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One of the more controversial, if not widely known, features of the current cultural landscape in America, is the ex-gays' movement. I do not want to say too much about it, considering that both sides (as we shall see) are aggressive, prejudiced and thoroughly opinionated; but the least that can be said is that there are organized groups in America claiming to be people who were once practicing homosexuals and who now have, as it were, kicked the habit.

These people's claims infuriate the GLBT movement, because there is an assumption among GLBT activists that they need an ideology, and that their ideology must defend the claim that sexual deviation is something innate and inevitable, as natural as having arms and legs. They insist on a very extreme version of the old "gay gene" notion, to the extent that they sound as though they denied any other possible cause for any possible case. Not only homosexuality, not only transgendering, but even bisexuality, must be - to judge by some of the rhetoric that emanates from their movement - genetically determined.

As might be expected, and although there is no necessary relationship between religion and a desire to change one's sexual identity, activist Christian groups, mostly grass-root Protestants ("ministries"), are the keenest promoters of ex-gays as a "movement". They form organized groups, try to get on panel debates and be recognized by national associations, set up training camps and facilities for homosexuals who might want to be changed; and they do not seem to be short of trade, at least by their own account. (What follows will show why I cannot trust the views of either side.)

A teen-ager called Zach from Tennessee was sent to an ex-homosexuals' camp, I assume by his parents. He kept a blog which gave a very negative account of events, to the point where the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services launched an investigation of the camp as a result of Zach’s online diary. However, the investigation was closed for lack of any evidence to support Zach's claims.

I do not take this as proving anything. On the one hand, it is perfectly possible that the Children's Services people were prejudiced in favour of the camp and made only a perfunctory investigation; or that the camp covered up whatever abuse had taken place, well enough to fool investigators. It is equally possible that Zach, sent to a camp where he may not have wanted to be, perhaps already committed to the GLBT movement, exaggerated or even lied online to blacken the camp's reputation. The fact that he was able to keep an unsupervised online diary and put in apparently horrible detail does not argue in favour of a gulag-like environment, but that is hardly a strong point.

But while I do not believe myself able to assess the reality of what went on, a man called Kevin Naff, editor of The Washington Blade, had no such doubts. He took every word of Zach's as Gospel, and used it as the starting point of a tirade against the very idea that same-sex attractions, whether or not wanted, might be cured. So far, so boilerplate. He wrote nothing that his kind of person has not written a hundred times, not as well as some, and, to judge by one of our fellow LJers, not even as hatefully as some others.

However, Mr.Naff's characteristic seems to be an undisciplined indulgence in his own feelings, which, for some reason, he imagines to be important. He concluded his article with a frank declaration of impotent hatred: the “ex-gay” movement “drives me into fits of rage... Someday, science will discover the biological or genetic root of homosexuality and finally put to rest the absurd notion that sexual orientation is a choice. Until then, we must counter the damaging rhetoric of the ‘ex-gays’ and ensure that young gays like Zach understand that they are perfectly normal as they are. It’s the ‘ex-gays’ that belong in a reparative camp.”

This is a fairly foolish piece of writing, the expression of frustration and impotence. He implicitly admits that there is no scientific evidence ("someday, science will discover that...") for his dogma that there are "genetic roots of homosexuality" and that the "notion that sexual orientation is a choice" is "absurd". He is ranting, like a man up against a brick wall, against "damaging rhetoric", and, like many people who feel themselves to be on the losing side, fantasizes about doing to the enemy what he feels they are doing to his side: "It’s the ‘ex-gays’ that belong in a reparative camp.”

Is this sort of talk to be taken seriously? As an indication of a fairly desperate frame of mind, yes; as anything like a practical program, of course not. Anyone who takes this sort of screed as a serious threat to shut the "ex-gays" up in concentration camps is either ill-intentioned or incapable of understanding human nature. At worst, it counts as a very abstract, very unpractical reflection of a desire to silence the enemy. That is certainly not nice, either in the itch to silence someone, or in treating opponents in a debate as enemies to be squashed; which is not alien to the GLBT movement as I have encountered it. But it has nothing practical about it. If anything, Mr.naff's outburst is a sort of backhanded compliment to the success of the "ex-gay" movement.

(To the success, I say; not to the merits. On this matter I intend to remain strictly neutral. But what Mr.Naff tells us is that he feels that the practical success of the "ex-gay" movement, however limited, threatens people like him.)

So what happens? It happens that a group called the Traditional Values Coalition gets hold of Mr.Naff's screed, turns it upside down, and makes a story out of it. The closing burst of helpless rage is taken to be the point of the whole article, and the Coalition publises on its website, as a serious news story, that ‘Washington Blade’ Editor Wants Ex-Homosexuals Imprisoned.

I have no sympathy for the likes of Kevin Naff, who are copiously represented in HP fandom, and I have suffered at their hands. But anything less Christian, less intelligent, less open-minded, than this patently manipulative approach, is hard to imagine. They take mr.Naff's screed and make a program out of it; they make of it, what it patently is not and never was, a program for action. What kind of Christianity is this, with so little understanding of human nature, so little interest in the human beings that oppose them, not concerned with anything they may say or feel, but only in how his words can be twisted to be used as a political scarecrow?

The Coalition, like other such groups, has a point. We have seen - I posted an account no more than a couple of entries ago - how the law and the courts are being used by people like Mr.Naff (I do not only mean the GLBT movement, but the whole vast arch of leftist prejudice and aggression) for a series of assaults upon freedom of thought and of worship; we know that people of this kind are perfectly ready to use such means to silence us. But this sort of instrumental abuse of others' words is actively self-damaging. Demonizing opponents is not going to help us; understanding them - even if to condemn them - is the only sound road. I have no tenderness, nor even much sympathy, for the likes of Mr.Naff; but to lie about him in order to frighten third parties is not going to give us any advantage. The effect of a lie only lasts until the truth is known; and then the liar, whatever his motives, is discredited in the eyes of others. Anyone who finds out what Mr.Naff really said, and why, is not going to take the Coalition's arguments seriously again; and for that reason alone, even forgetting the moral primacy of truth, this sort of stuff should be left strictly alone. This is the kind of controversy from which both sides come out equally soiled, the Christian one, if possible, even worse.

Date: 2005-07-01 04:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Nice one. I can't really say I disagree with anything you wrote, as I have seen and written on the same kind of thing (though not pertaining to the GLBT crowd).

It's like that sort of behavior is a plague, infecting virtually everyone it touches. It's astounding that in the modern "civilised" world that anyone is entitled to their opinions... as long as it's not the wrong one. Actually, I think I should have placed "modern" in the quotes and "civilised" without. It's the "modern" notion that's turning civilisation upside-down and against itself.

Date: 2005-07-01 10:56 pm (UTC)
ext_3663: picture of sheldon cooper from the big bang theory sitting down and staring at leonard with a smug/gauging look (Default)
From: [identity profile] jennilee.livejournal.com
Excellent post.

Date: 2005-07-02 01:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunderpants.livejournal.com
Interesting post old man. Intriguingly, the idea that homosexuality can be cured with motivational tapes or camps (the tapes which can be sold for hundreds of dollars, the retreats for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars) is dubious enough. A genuine attempt to alleviate the worrying of concerned (albeit misled) Christian parents, or a moneymaking scam from religious ministries who advertise 'make your donation to the ministry more meaningful' on their sites?

Date: 2005-07-02 04:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
Or both? What I object to is a single-cause explanation of "homsexuality", even assuming that such a phenomenon exists, since in my experience several different causes seem to raise their heads even in a single case.

Date: 2005-07-02 05:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunderpants.livejournal.com
Well, I dunno. Surely one would imagine that there are more reliable methods of psychoanalysis than what is on offer in motivational tapes or 'lifestyle retreats'. I saw an ad for one of those tapes somewhere before where the spelling and grammar was hilariously bad, leading me to place its validity and effectiveness somewhere near that of those herbal viagra pill advertisements I get bombarded with in my junkmail.

I must find that link for you too, btw. It was an Awful site of the day on SA.com a little while back.

I also think that a single-cause explanation is risky, but at the same time assuming it's a reversible condition is similarly risky.

Date: 2005-07-02 06:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
assuming it's a reversible condition is similarly risky
These are people - quite a few of them - who claim to have made the transition. Assuming that they are all lying or delusional is even riskier, not to mention closer to GLBT absolutism and intolerance than I would like.

Date: 2005-07-02 07:53 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunderpants.livejournal.com
Straight people similarly do have sex with people of their gender as well. And this is all assuming that bisexuality is out of the question too.

Date: 2005-07-02 08:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
You are just playing around with definitions. To you, a person who (say) only had sex with his own sex until a given time, then changes to the opposite sex, has only shown that s/he falls not into the box called "homosexual" but into the one called "bisexual". This discards in advance the possibility of taking their claim seriously. These are people who insist that they have gone through a profound, life-changing experience, that they were before "homosexual" and that now they are "straight". Who are you to tell them, "no, you were always bisexual"?

Date: 2005-07-02 11:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunderpants.livejournal.com
I dunno. Who are we to say that they may actually have been gay?

I dunno. I think that this is an issue I'm going to disagree with you on, and leave it at that. I'm not doubting that there are people who say that they are no longer gay. I'll never know until I speak to any of these people for myself.

Date: 2005-07-02 11:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
OK. That's all I wanted to say. I have never spoken to any of these people myself, I do not know where they are coming from, all I know is that judging in advance is unwise.

Date: 2005-07-03 05:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avus.livejournal.com
To me, the saddest parts of all this? The suffering & hate on all sides, which is fostered by how both sides approach things.

I work in Colorado Springs -- a kind of epicenter for some of the least disciplined and most closed-minded approaches. You fight liberalism. I try not to fight anything, but to find paths for people. But the hate & intolerance.... (Coming from an old country church, I've found that about as unChristian as one can get. But I've learned not to hold anyone to too high a standard, unless they have the power & inclination to impose on others, then I don't see a good way around it.)

There's so much hate & suffering around sexuality. I see it in my office regularly. Young gays, parents of same, often from a conservative Christian tradition -- Catholic, fundamentalist, Mormon, etc. It often takes a lot of work to get both sides to reconnect with the love and trust that were there before this came between them. Sometimes it can be done. To talk, to explore, to help.

Our society, with very little data & even less understanding, has declared sexuality a problem, and made rather exclusive definitions about it and what is & isn't TRUE. Coming from a small town, being raised many decades ago, when I started doing this work -- because no one in my office wanted anything to do with issues around sex, let alone sexuality -- and that even meant helping people with HIV/AIDS, I did my usual thing -- I was trained as a humanistic scholar. I got the best historical & cultural data I could find.

Reading that taught humility -- there's a lot more variety & change & acceptance & struggle than one might initially realize. Human experiences, human cultures are like that. Truth is hard to find, and when we find it, it's often pretty cloudy. ("Now we see as through a glass darkly, then as face to face. Then we will understand as now we are fully understood." Paul's writing, as I'm sure you know, I Corinthians 13.)

It's easy to poke holes in another's position. I'm told by a scholar that Aristotle wrote a book that allows someone to destroy any definition of anything, and that was old even then. But what's the point? And when there's so much uncertainly & suffering involved, doing the rigid thing, the thing "as if we were sure & pure, and the other side's evil", and then springboarding to hate.... Well, if we're going to survive in a diverse world, we're going to need to proceed in such ways where discussions can focus on problems, not the supposed intentions of others, and controversies can search positively for such bits & pieces of tentative truths, whatever we can find, knowing that truth always has a tentative nature or side or aspect to it, and that truth remains open to further discovery, too.

"Now we see as through a glass darkly." One of Paul's best lines. If someone as spiritually solid as Paul could say this, well should we do any less. And leading, as it does, to that great passage, one of the most profound of the Bible: For these three remain, Faith, Hope & Love. But the greatest of these is Love.

That's where I try to get to: Love. Then things tend to go better. Including the struggle for whatever truths might be hanging around darkly.

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