from Gay Activism in the Schools

Letter to a Psychology Professor

Dear Dr. ----:

During our last class session, we spent some time discussing homosexuality. This issue really hit very close to home for me, since I myself struggle with homosexuality.

I cannot recount any particular moment or age in my life when I was willing to say, "I am gay." Throughout my life I abhorred these feelings. Somehow I always knew there was something wrong with homosexuality, but I could never put my finger on what it was. I guess you can classify my psychological state as ego-dystonic, because I wrestled (and still do today) with homosexual thoughts and feelings, yet only acted out by way of sexual fantasy and masturbation, never with another man.

Over the last several years I have sought counseling in this area. I have found great solace in the works of Father John Harvey of Courage, a Catholic spiritual support group for men and women seeking chastity, and the works of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, founder of NARTH (see enclosed pamphlet describing that organization).

I now see myself as a man made primarily in the image and likeness of God and struggling with many issues, one of which happens to bring on the side-effect of same-sex attraction. l see homosexuality as incomplete psychosexual development; as a matter of stunted emotional growth in the area which would have prepared me to enter the world of men. The idea is simple: at some point in my childhood years I defensively detached from my father and the masculinity he offered due to hurt in the relationship or separation, and instead bonded more with my mother, my primary care-giver.

It is said that it takes a mother to raise a child into a boy, but that it takes a father to raise a boy into a man. And that didn't fully happen for me. I must work on that now, entering completely into manhood, with self-mentoring skills and by seeking out healthy, same-sex friendships, while continuing to build healthy opposite-sex friendships as well. For too long I have sought out this lost masculinity by homosexual attraction and desires, rather than through healthy friendships and relationships.

As I listened to you, I felt my blood boiling--for several reasons. First, I feel betrayed by society in general, which is lost in relativism and subjectivism, and which tells me that I should accept myself "the way God made me." God made me a human person, in His image and likeness. God didn't make me gay. I can never accept that. Homosexuality is a result of the Fall. You do a great disservice to encourage someone to embrace a false identity.

Second, Church leaders have told me the same thing--that I should accept my "gayness," that I have "gay gifts" to offer the Church. This is more nonsense. A psychological disorder cannot offer anything but more problems.

Homosexuals are not "hard-wired" to come out homosexual. That is a lie propagated by the gay agenda, and people have begun to believe it because the gay agenda has blasted society with it. No one is born gay. The evidence for psychological root causes of homosexuality far outweighs the inconclusive biolgical research. Consider Anna Freud, Reuben Fine, Irving Bieber, Charles Socarides, Masters and Johnson, Gerard van den Aardweg, Fr. Jeffrey Keefe, Conrad Baars...the list goes on and on. I can add at least 20 more names to it easily, of people who have researched this field and point to psychological causes of homosexuality.

You say that anyone can use statistics to back up their point, yet I cannot allow you to dismiss my claim so easily in this manner. You must figure out if you, too, have been "duped" by the gay lobby, robbing you of your objective judgment in this matter.

What can you offer people like me? There are many of us out here, searching for someone who will hear our pain, the pain of wanting to be healed of an open wound. We find words of comfort in Church teaching, at Courage, NARTH, through private confessors and close friends, for no one else will listen. There are many of us out here, that want to say that the gay agenda is a lie--it insists we accept something disordered that leads to immoral acts; it insists we were born gay; that we cannot hope to change. Now even you, yourself, tell us that it is impossible to convert the homosexual man to heterosexuality.

You also bring us a false understanding of homosexuality and heterosexuality. One is abnormal, the other normal; one is incomplete gender identity, the other complete; one is a lie; the other true.

Am I happy? I can honestly say that for the first time of my life, I am truly happy. Homosexuality offers me empty promises, to seek the masculinity of others by sexual means. Celibacy is not enough for me; I must pursue "healing," whatever that means in light of God's will for me. And I have been healed greatly--maybe not to complete heterosexuality, but I'm getting there.

Take a look at your son. Wouldn't you want what is best for him? What if he were gay? If homosexuality is treatable to a point where the person reaches a sense of wholeness about his life--that he is a man in every sense of the word--wouldn't you want that for him? By saying "there are no easy answers," you offer us empty words. There are answers in life; the problem is that people just don't want to hear them.