Hardly anything is more difficult for a man than to give up a pleasure which he has once experienced.”
~ Sigmund Freud
As a girl-crazy nineteen-year-old riding a bus from Ryerson in Toronto to my apartment west of the city, I was approached on the sidewalk by another rider who got off the bus right on my heels — a young man who seemed unnaturally interested in me. Naively unprepared for such an encounter, I said something probably overly-polite to discourage his advance, while striding quickly away in the direction of my apartment. I didn’t look back. Quite honestly, it took some time for my pulse to slow and my adrenaline to level off.
Knowing what I now know, I have some compassion (rather than total disgust) for this guy — not to support his lifestyle, but rather knowing he was struggling with deep developmental issues for which there were few publicly-known resources then to help him. So, unfortunately, he was left to wander wherever his disoriented impulses led him.
Today, with public media mistrust at all-time highs, it can be a challenge to find clarity on social issues that matter to the home, especially those dealing with sexuality. For decades, activist organisations have been nibbling away in the media and through the courts, attempting to normalise aberrant behaviours.
While news sources naturally lack a biblical lens, media and even many professional associations have increasingly turned their backs on science, clinical history, common sense and even reality.
I think that’s where we find ourselves today.
I’d like to chime in, particularly on the subjects of Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) and to a lesser extent, Gender Dysphoria (Transvestite Fetishism/Gender Identity Disorder), especially this month when we celebrate weddings, fatherhood and the nuclear family, but also when corporations and an informed public seem to be pushing back on so-called “Pride” festivities.
Not Healthy
For about a century dating back to Sigmund Freud, homosexuality was studied and professionally treated as a mental health issue. Lots of clinical history and literature out there in academic journals to support this history.
Then suddenly in 1973, homosexuality was extracted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) — the clinician’s “bible” of mental health disorders — under intense political pressure from the Gay and Lesbian Task Force. You can read about this event in The Journal of Psychohistory, 19(3), Winter 1992. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) caved to the bullying activists, and overnight a highly-treatable developmental gender disorder with decades of successful research and treatment, succumbed to political pressure, and was removed from the Manual.
Leftism has always survived on brute force. Brute force removed it from the Manual. Brute force pressured therapeutic associations to forbid treating same-gender attraction in the counselling office, at least until recently, thankfully.
“… in 1973 when politicised professional organisations turned a hundred years of hard-won scientific discovery, knowledge and theory of psycho-sexual development upside down and inside out.”
~ Benjamin Kaufman, M.D.
Here’s a question to consider …
Does dropping a mental health disorder — a well-researched and highly-treatable paraphilia from the DSM for political (rather than scientific) reasons, make it no longer a disorder?
Not Who You Are
The activist associations behind “Pride” celebrations say that “my sexuality is who I am”. It’s deceptively packaged as an identity issue.
Saying that your identity springs from how you behave in the bedroom is not only bizarre, but minimises the complexity of human design, and blatantly confuses identity with behaviour.
Our identity includes such things as our gender, our DNA, our temperament, our eye colour, our height. All of these attributes are unchangeable or immutable.
Our behaviour includes what we do, how we act, what opinions we form, the decisions we make, and how we respond to certain stimuli. All of these are changeable or mutable. In a word, “adjustable.”
Developmental Psychology 101 teaches that human sexual behaviour is a learned phenomenon, piqued during a life stage when males and females are transitioning to physical sexual maturity. One’s sexuality and how it fits into one’s world is a normal learned aspect of human development.
Bottom Line: One’s sexuality — aberrant or normal, is not who you are, but rather one small aspect of what you do, what you’ve learned to do, and in many unfortunate cases, what has been done to you.
“When we begin to believe that our sexual behaviour and sinful desires are part of our identity, we are putting ourselves into bondage.”
~ Stephen Black — Exec Director, First Stone Ministries
For a person to accept a gay identity, he or she must deny the fundamental truth that we are created for gender complementarity. Deny something long enough, and you may actually believe you are happy in your decision.”
~ Debbie Thurman, former lesbian
Not Love
The rainbow heart sticker says, “Love is Love”, inferring any attraction by one for another is healthy and good and equal. Except it’s not. Sex isn’t love.
Beneath our inadequately simple English word, “love”, are a multitude of meanings: affection, lust, romance, endearment, selfless giving, attraction, infatuation, passion, commitment, sacrifice, devotion, fondness.
Same-sex attraction, given its clinical foundation of brokenness, is marked by compulsion and presents with misdirected lust — sexual attraction — never a solid foundation for a serious relationship, aberrant or otherwise.
This sort of reductionism — a spouse is nothing more than a sex partner, so a sex partner is the same as a spouse — misses the point of what marriage is and what its role in society amounts to.”
~ Alan Sears & Craig Osten, from The Homosexual Agenda
For followers of Christ, be sure to check out Lisa Lynn’s, “Sexual Orientation — Newspeak for Lust” — one of the best articles I’ve read on the spiritual underpinnings of lust.
Bottom Line: Love is not necessarily love. Lust definitely isn’t love.
The best advice I can offer to anyone who wants to love and be loved, is to get healthy first.
Not Normal
This post stands on the shoulders of Drs. Joseph Nicolosi, Charles W. Socarides, Jeffrey Satinover, Dean Byrd, George A. Rekers, and scores of clinicians who invested their careers educating or compassionately working with clients who desired freedom from unwanted homoerotic attractions.
As a result of the dedicated work of these good doctors, much is known about the aetiology and treatment of Same Sex Attraction (SSA), and Gender Dysphoria.
Contrary to “born this way” “Pride” propaganda, SSA and its paraphilia sibling, Gender Dysphoria, are known to be developmental disorders — those that arise from complex dynamics within the family of origin. Of course, sexual trauma comes into play as well.
More often than not, those dynamics include a boy feeling rejected by an emotionally distant, disengaged or critical father, and to a much lesser extent, a symbiotic relationship with his mother, combined with an emotionally-vulnerable boy who possesses a highly sensitive temperament.
Because masculinity is an achievement, a father holds the key to a boy either identifying with or detaching from the only source of his masculinity. Of course this is a gross oversimplification of the attachment/detachment process.
Newsweek and Time covers in the ’90’s spread the activist lie that “born this way” was a done deal. What the general public doesn’t understand is that there was (and is still) no evidence to support those claims. Fake news isn’t just a recent phenomenon.
“Morality and immorality are not defined by man’s changing attitudes and social customs. They are determined by the God of the universe, whose timeless standards cannot be ignored with impunity.”
~ Dr. James Dobson
Bottom Line: Homosexuality and other compulsive sexual behaviours are not normative, nor are they just another alternative way of living.
Not in Harmony
LGBTQ+ activists contradict themselves, while holding fast to a manufactured view of sexuality. The clearest example is their claim that homosexuality is fixed and not fluid, (in spite of evidence to the contrary). Their gender-confused, effeminate “transgender” cousins who suffer from Gender Dysphoria hold that gender is totally fluid, never fixed, in spite of evidence to the contrary. I speculate it’s only a matter of time before a civil war breaks out within LGBTQ+.
Not a Church
The Body of Christ welcomes all people into its community. Christ’s true church differentiates the sin from the sinner, just as our Lord did. According to scripture, homosexuality and all sexual immorality is sin. While it’s not our only sin, and it’s not the worst of sins, scripture teaches that it is a violation of God’s moral law. So, while we embrace sinners as our Lord did and does, the true church doesn’t affirm sin. To normalise this one sin, to be tolerant of it, or to celebrate it would be to do an injustice to those who suffer from same gender attraction, and from the serious consequences of this lifestyle.
While God’s Word is crystal clear on sexual immorality, many so-called “welcoming” churches continue to confuse identity and behaviour, therefore confusing their congregants. The Gospel is extended to all of humanity because we are created in His Image (our identity), but our Creator and Redeemer has no patience for those who affirm sin (behaviour) rather than repent of it. Churches who affirm sin are not true churches, but rather tax-exempt cultural organisations.
Not Equal
Making something legal doesn’t make it right.”
~ Unknown
Marriage predates Christianity, western society, and even Judaism. Marriage was an act of creation, initiated by God to unite one man and one woman in a lifelong covenantal relationship for His purposes and for His glory. Homosexual “marriage” is not in the best interest of children, not in the best interests of the emotional, physical or spiritual health of its homosexual participants, and certainly not in the interests of society at large.
Legitimate marriage — the sacred union of one man and one woman, created by God and defined in Hebrew scripture, is not equal to a union between two warm bodies of the same sex. The former glorifies God … the latter is a counterfeit that glorifies lust and brokenness.
Parting Thoughts …
- This month, it’s especially critical to underline that fathers are the key to the emotional health of the home. A passive, disengaged, critical or absent father is rolling the dice on the future health of his family. An active, strong, and engaged father who prioritises his marriage (to his wife) is building an inter-generational legacy of relational health.
- Gender ideology undermines the foundations of human nature, the family, and society.
- As an individual, don’t be coerced or willing to compromise on sexual ethics. Is knowing someone close to you who is trapped in or struggling with same sex attraction reason enough to attend or participate in any activity that affirms their deviant lifestyle?
“We as Christians are called to go into the public arena to correct error with truth.”
~ Charlie Kirk
- Don’t be afraid to oppose anything that a gay or lesbian spokesperson asserts, out of your fear of being rebuked or labelled, “homophobic”. Name calling is verbal brute force, and is an indicator that you are probably on the right track. Double down on righteousness.
- Surgical or chemical mutilation isn’t a cure for Gender Dysphoria. Only skilled and compassionate therapy is.
- Believer or unbeliever, clinical history (science), common sense and human design affirms what God’s Word says about sexual ethics. Activist sexual politics is isolated from all of that — an irrational island of delusion standing in the midst of an ocean of evidence. Is that really enough for you?
- Peace in the Home Core Value #10: When we fall short of God’s design, by His mercy and grace, God promises to restore those who genuinely turn to Him, repent of their sins, and seek His forgiveness.
* * *
“When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it, and will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
~ Genesis 9:16
Gosh, does it get more inclusive than that?
Blessings on your home,
robert
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Peace in the Home 