I Hope This Will Help Some People.

[ChristianGirlForever]

This article is a must-read for people who want to better understand the agonizing struggle that Christians with gay attraction go through. It was heartbreaking to read what the author went through as a teenage girl. For someone like me, who is trying to be more understanding and empathetic toward people who carry this cross, the article was very helpful. She described it so well.

The story does have a very beautiful ending that gave me chills. I know that God doesn't always make a happy ending for holy gay Christians, but He sometimes does. Mrs. Lloyd certainly wasn't expecting her cross to be lifted. In my life, God has shown me many times that He is truly full if surprises. I hope this article will give understanding to clueless people like me, and hope to people who carry the cross Mrs. Lloyd bore.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/02/14388/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=33d2a08501-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-33d2a08501-84098529

[marigold]

The second vignette is way too short! I see what she is trying to do there, but I feel like it would be way too easy to dismiss.

[ChristianGirlForever]

I know, Marigold! I wanted to hear more about her story, too. Still, she has a right to her privacy.

[CrossCuT]

Hmm, Ive read the article and there are a few things that stuck out to me.

 

 

 

While she is in therapy, if she mentions wishing to resist these attractions and wonders whether she might develop heterosexually—or at least not identify as gay—it is considered unethical for the counselor to discuss this possibility with her. In some states, such as California and New Jersey, it is even against the law.

So it has been pretty proven that that type of behavioral therapy is extremely detrimental to the people who go through it. I dont know if it is not my place to say, but I feel like the idea that their homosexual attraction is unwanted is because they grew up in a society that told them it is unwanted. I wouldnt be shocked to run into many homosexuals who were trying very hard to fight against the inherent desires to satisfy our heteronormative society. 

 

Obviously if an individual truly wants to go after that method...I dunno. I feel so pained that we would subject anyone to that level of exclusion to the point where they needed to change such a personal aspect of themselves. Its terrible. I think that once society stops being homophobic, bigotted, and hateful towards the homosexual community, we wont have people WANTING the behavioral change therapy. 

 

 

 

Through social and therapeutic efforts, our fifteen-year-old’s same-sex attractions are reified as central to her very being and personhood. Alleviating her distress about them and encouraging her to accept herself as lesbian is the only option presented to her. She may even be told that she was “born this way,” evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

 

I think this particular paragraph is very careless. To any homosexual who reads this article who has religious or social opposition to their gender identity or sexual orientation, they will think that its possible they can unwrite something that is in their genes. There is sufficient information that it is genetic or at least enough to know it isnt some wishy washy behavior you can change on a dime.

 

And it IS part of who you are. We need to stop telling homosexuals that what they feel is wrong and start accepting them for who they are as a whole. If we accomplish this then they wont be pressured to seek these terrible "therapies".

 

----

 

Over all, I think this article serves predominantly as a narrative of the extremely negative societal forces that are at play against homosexual youth.

 

[Maggyie]

CC, while the article did make my eyes roll a bit, I think even in a completely organic environment many gay people would rather not be gay.

The relationship between a man and a woman is always going to be more dynamic than the relationship between two people of the same sex.

If you paint with a tube of blue paint and red paint you actually have 3 colors to use. 1+1=3.

If you paint using 2 tubes of just red paint, your art is going to be monochromatic. 1+1=1.

I think many gay people can sense that lack of a "dynamic of difference." And besides that, it's a deep desire of many to have children - and not to adopt, but to make love, and voila, a pregnancy. even though it doesn't make sense given their attractions. Its an urge that goes beyond sexuality.

[CrossCuT]

well, gay people aren't tubes of monochromatic paint so i disagree completely.

[Amppax]

well, gay people aren't tubes of monochromatic paint so i disagree completely.

I don't see how you missed her point. But you did. Edited February 6, 2015 by Amppax

[Maggyie]

well, gay people aren't tubes of monochromatic paint so i disagree completely.

If you believe that gender "doesn't matter" in who people are and what they bring to a relationship I can introduce you to many transgender people who will gently explain to you it does.

Hence, two women are going to bring something different to a relationship than a man and a woman... And, hint, it's not just an extra uterus. Nothing less, but something different. And that difference (or lack of difference between them) makes a difference. See what I did there.

Also it's helpful to actually listen to gay people and realize that the gay experience is not this monolith you seem to believe it is even amongst (ESPECIALLY amongst) people who are positive about sexuality.

There's this idea, If part of who you are makes you ambivalent, you're repressed. It's not allowed. There's something wrong with you that needs to be fixed.

Straight people are allowed to feel all kinds of ways about sexuality and not get put through the wringer about it. Or accused of being psychologically unhinged in some way. Gay people, not so much. Mostly because of straight people with backgrounds such as yourself.

[Not The Philosopher]

It is, I think, also worth pointing out that homosexuality is a complex phenomenon that impacts people differently. A lot of the tropes put forward in psychological theories (poor relationship with father, lack of good relations with same-sex peers, etc) don't ring true for me. Indeed I evidently fly right under peoples' gaydars altogether. But these explanations are genuinely helpful to a lot of other people, so who am I to say that they don't have merit in those cases?

Anyway, same-sex attracted people aren't ontologically different from straight people. Sexual desire has a certain fluidity to it. Some people do experience change in that regard, and I don't see why, if they want to explore that possibility further, they should be denied. The problem is when change becomes an expectation, or when heterosexual desire becomes confused with holiness/chastity etc.

[CrossCuT]

No I got her point, I just find it offensive.

 

 

If you believe that gender "doesn't matter" in who people are and what they bring to a relationship I can introduce you to many transgender people who will gently explain to you it does.

Hence, two women are going to bring something different to a relationship than a man and a woman... And, hint, it's not just an extra uterus. Nothing less, but something different. And that difference (or lack of difference between them) makes a difference. See what I did there.

Also it's helpful to actually listen to gay people and realize that the gay experience is not this monolith you seem to believe it is even amongst (ESPECIALLY amongst) people who are positive about sexuality.

There's this idea, If part of who you are makes you ambivalent, you're repressed. It's not allowed. There's something wrong with you that needs to be fixed.

Straight people are allowed to feel all kinds of ways about sexuality and not get put through the wringer about it. Or accused of being psychologically unhinged in some way. Gay people, not so much. Mostly because of straight people with backgrounds such as yourself.

 

Could you quote where I said gender doesnt matter? Or maybe youre talking to someone else. So I wont respond to that part of your post since it doesnt apply to me.

I will reiterate that I disagree with the terrible comparison of paint...I find it quite offensive. And if you want to talk about a homosexual relationship in a purely physical way, yes....homosexuals wont experience penis --> vagina sex. But that does not make their relationship monochromatic. Their inability to create children does not lessen their relationship. I would love it for us to move to a point in progression as a society to stop comparing homosexual relationships to heterosexual relationships as a means to determine the good and the bad. 

 

Let them both exist as their own, individual ideas so that they can develop without heteros telling them how much less awesome they are.

 

 

 

Your very last paragraph is something I do agree with however. I realize that people have a lot of opinions about homosexuals and what we think they should or shouldnt be. I agree 100% that homosexuals are allowed to find their own identities and be who they want to be without us pushing our own ideals onto them. 

 

However my main argument was not that I wanted all homosexuals to be liberated, I was just pointint out that societal pressures have created a world in which they feel like they have to choose. We beat down on them sooo hard for their disordered ways that they feel like they need the option of change in order to feel good. That is what I dont like. I want all homosexuals to grow up in a world where who they are isnt demeaned. If they grow up in that happy world and still dont want to be gay, then Im cool with it! I hope that makes sense. Probably not.

[Maggyie]

CC you are missing the point. I didn't compare gay people to tubes of paint. My comparison is regarding gender and relationships.

The prefix homo comes from the Greek, meaning "same." Sameness in sexual relationships and other relationships is often critical for success- same education, religion, interests etc. However sameness can also be more constricting, less creative. Without difference there can be no tension, and without tension there can be no dynamism.

Gender or really sex is the ultimate difference that makes a difference. I profoundly believe that women and men are not just humans with different sorts of genitals attached. Rather a woman's experience of life will never be fully understood by a man, no matter how much of a feminist or what his background is. And vice versa. It's not just a social construct but a biological reality that women and men bear in their bodies.

A relationship between a man and a woman, especially a sexual one, and especially the idealized sexual relationship presented in the Chtistian/Catholic imagination, is about 2 people having the most permanent, intense and primary bond possible while still ultimately remaining a mystery to each other.

The tension that mystery creates - the friction from loving but not being able to bridge the unknown - that's what makes those relationships synergistic, another Greek word meaning "greater than the sum of their parts." 1+1=3. Talking about childbearing as the "creative" aspect of this is accurate as far as it goes but it truly goes far beyond that.

Can gay couples generate that dynamic tension, yes, but never to the extent of that difference that is carved into human experience from the moment of conception, and which we bear in our dna, namely sex differences. Gender shapes our paths and identities in the most powerful ways imaginable both socially and biologically.

I am sure you are not truly offended but merely performing for an audience of one (yourself) as I have seen to usually be the case amongst language police in academia. It's a self-conscious thing. By the way "that idea offends me" doesn't mean "that idea is wrong."

[ChristianGirlForever]

I agree with a great deal of what you wrote, Maggie, but there is something I'd like to ask you. Do you agree with the Catholic Church that the homosexual act is objectively disordered? The only reason I'm asking is because if you do believe this, I don't see how you could think that a gay couple could in any way create the "dynamic tension" that a married couple could in the sacramental union. I know you didn't say it was the same thing, but something objectively disordered cannot compare to something holy.

Edited February 7, 2015 by ChristianGirlForever

[Maggyie]

Yes I agree with the church's teaching. However the creative friction I'm talking about can be found in many human relationships - friendships, business partnerships, etc. it's just that a marriage is the relationship par excellence