Are there any gay people who think they choose to be gay?

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NARTH (secular organisation)

"NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality. As an organization, we disseminate educational information, conduct and collect scientific research, promote effective therapeutic treatment, and provide referrals to those who seek our assistance." NARTH website

I agree. I just want to tell people with unwanted same-sex attraction that they are hope. Therapy work well (around 80% here in Quebec for the non-religious group "Ta Vie Ton Choix").

Those are outright lies.

First, you cannot use your experience to suggest to other people who are disordered as a result of their same sex attraction that they can experience results comparable to yours. Remember what it says on the Weight Watchers ad: "Results may vary." You are wantonly irresponsible if you fail to disclose the same.

Second, the therapy does not work well, and there is absolutely no clinical evidence to suggest the 80% figure that you so blithely cite.

I won't contradict your statements about your own experience. But I will call you a liar to your face if you dare to suggest falsehoods like these.

I found a study on SOCE (sexual-orientation change efforts therapy) with a sucess rate of 53% to 64%.

The original study was published in 2007 by Stanton Jones, Ph.D., of Wheaton College, and Mark Yarhouse, Ph.D., of Regent University.

http://narth.com/2011/10/2061/

Also, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer (atheist) found that SOCE can be very effective (around 80%). Dr. Spitzer isn't anti-gay. He help APA to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973.

I was laughing, but then I remembered people like you are allowed to vote.

Not to pick a fight, nor do I wanna pry into your personal life, but Im just curious. What exactly are you talking about?
Forget the stats, just about you.

Do you feel that you were actually 'cured' of homosexuality?

If so what does that actually mean?

Do you mean (a) the program caused you to actually become hetereosexual?

Or (b) the program is to homosexuality what AA is to drinking perhaps- the urge never goes away but the coaching and fellowship helps keep you from succumbing to it? ( I suspect thats what these programs the AngelRho talks about are really about- which is fine if thats what someone wants).

Or is it (c) niether of the above? you're talking about something else entirely.

Yes.

I found where came my same sex attraction. It's my reaction to an absent father and a mother who took all the space at home. Elizabeth Moberly call this "defensive detachment". You can learn more here: http://www.samesexattraction.org/development.htm

I took time in therapy for healing the past. Also, I try to have a better relationship with my father. In the healing process, same sex attraction disappear.

Today, I have almost no attraction to men. I have been in a relationship with a women in the past but I still struggled with AS issue. It's why we broke up. It was before my AS diagnosis.

Hmm. I wonder why that could be? Oh!! ! Maybe coping with the discrimination and alienation could explain it! Look at my earlier post for elaboration.

What about intersex people? They may be forced by our cultural conventions to present as one way or another, but they aren't created as fitting that male-female dichotomy so neatly.



Your "natural order" according to God is 2,000 years old, and also includes misogynistic gems like this:



On the earthly side-- If you cannot see how this antiquated notion of the "natural order" fundamentally conflicts with the concept of equal rights for all and rule of law, then I'm not sure what to tell you. You might as well go live in a totalitarian junta or something, because when we start getting into talk of who is a first-class citizen and who is a second-class citizen, we're not in democratic territory anymore.

And on the ethereal side-- I thought God was supposed to be a loving, forgiving Father. I thought His love for His children was supposed to be infinite. Why should He subjugate one demographic of His children to another for reasons determined by birth? And further, why should He make some of His children homosexual, only to forever deny them the right to truly share their lives with the people they love? Strikes me as a little cruel, don't you think?



If having associations with paganism were a mark of "inacceptable behavior for a Christian believer", you wouldn't be celebrating Christmas or Easter. Christmas as we know and love it today contains a number of rituals which actually arise from the pagan Roman winter solstice festival known as Saturnalia. Even the date reflects the influence of paganism-- there's not a whole lot of evidence that Christ was actually born in late December, in the dead of winter. Similarly, Easter also has roots in paganism, in annual observances of the arrival of spring. Yet Christianity has been able to reconcile these pagan behaviors with its own canon. That is, of course, because when Christianity was spreading to areas of eastern and northern Europe dominated by Germanic tribes and other pagan peoples, it was trying to convert them-- and mixing a few of the pagan rituals into the Christian doctrine made conversion easier.

The fact is, Christianity has a long history of colluding with paganism when it serves the agendas of the Christians.

Last edited by Chevand on 30 May 2012, 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Being gay is no more an "illness" than being left-handed.

And I understand that being Jewish, especially during the 1930s through 1940s, was strongly correlated with serious health problems, a higher probability of incarceration, and a higher risk of violent death. Sig heil.

The Klansmen are not performing a Nazi salute. They are performing a Bellamy salute. It even says it in the jpg link. It looked strange when I saw it, and I thought something was wrong with it and they were not doing that. Sadly. You can continue, sorry for the derailment.

Die Fahne Hoch!

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/queer-science

"In fact, every major American medical authority has concluded that there is no scientific support for NARTH’s view, and many have expressed concern that reparative therapy can cause harm. Most strikingly, in 2006, the American Psychological Association (APA) stated: “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.” The APA added, “Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”

And flourish it has.

The LGBT community is overwhelmingly the group most targeted in violent hate crimes, according to an Intelligence Report analysis of 14 years of federal hate crime data. Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or blacks; more than four times as likely as Muslims; and 14 times as likely as Latinos.

Despite this hate-inspired violence, anti-gay groups continue to employ virulent rhetoric that demonizes gay men and lesbians, some of it based on NARTH’s research. This strategy of using science, however flawed, to fortify their religious condemnation of homosexuality was articulated five years ago by the Family Research Institute’s Paul Cameron, a psychologist whose research has been thoroughly discredited by mainstream scientists."



This guy thinks that you ought to blame your father for the fact that you are gay.

I would ask that you try to be open-minded with me, here.

Try pursuing a healthy relationship with a guy. Don't bother having sex: you can live without it if you are in a secure, stable relationship. You could even make a romantic ritual out of taking a vow of celibacy with him. Just find someone to fill that hole for you. You can express your affection for each other by wholesome touching exercises, play, or shared activities such as gardening or renovating a house. It is a harmful myth that being gay consists entirely of the carnal attraction to members of the same sex. A good, moral man, whom you have something in common with, would do you a lot of good.

Congratulation! You win a Godwin point.

Good advice but I have that man in my life. My ex-husband (we get married) are my best friend. He's an ex-gay and his wife like me too.

Before entering in a relationship with a women, I always ask him for advice.

There is only so long you can keep up something that is unsustainable. My first lover was married for 15 years before it caught up with him that something was missing in his life. It wasn't just something that suddenly developed one day, either. There was a lot of depression and anxiety, also, and it was a protracted torture for both him and his wife. You cannot just go on living a lie. It doesn't work. I have a lot of experience with people who have been in this sort of situation. It ultimately leads to strained compromises, and it often leads to situations in which children from the marriage are the ones who end up suffering.

The only way a straight marriage could work for a guy who is attracted to men is if this person were always bisexual, like the guy I am presently with. The guy I am with now was not only always bisexual, but he and his first lover both courted women consistently throughout their relationship with each other. A lot of women. After their break-up, he didn't even pursue other guys. He eventually ended up in a straight marriage. The fact that he and I ever even considered each other was a strange accident of circumstances because, after his wife's death, he had sworn off dating anybody. He is not like me. He is a bi guy. Not only that, but the only two men he has been with, in his entire life, were ones he ended up sexually involved with quite by accident of circumstances.

However, if you are a thoroughgoingly dyed-in-the-wool gay guy and married to a straight woman, you are making a mistake. It will come back to haunt you. I know that you really have your hopes up that somehow you have silenced your need for a same-sex lover, but it always ends the same way. Gay men who are trying to do without will always end up yearning for the company of a man, and they will often end up seeking it out in dysfunctional and self-destructive ways. I have heard of men openly having same-sex lovers while married to a woman, but I can't imagine what that must do to their wives.

Right now, you are on a chemical high. Your feelings for your wife are genuine enough, for now. However, that chemical high falls away after about seven years. It always ends the same way. If you think that somehow you have beaten the system, you are a fool, and your wife is a bigger fool if she knows what is going on.

Look, I know that you don't believe me here, but I think that you are being very naive in thinking that you can just wish away your sexuality. It is unrealistic. Within less than a decade, you are going to be back at square one, only with a lot of complications that you will not be prepared to deal with. Someone is going to end up getting hurt.