The 'Ex-Gay' Myth and Its Lethal Consequences

There's a myth out there that being gay or lesbian is a matter of "choice." I don't know about you, but I can't ever remember a time when I sat down, thought it over, weighed the pros and cons, and then said to myself, "I know! I'll go gay!"

What I do recall is years of wondering why I wasn't interested in girls, interrupted by flashes of panic when I'd have a wet dream about some other guy.

When it came down to it, the decision was never whether or not to be gay--because I am gay, always was gay, and always shall be gay--but determining whether facing the hostility dished up by straights (and closeted queers) would be more painful and more damaging than lying about it and pretending to be straight.

That's what anti-gay people want, of course: they want us to shut up and play it straight, regardless of the ethical, moral, and spiritual consequences of lying every single moment of one's life. And not just lying to oneself, but lying also to one's life partner, one's children, one's community. Is there anything more sexist and callous than an expectation that gay men will dupe, and then lie to, the women they are pressured into marrying? Is there anything more cynical and family-unfriendly than this pretense that men exist only to sire children--and women to bear them?

The very thought of surrendering to this mendacity, this vile corruption of souls, enraged me. If I was to be condemned and attacked, I decided, then let me be condemned and attacked for who I was--not who I was forced to pretend to be. That was the one and only choice I ever made about being gay: whether or not to tell the truth.

Maybe I was fortunate. Maybe for others the answers are not so clear-cut. Maybe for some gay people there is a margin in which they could live, honestly and without the loss of their own integrity, as heterosexuals; maybe for some, there truly is a possibility to make a choice and pursue it, without harm and without regret, to be straight, or to be gay.

And perhaps for some straight people it's the case that they could also choose a person of the same gender to have and to hold, to honor and shelter with devotion and tenderness. Who am I--indeed, who are any of us, whether layman, lawmaker, or clergy--to condemn the deep and personal bonds that connect two people of whatever genders?

But here's what I have to object to: straight people who thought they might be gay emerging from a youthful phase of same-sex dalliances to declare themselves "cured" of having been homosexual. Or bisexuals who swung toward people of their own gender, then retreated to so-called conventionality and proclaimed themselves to be "ex-gays." Or queers who so feared and loathed themselves and their own spontaneous, deep-seated romantic and sexual desires that they stuffed their true selves deep into a closet and sought so-called "reparative therapy"--as though they needed to be "repaired," as though there had been anything wrong with them to begin with.

Those behaviors are not only immoral, but terrifying if taken to extremes of scope and consequence. Let me put it more plainly: once a large number of people convince themselves, and others, that sexuality is a matter of "choice," or of a pathology that can be "cured" through the mojo of prayer and counseling, anti-gay laws are sure to follow. And once anti-gay legal precedent has been set, the door to wider interpretations of "crime" and steeper, more savage means of punishment swings open--and more open--until the whirlwind has entered the room, and chaos and terror reign.

For an example of what I'm telling you, cast a glance at Uganda. After anti-gay American Christians visited the country with a message of sexuality as "choice" and homosexuality as "curable," the ingrained social and legal prejudices against gays kicked into overdrive. Why not?--when all gays have to do is get "cured" in order to remove themselves from the path of a legislative juggernaut that promises to punish gays with prison and, for repeat "offenders," with death?

That's right, Uganda is contemplating a law that would punish gays with death. You've read the comments on American blogs often enough to know that even here, "Death to Fags!" is practically a slogan to a certain stripe of religious patriot. In Uganda too: Ugandans quoted in an Associated Press article claimed that being gay is not natural to any Ugandan (remember when the Russians, beating their chests in the height of the Cold War, used to say the same thing?). Well, if it's not natural, then it must be a calculated behavior, right? And what's wrong with bringing the full brunt of the law down on those who flaunt the law with calculated, unnatural sex?

Why not kill such people? After all, doesn't the Bible instruct us to kill queers? (It also instructs us to kill adulterers and uppity teens, but let's not get carried away...) Even if the Bible didn't tell us to kill gays, it's in the best interests of society, family, and children to kill them, because gays endanger society, threaten the family, and "recruit" children.

If all of this sounds familiar, that's because the American religious right has made talking points of these claims for years now. There's no evidence for any of this; indeed, what credible evidence there is suggests that none of these claims are true. Gays are born, not "recruited," and straight people meet, marry, and reproduce whether or not there are gays in the house next door. But reason has never been a barrier to hatred or fear, and few people bother to ask for proof, or even explanations, of these wild assertions: the claims in and of themselves are enough, evidently, to justify their endless repetitions.

But what's the logical end of all this? What happens when the gays are not out on the streets proclaiming their existence and demanding equality before the law? With no gay voices lifted to counter the abuses of law, things degenerate quickly, and profoundly. The result? Uganda--where gays not only face the prospect of death, but anyone convicted of knowing about gays and gay relationships also face steep penalties. Ask yourself this: would your own siblings, parents, or friends rat you out for seeing another guy if not doing so meant they faced seven years in prison?

How terrifying it is to behold the prospect of a culture so driven by homophobia that the law demands that those who follow a deep and natural tendency toward same-sex romantic attachment pay for it with their lives--and all because of a myth that being gay is a pathology that can be "cured" with the medicine of faith. Where is the faith that God meant his gay children to be part of the world He made? What if the test God has set before humanity is not that gays be eradicated, but embraced and honored as equals?

That's not the kind of question people who have made up their minds to kill want to hear. Questions of all sorts, for that matter, are suspect in a culture where religion--that provider of eternal Answers--has supplanted civic discourse and judicial inquiry.

Some American evangelicals who promote the idea that gays "choose" their sexuality, or that they can be "cured" of their same-sex attraction, have spoken out against Uganda's pending new law--not for its nature, which criminalizes gays, but for its extremes, which impose death. But not all evangelicals have spoken out against the proposed law, or the spiritual and sexual police state that will result. Indeed, some religious people would welcome the very same law here in America.

Not that reason means much to people who discount everything but faith in ancient words written in ancient languages, but is there perhaps a rational motive for us, here in the land of the free, to observe and learn from the mistakes of others without having to make those same mistakes ourselves?

I recommend that we watch Uganda very, very closely indeed. What happens there next may well be... instructive.