Is It Really About Hate? Homophobia and The Episcopal Church

Commentary

By David W. Virtue in London
www.virtueonline.org
5/1/2009

This past week, I was given a unique opportunity to witness first hand two opposing forces locked in combat over homosexuality.

The first group was 100 mostly men who had voluntarily come together at Emmanuel Center, London, to give witness to their changing lives. They had come from as far away as Israel, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland and the U.S. to tell their stories of struggle with same-sex attractions as well as to hear, participate and share their stories in a non-threatening environment.

Were they all happy, ebullient, "I'm instantly changed" testimonies of men and women? Of course not. Were they suddenly and miraculously cured of their same-sex attractions? Absolutely not. Were they now married with two kids living in a nice neighborhood with a picket fence? No. Were they all still struggling? Mostly, yes.

What marked them out as different is, that by the grace of God, they were slowly being freed from a behavior that had made them dysfunctional and could prove deadly, leaving them lonely, desperate, afraid, and, in many cases, suicidal. By their own choice, they were on the road to recovery and healing. Would they be cured? That is not the right word. The word is changed.

Were they all self-loathing? I saw little evidence of that. Most were searching for wholeness. They hated what they were, but more importantly, they wanted to become what God meant for them to be - men, real men who, at a minimum, could live full lives as single men without jumping into bed with other men and engaging in anal sex, fisting, urinating on each other or bug-chasing. For some men, the desire was greater - to desire a woman, get married, and start a family.

They had come, because somewhere deep inside themselves was the desire to be free of their attractions with persons of the same sex, and they wanted out.

Was anybody coercing them? No. They came voluntarily to hear two world- class therapists and a renowned psychiatrist preach the gospel of reparative therapy, a much maligned notion hated by homosexuals and the psychological profession who believe that change is not only impossible, but is intolerable to even mention or consider, because out there somewhere there is a gay gene waiting to be found which will prove that homosexuals are born gay.

Ironically, none of the speakers were explicitly Christian. One was an orthodox Jew, another was a secular Jew, skeptical about any sort of creed, and the third was a Roman Catholic, but that was not remotely apparent in his work as a therapist. This was no Anglican evangelical therapist, nor was there a conspiracy to convert people in some subtle underhanded way. Those who put on the event were indeed orthodox Anglican Christians.

All of those who came attended because they wanted to learn more about themselves and because they knew that they had been parented badly. A weak or uninvolved father, a possessive mother...a poor self image. When their fathers didn't hug them, someone else did and, more often than not, took sexual advantage of the situation.

In the two sessions I witnessed, men stood up and told their stories of pain, rejection and, in one case, a man told of how his mother had told her son how he should live every detail of his life. He shouted for release. He cried...then he laughed. Everyone clapped. Change had begun.

For the record, nobody used the Bible as a hammer. Nobody quoted the obvious chapters of Scripture condemning homosexual behavior. Rabbi Arthur Goldberg who heads JONAH, a ministry helping homosexuals leave the lifestyle, carefully explained the Torah's prohibitions against both gay and lesbian behavior. At no time did he condemn or brow beat his hearers.

From a heterosexual outsider's perspective, it was painful to hear and watch as grown men broke down and cried, revealing their inner souls and the family dynamics that had brought them to the point where they now poured it all out to a therapist in front of a group of seekers also looking for healing.

By contrast on the street outside, a 100 plus angry men, women and children, as well as a group calling themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence whose sexuality I could not determine (I chatted with a "sister" whose voice clearly betrayed that she was a he) paraded up and down waving placards and chanting "2,4,6,8 there is no cure only hate." Other angry gay activists placards read "only prejudice needs a cure", "there is no cure for love", "positive alternative to bigotry", "even Jesus loves gays" and "inside lies obfuscation and despair".

The contrast could not have been starker. The charges could not have been more false. Their actions only betrayed their own core anxieties, pain and fears.

The truth is no "hate" of any kind was going on inside the church. There was no bigotry. No one was trying to cure anybody. No one even remotely hinted at or said that Jesus doesn't love gays. There was certainly no obfuscation or despair. The truth is Jesus was barely mentioned. By contrast, I saw hope and love, acceptance and the realization that, for many, change was possible and the only basic ingredient for that to happen was their own desire. Speaker after speaker reiterated that the more highly motivated a person was, the better the chance for change, but that had to come from the person themselves.

The highly trained therapists deplored coercion of any kind, even parental or pastoral coercion...it is not the way to help men and women who want to throw off their same sex attractions.

At the root of it all, I saw a genuine love and acceptance of men and women who were struggling to move away from behaviors they themselves viewed as destructive and dangerous, possibly deadly. They were choosing it, freely and voluntarily.

Psychiatrist and physicist Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a world authority on homosexuality, a man who describes himself as a skeptic about religion, says that the scientific evidence all points to the possibility of change. For over 35 years, his profession has believed the lie that homosexuals form a "class" whose boundaries are defined by a stable "trait". It is not true, he says.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, whose new ground -breaking book, "Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy", says homosexual change is both possible and advisable. His book shows that initially conceptualizing homosexual attraction as a striving "to repair gender deficits," has moved to the realization as a striving "to repair deep self-deficits" and as a "defense against trauma to the core self."

Writes Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, after he attended a Leanne Payne conference, "I met a large number of people who had left the lifestyle and changed their sexuality. There I met hundreds of people struggling with that issue, and many who had successfully emerged on the other side and were married with children. As I got to know them, I found them to be quite remarkable. The struggle to be healed had left an indelible imprint. I saw a humility, an empathy and a fearlessness about life. They knew exactly what it meant to stand up for what they believed in, since the struggle to become who they truly were had exacted such a cost in suffering. Since then I have met plenty of people who have moved away from same sex attractions."

My view, as I watched what was taking place, was of sincere attempts by men to repair "deep self-deficits". As they became aware of the inner core losses and trauma that had been done to them, they became more self confident, even forgiving. What I saw were men and women on the road to change and healing. There is no better testimony than the testimony of changed lives. Who can argue with "once I was blind but now I see"? Who indeed.

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