Is Exodus handing out special glasses or something cos some select ex-gays have sure been reading minds recently. If anyone attends an exgay conference and is issued a pair of said magic mind reading glasses please mail them to me. Satire aside, here’s an ex-lesbian reading the mind of Sheryl Swoopes for our friends at the AgapePress:
[Yvette] Schneider does not see in Swoopes’ recent divulgence any affirmation of the prevalence of lesbianism in society, necessarily. Rather, she says she views it as “more a comment on our sex-saturated society — that if you care for someone and have a strong emotional connection with them, then it must be sexualized in some way rather than just merely having strong feelings for a close friend.”In fact, the sports ministry consultant contends, Swoopes’ lesbian relationship has nothing to do with what is commonly known as a “lesbian core identity,” where an individual acknowledges having experienced same-sex attractions since childhood. For the WNBA star, as she herself acknowledges, homosexuality was not an inborn trait but was a conscious choice.
And the athlete’s revelation of that choice came as no surprise to Schneider. She was, however, taken aback by the double standard with which Swoopes’ announcement has largely been met.
“What surprised me,” Schneider says, “was that there was no real mention of the fact that her relationship began with an assistant coach, Alisa Scott, on the Houston Comets; whereas, if a woman started having a relationship with a man who was coaching her, we’d hear about that being sexual abuse, molestation, or some sort of [suggestion that] she was coerced into a sexual relationship.” (*)
You know Daniel, I think you’re a good person. You’re doing a lot of good. I admire you. I like you.
Must… sexualize… feelings… societal… pressure… too… strong…
so, uh… wanna sleep with me Daniel?
PS- it’s “secret.” I’d hate to think an “ex-lesbian” was making psychic secretions of some kind on the WNBA 🙂
Hi Daniel!
I sent Mike an article from WorldNetDaily, Throckmorton is pontificating on Swoopes coming out as well.
This Schneider woman would make me laugh if what she said wasn’t so stupid.
See what I mean when I say I want to shake people like her and go…DUH!
As a straight women, looking at all this from the outside, I say this:
When a lesbian comes out, you haven’t heard or seen them all.
When an ex gay speaks, you’ve definitely heard them all!
Regan, that last post made a lot of (poetic) sense to me, actually :)If you’ve been following Warren’s blog you’d also be aware we posted the following:Reconcile these two statements from Swoopes:
and
or
So… apparently she choses to be lesbian, but cannot chose to fall in lesbian love.And that, folks, is the short and curly of the entire matter. She chose to “be” gay, but cannot chose that she IS gay. Urh, well, DURH.
I don’t understand why if she says she doesn’t think she was born this way, that automatically means she “chose” to be gay. Aren’t there any other possibilities? I often say I’m not sure I was born this way, but I definitely know that by the time I was in my pre-teens, this is the way I was; and the ex-gay ministries and change I pursued in adulthood didn’t change it. So, I absolutely didn’t choose this, but I can’t say for sure why it is. Wonder if that is closer to what she has been saying?
I think the bottom line is that we need to allow for all kinds of expressions of people’s own truth within our community…wish the rest of the world could allow for that as well.
We had a huge discussion on another thread about choice of identity verses choice in attractions and love. Maybe she’s trying to express herself this way, which is how I would characterize myself.
I am homosexual by orientation. I always have been for as long as I can remember. However, for many years I refused to be gay. For religious reasons as I understood them at the time, I chose to be celibate. But I never made any pretense (to myself at least) for every being capable of behaving heterosexually or for falling in love with a woman. I just am not wired that way. (Note: I didn’t even know about “ex-gay”, so I would caution that my experience is nothing like what’s going on there)
Finally, I came to the point spritually that I determined that God created me as I am, and to judge his creation as being “intrinsically disordered” is the ultimate act of hubris. So I decided to accept God’s gift of his creation to me. That is when I became gay as an identity.
I’m not speaking for Swoopes necessarily, but others have expressed a similar distinction, that there are two things going on here:
1) The intrinsic nature of who we are attracted to and who we fall in love with, which is what we cannot choose.
2) How we decide to act given #1.
Christine said, I think the bottom line is that we need to allow for all kinds of expressions of people’s own truth within our community…wish the rest of the world could allow for that as well. That pretty much sums things up for me.
No one has an accurate recollection of their state at birth. That she thinks she was not born gay tells science nothing about whether or not she was. Biology in place at birth results in sexual attraction later in life. Assuming we are born to feel GLBT(or straight) later in life it is inevitable that some will erroneously feel this means they weren’t born that way. No person has ever given a specific recollection of an instance where they felt no sexual attraction, made a concious decision to cause one to appear and it immediately did. Swoopes is another example confirming that no one recalls conciously willing a same or straight sexual attraction into existence. That none recall specifically making such a choice to be sexually attracted is sufficient reason to believe that no one does.
I’d post that idea on Throckmorton’s blog, but he gives me the creeps and I find I can only deal with him in small doses when I accidentally come across his lies when googling ‘gay “same sex”‘. I gather he hasn’t and won’t address the idea of why he considers Swoopes self reporting of not being born gay but not the vastly greater number of self reports of not having chosen to be gay.