Understanding Gays, Part One

Most people who’ve never personally wrestled with homosexuality are under one of two misconceptions (heck, many who have wrestled with it labor under the second):

1. Living the gay lifestyle is a free choice, and anyone who makes such a choice is dumb, misguided, and/or selfish.

2. When someone has a homosexual orientation, there’s nothing he can do about it, so he has no choice but to give in and live that out if he wants to have anything resembling a normal life.

Neither of these statements are true. Like most things in life, the truth is found in the grey area, the mean between the extremes. Choosing an actively gay lifestyle is an extremely difficult choice (if most choices are 50-50 or at least 40-60, this one is 97-3, with the pressure on the pro-gay side). But it is a choice nonetheless, and there are numerous people who have successfully made that choice to live chasteley, ignoring their disordered carnal desires, and in some cases even receiving healing. But that’s another story.

What I want to focus on right now is the first misconception, because many people who have never experienced persistent same-sex attraction think that this is just like any other temptation, or even like any other sexual temptation. This is not the case.

I once asked a dear friend, who is one of the most ardent Catholics and most powerful instruments of the Holy Spirit I know (despite being attracted to other men), why he kept putting himself in situations where he’d bend and almost break under the incredible pressure of the temptation right in front of him, and he boiled it down to this: the temptation is so great and the oppression so relentless (and for so many years) that, even with full knowledge of the consequences of his actions, it seemed worth it to give in just for a moment, to have just a moment’s relief from those terrible, constant, inescapable desires. That statement of his has remained with me ever since, a reminder of the terrible cross that is borne by those experiencing same-sex attraction.

There is much more to say on the subject, but I want to let that sink in. Consider the enormity of the temptations of same-sex attraction. I cannot emphasize that enough. Look forward to more discussion here on this topic.

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Thanks to Bridging the Gap for organizing today's Synchroblog.  Definitely a worthwhile initiative, and what response they've gotten!