Switching
Posted on April 12, 2005 in Crosstalk Reading Sexuality
Gareth Fenley has been a part of the writing cabal on my sites for a month or so now. Recently she went undercover in Atlanta to see what the ex-gay ministries were doing. She reports on the video “I Do Exist” at her blog:
Everyone involved appeared to be an evangelical Christian who wanted to inspire homosexuals to convert to heterosexuality for Biblical reasons except Spitzer. Sound bites from an interview with him were presented to demonstrate that a mainstream psychiatrist documented the existence of ex-gays who had changed orientation. I already knew that such people exist, and I know that their existence is denied, so I support Spitzer’s research, but I didn’t understand why he agreed to participate in this project. I thought that perhaps he had been deceived about its purpose.
Gareth goes on to reveal that Spitzer had, indeed, been duped. She evaluates her own feelings, realizing that despite their differences, she is among people like her.
People do change sexual orientation. Heterosexuals become homosexuals and vice-versa. Unfortunately, changers are often attacked as sell-outs by one side or the other. Gays and lesbians resent those who go straight and vice versa.
I find this attitude unrealistic and crushing. When gays and lesbians resent those who change their sexual identity as traitors, for example, they become susceptible to abusive cooptation by right wing militants. The loss of friends means that they must seek new friends. And who is out there shoving his hand forward but the Devil himself masking as the vicar of Christ?
In The Mummy at the Dining Room Table : Eminent Therapists Reveal Their Most Unusual Cases , Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson describe the confusing circumstance facing therapist Peggy Page when she meets an opposite sex couple which consists of a gay man and a lesbian woman. They love each other. They do not feel ashamed of being gay and lesbian. They don’t want to be seen as “breeders”. Page finally challenges them to be themselves:
your relationship doesn’t fit into any of these boxes. Why let yourselves be caught up in language and defined by conventional categories? You are both gay, but you are living in a straight relationship. So maybe it is time for you to take what you want from both worlds and create your own culture, a third sexual identity. That way neither of you has to give up your own identity, or your integrity.
Isn’t this the goal of all good psychotherapy, to help people establish their own identity? The idea of “ex-gay” — whether used by gays or breeders — strikes me as repugnant when used in its present context. In one case, it denies the right of the person to be what he or she is now. In the other case, it denies the right of the person to own her or his history without regret. Being heterosexual or homosexual is not the sign of a disease, just a sense of attraction. We are what we are and as long as we do not do violence to others, there is no cause for shame.
The rest of us should honor persons and honor their right to change whatever way pleases them.
