Ex-ex-gay and former Assemblies of God minister Anthony Venn Brown reflects on the elements of sexuality, and discusses how ex-gay men maintain heterosexual marriages:
‘Situational heterosexuality’ is a term I’ve used for several years when people have asked how I could have been married for so many years and yet be gay. This term has also helped people gain a clearer understanding of what really happens when someone who is homosexual marries someone of the opposite sex and claims change. Confusion about what really happens in these situations still exists and often wrongly reinforces the ‘homosexuality is a choice’ and ‘homosexuals can change’ concept.
How often have you heard someone say something like this ‘They couldn’t be gay, they’re married’. When someone says that to me, I just remain silent for a while with a smile on my face (having been a gay man in a heterosexual marriage) and wait for what I’m actually thinking to sink into the consciousness of the person who made the naïve statement.
Read the full article here.
thanks for helping get the message out there
“Situational heterosexuality” describes my own experience very well. Following a religious conversion in which I renounced my gay identity, I was married for 26 years. I would describe at least the first 20 years of the marriage as successful, happy, and even sexually fulfilling. That is, I fully enjoyed our physical relationship and did not have to fantasize about men to function.
But through even the happiest times in the marriage, I never changed my basic orientation as gay–that is, I remained sexually attracted only to other men. I never fantasized about or felt attraction to another woman. In fact, I didn’t feel “turned on” even by my wife outside of times when we were actually having sex. (That was sometimes a source of frustration and hurt for her.)
In other words, my ability to enjoy sex with a woman in one particular relationship didn’t change my general orientation.
As I’ve talked about this since coming out again, I’ve been surprised by how much my experience seems to disturb some gay people. Even on this site, when I’ve commented on this topic in the past, I’ve been told by other posters that I must be bisexual, that I couldn’t have been completely gay in orientation, and so on.
I believe strongly that for most people–or at least most men–orientation (whether hetero, homo, or bi) is fixed and rarely changes. But a fixed orientation does not rule out all flexibility in responding to particular situations. That’s why straight men can have sex with other man in a restricted same-sex environment, like prison, without developing any lasting homosexual attractions.
The most important point to realize, in terms of the “ex-gay” question, is that the ability to function sexually as a “situational heterosexual” does not resolve the many conflicts in trying to live your whole life in denial of your basic sexual orientation. In my experience, my orientation as a gay man is part of my entire sense of self-identity. It’s not a question of who I’m able to have sex with. It’s who I am.
I had this conversation with a young friend of mine whose pastor and his wife are a gay man and his straight wife.
My friend is a religious girl, essentially gay friendly, but who believed fully that her pastor was changed. And, in her own family, had expectations for a sibling to do so.
I had to remind her of the mitigation, the pressure to conform that obliterates all thinking that changing was possible or desirable. I asked her to think about when anyone is free to choose to even be honest about being gay without a negative response?
When does a gay person have the option to be honest, open and live their lives as gay, without something serious and threatening to their lives, no matter how they are living it?
In a world of expectations, threat, pressure to exercise exceptional disciplines, denial and sacrifice (of which she nor other straight people could measure), then how could they say it’s a choice to be anything?
Not only that, but if her religious group engages in teaching that homosexuality is undesirable, dangerous, threatening and damaging, and the gay person has little that is respected to offer that such teaching is a contradiction to their experience and understanding, then where is the gay person in all that?
They are nothing, they are silenced, and expected to disappear. Furthering the ignorance and fear of those who dominate the gay person and always expect to. It’s the gay people then, who struggle so mightily JUST to be known, own their identity and tell the world who they really are.
My friend’s pastor, I told her, traded status for his identity, precisely so that he could go about his life without being challenged, denied, forced out of a community and family or career of choice.
In simpler terms, he chose another form of deception as a way to ease his homosexual burden.
I told her it’s not his homosexuality that was wrong, but the confluence of beliefs, government laws and expectations that force him to lie about it.
I hope to have more conversations about this with her.
But the bottom line is, he DOES deceive to relieve…and in the meantime, honest gay people are punished for not engaging in that same deception.
Anthony’s theory is 100% plausible!
Situational *homosexuality* is fully recognized as valid, especially in prisons and jails, so it’s simple logic to describe lesbians and gays being forced into heterosexual relationships…
I’m really one of the biggest queers around, and have been as far back as I can remember– probably since the age of 3. So we’re talking nearly 60 years.
And yet, I had sex with a woman in 1975, and didn’t enjoy it. I had a two week affairette with a woman in 1979, and enjoyed it very much. Except that at the end, I was just as queer as when I started. I told her about me right at the beginning. We proceeded anyway. But at the end of two weeks, I just had lost interest– not in her, but in the whole thing.
Situational heterosexuality indeed applies.
“she offered her honor.
I honored her offer.
And all night long,
it was on her and off her.”
@NickC……the concept of ‘situational heterosexual’ has been most useful to me. I think the further away from our lives as ‘straight’ men the clearer things become. It wasn’t till many years later after separating from my wife that it became clear to me that I was actually more in love with the idea of being a father and husband (‘normal’) then I was wiith my wife. I loved her as I love male and female friends but never romanticlly in love. We were a good team. We were good companions but I was not in love with even though I’m sure she was me. That was the sad part. I could never give her emotionally the thing she craved the most. Intimate connection.
Not everyone within the gay community understands the situation as they have never had the experience. I don’t try and convince them I’m right……I just know what is truth for me and for so many of us that are or have been in this situation.
I sure get it.
I’ve been so fortunate. I have gay male friends, and sometimes the relationships have developed into very close friendships with a great deal of time spent together and casual acquaintances thinking we were a couple.
If at some time a gay man or woman felt the need to marry, have the family to fit into the expected role, then that ‘best friend’ relationship would take the logical next step.
But it would fit, it wouldn’t be there for the right reasons, nor free of those doubts of if or when the mask might crack at any time.
And certainly, some straight people consider it a triumph, something of a prize to ‘turn’ someone gay and churches and so on encourage and cheer it on.
I think the whole aspect of that is arrogant, presumptuous and selfish.
I have always maintained that the role of gay men and women is as a tempering factor between men and women. It’s a comfort to be around men who have no sexual interest, but can confer all the intellectual, emotional and spiritual comfort without the sexual tension.
With lesbians and straight women, there’s no sense of threat or competition.
And the same is true of straight males and lesbians, the benefits of women, but without the expectations of sexual conquest.
We’d all understand, empathize and respect one another a lot better if the bridge weren’t constantly repressed and in place to keep men and women from tearing each other up. Which…they do.
Frankly, what happens is that these expectations for gay people are creating situations where straight women have to compete with lesbians for men, and if straight men thought about it, why would they want to compete with gay men for wives?
The middle, those who are gender variant and homosexual, have a match out there, as do even MORE heterosexuals.
So what faith communities and those who want to force gay people to conform keep denying, is that heterosexuals have PLENTY of options without tapping the gay population, and gay people have less of themselves for each other, so therefore should be left each to their own.
My closest male friends are gay men. They are energetic and protective, with and all the great things a woman could love in a man…like having an extra set of brothers. My lesbian sisters have a perspective about men, from a kind of distance that’s ALSO important for us hetero women.
I think our Creator WAS absolutely GENIUS about homosexuality and the role of gay people as, and I’ve said this before, like the thumb is to the hand.
So different, yet so necessary.
I’ll believe to the rest of my days that the holiest trinity is men, women and those in between.
And it would be right to question why women, and homosexuals and the gender variant are the most violated, repressed and isolated members of all of humanity?
What would life be like if they weren’t?
Anyway…
Mr. Venn-Brown, your article and the wisdom of your experience is something I dearly appreciate.
Oops, typo. That line should read…”but it WOULDN’T fit.”
thanks for the additional insights Regan…….well put.
Yes, I do realize that. Most of my friends my own age have also been married, so they understand how a gay man can have a relationship with a woman. And back when I first came out, in the free-wheeling days of San Francisco in the very early 70’s, we were all still experimenting with what it meant to be gay, and there was a lot more fluidity in who slept with whom.
It’s usually younger gay men, who have lived their whole lives with a more defined gay identity, who tell me they can’t imagine themselves ever having sex with a woman.
None of this would really matter much, except that the ex-gay industry continues to hold up heterosexual marriage as the ultimate proof of change. People like Alan Chambers and Peter Ould are out there all the time saying, “Look at me. Once I felt no attraction to women at all, and now I’m happily married with children. Clearly, I’ve experienced a real change!”
(Added in a whisper: “… even if I still have some lingering attraction to men.”)
From my vantage point, marriage and children prove absolutely nothing about how gay someone is or isn’t. I won’t argue with the Chambers and Oulds over how “changed” they really are. But I’ve been in their exact situation, and it’s not a direction I would encourage anyone to follow.
PS–For anyone interested, Truth Wins Out has a video interview telling my ex-ex-gay story. It was filmed and edited by my oldest son:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT-4nmr3e_s
hey NickC…..it is very generational.
eg…..men in my Dads era (I’m 59) who were pre war and gay…..got married……would not come out and many never acted on it….just were dutiful husbands/providers.
My generation (baby boomers) we got married because there were hardly any role models or out people….still a crime etc. Around midlife many of us came out. (hand up me).
Gen X and Gen Y are less likely to get married although they may date the opposite sex. These days young people are coming out at 12 and 13.
Of course if you are in certain parts of a country eg rural or south USA……or locked in a church culture then the development to true self can be retarded…..and sometimes no different than it was decades ago.
just watched your video and left a comment. You son did a good job. We are the blessed ones Nick….better to live one day on this planet being true to yourself than an entire lifetime which is a lie.
if you are interested you can see my story on Australia 60 minutes…sorry its in two parts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjbwuvmZuv0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jOCSuvW7Rg
Anthony, this is really wonderful getting to know you this way. I’m glad that you and your children, and the children of the other gentleman profiled are still close. I thought is precious that they have a sense of humor about it and love him, no matter what. Bad dancer and all.
Another great tragedy of this issue, is when the straight spouse is embittered and encouraged to cut off the gay parent’s relationship with their children.
I don’t know if you heard about the case of Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins, but Lisa Miller ‘got religion’ and decided to renounce her homosexuality. She’d had a baby together with her ex partner Janet, who helped support and care for their child for about two years prior to Lisa’s conversion.
Lisa Miller fought to have Janet cut off from a relationship with their daughter Isabella, but the courts sided with Janet.
Lisa took the child underground and neither has been seen for months.
We’ve had a few ex gay visitors here who support Lisa Miller and agree that Janet has no rights to the child as she is not the biological parent, and of course doesn’t have the federal marriage protection a second non biological parent would have.
Meanwhile, Isabella has a another mother who loves her and has shown she’ll go to the mat to do so.
There are plenty of hetero parents not as interested in their own.
The ex gay industry fosters resentment, family disunity and abandonment of the gay parent.
It’s not any less cruel than what slaves had to endure with regard to keeping their own children.
They had no rights for lack of marriage too and the cruelty of slavery broke families and kept them apart and the parents from supporting their own.
A church (ANY CHURCH), of all things should not be conspiring in such spite and cruelty.
Loving, competent and committed parents AREN’T that easy to come by. As foster care rolls, abuse, neglect and abandonment stats will attest.
But through their own children, is another way that the anti gay cut to the very soul of gay people to break them.
And that they develop a system of monetary profit that this should happen looks to me like a deal with the devil.
Your daughter is lovely, and she’s lucky to have you.
HI Regan……yes I am familiar with the tragic case you mention. I know of too many devastating situations that have also occurred when homosexuality has been presented as evil, sick perverted and heterosexuality the norm and wholesome………When one gay man or woman tries to do the ‘right’ thing and marry…….in the end we all suffer at some level.
Some of us are blessed and have been able to work through these issues and maintain our relationships with our children and former spouces……many though are still separated by hurt, bitterness and resentment.
I know of several cases where the former wife has been particularly cruel……and then again I know of cases where the gay man has also.
Interesting discussion. I was also married to a woman, then “came out” as “gay” and was involved with and dated several men. But as time as time has passed, I’ve felt more and more that I identify much more with the “straight community” than with the “gay community.” My experience has also been that sexuality is indeed somewhat fluid and that what is arousing depends a lot on what else is going on in my life emotionally–the same-sex attractions can wax and wane significantly, although, in all honesty, they never go away completely. I think that “ex-gay” therapies actually serve a valid purpose (although I’m not interested in pursuing them personally, and have no axe to grind in that regard) in helping people live more comfortably with the sort of conflict that I have experienced in having same-sex attraction but feeling strongly alienated from the “gay community.” (Btw, I have very seriously pursued therapy to try to fit in better with the “gay community,” but it has not helped.) One can point to the outlandish stances and behavior on both sides of this issue, but the truth lies in the individual experiences.
Point well taken, SFTom…but it also illustrates difficulty you have with relationships, period.
The difference is, there is a calculated campaign and determination to KEEP gay people FROM having any relationships or forming bonds. Whether it’s with their own parents and siblings, a significant other or their children.
It stands to reason of there are less well adjusted gay people out there, or those who are tentative and not trusting, and of course….there are less gay people to choose from.
Which, to me, because there are less gay people, makes this campaign to isolate gay people exceptionally cruel.
And most of all, UNNECESSARY.
Were none of this a part of it, that sexuality were fluid might be more factually true, but that’s hard to qualify, if it can be at all, considering the rest of it.
Hi SFTom……can I ask what you mean by the gay community. The reason I ask is that I have come across many who speak disparagingly of or say that they don’t fit into the gay community. On deeper examination though I’ve found that when people talk this way about the gay community they are actually talking about the gay scene. I see these as two distinctly different entities.
Personally I immersed myself in the gay scene for at least 6 years when I first came out at 40. The gay scene can be incredibly hedonistic and at times dysfunctional with relationships difficult to maintain.
I transitioned out to that a the end of the 90’s . I would describe myself these days as being a part of the gay community. that culture is very different……basically we are all very normal people living pretty normal lives. I fell in love with our wonderful LGBT community……the gay scene though I dont really miss.
True point, Regan–I’m not terribly keen on super-close relationships. But I still enjoy (and crave) the company of others with whom I “click” or feel sympatico. So whether I like to be single is really irrelevant to my point, which is that I feel I have very little in common with the “gay community” and that I have much more in common with other groups of people. For example, I believe in monogamy and loyalty–the subject wouldn’t be open to discussion were I to be involved with someone seriously. That runs counter, of course, to the prevailing “humans aren’t meant to be monogamous” orthodoxy that seems to be required of gay people.
I put the term “gay community” in quotation marks because I don’t really believe there is any such thing, just like there isn’t a “straight community.” A community has to be founded upon a shared set of core values and beliefs, ethnic or cultural similarities, or, although a weaker form of community, geographic proximity. I think the notion of a “gay community” is simply a political tool used to generate political power–it is not a true community, however, as there a no common values or beliefs, or ethnic or cultural traits. I would be very interested, Anthony, to hear what you have found to be your gay community.
Required by whom? That’s a very narrow view of what you seem to realize is a broad group. It certainly doesn’t describe me or my circle. That doesn’t mean I’m going to join a witch hunt to find those who do hold such views and judge them, but it’s not my way at all. Where are you finding all these people to whom loyalty is not important?
Again, this is quite cynical. Of course there is a need for a stronger voice in civil matters, that’s hardly a new concept. But community can also form around a common struggle, which in this case should be rather obvious. That others have come in under that banner seems a strength to me — diversity does mean something, and I have found it to be a strength.
You may have had some lousy experiences, I don’t know — feel free to elaborate if you like. But there are too many different walks represented here for such declaratory statements to make sense. Again, feel free to share but it would be easier to empathize if you would do so without painting huge swaths of people with a single brush.
thats easy to answer SFTom.
I found my gay community when I stopped trying to conform to the image of what it meant to be a gay man. you know living the supposed ‘gay lifestyle’ (now that one needs inverted commas).
Once I moved away from the bars, nightclubs, excesses etc and began mixing with other gay and lesbian people through community support groups, activist groups, volunteers, HIV and AIDS groups, gay and lesbian common interest groups etc…..I found my community of which I am very much a part……and I love support and defend.
I think we have a lot in common.
1. We are either same sex oriented or of a minority group
2. we have all been on a journey to rid ourselves of of the negatives imposed on us by our society, family and churches.
3. We want to see all LGBT people treated with equality dignity and respect.
4. We have chosen to live authentically.
5. We have experience rejection and hatred but we don’t allow that to define us and have chosen not to be victims.
6. We support our fellow LGBT brothers and sisters when we can
7. We give our money talents or time to worthwhile causes in the community
8. We have a sense of morality and right and wrong. The moral values differ from person to person as they do in the straight community.
There are just some of the things that bind us together.
I am from Sydney Australia and i’m very much a part of the the LGBT community……..I have no doubt it also exists in the country you come from unless you are in Africa or the Middle East which would mean you can’t live openly or authentically for fear of prison or execution.
Anthony and SFTom,
In so many ways, this has a great many similarities to what blacks experience.
Black men, in dealing with hyper emasculation from the dominant white culture, went in one or two directions: in trying to assert their identity and naming their place within their own micro society, have over compensated.
Hence you got the Black Panther to gangsta rap sort of image.
The other direction would be the tame, even obsequiousness from blacks expected by the same dominant culture. Somewhere in the middle you MIGHT get fatherly intellectuals like Bill Cosby, but he was still in the context of entertainment, not a reality for many black families of the current generation.
In all this, hetero black women like myself have been abandoned or left to fend for themselves with their children, yet competing with OTHER black women…or white and non black women, for economic stability, health care access and other stabilizing factors. Including marriage.
With a kind of resignation, many black women have found themselves accepting non monogamy, single motherhood and risk of HIV, so as not to be left lonesome and with NO companion at all.
You will find three generations of single mothers within the same household and neighborhood community, and baby daddies being held less and less accountable, but there aren’t so many eligible black men so thick on the ground that black women have enough to choose from.
We are competitive as well as social creatures. Human beings are that way.
I’ve found that when I’m with my sisters, or my gay men friends…we could literally be one in the same in our search for ‘the real’.
Indeed, there are some intense, loving and remarkably committed friendships between gay men and black women because we’re so in the wilderness together.
If we were to look at the celestial hand in all this, I’d say it’s our Creator giving us something to remain whole, SOMEONE to love and be loved by, with all that’s meaningful, but the sex, which is where we find the biggest complications to both our respective groups.
My lesbian friends, because women and their affection between each other isn’t so scrutinized or met with hostility, have a few more options too, in being able to express themselves openly in a healthy way.
Men and boys, STILL suffer from cultural repression that keeps simple and casual affection from being a part of their every day interactions. I think this too plays a role in overcompensation, among gay AND straight men.
If people only remembered that our BASIC, most common needs are not alien, nor should be met with disdain, caution or repression because of the group someone belongs to.
When I listen to straight people discuss gays and lesbians as if gay people don’t grieve, don’t care for each other, have trivial needs and wants and most of all, should not respond to denial of these basics with any emotion at all, boggles my mind.
So here you two gentlemen are, dealing with those needs in and examining them in middle age!
Something that most people know when they are toddlers. This is part and parcel of your needs being questioned or denied, when those who keep them from being met, like to think you’re nothing like them and don’t have to be.
A very effective method towards dehumanization and damaging a person’s sense of who they are. This is why taking away belonging is also very effective, a way of torturing a person and breaking their spirit. Identity, knowing who we are as a collective or individual is very powerful. It’s what nearly every human social hierarchy is organized around.
We have much in common gentlemen, because we are simply human beings.
Who want and need to belong. This is what we are mostly all born to be and feel.
The hard part is dealing with the sort of socio/political systems that keep trying to tell us differently and that such a thing isn’t so.
thanks Regan…..that was very insightful. Your perspective on this is much appreciated
There cannot be an “orthodoxy” if there is no “community”.
make up your mind Tom… 🙂
I’m not sure what Anthony means by “excesses”… but the two of us (that’s grant and dale, together, nothing to do with Anthony!) spent an inordinate amount of time in “bars, nightclubs” for years on end. Mid-week. Weekends. Often until dawn. We liked to socialise like that. A lot. A real lot.
About the only “excess” we were bothered by was lack of sleep at times. Drugs, nope. Didn’t end up alcoholics (touch wood!). Held down jobs. Remembered our mothers birthdays. Had a wide range of other interests. etc etc. We also had no problem keeping our commitment to monogamy and loyalty in our relationship, and I cannot remember any orthodoxy ‘demanding’ that we behave any differently. To the contrary, actually.
We’re in Melbourne, rather than Sydney, and the clubs have always been more integrated here but I sometimes do wonder if this so-called ‘gay scene’ gets blamed for too much, and if there isn’t a deal of blame shifting going on by individuals who would have crashed and burned in whatever environment they had found themselves in.
As example, rural and regional Australia is NOTORIOUS for having high rates of alcohol and drug abuse among young people. You don’t need to be in a nightclub on Oxford St to get yourself into all sorts of trouble or make bad decisions. Anywhere will do.
And by the same token, you can also be safe and sane and in good company and enjoying yourself at 3am under laser lights and a mirror ball in a smoke filled room. Yes, you can.
Then again, Anthony, I don’t think I would have enjoyed entering that World when I was 40. Jeepers, no. We were giving it all up at that point, the whole circle of friends were. Staying out 4 nights a week these days would probably kill us within the fortnight!
Oops. I used an expression that probably doesn’t mean the same thing in the U S of A.
Touching something made of wood is an old superstition to avoid bad luck. (For extra laughs, you reach out and tap someone on the head after using the expression.)
grantdale: real americans say “knock on wood”. Touch wood means… well, you know what it means.
Tom: lots of people come out and expect there to be an instant brotherhood. Back in my day– the ’70’s and ’80’s– it was not an unreasonable expectation, though it ws frequently not met.
My late partner– he’s been gone for 14 years now– frequently found that we had a lot more in common with our straight friends than we did with our gay friends. We were very coupled, whereas so many of our gay friends were either single or in bad relationships.
We also never felt much at home in the “gay community’, whatever that was. We didn’t go to bars (same reasons, grantdale), we were monogamous, and our lives were quite full with each other, friends, family, and business. Yet we could not have been more out of the closet. We just knew we didn’t need to be much involved with the official community, if there were such a thing.
My legally married husband and I feel the same way. Our lives are too full to spend much time there.
You are responsible for the quality of your own life.
I think that back in the 70’s and 80’s, the free love era was still in full swing. Among unmarried straight folks, there was a cultural shift and bars were all called ‘meat markets’, so if gay men, among themselves, joined in the endless party mood, it was just part of what was going on with everyone.
Then the spectre of AIDS and rudderlessness with nothing to show for it at the end of youth, started to focus people back to stability, family and more meaningful goals.
A generation, although more self centered and looking for fast gratification, inevitably had to grow up and attend to real business.
Rootlessness is also loneliness. There are some who choose it, and some who have it forced on them, but eventually, one gets tired and needs someone to lean on and trust.
I have learned that gays and lesbians, so many kept detached from their families, TRIED to form one’s among other gay people out of that need for having one.
Some have succeeded, but some also fell into the trap of being EXPECTED to live the life of those who are rootless. Without children or a significant other to set you down in a strong place, young gay people are taught the stereotype that this is what their lives will or are supposed to be.
I look at what the anti gay say all the time: that gay life is INEVITABLY rife with promiscuity, depression, rootlessness and dispassion. Gay kids and their straight peers are TAUGHT this. And constantly point at statistical information to reinforce this idea.
So if a gay kid and their families and peer group think this is what gay life IS, and nothing else, then that stereotype will go on as a self fulfilling expectation.
If there are no other examples, or social connections that can contraindicate this, there is nowhere else to go sometimes. Again, it’s a calculation that the anti gay foment.
Leaving out of course that this is part of the coercive process that requires that gay people choose heterosexuality to avoid all those problems.
As if heterosexuals never have them.
Gay couples that are monogamous, are close to their families and are raising happy children…are antithetical to the anti gay.
These are not the people that the anti gay want anyone to know or see or integrate with.
They counter each effort to show that THIS is more the reality of gay lives than bars and partying and promiscuity, and say that such lives that are so close to heterosexual ones, don’t exist or are false.
They especially don’t want young gay people to think that there is someone out there for them, and that being a happy couple…even with children is at all possible. Let alone being legally married and disappearing into the fold of normalcy and success.
Indeed, if in general gay kids hoped for it, lived for it and demanded it, it would completely screw up the machinations that have gone on so long.
As long as gay people are exotic strangers to be kept at a severe distance from the reality, for gay AND straight kids, in particular, then the anti gay folks have accomplished their mission.
In many ways, the gangsta rap culture accomplishes the mission of racism and what Jim Crow tried to foment.
That young blacks are angry and dangerous and ALWAYS criminally poised to attack ‘regular’ people.
And the few blacks at the top of the record/film and network media aren’t deterring that stereotype, but engaging it because THEY say popular culture is embracing it.
When the truth is, they are forcing it on everyone.
No one questions why rap artist’s material doesn’t have the stunning power and beautiful wording of say a Maya Angelou or Paul L. Dunbar.
Why?
Because there is profit in the further degradation among blacks as there is gay people that’s why.
These are easy and traditional groups to set aside for excess scrutiny and powerlessness.
Hard to own what the dominant folks take for themselves and always have.
Hi grantdale……fancy seeing you here
Just to clarify for those in the US who might not be familiar with the australian gay scene/community……
Oxford St = Santa Monica Boulevard LA, The Castro SFO, Boystown Chicago, Christopher St NYC etc etc .
“In every major city around the world there is a strip or suburb where the gay community becomes visible. In New York it’s Greenwich Village; San Francisco, the Castro; in Los Angeles, West Hollywood; London has Compton Street; in the Greek Islands it’s Mykonos; in Melbourne it’s Prahran; in Brisbane, the Valley, and Sydney has its famous Oxford Street. In these places young gay men and lesbians, and others not so young (like me), can more freely come to terms with their sexual orientation and experience the rites of passage of being gay. These communities provide a haven where gay and lesbian people can express their identity and enjoy the opportunity to evolve.
Many people wrongly judge the gay community, believing that gay life revolves around endless sexual encounters, bars, nightclubs, dance parties and drugs; this is often referred to by preachers and others as the ‘gay lifestyle.’ It’s interesting to note that those who speak so knowledgeably about the ‘gay lifestyle’ actually don’t know any gay men or lesbians. This knowledge is gained by observation from elevated ecclesiastical towers constructed to separate them from the world Jesus called them to minister to. In every major city there is also a red light or sex area where heterosexuals go and play, yet no one calls this a ‘heterosexual lifestyle.’ The majority of gay and lesbian people no more relate to zones like Oxford Street than heterosexuals do to red light areas like Sydney’s Kings Cross. The party subculture exists in both worlds and has never been exclusively homosexual (although some think we do lights, music and costumes better, honey).
To say this ‘gay lifestyle’ is shared by the whole gay community lacks understanding, as this is only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath this visible expression are thousands, even millions, of gay men and lesbians who live everywhere, from the ‘gay ghettoes’ like Darlinghurst, to the suburbs, to the towns and rural areas. Whether single or partnered, they are just like everyone else, working as doctors, teachers, lawyers, labourers, business owners, mechanics, salespeople, factory workers, nurses, shop assistants. Some even have children! They live lives of unintentional activism, by gaining acceptance from neighbours and work colleagues as people of value just by being who they are—normal, decent, law-abiding citizens. Some have lived together as partners for ten, twenty, thirty, even fifty years, demonstrating that being gay or lesbian is not about what goes on the bedroom, partying or being outrageous. It’s much deeper than that and we value the same things in life that heterosexuals do: love, friendships, happiness, companionship, intimacy, to make a difference where we can, and to treat people with respect.”
Chapter 19 A Life of Unlearning (please excuse the piece of shameless self promotion)
grantdale said:
Amen.
…and i think a lot of preachers have a lot to answer for by constantly referring to things like the ‘gay lifestyle’ . So that when some young kid from the church finally comes to a point of realising the gay will never go away and he accepts it……the only image he has of what it means to be gay is to live the ‘gay lifestyle’ …..and doesn’t realise, probably much later in life, that his morality and the way he lives his life does not have to be dictated by the church or the ‘gay scene’…..he can live life on his own terms.
Yes, that was a shameless plug Anthony. You’re forgiven.
I have been meaning to read the book… so I can only go off the passages you dropped in.
There is a vast chasm between Oxford Street and Kings X in one important regard and they do not bear direct comparison because of it. One area has long been a red light precinct with a very blatant commercial and corrupting sex industry. Strip joints. Seedy brothels. Many a lady of dubious reputation hanging around street corners. And very, VERY heterosexual. The other is full of bars and clubs (and a few indoor equivalents of a beat) but it is not anywhere near an equivalent type of place.
You can go to Oxford Street with a mixed crowd and happily enjoy a night out at the clubs without needing to deal with any other undertones.
Cannot say the same thing about Kings X. I’m hard pressed to imagine taking anyone there, let alone a female friend. The whole atmosphere is plain nasty, inside or on the street.
Don’t even get me started on what the no-nothings claim about ‘The Gay Lifestyle(R)’…
(ps: we’ve lived in Prahran for, ooh, well, let’s just say “more than” 20 years. For our foreign readers — Prahran is nothing like Oxford Street, let alone Kings X!)
Ben in Oakland: Thanks much for your comments … I related a lot to them. And you’re right that we are each responsible for the quality of our own lives, and that my issues with my sexuality are my own. But that gets back to my original point that I think “reparative therapy” is a valid option for people who are anxious/depressed/rejecting of their sexual urges and who have unsuccessfully tried other therapies to try to deal with those urges. I’m not a big fan of talk therapy personally, as I have found it to be largely ineffective hand-holding, but if someone wants to go through that process to deal with their difficulties with their difficulties, they should have the right to do so. I’m more of a hard-core realist, I guess–don’t give me platitudes, but show me proof that there is a “gay community” that elevates the values and life goals that I find to be important (and which I touched on earlier). I’m not impressed by recycled political correctness (I’m not directing that at you, Ben).
I am, however, impressed by the respect and intelligence of the posters here, and for that I say thanks.
Respect always SFTom….I am still a firm believer of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself.
Intelligent?…..I’m sure other posters will recieve the compliment……I however have to work with the cells I have left…..hehe.
Grantdale……thanks for your observations re Oxford St and Kings Cross.
there was a time I might have agreed with you.
I wonder though how long its been since you have been in both areas on either Friday or Saturday night recently. Possibly you have not explored all the avenues and back alleys of both. I could name about 20 venues in Kings Cross that have a gay equivalent in Oxford St.
OMG…..now you are making ME….sound bad……hehe.
Tom: thank you for your nice words and your understanding.
I will disagree with one thing, though. You wrote ““reparative therapy” is a valid option for people who are anxious/depressed/rejecting of their sexual urges and who have unsuccessfully tried other therapies to try to deal with those urges. ”
There are three problems with this. 1) Reparative therapy makes an unproven assumption that there is something wrong with gay people. 2) This something wrong with gay people is the source of the problems in their lives, whereas heteros are given a free pass. 3) It doesn’t work, and has been demonstrated over and over.
Here’s something I wrote to our very own Debbie Thurman on this very subject:
The problem with ex-gay pseudo-psychology is that it can never actually be pinned down. What does change mean? As Jones and Yarhouse put it, it can be very complicated and ambiguous– and they “believe” it works.. What does fixed mean? It’s the only therapy known to modern medicine where, when it fails–and it almost always does– the fault lies with the patient and not the doctor.
I’ve only known one of these ex-gay people personally, and his self-conflict was difficult, painful to be around, but ultimately, became boring. It was clear that the anguish was where he chose to be. He neither became straight nor stopped being gay.
Of course, there were two obstacles.
1) There was nothing that was actually subject to change in his being gay, nor was there any particularly compelling reason (in the real world, not the ex-gay and fundamentalist worlds) for him to make the attempt. Nor was it actually possible by prayer or ex-gay methodology or theory. It’s sort of like treating a sore throat by getting a colonoscopy. It hurts like hell and you’re still sick.
2) The ultimate problem was not his sexuality, but his self image and his self esteem. More accurately put– his self-hatred. His inability to move out of the place of not-straight-and-not-gay-but-still-very-unhappy was in fact rooted THERE. He enjoyed poor health, as they used to say. He was so used to hating himself and thought that he deserved everything bad that happened to him– including being gay. Why move out of the drama when there was so much good theatre going on?
Positive self-esteem is the basis of good mental health. Low self-esteem is the basis of poor mental health. And that is what ex-gay ministries prey on– self hatred. Hating oneself is betraying oneself. If you do not love yourself, can you love anyone else? Can anyone else love you? Not if you are worthy of hate. “You must be carefully taught…to hate all the people your relatives hate”– even if it is you yourself.
My question to my wannabe-ex-gay friend was: Do you think you’ll actually stop hating yourself if you become heterosexual?
Basically, I said this to him. Your self-hatred is the problem, not your sexuality. Maybe there is actually nothing wrong with you, so you can’t actually CHOOSE to not have anything wrong with you– just like you can’t CHOOSE to have three eyes. Maybe the something wrong with you is actually the only thing that is right with you, but you’ve been very carefully taught to reject the best of yourself, and choose the worst of yourself.
From everything that I have seen of ex-gay people writing here and elsewhere–
Professional ex-gays lives are very much like alcoholics how haven’t had a drink in 30 years but still go to meetings six nights a week. The problem is not the alcohol. And their lives are still ABOUT alcohol. Guess what a professional ex-gay’s life is still about?
Ben, HOLLA!
Exactly!
We could find any number of heterosexuals with EXACTLY the same issues. Except they don’t have to dwell on their orientation being the root of all that is wrong or difficult in their lives.
They can point to what ACTUALLY is wrong in their lives, or what they THINK is wrong.
An ex gay can obsess about their sexual orientation, and neither being gay or straight will be satisfying so that’s why so many end up in the ex-sexual limbo of being celibate.
But a person can obsess about what’s NORMAL in their lives, simply because if they are in a situation of prejudice and being hurt by it, it will be focused on too much.
Such as in the case of my flawlessly beautiful Asian friend who wanted to have surgery to Westernize her eyes.
Or, as I’ve said before, why anorexia is a serious phenom, especially among women.
Dealing with the impossible expectations and standards of our culture in other areas, REGARDLESS of being NORMAL, is what makes an otherwise happy person into a neurotic.
And these examples are but a few that prove it.
So, an ex gay, is by definition, neurotic about their orientation and the ex gay industry exacts a profit and a VERY high price by exploiting it.
And that’s essentially what’s also so tragic. Plastic surgery is expensive and painful and might not yield the desired results. But it’s not a long, long, drawn out process either.
Those working towards being heterosexual spend years and years and years trying and a lot of money, with absolutely no result like a CURE in which they never have to look back.
Ex gays also avoid social circles and relationships with gay people. They are encouraged to, and to view those who are still gay as weak, immoral and without restraint.
I noticed a while ago that ex gays need an excessive amount of compliments and validation as if they accomplished something important. That to them, to feel heroic is part of the process, so that it’s easier to look down on and away from their ‘former’.
Someone like me, ever hetero, and not interested in converting a gay person, could look at this as seriously disturbing by itself.
It’s NOT anything special, heroic or especially courageous about being straight. It’s what I AM, it’s not something I DID.
I can’t help being rude in response at the sometimes smug, snobbish attitude that ex gays can take on, and I’ll say outright, ‘what do you want applause?’ I’ve always been hetero, big deal….so?
It ain’t no thang.
But the real test in the sincerity of saying that people should be free to choose which life they want to live without being criticized or judged for it. Ex gays say that all the time, but it’s an especially EMPTY statement to make when we all know it’s meant for ex gays not to be judged, not gay people.
And if they were authentic in their own statement, they would fight as hard for equality and justice for gay people as gay people do. Because in no way is there a choice, as long as there is any threat to a gay person for anything and any reason.
Our culture coerces that choice, negating that it was ever one at all.
I’ve mentioned this before, and maybe I’ll check back with this young man I had more involvement with. His name is Chad Thompson. He wrote books and lectured, but he pretty much was towing the same party line about his conversion. He’d been thoroughly trained and parroted everything that Joseph Nicolosi says from his template on why young men are gay.
Anyway, at that time, Chad hadn’t really had his orientation tested. Women, were not in his life. And there are only a few types who would want to get serious with a gay man in his situation.
At any rate, I told him to think about gay people in the context of all humanity.
That Jews and gay people share a similar history in being hated the longest of any group known to man. And eradication has been the agenda for always. Being a minority to begin with, and constantly being under attack and under some kind of siege, there is more urgency in being counted, and accounted for.
Jews and gays are diasporic. Have been on the receiving end of many pogroms, including the Holocaust.
I told him if someone succeeds, then the world would have NEVER known who gay people really are, why they were here and what might have happened in the world had such obsession to eliminate weren’t compromising resources for better use.
Indeed, the effort to keep gay people at a distance from equality and THEIR effort to meet it, costs millions of dollars. Lives are being lost in the process, children being taken away and yet, ex gays and the anti gay factions out there consider this effort on the part of gay people trivial, or threatening to civilization as we know it, depending on whose boot is on whose neck.
So I asked him: why would he engage the effort to see gay people disappeared? Why participate in the longest hatred, that is a training exercise, not a natural inclination? Even YOU don’t know what it’s like to be gay, and don’t want to?
Yet, you are so CERTAIN it’s right that YOU disappear? Well, why?
How are you certain?
Only an intellectually dishonest person would avoid the question or couch it to the Cross.
And that’s what he did.
And I can be civil to him, but I don’t think much of him.
I have no reason to.
There are several things I love about Jews. One is, not prosthelytising. The other is allowing for every factor to enter a question before certainty is declared.
If you don’t allow gay people to be TREATED as equals, you won’t and can’t know if they AREN’T equal.
And saying they aren’t, without the most important factor to determine that, means there is no way to be certain.
But, even with evidence RIGHT before them, some people don’t want to see it, and don’t care who pays the price for such willful disregard.
And it’s easy for heteros to point at ex gays as their handiwork, until something bad happens, then they claim their usual exit clause and put the blame where it’s easiest.
Very cowardly, and not a sign of committing to faith in God either.
@Anthony: maybe I already lurk around said avenues and back alleys…
Well, yeah, ahem, I’m not trying to put a gloss on either place in any case. Personally I think Oxford Street has been rubbish for years. But I will need to ask you to name those 20 venues. (OK, maybe only 10 will do.) I’m trying to gauge how you are comparing things. Which I should have asked first, I suppose.
I’d still put it that Oxford Street venues are better compared to any one of the million other bars and nightclubs in Sydney, none of which deserve direct comparisons to strip clubs in Kings Cross either. And come to think of I don’t why anyone bothers calling Oxford Street “gay” any more. (It has changed, for the worse — I’d certainly agree that Friday and Saturday nights are NOT an attractive idea. Knife fight anyone? Anti-gay abuse anyone?)
ps: actually we are pretty handy when it comes to getting around Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. Just don’t ask me to find my way about during daylight hours.
@grantdale
maybe we could take this conversation offline via email……sort of got off the track on ex-gay stuff and situational heterosexuality…..feel free to email me ….i believe you have my email address….but if not anthony@anthonyvennbrown.com. I’m a bit snowed under with several projects ATM…including Uganda….so you’ll have to forgive me if I dont get to respond immediately.
Thanks, Regan. As always, you are bang on. If I ever get to L.A. again, I would love to tkae you out for lunch.
It’s on baby!
How’s about if I find myself in Sunnyvale or San Francisco. I have friends up there I’m LONG overdue to see.
We have a date?
We do. Let me know when you’re going to be up here again. It’s far more likely than me going down there.
Who woulda thunk? Exgay watch for meeting people.
Okay, whenever you’re in LA, let’s please get together.
No, I’d love it.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting our friends Petersen Toscano, and Daniel Gonzalez and Tim Kincaid.
But while I was getting gobsmacked over at TownHall, a wonderful young knight came to set the record straight.
He invited me to a little house party he was having, and I met his beautiful dog and his hunky boyfriend and we’ve been good buds ever since.
They are princes ( the dog too) who treat me like a princess.
What’s not to love?
This IS a good place to meet people. Please find me on Facebook and I’ll give you my phone number and so on.
I have a BIG hug waiting for you, my friend when we do meet.
And that goes for each of you who have been so helpful in my education…and being my friend.
love those three men regan……met them all at conferences I’ve particpated in over in the US. I have great respect for the work many of them are doing……right spirit…but telling the truth.
Hi Ben: You raised a straw-man argument that I didn’t make, and then set about to disprove it. I didn’t say that being gay is “wrong.” I said that some people (like me) experience same-sex attractions as a source of personal trouble (anxiety/alienation/depression), and have not found relief from those symptoms in trying to be “authentic,” as you may define it, and live outwardly “gay.” I think reparative therapy probably helps some of those people. Dr. Spitzer, moreover, who I think was one of those involved in the 1973 DSM decision, published a report a few years ago of a man who felt that he had changed his sexual orientation. But regardless of that, isn’t it up to each of us to decide for him- or herself what being “authentic” is for that person? Can you not accept that for some people being “authentic” means that they make different choices from what is commonly considered to be the route to gay bliss–i.e., “coming out”?
Anthony, that is so COOL!
Australia is so far away, but you feel close even so.
I sent your article to my young friend, and hopefully she and I can have another long talk about it. As soon as I hear someone mention that gay people can change, I see it as an opportunity to offer the real deal.
Your experience certainly is important and you’ve helped me spread the word as well.
I’ve developed the “thumb to the hand” philosophy and I’m honing it so there is more concision about what that means.
And the natural way in which gay and straight people can and should form alliances.
A while back I participated in a documentary, and I wasn’t sure what to say. It was being filmed at a church conference that was very diverse.
And spontaneously I said to the camera that our hands feature fingers and thumbs, and that the fingers look and function differently and there are more of them.
But the thumb, stood in opposition to that, on it’s own.
We don’t question the thumb, as we notice the difference. And we don’t cut off the thumb because it is, nor force it to function like the fingers.
If we did, our hands would be less strong and skilled without it doing exactly what it always has.
The filmmaker didn’t want to edit a thing. But it got me thinking about the assumption that homosexuality has no function or that it’s a dysfunction.
Why assume that?
Why not assume that there IS a function and purpose that is complimentary to being heterosexual?
After all, it’s not like homosexuality restricts talent, and all other characteristics that matter.
The billboards for Exodus say “question homosexuality.”
Well, why? Why not question hostility to it. Question willful ignorance and the spread of fear about it?
Why not assume that our Creator expects us to be diverse and look around at exactly the infinite diversity all around us.
How could someone assume there is ONE normal sexual orientation, when there has ALWAYS been more than one kind of normal among all living things?
Considering there is little that is positive and beneficial to forcing the will of heterosexuality on gay people, and being abusive in the meantime, isn’t any kind of moral value, but one of coercion, control and dominance.
And no man has a right to dominance over another.
And no other man is superior to the other.
Anyone that thinks they are and this is right, is thinking like an animal, not a human being with a conscious.
“what does it profit a man…?”
I don’t mind insisting to heteros who insist that gay people change by saying that it’s an effective way to render gay people to disappear and we’ll never know for sure.
And I for one, among millions, would that heteros like that finally SHUT UP and let gay folks speak their own, and let folks like me hear them.
It’s extremely selfish and arrogant to NEVER let the other side have their say, why must straight people hijack and dominate every form of information about gay people…even when they get it so wrong, and even children get killed because of it?
It’s long past overdue we DID hear from gay people about what’s what.
To SFTom:
I understand your point that “some people (like me) experience same-sex attractions as a source of personal trouble (anxiety/alienation/depression), and have not found relief from those symptoms in trying to be ‘authentic,’ as you may define it, and live outwardly ‘gay.'”
Okay, it’s a big world and there’s plenty of room for people to choose their own ways to live with their sexual attractions.
However, I will strongly disagree with your suggestion that “reparative therapy probably helps some of those people.” Other types of therapy may help such people, but I think reparative therapy specifically is based on completely bogus science and will not do anyone any good.
Reparative therapy presupposes that homosexual orientation is caused by a young child’s failure to form a proper gender identity due to problems bonding with parents or other gender role models. The reparative therapist seeks to help a person identify and “repair” those missing/broken bonds. That will supposedly result in diminishment of same-sex attractions and ultimately the development of a primarily heterosexual orientation.
No scientific study has ever validated any part of the reparative therapy approach, starting with its whole theory on how same sex attraction develops and going through to the any actual results it can achieve.
From my own personal experience, I’ll even say that the reparative therapy approach can undermine a person’s efforts to “overcome” same sex attractions. The period when I was deeply involved in reparative therapy was also the time when I was most involved in a double life of clandestine gay sex outside my marriage. Reparative therapy provided me a convenient self-justification: obviously I couldn’t change my behavior until that that far-off day when I somehow identified and repaired the causes of my attractions.
If you want to argue your case that coming out isn’t the best solution for everyone, first learn about therapeutic models that make at least some sense. I’d suggest Warren Throckmorton’s blog, where you can learn about his model of Sexual Identity Therapy, which doesn’t purport to change sexual orientation.
Tom- you wrote ” You raised a straw-man argument that I didn’t make, and then set about to disprove it. I didn’t say that being gay is “wrong.” I said that some people (like me) experience same-sex attractions as a source of personal trouble (anxiety/alienation/depression), and have not found relief from those symptoms in trying to be “authentic,” as you may define it, and live outwardly “gay.” I think reparative therapy probably helps some of those people. ”
What I said was that RT ASSUMES that there is something wrong. World of differnece.
I actually wrote something quite lengthy, but lost it. Nick’s comments pretty closely mirror what I was going to say, so I’ll leave it at that
@regan…..I’m glad that my article is getting additional use. I’ve spoken about the concept of ‘situational heterosexuality’ for some time now…..it was good to put all those thoughts into an article. Every time I mentioned the term and explained it …it was like a light turned on for people and gave them an explanation for their experience…..and I’m sure it will continue to do so now it is out there.
BTW……I like your analogy of the thumb in the hand. Very good.
Lets face it heterosexuality is not normal….its just more common. What is normal? Normal is a cycle on washing machine….hehe.
@SFTom……possibly this is where you are at in your journey now…..but may feel differently about your sexual orientation later. Some of the things you say I’m familiar with in my own journey. I hope you find resolution. You don’t sound happy. You mentioned “that some people (like me) experience same-sex attractions as a source of personal trouble (anxiety/alienation/depression), and have not found relief from those symptoms”. I find this sad. I’m no psychologist but maybe there is something underlying your difficulty in accepting you are gay.
This is the principles I teach on to self acceptance. You’ve probably heard it all before though and hasn’t worked for you……which makes me wonder what else there is underlying your difficulty.
THE PROCESS OF RESOLUTION
Let me take you through the process that I went through. Its not the same for everyone but like Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ process of grieving, most people pass through each stage at some time no matter how briefly. Problems develop when people become stuck in one place and can’t move on.
1. Denial (I’m not gay, I was drunk, I’m bisexual, I was just horny, it’s just a stage, I was just experimenting).
2. Rejection (I can change it, I can overcome it)
3. Suppression (I can control it, monitor it, it’s my secret, no one need know)
4. Hatred (this thing is too strong for me, I hate my gayness, therefore I hate myself)
5. Acceptance (Healthy & unhealthy). It’s wonderful that so many young people today are coming out and accepting their homosexuality. There is also a group, like I was for years, who have accepted their sexuality but only reluctantly. They would prefer to be heterosexual and as long as that remains in their thinking, they can never fully embrace their true selves and enjoy the sense of freedom that brings. They exist with a subconscious belief that life is unfair, they still live with a sense of shame and some believe they will inevitably go to hell because they gave in to their homosexuality.
6. Celebration (I love being gay). This is the beginning of living a life of authenticity and congruence. The person who celebrates and embraces their sexuality lives a powerful life that transforms those around them because no one can deny what you have………a wholesome and profound love of self.
Anthony thank you for writing this. It is also what I was saying in my lost post. I’ll add this.
If I have learned nothing else in my 60 years, it is this: Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey. In fact, not even that. It is the train you are on while you’re on your journey. It is never a case of “If only X, then I would be happy.” If only I had a boyfriend, if only I had money, if only I were straight…then I would be happy.”
Doesn’t work that way.
I’m basically happy all the time. It’s a point of view. There are things make me unhappy– my business has collapsed, but I’m at peace. My husband has cancer– we’ll deal with it as we can. that damned volcano may screw up my trip to visit my husbands family– oh, well, we’ll do something else. But ultimately, they are just negatives. They are not the place where I live.
tom, you’ve already bought into the whole ex-gay lie when you say “experience same-sex attractions.” It is deeply depersonalizing, and despite what you might think, makes you less of a responsible person. It is also not exactly true. It makes it sounds like something that has happened to you, not something that you do or you are.
Let me give you a parallel example here https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/its-not-about-homosexuali_b_537810.html. There are lots of catholic priests who are gay and who are also celibate. They “experience same sex attractions”, but apparently are at peace– and celibate. They are apparently “happy” in a situation where one would expect them not to be. There is nothing inherent in “experiencing same sex attractions” that makes them unhappy.
There is only a tiny fraction of the available evidence that says that ex-gay thinking and reparative therapy make anyone either either straight or happy. There is a great deal of evidence– including the massive failure of ex-gay/reparative nonsense to produce even a decent study of its own effectiveness (See Jones and Yarhouse if you want a real laugh)– that ex gay and reparative “therapy” are based upon faulty and unproven premises, both religious and psychological, conducted in a slipshod and unconscious manner, both religious and psychological, and with ever-changing goals, both religious and psychological, and finally, labeled “successful therapy”, both religious and psychological, and touted in research, both religious and psychological.
Do you get the picture?
Look, when someone tells you that you are dirty, sick, unclean, and especially, sinful and in need of salvation (which they offer, of course, at a price) it is the biggest mistake in the world to assume that 1) it’s true, and 2) that they are telling you for your benefit, and not for their own. The concept of sin, especially YOUR sin, becomes the expression of their will and their way of seeing the world, and if it is making you unhappy, or interfering with your life, then that is probably a good test of its truth value. Likewise, you pay the price with happiness in your life, while they reap the benefits– or, validation– and the “glory”.
And the power and the money. Always, always follow power the money. That is why it is so impossible to impeach Jesus. He had none. It was not his motivation.
I assume you are seeing a therapist. If not, maybe you should be, because you are not happy. To me, there is no other goal in my life but to lead a happy (and responsible) life, so that the the very end of my life, I will look back on my life and say, “Y’know? I had a very happy (and responsible) life.” Sounds both laudable and obvious to me.
If you are seeing a therapist, the question I would ask myself first is; is this guy making me happy or unhappy? Because getting happy is the whole point of seeing a therapist. My experience has always been that when a therapist tells me the truth, it may be difficult and time consuming for me to hear and process, but ultimately, I am in some way happier than I was before. But then, I want to be healthy, happy, conscious, and responsible. I have to hope that my therapist wants that, too. but it’s not a given.
So here is the test for your therapist, if you have one. I have been seeing this guy for… (a year, six months, whatever). Overall, do I understand more? Am I happier for the understanding? Am I any better off than I was before I started seeing this therapist? (Also a good test for men in general, but I digress). Am I happier and more at peace in general?
Because in my experience, if you can’t answer those questions in a nearly unanimously positive fashion, then you are probably seeing the wrong therapist. The whole point of any relationship is that it makes your life better to have this person in it. Maybe you have far deeper problems than he can resolve, he can’t see the problem, he can’t help you correct the problem, he’s an idiot, he has his own issues, he or you need medication, whatever. Doesn’t matter. He’s not right for you. (Also true of men, but I digress… again.).
And this just brings us to what Anthony was telling you. Unhappiness, self-hatred, and all of those things like those that infest the human condition, are the real problem. Sexual orientation, straight or gay, is neutral. Your sexual orientation is not making you unhappy. You have it exactly backwards. Your unhappiness is making your sexual orientation an issue. Deal with your lack of happiness, and you will probably know whether you are truly straight or truly gay or truly somewhere in between. Trying to be who you are not is putting your attention and energy on the wrong thing, and that is preventing you from finding out and then being who you are, which is authenticity.
I’m not saying you really are gay. I have no idea. It could very well be that you are of the mindset of the I’m-no-longer-gay-I’m-straight group. There is a problem there. What they mean by that is that they were always bi, but the gay part really bothered them. If one is bi, and one can actually choose, and one likes oneself, then there really ought not to be problem at all. Likewise, if one is really straight. Why, then, does the gay thing keep popping up, then? Technically, I am bi, but I would never say so, because I know I’m REALLY a big queer. The straight part doesn’t bother me at all, so I don’t think about it in a negative light, so I don’t create any drama around it. Drama is by definition unhappiness. As I said, deal with your lack of happiness, and you will probably know whether you are truly straight or truly gay or truly somewhere in between.
Because this is the place where ex-gay proves its nonsense quotient. Who you are and what you do are indeed separate issues, but ignoring one does not make the other go away. Change of what you do is, or ought to be, fairly easy. If it is not, then change of who you are may be impossible, or at least very unlikely. Or, putting it another way, change may indeed be possible, but changing one does not magically change the other, nor is it sufficient just to change one. The ex-gay pitch has not proved that true change is possible, as Alan Chambers has attested. Nor has the ex-gay pitch proven that it knows what the nature of the problem is or that they have the solution to it. The very fact that it believes that there is a problem when there isn’t may actually BE the problem.
Remember what they used to politely call “The Jewish Problem”? Look where THAT got us.
If your premise is nonsense, so are most of your conclusions. Unfortunately, some of those conclusions prove harmful or deadly to people whose only true sin is existing.
“It makes it sounds like something that has happened to you, not something that you do or you are.”
I forgot to add: and this, i believe is a possibly intentional obfuscation of the problem.
May be this statement I made for Peterson Tuscano’s Beyond Ex-gay site is relevant here.
Before you invest the time, money, emotional energy and possibly years of your life trying to go from gay to straight, ask the ex-gay leaders what guarantee they can give you that it will work. If they are honest with you, the best they will be able to offer you as a degree of ‘heterosexual functionality’, but the gay never actually goes away. Then ask yourself what would be the best way to spend your life, time, money and emotional energy…..rejecting yourself or accepting yourself.
Obviously loving yourself is far healthier emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, than self-loathing. After 22 years of trying to change including ex-gay programs, exorcisms and 16 years of marriage, I came to the realization that, in order to live a truly fulfilling life, the latter is a far better option than the former. Like 1,000’s of others today, I finally discovered I can live a wonderfully rewarding, moral life as an openly gay man and …………still have my faith.
Anthony: this is exactly what I was getting at. The issue is self-esteem and liking oneself. That has to come first, only then will someone be in position of responsibility and choice. If you have someplace you want to get to, you really need first to know who you are.
I have come to see that the process of coming out is only partly, and perhaps not even necessarily, one of accepting one’s homosexuality. It is a process of knowing and accepting oneself.
That is certainly true for me. The only thing that kept me from coming out earlier than 1971 was fear of consequences to my future and my career. There was never a question in my mind but that I was gay. I never saw it as a bad thing, though I understood as early as the age of 6 that there were people who did. And i also suspect that I never saw it as a bad thing because I had never learned to dislike or mistrust myself.
Which was my whole point to Tom.
really? Exorcisms?
What was that like, if you don’t mind talking about it. Seriously, that mindset is so far from my own I cannot even imagine what it must have been like before, during, and after, especially when it didn’t work.
not to be beating a dead fraud, but the parallels between exorcism and ex-o-gay are just too creepy. I have disturbing images of the priest in The exorcist occupying a split screen with Richard Cohen and a tennis racket,
*shudder* *eeewww* *shudder*
@ Ben…..is this comment to me?
@ Ben…..I think it is sad when people are given wording and using it that distances or pathologises their inherent sexual orientation. this is something I pointed out in my article.
“Struggling with same sex attraction, overcoming same sex attraction”….are terms that identify someone who is troubled. The journey to self acceptance can be difficult for anyone….but obviously it can more so for those of us who are same sex oriented or bi……or gender identity issues.
As I always say.
Yes. you wrote: After 22 years of trying to change including ex-gay programs, exorcisms and 16 years of marriage…
I know what marriage is like, I’ve read a lot about ex-gay, but exorcisms i’ve only seen on TV.
The shuddering idea was not referring to you, only to the image on my imaginary TV.
@Ben…..here is the chapter that relates that. I put that on the net along with some others that I thought would be relevant and helpful to some who might not buy my book
https://gayambassador.blogspot.com/2008/06/chapter-5-devils-in-bible-college.html
There is also an article written here where I am quoted on the topic.
https://www.samesame.com.au/features/2799/Devil-Or-Delusion.htm
Hey guys, thanks for your thoughtful advice and comments. My problem is that I really don’t relate to or identify with the label “gay,” even though I have dated, slept with, and been in relationships with several men There are a vast number of men in my situation … I’m sure you’ve heard of the DL phenomenon, “closed-loop” relationships (sorta like the guys in Brokeback Mountain) … men who are attracted to men, but who find the label “gay” repellant. Of course, the label “gay” has been an effective political tool over the past 40 years, but movements that require conformity of thinking tend to repell the more independent or indiosyncratic. Interestingly, I think I am actually going in reverse order of the stages that Anthony proposes. I began this process of finally exploring my sexuality and admitting it to other people with an open mind–and it worked well for a while. It felt good to participate in “gay” events, as it seemed like there would be resolution of my feelings of alienation, which I attributed to my sexuality. But as time has gone on, I’ve concluded that my values are very different from those that seem to be required of gay men (e.g., “open” relationships are just as valid as monogamous ones). So, rather than be a “gay without a country”–i.e., hated by both gays and straights–it seems like it may be better to return to the process of managing my sexual urges, because at least then I felt like I was part of a group with whom I could identify and feel accepted.
well you are an interesting case SFtom aren’t you. I dont mean that in a condescending way BTW.
Every now and then someone pops up in my life who has such a unique experience…….its hard to categorize it……..and probably there is the problem….trying to categorize your journey…..but its your journey not everyone elses and the last chapter hasn’t been written yet.
I have come across quite a number of people who have been in and out of the closet several times. particularly from Christian backgrounds……..and I have to put my hand up here. Twice out of the closet and went back again. I have no doubt now that it would ever return. I love being gay me too much to live in denial of who I am.
Reading your post…..I’ve wondered though with it is not the label ‘gay’ you have a problem accepting but the meanings and perceptions you’ve attached to the attached with the word gay. I’ve worked with a number of people who had a similar experience. Once they were able to define what that meant for them in a healthy….removed the stereotypes….preconceived ideas and misconceptions…..then that were able to move on from talking about same sex attraction to accepting a gay identity….one that had defined for themselves which had integrity and authenticity.
I see that for many…..accepting the identity is the final step.
actually…the final step of one journey and the beginning of another.
Tom– thank you for your reply. I would urge you to read and re-read what Anthony and I have written, because from what you have written, it really applies to you.
If you are not happy with the gay life you have led– something that many ex-gays have said– then you must lead a different life. That is what responsibility is all about. The problem is not with being gay or all gay men or all gay values. The problem is how you choose to live your life.
There is no monolithic gay community, gay value system, or gay anything else, any more than there is for straight people. If you don’t like what you see in what you call the gay world, find a different gay world. Let guys you meet know that you are not interested in sleeping with them unless there is something there for you.
Here’s what I mean.
I am nearly 60 years old. I have been out for nearly forty years. I came out in the very hedonistic culture of the 70’s, and lived in SF since 1975, which made that aforementioned hedonistic culture of my youth in Honolulu look like a seminary. Whoops, not like that. Like a nunnery. There we go.
I have, in my time, been a total slut, of the type that most people in their most slutty moments could (probably) only aspire to. It was fun, and i caught no fatal diseases. I have been with the same man for the past seven years. We are legally married. We are monogamous. We like it that way.
It is always MY choice how I live my life.
I lost most of my friends and my four serious relationships in the eighties and nineties due to HIV. Promiscuity, ignorance, stupidity, and plain bad luck were the four horsemen of that apocolypse.
I liked being promiscuous. I like being monogamous. If I weren’t married to Paul and value my life with him as much as I do, I could be very promiscuous again. not as cheap as unlimited free porn, but often much more satisfying.
I recognize where the very promiscuous gay male culture came from– centuries of oppression, the need to do it quickly and in the dark, a legacy from the ancient world down to this very day. Promiscuity is in the psyches of a lot of men, and not just gay ones.
For us, it served us once. That culture was both a lot of fun and very much a factor in the liberating of our psyches, and at the same very destructive to health and happiness, and very much the opposite of liberating for a lot of people.
My opinion: it has served its purpose, but it is no longer of benefit. Whatever wisdom I have accumulated in my 60 years says that our young men– and ultimately, the wider society, both straight and gay– would be much better served by restraint, by not making sex do and represent something that it cannot do and cannot represent.
This is not about morals, it is about practicalities, personal responsibility, and making our world a better place. I don’t want young gay men to die of a highly preventable disease. I don’t want young gay men to choose a chambersexual, a glatzesexual, a thomassexual mode of existence because they don’t see alternatives that will actually work for them in the long run instead of scratching a short-run itch. At the same time, I do not advocate removing the choice from them.
But the world is changing, and that culture is dying, though as long as there are Ted Haggards, Naggie Gallaghers, and Alan Chambers in the world, it will continue on. I’m glad i had it, but I don’t mourn its passing.
Gay people are in a unique position to help heterosexuals, who have never had to come out, who have never had to confront their sexuality, who frankly, don’t have to do much thinking at all, at least when it comes to being heterosexual.
So I will repeat my advice. Learn to be happy, to love yourself, and I suspect many of the issues you have with the gay world will just fade to nothing.
I’m not aware of any values or behaviors that are “required” for all gay men. I know gay couples who have open relationships to one degree or another, but I also know couples who are strictly monogamous. I know gay people who are deeply religious and others who are not just unbelievers but bitter and hostile toward any type of religious belief. I know gays who love to go out and drink and dance in the bars, and others who consider that a living hell. There are gay liberals and conservatives, sluts and celibates, downtowners and suburbanites, professional party boys and hard-working professionals.
And guess what–I know straight people who fit in all those categories, too!
There is no monolithic standard for gay. Each of us has to find our own identity and sense of authenticity.
Y’all reminded me of something. Especially you Ben. But when the Pill was introduced and passed through all the legal barriers to it from the same religious factions: it DID usher in a sort of liberation for women never seen before.
Women, for the first time, could have sex without the risk of pregnancy, just like men.
Women were in colleges on track towards professional parity with men.
It was a time when women’s roles were changing and away from dependence on men.
Gay men and lesbians were always free of the risk of pregnancy, and could explore another level of freedom for themselves. For the most part, they were no longer forced to be institutionalized in mental hospitals or jails.
So those on the margins of gender politics and social repression were in so many ways, expressing their sexuality the way straight men always had without question or challenge.
or course, the price was HIV/AIDS and plenty of straight people in the beginning of it’s pandemic had far more supportive walls of protection from it through marriage, and encouragement towards monogamy.
Gay men and women are not encouraged that way as an alternative to the headier time of free love.
But there is much in the debate over marriage and children that isn’t being said, even by those of the opposition to marriage equality.
Such as that married couples with NO CHILDREN, and those that chose not to have children, are THE happiest of married couples. They have the lowest divorce rate and disposable income and pursue more pleasurable things than those who have children.
Another category is that of people who are no longer fertile or never were. In couples surveyed who knew they no longer could conceive, among married couples (older men AND women especially), they had the most robust and frequent sex lives.
The risk of pregnancy seems to have been the catalyst to how much and how often folks were sexually active.
Considering how much childbearing is part of the conversation on marriage bans, the stigma of non parenting is strong and still prevails.
As well as the stigma of not being a biological parent.
That such a stigma is so strong in our age of huge populations (even in Third World countries), is remarkably irrational.
This stigma, no doubt has contributed to a dichotomous aspect that is seriously negative: the fertility business, lack of enough adoptive families, and women and men bearing children against their own interests, and especially that of their issue, to avoid the stigma.
I personally ran into a stonewall when I decided NOT to ever have children at the age of 29.
A decision I thought to be very responsible and most of all, mine to make.
That I would have serious challenges to that, was incredible to me, and also SO very wrong.
So what I see regarding gay people and what they do with their lives, is part of the paternalistic attitude in gender based socio/political issues.
That is to say, gay people and women are not to be self reliant and make their own independent decisions and live that way.
SOMEBODY always wants to interfere with that, and spite any gay person that defies it.
In any case, all of what we’re talking about will always have a hetero equivalent. There are little differences in HOW or WHY any one of us does something that’s within the GENERAL culture.
But gays and lesbians certainly have more mitigating circumstances if something is negative or exacerbates pathologies.
All of the philosophical talk about defining how one lives one’s own life is well and good … but I think it’s also helpful to focus on cold, hard reality when making life decisions. I simply think I have a better chance with a woman rather than a gay man of leading a well-balanced, emotionally healthy life as part of a couple. (I know you guys probably hate NARTH, but I believe in exploring all of the data out there. They recently posted an article about how gay coupling does not reduce the suicide rate among gay men.) But, anyway, thanks again for taking the time to provide your insightful comments.
SFTom
Gee, you sound just like my daughter, who was very frustrated with the straight dating scene at one point and told me, “It would be so much easier if I was a lesbian.”
tom: if you want to believe that an anti-gay organization, known far and wide for making stuff up, distorting research, and so on, has answers for you– good luck.
If you are truly a gay man, and you truly believe that you would be better off with a woman, also good luck. the question to my mind would be, will she be better off with you?
In any case, you choose to stack the deck against yourself, your health, and your happiness. NARTH has no answers. They are a political anti-gay organization, not a professional– let alone authoritative- group. I don’t even need to read that study to guess about what it does not say.
What Anthony and I have been trying to tell you is not “philosophical talk”, it is eminently practical advice for living your life. What you have written confirms in my mind that your problem is not your sexuality, it is your self hatred.
So, i will repeat: find yourself a therapist who will address that with you.
BTW– I seem to hate NARTH (and I’m not sure I’d say hate, but I certainly do despise that crowd) it might be due to the fact that I spent more than two years and a great deal of money pursuing pointless therapy with Joe Nicolosi’s own practice.
Tom, I don’t want to argue with you, because your life decisions are your own. And I agree with you on the importance of basing decisions on “cold, hard reality.”
But I have to point out that of the two of us, I’m the one who’s experienced the reality of being a gay man in a straight marriage. I’ve experienced the reality of seeking help through NARTH. I’ve also experienced the challenge of having to form my own identity in a gay community where I don’t always automatically fit in. (YOU try coming out when you’re 50, bald, and overweight!)
To me, it seems clear you’re feeling disillusioned with the gay life you’ve found so far and engaging in a lot of wishful thinking about how much better things would be if only you were straight. I just hope that you don’t lose years of your life pursuing wishful thinking instead of reality.
Nick– more nicely stated than mine. And more importantly, more to the point. you’ve lived that reality.
I’m not sure if “cold, hard fact” and NARTH really work well in the same sentence. There is a limit to how much one can learn about another from a discussion like this. However, I think I would have to agree with Ben in finding it likely that there are deeper issues at play than your sexual orientation. If you haven’t already, you might want to consider spending some time with a competent therapist to help figure that out.
It does concern me that you brought up suicide out of the blue.
“I’m not sure if “cold, hard fact” and NARTH really work well in the same sentence.”
Actually, cold and hard work quite well. It’s the word “fact” that is questionable. Anti-gay agenda would be more accurate.
SFTom,
As I had mentioned before, there is another demographic in a similar, if not the same boat as you.
Us heterosexual black women. Seriously, my friend…the grass always seems greener.
NARTH and Exodus and groups like them try to sell heterosexuality as an ideal, while they are pushing homosexuality as not.
Well, NONE of it is or will be. A lot of people’s lives are rife with and confused by unrealistic expectations.
Especially in relationships.
Heteros aren’t any better at it, really.
And, since NARTH and so on are in the business of SELLING heterosexuality, they have to put up QUITE a front, don’t they?
We have NO idea what the real quality of their lives are, and they sure aren’t going to be honest about that.
They have an image to maintain.
So even the examples of their own lives could be qualified as suspect because there is only so far and so much that will be revealed.
Good luck to you. The posts here sound like very good advice and from people who have worn your shoes.
I’m not gay, but I’d sure listen to them, no matter what.
there has been some great discussion and insights given here unlike another gay site that seemed to bypass the issues the article raised and some individuals thought the best use of their time was to attack my personal integrity. Yes SFtom there are some vile gay men and lesbians just as there are some vile heterosexuals. Nothing to do with the sexuality….they are just toxic people.
Excellent point Ben. Something I raised in the article. You are thinking about what will make YOU happy SFtom…….but if you find a woman who will marry a man who has ‘same sex attraction’ as you call it……what would she be looking for. If she wanted complete sexual intimacy and to be loved only like a heterosexual man can love her then she won’t get that. Yes you will possibly have a level of ‘heterosexual functionality’ as I call it….but it won’t be the true intimacy that two genuine heterosexuals experience.
She may however by happy with that. If she is an older woman either previously married or single then security and companionship might be more important to her at that stage in life. That will be her life choice…….but only after you are completely honest with her about why you want a relationship with her. And dont forget…….you will both have to fall in love with each other or you wont even get to square one.
The statement at the ‘philosophical’ stuff we have been speaking about is not really philosophical……its practical life 101.
Being true to yourself and others is living in integrity.
There does come a point in our lives where there is the challenge to live that. Not everyone is up for the challenge because the cost is too high. I lost everything. But today I’m glad about that. As what I had was based on a total false premise. Gay is bad – straight is good.
As an openly gay man today I have an integrity that eluded me up to my 41st year.
I’ve worked with guys that have come out at 60. And here is the part I find so fascinating. They had never really acted on their same sex orientation. Which begs the question. Why on earth would you bother coming out at 60 risking the rejection of your children, your family, breaking up a marriage and begin a new life as it were????
This demonstrates how profound and innate our sexual orientation is. the real person….the gay person inside is saying when do I get to live. As I’ve often said…..it is better to live one day on this planet being true to yourself that an entire lifetime that is a lie. Its probably more about identity than we want to acknowledge. There were and have always been gay men……who finally wanted to actually identify as gay men. In doing so it seemed to give them two things immediately…..one a sense of peace….and two a sense fo freedom.
May sound philosophical ……but its true.
Anthony and Ben have returned to something Anthony touched on earlier, and which I had intended to comment on but got caught up with work.
Anthony had said “I came to the realization that, in order to live a truly fulfilling life…”
To which I thought, well yes, that’s certainly worthy and valid (particularly compared to the alternative of an UNfulfilling life!) But it doesn’t end there.
We’re not just talking about individual lives. We’re talking about shared lives. Lives as one half of a couple. I’m glad to see that has now got a mention.
This relationship is part of a fulfilling life for me, but more than that it is — he claims — also a fulfilling one for him. I like knowing that. I think it’s core to any mutual relationship, but particularly so for a functioning marriage. Our lives as a couple, and not just as two individuals, also touch the lives of family, friends and wider society.
Too often what marriage to a gay man means for the wife is ignored. Is her life fulfilled, or is she an accessory to his ambition or fears? Are her best interests uppermost in his mind?
Call me old fashioned.
what a shame we have to work grantdale…..hehe. we could happily spend our days on the net engaging in important and stimulating conversations…….and of course helping people still on the journey to total self acceptance.
In reference to the happiness of the heterosexual partner I add a link to this video on the original article on my blog. So relevant to what SFtom has been speaking about as one of his goals.
Insightful and funny posts above–thanks. Maybe I didn’t make this clear earlier, but I was married to a woman for 10 years and have a daughter. So I guess I know something of both sides of the fence.
And I have tried therapy multiple times–I saw three gay male therapists at different times because I hoped I could “relate” or “identify” with them … but it didn’t help (there are a lot of quack therapists out there). A straight female psychologist I saw set me on the path to exploring dating and having sex with other men, and, like I said above, that worked well for about two years, until I started to look around and say where are all the grown-up men? I’m doing some behavioral/talk therapy with a well-trained straight male psychiatrist who is not at all a reparative-therapist type … and I appreciate that he let’s me express my confusion and rejection of the predominant gay culture, and explore with me strategies to resolve my dilemma and “manage,” if you will, my sexuality.
oooops…..too many posts and too much information must have let that slip.
my you have invested a lot of time and money in sorting this thing out haven’t you. I guess we all feel it really shouldn’t be that hard.
I look forward to the day when young gay boys and girls will not have to sort through all the crap that many of us have had to deal with such as early paternal rejection, later peer rejection, the internalisation of society’s prejudice, religious condemnation and the lack of good gay role models….as well as the fear of harmful treatments or imprisonment. I think we are certainly closer to that day than when we were growing up.
When we look at the homophobic society and ill-informed culture many of us grew up in …..its no wonder so many of us got f&#ked up.
Tom: here is something i wrote to a man about 9 years ago. I can’t recall how he found me, but he was curious about me.
Got your letter, and no, I am not offended. If I were I wouldn’t be writing back to you. I will try to respond to it, though.
Your letter seemed to be about three things. 1) Am I really who I say I am? 2) How can I expect to find someone when I want a man who has a lot to offer? and 3) What’s wrong with all of those men out there?
I am who I say I am. The photo is from March 2000, I still weigh what I did in college, and I live an active, happy life. I’m not perfect–I am all too aware of my faults– but I am a healthy man, and I value my life and how I live it, and most importantly, who is in it. I don’t think I am one in a billion at all, but I know that it is difficult to find a quality man. This is in no way self-aggrandizement or bragging, but I would not “settle” for a man who has 1/5 of the qualities I either seek or offer. Why bother with 1/5 of a man? There are too many of those running around now. I know, because I’ve dated far too many of them. I know that there are good men out there. I was married to one, and since he died 4.5 years ago, I’ve met a few of them.
Unfortunately, they are usually married. I am not looking for a specific man. That is self-defeating. But I don’t think I am asking too much to ask for a man who is whole, and grown up, who lives his life from a place of happiness and integrity. If that is asking too much, I would rather be single.
I have had the same problem you have had– meeting a quality man who actually wants to have a relationship. I just recently finished off with two different men, both of whom I liked and who appeared to like me, both of whom I thought had some real potential, both of who disappeared without a word of explanation that made any sense or rang true. Like you, I’ve met a lot of men who say they have a lot to offer, but the problem is, they seem unwilling to offer any of it. I am well past the place where I would expect chemistry to mean anything, yet so many of the men I meet “are still waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.” Meanwhile, they miss the man right in front of them.
The whole problem lies in what my friend Sean calls “poor pathetic males.” I call them half-men. And they aren’t just gay men– my straight women friends tell me they have the same problems.
So, I don’t know what else to tell you, Preston. The whole dating thing is both ongoing and frustrating. I’ve been lonely– in the romantic sense– and sometimes close to despair. But I don’t see much choice. I know that love is what makes my life complete and fulfilled, and I must have it. My ex lover, Dewey, put it very well. “Something is better than nothing, but nothing is better than just anything.” But I also know that I’m not willing to settle, and that there is a man out there for me. Someday, it will happen. And if not, then I will live my life as best I can without it. From my point of view, a bit crippled, lacking in something essential. But I cannot stay in the place of “poor lonely me.”
I hope that answers your questions.
Ben
The shared life.
Absolutely, being true, helps EVERYONE around you. Whatever the other relatives, colleagues and so on have been taught about homosexuality too, the bottom line is, it’s the gay person that is the owner of the truth, and the empirical evidence of living gay and being gay.
No one else is qualified to argue.
It’s unfortunate that regardless of whatever loving relationship has been in effect, the revelation about being gay, shouldn’t destroy them.
And it’s a fair question to ask: why should it?
The young lady that I mentioned I sent this article to, nearly cut off her brother altogether. She’s devout in her Christianity. She’s also just 21 and never been in a relationship herself.
However, her pastor is ex-gay. She admires him greatly because he advertises that he’s no longer gay and that ‘change is possible’.
Now, what could likely happen, is this young lady find herself married to a gay man because her church encourages the idea that gay men can change and should.
This is so unfair, and not healthy for the endurance of a marriage. That she is inexperienced with men might be a way that she won’t know to what level she could or deserves to be satisfied, but that’s when us straight folks get together and make comparisons, will a person start to wonder at the depth and integrity of their sex lives.
We have a wonderful friend named Pam Ferguson, who went through an arduous experience of her church and pastoral counselors getting into some very intimate aspects of her and her ex husband’s sex lives and what their church community expected of them, as well as what they wanted for themselves.
She was very frank about that experience and what they all went through (they have two sons). I thought her brave and very classy to educate us on the experience of being the wife of a gay man, whose church encouraged their marriage.
But it’s fair and right to say, that few of these mixed marriages ever survive or are satisfactory enough to who is in them.
So, it does go back to the original reason it’s done in the first place.
Is it for the CHURCH, or for the individuals with something to prove so as to belong to the church?
Well, it certainly isn’t for the individuals who have to be the ones in the marriage and deal with the consequences of failure.
It isn’t for the children who might result and end up embroiled in bitter custody and relationship battles.
I think too, that the transgender and asexual factor can’t be discussed enough in this either.
A church or NARTH or Exodus wouldn’t consider asexuality a disorder or dysfunction of sexuality.
They aren’t participating in political action against asexual people that they lose their families and jobs and so on because they aren’t producing babies for the cause.
Nor do they consider asexuality something worth acting against at all, in ways like stigma or requiring that asexuals attempt or have regular sex, regardless of how repulsive it is to them and how damaging it would be akin to emotional rape to make them engage in it.
Asexual people also are same sex attracted, and opposite sex attracted. But if you threw the idea into the political arena that asexuals don’t deserve to marry because they don’t want to ‘naturally procreate’ or because they are psychologically and emotional repelled by sex, the same factions who want to keep gay couples from forming pair bonds would consider the idea cruel and absurd.
Which and base, just shows that religious based rationality on sexual orientation is in itself without merit. Sexual orientation is a biological function, and biologically inherent. And that changing it, or trying to IS impossible, but most of all, UNNECESSARY.
But essentially is more complex, AND acceptable than the simplistic reasoning we’re all confronted with.
It is beyond frustrating to live in a era, with handheld computers, space stations and digital technology that would make us all gods to the minds of those who wrote those ancient texts.
Yet, some of us are expected to be set aside and treated differently as if ANYONE lives LIKE people from those times.
This isn’t about relative MORALITY, but understanding how and why certain cultures detailed or did what they did and believed what they did.
But there are some factors that remain the same, such as in how we treat each other and if certain directives LEAD to chaos and injustice, or foster justice and fairness.
I do consider most people who accept homosexuality as a variance on normal sexuality, much more intellectually courageous and honest.
And engaged in learning more through experience, FROM gay people who are open and honest about it.
Seriously, as I said before. I wish the non and anti gay would SHUT UP.
Just SHUT UP and let people have the opportunity to learn from those who know about it best.
But even having the class to give the floor over to gay people is selfishly seen as discrimination against Christians or whoever to not be able to spread misinformation. No matter who it hurts, or how many families AREN’T whole because of that.
What kind of mind believes they are being discriminated against, because they can’t discriminate against someone else?
Even if they don’t really have a reason to consistent with the standards of a secular nation they choose to live in?
Anyway, my friend is very young. She’s lovely and very kind and loving. She has a friendship with her gay brother after all. And she hopes I can meet him someday. He lives in CA, but further south. I love this kid. She calls me her other mama and respects what I have to say.
So the article came in very handy. She can be a very good Christian, and not expect or want a gay person to change, any more than an asexual person should change.
It makes more sense that our Creator wanted variety among us, as there is in so many other things. It keeps our Creator and us, from ever getting bored.
wouldn’t it be great regan if my article saved you dear young friend from a making a terrible mistake…….that is….marrying a gay man with the false hope that it will help heal his ‘same sex attraction’….and make him heterosexual.
I like this Ben
@ regan…..I thought this was particuarly relevant to your last post.
Concerning the Homosexuality and Christianity debate from now on no one is allowed to talk about it unless they have enough points:
“10 if you have considered and studied the relevant biblical passages
10 if you have actually read the six passages about homosexuality in the bible
20 if you have read other passages that might affect the way you read those six passages
5 if you have read one or more books that reinforce the position you already hold
25 if you have read one or more books arguing the opposite position
10 if you have spent three hours reading websites showing a variety of views
50 for every friend you have who’s been through an ex-gay ministry
50 for every friend who’s been through an ex-gay ministry that didn’t work
50 for every friend who’s gay and in a long-term committed relationship
50 for every friend who’s gay and not in a committed relationship
50 for every parent you’ve listened to whose child is gay
When you have 3,000 points, you can speak on the issue.”
–Brian McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy Conference: The Gay Forum, 2005
https://thinkerup.blogspot.com/2006/09/brian-mclarens-unorthodox-quotes_07.html
You really the the nail on the head, Ben:
“Something is better than nothing, but nothing is better than just anything.”
Btw, I don’t, as a Christian, feel homosexuality is against my religion. My feeling is that Jesus would have said something about it if it mattered to him … but he didn’t.
This also very much resonated with me as a single gay man for over 10 years now.I live a very happy fulfilled life in singledom. As nice as it would be to have a partner I don’t fell a great void. A second rate relationship is not an option.
BTW…..this is not an advertisement for offers…..hehe
You are blessed SFtom. I’m glad to hear that. This is not always the case of course for people from Christian backgrounds.
The message of Jesus is very simple. Love God, love others and love yourself. It is the complexities of religion and interpretations that have screwed people up. Possible He did say something homosexuality
A study of eunuchs of the day reveals that quite possibly they were the gay men of that time.
@Anthony: Wow, what study is that?
I have read quite a bit on this actually. I find it quite facscinating……you can do your own research and come to your own conclusions of course…….here might be a place to commence.
happy reading
Fascinating article, anthony. It underlines how once again, when people quote their bibles about how much god hates homos, they believe something that they are presuming they understand in a translation of an interpetation of something that may possibly be about homoseuxality, at least as it was understood in a culture 6000 miles and two to three millenia ago.
It is a well known reality that the average christian is uneducated about the historical, cultural contexts of the verses they quote or the original langueages……they read an english translation in a western cultural mindset…….hence the problem. The average christian is shocked or incredulous when they are told that the word homosexual didn’t even appear in an English translation of the bible till 1946.
https://thegreatheresy.wordpress.com/