce the gay lifestyle? Obviously not.
The very notion that a thing called “sexual orientation” exists is wrong. Psychologists are increasingly discovering that gays typically feel a need for connection with other men that they mistakenly assume cannot be achieved without having sex with them. In fact, that’s part of the lie. The need for men to have relationships with other men is healthy and constructive. Men have challenges and issues that cannot be adequately met by women. Yet often men who enter into the gay lifestyle feel a lack of strong male connections, frequently because their own fathers were either physically or emotionally absent from their lives. The lie is especially heinous, in that once sex enters the relationship, the bond that was sought becomes all but impossible.
PFOX has an interview with an ex-gay who makes an interesting discovery during the interview. He actually discovers just such an issue in his own experience – something about which he was never consciously aware. Read it here.
We have all been lied to. And to at least some extent, we have all become victims of the lie. If we are to be truly “tolerant” – or better than that by far – loving, we need to become aware of the wobbly edifices we build when we alter entire cultures based on an unsubstantiated but reasonable-sounding lie. I do not hate gays. I do hate lies, and the bigger the lie, the more damage it causes, the more I hate it.
I do love the truth. And the truth is that homosexuality is a choice. It is not something you are born with. It is something you can change. even though doing so may be extraordinarily difficult. But given the stakes and the consequences, wouldn’t you want to?
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