Yesterday 10:08 AM
(This post was last modified: Yesterday 10:46 AM by Syne.)
Like most gay men, I wasn't 'born this way' — and I refuse to lie about it
Embracing my dysfunction as an 'identity' nearly killed me through alcoholism and self-destructive promiscuity.
“Why are you gay?”... Then the internet exploded. The voices of countless homosexuals and their supportive family members rose in unison to a pitch so shrill it could crack silicon data chips.
They trotted out all the predictable labels. Homophobe. Bigot. Christian nationalist. ... — simply for asking the question we are not allowed to ask.
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Trauma response
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So what did he say?
"In almost every case, and certainly in every male case, [homosexuality] is a trauma response. It is not a sexuality."
Milo Yiannopolous speaks for me. I endorse what he said and believe it to be true. I believe I became a homosexual because I grew up under a mother with narcissistic personality disorder, a father who left before I could ever meet him, and an attempted murderer and pedophile for a stepfather.
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1. Yes, I believe the large majority of male homosexuals are homosexuals because of childhood circumstances and trauma.
2. Yes, I believe that most of those who claim that they had no childhood trauma are not being candid — including, in some cases, not being candid with themselves. Personal and professional experience leads me to this conclusion.
3. No, I’m not claiming that every single male homosexual had abusive parents. Yes, I recognize that some male homosexuals come from stable, loving families. I have male homosexual friends who fit this description.
What we used to know
We have lived for so long with the culturally enforced mandate to believe in “born this way” that we have to remind society of what it used to know just yesterday. Those of you in middle age will remember that until the past 25 years or so, homosexuality was understood to be the outcome of an abusive or neglectful childhood.
Not only psychiatric researchers, but everyday Americans noticed that most male homosexuals had troubled or nonexistent relationships with their fathers. They noticed that male homosexuals were unusually close to and emotionally enmeshed with their mothers. They noticed that those mothers often had overbearing, domineering, or melodramatic personalities.
If you’re younger than 40 and reading this with shock, I’m telling you the truth. This view was normal, but it was deliberately re-cast as “homophobia” and “ abuse against gays” in the past 25 years by the same activists who brought you “trans kids,” breast removal of healthy teen girls, and cross-sex hormones for teen boys who “are actually girls.”
That’s the set that brought you “born this way.”
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When the topic is this emotional, people stop thinking and start emoting. They start pretending that humans can’t know anything about the world, can’t recognize any patterns, and can’t come to any conclusions unless a Scientist published a Paper in a a Peer-Reviewed Journal.
Nevertheless, I’ll try. Surprising though it may be, the psychiatric and psychological literature, starting with Freud in the early 20th century, has long noted the pattern I described above. And most, though not all, male homosexuals were sexually abused as children or as minors. (I am a homosexual, but I was not molested as a child.)
Commentator and “ex-gay” Joseph Sciambra has published several bibliographies that round up much of this literature.
Normally, people don’t demand “the Science” on other subjects. No one demands “the Science” before noticing that most teenage drivers are more erratic and dangerous and therefore it pays to drive defensively around them. Everyone knows this, not because they read “the Science.” They know it because they have eyes, ears, and a brain that detects patterns.
... Those conservatives who find the position taken in this piece hard to bear have been manipulated emotionally by gay activists.
If you’re a conservative who finds this uncomfortable or “mean,” I think I know another reason why. You have homosexuals in your family whom you love (so do I, friends). Some of them are your children. And if they’re your children, you’re hearing an implicit accusation: “He’s saying I’m a terrible mother who made my son gay.”
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Even the most loving parents will make mistakes, and the culture outside the parental home is ravening at your children and pushing them to adopt deviant and hedonistic lifestyles. Even the best parents can’t keep all of that out.
'Coming out' to my mother
Let me tell you the story of a night in 1986 when I “came out” to my mother at age 12. Align readers know from my past columns that my mother was an abusive, deranged woman who veered into psychopathy at times. But there were moments when a real woman with real feelings came through.
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I told my mother that I was gay and that I felt duty-bound to tell her the truth about it. Looking back at myself at 12, I shudder that I was already forming myself into a “gay identity” that would trap me in promiscuity, addiction, and emotional disturbance for decades to come. But I didn’t know any better then.
My mother started crying. It wasn’t her usual self-pitying kind of crying, and it wasn’t her angry crying that would escalate to slaps across the face and screamed insults.
“I worried for so long that I would do this to you, that I would make you gay,” she said while she looked down at her hands. “I never gave you a father, and the father figure I brought into your life turned out to be a monster.”
This was one of the few times in our life together that I can remember when my mother seemed genuine and honest and seemed to care about my well-being. I think her sense of responsibility and guilt was real (my mother wasn’t much for feeling normal parental responsibility).
“I’m not crying because you’re gay,” she said. “I’m crying because I know that life is going to be harder for you. I’m terrified that you’ll get a disease and die early. Please be careful.”
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“You didn’t do anything to me, Mom. I was born this way,” I said.
And I believed it.
The limits of tolerance
It is true that my mother never sat down one day and said, “How can I derange my son and turn him into a homosexual?”
But what my mother feared did happen. The abuse, the depravation, the disordered emotions in my childhood home did make me a homosexual. How I choose to behave is my responsibility, but I did not “choose” to be sexually disordered this way. I was just a child.
If you’re reading this and you’re a homosexual or the parent of one or a loved one, and you don’t believe this applies to you, then go in peace. But please let those of us for whom this is important — let us have this conversation. Too many emotionally triggered people do everything they can to shut it down.
They accuse homosexuals like me of being “abusive” and of “hurting” them. No such thing is occurring. All the sympathy "allies" claim to have for homosexuals when we are “born this way gays” evaporates the moment we change our minds. They insult us and call us insane, with more vitriol than actual anti-gay bullies who beat us up in high school.
Silence equals death
We are going to have this conversation. We’re not going to be silenced or manipulated into being good, quiet little gay boys to fit someone else’s fantasy of having a “fabulous” best friend or son.
I lived the “fabulous” life, and it nearly killed me through alcoholism and self-destructive promiscuity. The way I lived brought despair. And I am typical. I am not “just an unusual gay.” My life story looks like the life stories of the majority of gay men. Yeah, I know. They tell you that isn’t true.
They’re lying because they’re terrified that something they’ve relied on too heavily to define themselves as human men may have been a lie all along. I know, because I lied this way too.
Yes, I’m still attracted to men and not attracted to women. I don’t believe I have the ability to change those subjective feelings, but I may find otherwise in time. For seven years I’ve been single and celibate, and I plan to remain so.
Others must choose their own path in their own time. Nothing I’ve written here can honestly be construed as an attack, or an assault, on other homosexuals or those who love them. The truth is not an act of hate or abuse.
What’s real and true matters, and it’s well past time to tell the truth about the lie we call “born this way.”
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