It’s little wonder that with so few facts on their side, anti-gay activists are forced to make earth-shattering headlines out of unremarkable material.
So it is that WorldNetDaily excitedly reveals that a gay activist has, supposedly, challenged pro-gay arguments:
But now the homosexual activists have had a wrench thrown in their argument, with the admission by a homosexual conference presenter that being “gay” isn’t necessarily permanent.
“Sexuality is fluid, especially when it goes beyond the binary of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ labels,” says a description of the “Beyond Bisexuality: Living Between the Labels” seminar presented by Prideworks for LGBT Youth.
“The way a person experiences it may change over time and with monogamy, which may make labels confusing and ultimately unnecessary.”
WND trots out anti-gay extremists Greg Quinlan and Matt Barber to explain why the statement proves they were right all along:
It means [homosexual activists] honestly know and they’ve always known, they factually know, that sexuality is fluid and is a choice.
But it doesn’t, of course. Sexual orientation may change, but can it be made to change? The claim of the ex-gay movement is not that sexuality may shift over time, but that prayer, conversion, reparative therapy and other treatments can make sexuality change. The evidence repeatedly suggests not.
Psychiatrist Jack Drescher summed up the futility of gay conversion efforts perfectly last year:
I sometimes think of the anecdotal evidence as something like winning the lottery. I’ve seen people on TV talk about they’ve won the lottery ticket, and they’re marketing it as saying you can win the lottery ticket, too. Well, I think planning your financial future on winning a lottery ticket is like planning your sexual future on a conversion therapy.
You can read the full, game-changing admission — a brief blurb describing a workshop at an LGBT youth conference — here.
This is where WND’s whole ridiculous argument collapses. That some people’s sexuality is fluid does not mean that it’s a choice. The colour of my hair has changed twice during my lifetime. Until I was 10 it was corn blond. By the time I was 13 it had become such a dark brown that friends spoke of it as black. By the time I was 30 it had turned completely grey. (This is clearly hereditary, since both my parents and all my siblings were also grey by the age of 30.) So does this prove that hair colour is a choice, and that anyone can change the colour of their hair if they try hard enough? No, of course not; it proves no such thing. The fact that something may change does not prove that you can make it change. (I wish it did, because then I’d change my hair back to its original colour.)
Greg Quinlan:
Notice how Quinlan dodges deftly (and dishonestly) from choice about sexuality in the first sentence to choice about whom you go to bed with in the second, speaking as though they were the same thing, although they’re completely different. (This kind of verbal card-sharping has long been a popular tactic in advertising the ex-gay fraud.) Both gay and straight people choose who they go to bed with. We all know that. People can even choose to go to bed with someone to whom they are not sexually attracted, for all sorts of reasons (e.g. they vainly hope it will alter their sexuality, which it won’t; they’ve been offered money for doing it.) But choosing your sexual orientation is a quite another matter: you don’t and can’t.
What’s so disturbing is that the ex gay industry MUST exist on the exploitation of prejudice and hostility of gay people.
We don’t live in a world where there isn’t constant negative bombardment and expectation of changing as necessary. Not especially for the individual, but for the mostly religious sensibilities of those who target gay people.
This is a political issue, not just a religious or social one. Discrimination and prejudice are very real issues that confront ALL gay people at any time.
Gay people can’t and don’t choose who will accept them, or even deal with them fairly no matter what they do.
Passing for something you’re not, or wanting to, stems from unhealthy and cruel situations. Gay people don’t create the systemic prejudice.
No one spontaneously distrusts gay people, the public is taught to.
To say that gay people are free to choose and can, the hetero orientation is to assume life’s most difficult relationship issues will be better than gay ones.
The presumption is the heterosexuality is the more desirable way to be.
That it’s unnecessary to be heterosexual for any reason, doesn’t matter.
Unless and until the ex gay industry also participates in equal justice and protections for gay people, and supports an environment of acceptance, especially for gay youth, that industry will always be suspect.
Because if a gay person doesn’t want to be gay, even with all the best support and access to other equally well adjusted gay people, STILL wants to figure out a way to not be gay, then that is for another time.
For now, that’s not what the ex gay industry does. Therefore, their motives are greedy and cruel.
Actually, I’m not even sure I’m as convinced of the commonness of sexual fluidity these days, much less the idea that one can make it happen. Quinlan and Barber, what a team. Quinlan repeats that lie (we must assume now that he knows the truth, so his misstatements have become lies) about Francis Collins and the genome project so often, it’s like his battle cry. There isn’t a shred of credibility between them, as evidenced by the venue for their comments.
David, I have a comment and a question. First, the question. Is there a place that I can find the article in which Dr. Jack Drescher talks about the lottery/conversion change metaphor? I quoted him often in my master’s degree project and I’d be interested in reading any other thoughts on the topic he may have offered. Second, is my comment. I agree with you about the sexual fluidity. Depending on one’s upbringing, the time in life when one begins to consciously acknowledge and come to grip’s with his/her orientation as being different than it was previously can give the appearance that it shifted when, the reality is, that it was that way all along. S/he was gay/bi all along and just didn’t (consciously) realise it. Just because a person doesn’t realise that they have an inner capacity to love both sexes does not mean that their “sexual orientation range” was not already there. I know a lady who was married to a man for twenty years and, after their relationship ended (I’m not sure if it was due to divorce or death), she met another lady for whom she felt intense feelings and is not happily coupled with her. Did her orientation shift or did she discover something that had been there all along? Or take those of us who lived in a state of repression for many years. I know in my own case that I was bisexual in my teen and college years, though today I can acknowledge a clear lean toward other men. I was, however, in denial about this and identified as straight. My religious and family conservatism drove me to provide alternative explanations for same-sex attractions (e.g. “I’m a heterosexual who is tempted with same-sex attractions that are not really part of the real me [in Christ], but part of the former me, my sinful nature). As I progressed through my twenties, my opposite sex attractions began to diminish gradually. I continued to struggle with what all this meant. At first I feared that God was “giving me over” (see Romans 1 in the bible) to my perversions. However, in the process of self-discovery, I realised that I was undeniably gay, but was unconsciously holding on to the hope that I could fulfill the demands of my conservative family and have the happily-ever-after wife and kids storyline from my youth. When I finally decided to stop seeking my family’s approval and accept myself as I am, my opposite sex attractions, for all practical purposes, mysteriously disintegrated LOL!! I truly think it is possible to manufacture opposite sex attractions (at least for awhile) to conform to social norms and family/religious expectations (we psychology nuts call it “reversal of affect”). In summary, bisexual people who later discover their “other half” and those who don’t consciously come to terms with their homosexuality until a little later in life (for me it was just recently in my early 30s) may appear to be exhibiting fluidity when, in reality, it is illusory and merely the result of alternative pacing toward the development of self-understanding and identity.
Hi, @Josiah. The quote by Drescher is from the video linked in the article. That said, I’m having difficulty viewing it, so maybe ABC has removed it? [Edit: I corrected the code, so the video should work now.]