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from Books & Reviews
BOOK REVIEW
Beyond Gay, by David Morrison
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, Huntington, IN
Reviewed by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.
Leadership in the Catholic Church today is in great need of
accurate information about homosexuality. This book is the first
of what will hopefully be a substantial new body of Catholic
literature giving voice to individuals who, in spite of
experiencing same-sex attractions, refuse to define themselves as gay.
Such books pose a growing threat to two foundational premises
of gay anthropology---the ideas that "You were born gay," and "If
you experience same-sex attractions, the only authentic response is
to say, 'Gay is who I am.'"
The author intelligently balances observations about his
personal life with very insightful and astute social commentary. He
discusses not only the politics within the Catholic Church, but
also the political compromises made within the American Psychiatric
Association. He also describes the well-documented data which
indicates that male homosexuality is primarily a developmental
problem--that is, a gender-identity problem rooted in the child's
early parental relationships. While genetic factors may predispose
some children to struggle with gender issues, there is strong
evidence that family (and later, peer) factors are pivotal.
In his own life, Morrison relates what reparative therapists
call the "classic triadic relationship," which has been so
consistently established in the psychoanalytic literature, and which I have
seen hundreds of times in my own clinical practice; that is, the
boy experiences his father as distant and detached, while his mother
is over-involved; and in family arguments, mother and son
unite against the father.
Morrison says of his father, who he remembers as generally
indifferent: "He was absent much of the time and carried himself
with an air of grave importance when he was at home. He looms in
my memory as 'aloof and demanding'." He recalls his father's
efforts to teach him the multiplication tables, which left him
feeling ashamed and inadequate. In contrast, he recalls his mother
"making herself all too accessible. Where my father was aloof, my
mother was cloying." He says, "I quickly understood that my family
dynamic was she and I against my father. When my mother complained
about my father - which she did with increasing vehemence as the
years passed - she came to me at least some of the time. Her
complaints assumed an authority in defining my father that was probably
not useful."
In the author's early relationships with his peers, again we
see the repeated developmental themes common to the pre-homosexual
boy--shame about his body, a feeling of inadequacy, and the sense
of not belonging to the company of males, who he eventually
romanticizes from a distance.
Morrison sees how fortunate he was to have escaped the trap
which snares so many of our young people: with the encouragement
of teachers, counselors and society, such sexually confused
children are self-labelling as "gay" before they are old enough to make
an informed decision about such an essential issue. Without the
opportunity to understand how feelings of gender inadequacy will
lead to romantic idealization of same-sex peers, many young people
have been led to believe the scientifically insupportable argument
that "I was born this way," or, if they are people of religious
faith, they say, "God just makes some people gay."
The recent Catholic bishops' document "Always Our Children" in
fact reinforces and supports this gay self-label, and many priests
and bishops are now promoting--even while reiterating the
requirement of chastity--this identity as valid to our young people.
But Christian anthropology, backed up by science, makes it clear
that God did not design two kinds of people, heterosexual and
homosexual; and that when homosexuality occurs, it is not an
authentic identity, but should be seen as a developmental problem, a
challenge, a struggle to be endured (as Morrison has chosen, with
powerful help from his faith to reduce unwanted temptations), or
one which the struggler may be successful in overcoming by moving
toward a heterosexual adjustment.
In trying to pull the pieces together and explain how his
same-sex attractions emerged, Morrison said, "My failure to believe I
could ever please my parents, especially my father, gradually became
a deep-seated attitude that spread tentacles throughout my life.
My failure to lose weight, succeed at sports, and genuinely like
my appearance, contributed to my feeling constantly ill-at-ease
with other boys--an alien among my peers."
Morrison speaks about the fear (so often reported by my own
clients as well) of being genuinely seen by other boys for who he
was, which resulted in the longing for a deep male friendship
which never seemed to come. These longings became the foundation
for later same-sex attractions: what he could not find in the
usual way through friendship, he compensated for with the secret
fantasy that one day he would find that one special, "best buddy."
Those fantasies eventually led him into a gay lifestyle. In
reparative therapy, we call this period the Erotic Transitional
Phase--the time when the boy's emotional needs for same-sex attention,
affection, and approval become eroticized.
Morrison's reporting of his first homosexual experience at the
age of ll or 12 with an older teenage boy is also very typical in
the formation of homosexuality. One-third of my own clients were
sexually molested as little boys or young teenagers by older males.
Their feeling of inadequacy and alienation from other males found
a tension-releasing outlet early-on in their lives, and this
experience confirmed their suspicion that they might be gay. At the
same time, it short-circuited any future attempts they might have
made to experience normal, non-erotic male intimacy through the
mutuality and equality of genuine male friendship.
As a young adult, Morrison at first tried to integrate his
Christian identity with a gay identity. Thus, he was at first drawn
to the gay Catholic (an oxymoron) group "Dignity," which seeks to
integrate Catholicism with a gay identity. His disillusionment
with Dignity led to a final struggle which revealed to him the cost
of discipleship, as he discovered those two identities (gay and
Catholic) to be ultimately irreconcilable.
Morrison says:
"I can't say why I have experienced the healing I have.
I don't know why others have not. I can't say I believe
that dramatically diminished same-sex attraction is possible
in every life...But I must testify that despite the
complicated web of wounds both real and imagined, deep longings and
insecurity, doubts, failures, and desires, Christ stepped
forward with the knowledge, resources, and the wise and loving
friends I needed to break free [from gay life]. For this I am
deeply grateful."
He talks about his initial rebellion against his church's
moral teachings, and acknowledges the Church's statement that
homosexuality is an "objective disorder."
Many gay ministries within this country wish to simply ignore,
explain away, or rationalize that powerful term which forces the
homosexually-oriented Catholic to make a fundamental decision.
But without question, acknowledgment of that statement must be
the "litmus test for orthodoxy" of any Catholic ministry to
homosexuals. Many unorthodox ministries are now flourishing around
this country, with the support of their dioceses--in spite of
their failure to acknowledge that a gay identity
cannot be "who a person really is" in the deepest and truest sense of human identity.
This is the first such autobiography written by a Catholic,
aimed at a Catholic audience, and printed by a Catholic publishing
house; it is even graced by a bishop's introduction. It's about time!
Updated: 2 September 2008
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