I retitled the section of blogs to be 'gay' instead of 'homosexual' so I can post the links and access the post myself. This is not a change that intends to offend it is simply one of convenience. Again this post focuses mainly on male homosexuality.
I don't know if you know much/anything about gay culture, as it is known. The bits we see are Pride Parades and gay bars, which are seemingly bright, colourful and happy in appearance.
If one is to dig a little deeper one can find a different story.
As mentioned in the previous blog homosexuality (if not genetic as would appear to be the case these days) is caused, at least to some degree, by a sexual encounter that should not have occurred.
'A Guy Who Was Gay's author said that it was when he saw a pornographic magazine in a bin that his homosexual attraction was born. Another story I have read involved sexual abuse from an older man and the younger man went on to have sexual relationships with older men... similar stories exist with abuse involving a skinny coloured man, best friend, butch blond guy and long black haired slightly older man. In each case the sexual abuse led the person abused to have homosexual feelings towards the a similar person as their abuser.
I do not know how widespread those ideas are but I have read them in Christian works, psychological works, articles on homosexuality, and from women's magazines. This seems widespread enough to me to make me believe that there is a possible connection between abuse/rape victims and homosexual tendencies.
I no longer recall the title of a book I read when I was 14-15 but it was one of two I was reading on psychology at the time (I wanted to be a counsellor in those days). The book was a secular look on some psychological issues had been dealt with by the particular counsellor writing. It contained a lot of material I was probably too young to read but I, even at the time, was impacted by the writers views on homosexuality.
She started off by saying that when a younger person came to her and confessed to being gay she would encourage them that such a thing was perfectly natural and that it should be embraced and held on to.
A number of patients, I believe it was three, were sent back to her and after a lot of discussion she revealed that she discovered the three boys had also been sexually abused by men or had a sexual experience involving men or images of men that they should not have had and did not choose to have. She said that on counselling them two of the three came to terms with what had happened to them and began to get on with their lives and that, after a year or two, the homosexual tendencies they had been displaying began to disappear.
The Christian book, as I recall, said a lot about what causes it and how it is wrong whatever causes it and offered suggestions that an overbearing mother could cause her son to be gay and a distant father coupled with a very affectionate mother (but who was otherwise unfeeling) could cause it in daughters.
Recently in IBI we were talking about people suffering from depression and how we should see them as people and not depressed people. In the same way as we should see people who sin in any way as people who sin not as sin people... e.g. the one who sleeps around isn't a promiscuous person they are a person who is stuck in sexual sin or a person who has murdered someone isn't a murderer but a person who has unlawfully killed someone. There are still people there. Similarly a man who has romantic feelings/lustful feelings (more accurately) for another man is not a gay man but is a man who has homosexual tendencies.
Often Christians will throw words such as 'lifestyle choice' around when it comes to homosexuality and many of us will admit that we believe homosexuality is more a choice than it is something people are born with. The thing about gay culture is that it has given birth to this myth, which has infected society, that people are gay and that is that. Therefore when a Christian says homosexuality is a choice, or anything close to that, expect the person suffering from homosexuality you are talking to to turn off and not listen anymore.
Though there are elements of choice involved it is something that is very deep inside them and needs to be dealt with sensitively, carefully and lovingly.
The big trap that many young people who feel as if they might be gay is that when they ask questions they are told that they are and that's who they are and to get on with life they need to embrace that part of themselves and make it part of their identities.
I don't know if you have ever been in a conversation where a person randomly tells you they are gay (when it wasn't even close to the topic of discussion, they just felt the need for you to know). I have had that experience a couple of times. It reminds me of Christians who cannot but help talk about Christ because He is (or at least should be) such an integral part of our identity.
As Christians our identity is Christ, as people our identity should be in Christ. It always makes me sad when you see people call themselves Gay Christians... Firstly because it's an oxymoron and secondly because it isn't Christian Gays, the thing that comes first is gay and Christ comes after.
Ok so here is the point of this blog: The idea that a person is gay is a myth!
If you want to talk to a gay person about their life and direction you need to ignore their choices and talk about their identity. What is it in? What do they live for?
Christ offers so much more than gay culture, promiscuity and the possible eventuality of having a partner (which is a whole other issue because often these break up when the guys run off with much younger guys because their feelings are based on lust... that's not all cases but there are some I have heard of)
Christ offers so much more!
"So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."
(Genesis 1:27 ESV)
If you have questions on this blog, or any of my other blogs, and want to ask a question about it you can do so anonymously by clicking (or copying and pasting if it doesn't appear as a link) the following url http://ask.fm/Wavey1111
Go mbeannaí Dia dhuit mo chairde.
Here is an interesting and related article from 1997
ReplyDeletehttp://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html