GLBT Relationships Forum - The Truth About "Ex-Gay" Ministries

I can remember reading about an ex-gay 'camp' that parents send their children to. I thought long and hard about it, and realised that people are so against homosexuality because it threatens their narrow view of what love is. I'm going to post this rant I did after I read that story. It deals with Anti-Homosexuality as a result of people's narrow definition of true love.

---

Homophobia, taken literally, is unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality. This isn't what I'm going to talk about because, as the definition states, it's an unreasoning fear. I don't think I want to try to bring reason to something unreasonable.

However, anti-homosexual(ity) (I don't even know if such a term exists) to me, anyways, is the rationalizing of homosexuality as an inherently wrong act, contravening that which is 'natural', or, taken in a more religious sense, that which is 'our purpose'.

It is the latter of these two definitions that really disturbs me.

I want to make one thing clear, coming from my personal experience as a gay person. Rationalizing homosexuality as unnatural or as a counteraction of human purpose is wrong.

What I personally find disturbing is the religious defence of the flagrancy of homosexuality. Those who take this view (particularly in Christian denominations in my experience, as I grew up as a part of one of them), may maintain that homosexuality can primarily be a product of a broken home (ie, a missing mother or father figure), or that those who are homosexual may not fully understand the mechanisms of family life and "love" the way the Creator intended it. Some others may argue that the act of homosexuality is the sinful counterpart to the other apparently 'unsinful' state of just BEING homosexual. I'm not characterizing any single denomination or religion. These are just merely things I have experienced through my own discourse.

Am I well versed in every religious scripture relating to homosexuality? Absolutely not. I do, however, have enough experience in trying to defend my sexuality, that I understand the opposing argument.

Today, I know what love is... it will change tomorrow, though, because I will fall even more in love with my family, my friends, myself (in a non-arrogant way, obviously). Over time, I am faithful that it will intensify, and perhaps branch out other people who cross my path (hopefully someone of the same gender who I will spend my life with... who knows). I know that I am spiritually in tune enough to grasp 'love'. I refuse to believe that because I am a gay person, I do not understand. I also repudiate any sort of doctrine or cannon or catechism or teaching that insists that because I may love someone of the same gender (and show it), I am immoral (or unnatural or sinful or backwards).

Love (and I'm not saying "oh, I love that book" type of love.. I'm talking the real stuff) is NOT conditional. Saying that love in its fullest embodiment between two humans is manifested only between a man and a woman is placing an irrational and unjust condition on it.

It worries me that people place this sort of barrier on what love really is. Restricting it to such a narrow tendentiousness causes severe problems in the world (and, man, I could go on for hours about this). People need to practice the true love they preach. The world would be so positively different.

Clearly, the issue for me isn't myself being rationalized as someone who suffers from an immoral affliction, but rather how the concept of 'love' is being afflicted by those who severely circumscribe it. To be honest, it angers me quite considerably.