exploring modern sexuality

I first became acquainted with the term "ex-gay" a few months ago when Chad Thompson came to speak at UCSB, parading his book titled Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Christian Approach. Mislead by the title as I'm sure the author intended, I threw the flier on my busy university editor desk and vowed to deal with it later. But what I thought was a Christian telling people "It's OK to be gay" had the queer community in furor: it was actually, if you read the fine print, a reformed homosexual Christian telling people "You can change. I did." Rather, from his website, "Provide a living counterexample for those who say that homosexual people can never change."

It's a baffling assertion, really, that it's possible to change one's own sexuality using only self control and a really serious devotion to God and religion. My knowledge of sexuality comes from within, of course, and I'm pretty devoutly heterosexual. My knowledge of religion comes from myself, of course, and I'm pretty casually Jewish. Two identifications that I suppose make it very difficult for me to understand what it's like to be homosexual and Christian. Nevertheless, I was lead to believe that homosexuality is nature, not nurture. The same way my hair is brown, I'm short, and my eyes are brownish hazelish, nature is difficult to change.

To be fair, there is something to be said for people who are able to find something they don't like in themselves and decide to change it. That's hard to do. But I'm not sure if it's quite that easy with the question of sexuality. Ted Haggard accomplished it in a couple weeks. Larry Craig probably will too if he ever decides to admit he was, indeed, soliciting sex in a men's airport restroom. The bottom line is these people can say whatever they want to appease themselves and others who think it's wrong, but we won't ever know what they think about at night before they fall asleep, whether they are ever satisfied again being just heterosexual. Really, it doesn't matter: they are only denying themselves of love, pleasure, and honesty. It's sad, really. Another ex-gay Charlene Cothran (founder of Venus magazine based in Chicago) did an interview with a New York freelance writer that's published here (see April 10, 2007). It's fascinating and I admire the writer, for having the huevos to ask her most of the questions he did, and her, for answering them. So he asks her whether she's still attracted to women. Well, it seems to me that would be the hardest to change: it's easy enough to abstain from sex, dating, and to change your "Looking For" on Facebook to read the opposite gender, but pure, physical attraction is rather involuntary. So she answered: "I would say after 29 years of walking in the sin of lesbianism that if the devil were going to try and tempt me that he's probably not going to send a football player, if you will, because that didn’t do it for me. You follow me? I’ve got sense enough to know if he tries to tempt me he's probably going to send something that resembled the thing that I was entangled with. You follow me?" I follow. And it's a great answer. But basically she's saying, "Yes, I'm still attracted to women, but I think it's evil so I try to shut it out."

Why shut it out? I find it incredibly disheartening that religion is the trigger and the proof behind many of these "reforms." Religion that's supposed to facilitate a good life (happy and healthy?) and a pleasant afterlife. That's for another day. It's just tragic that they would be so devout as to deny themselves of having a completely loving, happy relationship with another person: same sex or opposite.