Anglican Mainstream today re-posted a link to this article on ‘Orthodoxy Today’ in which Ronald G. Lee tries to expose ‘the truth’ about the ‘Homosexual Rights Movement’. If you are interested in the sort of arguments a self-professed Ex-Gay writer uses to dismiss homosexuals, it is well worth a read. It is both funny and awful.
The writer begins by setting up a metaphor for the homosexual lifestyle. He talks about a gay bookshop called Lobo’s in Austin, Texas, which, from the window, he says, had an air of respectability about it, selling books by classic homosexual writers such as Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, W.H. Auden, etc. But behind the respectability, at the back of the shop, was, he claims, where the action was: the porn section. This was were the customers were. ‘As far as I know, I am the only person who ever actually purchased a book at Lobo’s. The books were, in every sense of the word, a front for the porn.’ Lee suggests this bookshop reflects the life pattern of a homosexual: it may seem almost respectable and acceptable to begin with, but eventually you will be drawn to the pornography and that’s where you will stay. He warns people lulled into homosexuality: ‘Eventually, they will find their way back to the porn, with the rest of the customers. And like them, they will start rooting through the videos. And, gentle reader, that is where most of them will spend the rest of their lives, until God or AIDS, drugs or alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age, intervenes’. Wow. This is is where gay people like myself are heading: AIDS, drugs, alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age. Or God. Presumably he means God as rescuer, not as a God who loves and affirms us as we are.
He also uses the bookshop as a metaphor for the gay rights movement: ‘I recognized in Lobo’s a metaphor for the strategy used to ‘sell gay rights to the American people, and for the sordid reality that strategy concealed’, and ‘There are millions of well-meaning Americans who support gay rights because they believe that what they see looking in at Lobo’s is what is really there. It does not occur to them that they are seeing a carefully stage-managed effort to manipulate them, to distract them from a truth they would never condone’.
His article goes on to talk about ex-Father John McNeill’s influential (to Lee) book ‘The Church and the Homosexual’ and his later autobiography. The autobiography shows the disconnect between the respectable homosexuality for which McNeill was trying to make a case, and his own ‘promiscuous’ lifestyle. A reasonable point to make, as long as one acknowledges that there is a disconnect in the lives of so many who preach one thing and do another, but Lee’s language is strong: ‘ex-Fr. McNeill is a bad priest and a con man. And given the often lethal consequences of engaging in homosexual sex, a con man with blood on his hands.’ Strong indeed: an accusation of manslaughter.
Give the article a read if you want to get into one ex-gay man’s mindset. There are juicy nuggets to be found, such as this one: ‘Gay culture is a paradox. Most homosexuals tend to be liberal Democrats, or in the U.K., supporters of the Labour Party. They gravitate toward those Parties on the grounds that their policies are more compassionate and sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden and oppressed. But there is nothing compassionate about a gay bar. It represents a laissez faire free sexual market of the most Darwinian sort.’ Thus, gay people are not really interested in compassion, they are interested in sex.
To summarize Lee’s thinking, he urges us not to fooled by ‘respectable’ gay people. Behind the veneer we are dirty, dirty, dirty. He ‘knows’ – because he is ex-gay.
Towards the end of the article, it’s difficult not to feel sad for Ronald Lee. He talks about his own experiences struggling with his homosexuality, and fills the article with examples of unsavoury or tragic gay lives, and one gets the profound sense that the unhappiness he felt, and his determination to believe that it is the lot of the homosexual to be unhappy, has totally dominated his world-view. Not only does he seem to believe it, but he is suspicious of anybody who thinks otherwise. Here’s an excerpt:
A popular definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. That was me, the whole time I was laboring to become a happy homosexual. I was a lunatic. Several times I turned for advice to gay men who seemed better adjusted to their lot in life than I was. First, I wanted confirmation that my perceptions were accurate, that life as a male homosexual really was as awful as it seemed to be. And then I wanted to know what I was supposed to do about it. When was it going to get better? What could I do to make it better? I got two sorts of reactions to these questions, both of which left me feeling hurt and confused. The first sort of reaction was denial, often bitter denial, of what I was suggesting. I was told that there was something wrong with me, that most gay men were having a wonderful time, that I was generalizing on the basis of my own experience (whose experience was I supposed to generalize from?), and that I should shut up and stop bothering others with my “internalized homophobia.”
Poor man. Honestly, as an extremely happy homosexual man in a wonderful, long-term relationship – and as somebody who knows lots of happy gay people – I find this very sad. He believes homosexuals live in a world of ‘self-deception’ and that the ‘homosexual rights movement’ is trying to pass this deception on to others. Genuinely, I feel sorry for him – he must have had a miserable live to be so embittered, but I am not convinced his experiences give him the right to say ‘I know’.
flockedout
flocked out 