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June 26th, 2007

To A Kid Considering Ex-Gay Therapy…

I posted this on a MySpace discussion group just this morning, where a sixteen year old preacher’s son told the others that he was being sent to an ex-gay camp.  He said he doesn’t want to be gay, that it’s a sin, and that he hated the urges he was having.  This is my reply to him.

I’m reposting it here because you have to know that there are many other kids out there just like him, feeling alone and miserable about urges they’re having that they can’t seem to control, and which shame them deeply.  It just breaks your heart sometimes.  If there’s any shame here, it ought to be falling down hard on the shoulders of the adults in their lives who won’t teach them to reach for that higher ground where urges can become the beautiful desires two people in love feel for one another, because if gay kids can stand tall and proud and love wholeheartedly, then those adults just can’t feel righteous…

Yeah, some people say that simply being gay is a sin. Some people say that it’s just acting on it that’s the sin. And then again, some folks say the universe is less then nine-thousand years old too. Here’s what I say: when the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird.

I’m sorry you’re being troubled by urges. That’s not unusual at your age. Gay and straight alike, we all go through adolescence. And it can be a difficult time no matter what your sexual orientation is. It’s the walk from childhood into adulthood. And part of being an adult, is learning to deal with sex and sexuality. In your teenage years especially, that part of you can yank you around like a big yapping dog on a leash, always tugging you this way and that toward whatever it finds interesting, the instant it catches sight of it. It can be really hard to deal with, especially when you’re young.

Straight kids usually get to learn at this stage, about dating, and about love, and about what it means to become a worthy lover, and find someone to love and be loved by. The really troubling thing about how gay kids are often treated, even these days, is that their urges aren’t allowed to become anything more then urges, aren’t allow to develop into anything higher and more noble then lusts. They’re not told that they too can reach for that higher ground where two people can find a soulmate in each other, and nurture and share an intimate body and soul romance between them.

That is one of the most perfect joys of this life there is…to find your other half, and to love and be loved by them. But like anything else important in life, you have to learn how, you have to make yourself ready for it, and become worthy of it, and gay kids are taught only that all they have, and all they ever will have, are urges. A kind of acid is slowly poured over their capacity to love and trust and accept love and trust from another, and the possibility of finding that soulmate, that intimate other, is carefully and deliberately taken away from them. If there is such a thing as Sin in this world, capital S, then doing that to someone has to be a big one.

If you’re worried about being gay, you’re worrying about the wrong thing. Worry instead that you are trustworthy, that your word is good, that your friends can trust you, that you do your share of the work, that you never become the kind of person who takes advantage of other people who are weaker then yourself, or more vulnerable, that you care that your community, and your country are better for your having walked in it, and that the people you take into your arms, whether they’re male or female, are better for having been loved by you, and not worse. That’s the important stuff in life. The rest is detail. I tell you that if you take care of the important stuff, the detail will work itself out.

2 Responses to “To A Kid Considering Ex-Gay Therapy…”

  1. Peterson Toscano Says:

    Bruce, thank you. This is lovely and powerful. Ah, if I knew someone like you when I was a teen struggling to make sense of my life, how different things could have been. This is very powerful.

    Do you know where his parents are sending him?
    Peterson

  2. Bruce Says:

    Ah, thank you much Peterson. I wish someone could have said those things to me back then too. I might not still be single today. But at least we can say them to the gay kids we meet along the way now.

    I don’t know where he’s being sent, or really for that matter if. He’s only posted a couple messages to the Discussions WITH and ABOUT Fundamentalist Christians MySpace group. It’s owned by one of the regulars in FreeZ…a guy who used to go by the screen name “Woody”. Woody alerted me to the situation. Here’s a link to the discussion the kid posted on.

    ..it’s one of those knotty MySpace URLs, so if it doesn’t work for you let me know and I’ll try to find something that does. The kid’s 16 and his profile is marked “Private”, so I have no idea what’s going on in his life other then the two messages he posted on that forum, but others who seem to know him have said that the kid’s father is a “high profile” preacher.

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