Gay lobby fighting reparative therapy at the expense of our youth

[Catolico65]

Unnatural and it being a sin is rather different, Your reading of the Cathechism is different from mine obviously.

Please show the stats from an authoritative source to prove your “fact”.

Unnatural is not from God but the devil. You are ignoring the Bible passages referenced in the Catechism. Please review them.

Here is the study. mygenes.co.nz/summary.htm

 

[EIF5A]

I wonder if the higher rate of suicide is due to the, relatively, new position that this is a permanent condition and there’s no way “out”. For a young person who does not want to embrace the homosexual lifestyle but who does not have any resources available to help him/her overcome, despair and depression could result.

Since we don’t know who (e.g., 100% homosexual, mostly homosexual, bisexual, mostly heterosexual with slight homosexual temptation) actually goes through with the unfortunate decision to end one’s own life, none of this speculation will ever be solved.

Homosexual inclinations are equated with disorder — but rarely do you hear about living a chaste lifestyle that is still acceptable to God. Mostly, people want/expect you to change orientation to be “good” because if you still have homosexual feelings, you’re not “healed” or “complete”.

How many people actually go from one end of the spectrum to the other? How many have some degree of bisexuality and choose to marry the opposite sex?

The success stories you hear are mostly with people who are capable of having romantic/sexual feelings for either gender but choose to foster the one that is taught to be natural and ordered.

One is expected to become straight because if you’re not, then clearly, something is wrong with you, or you’re not praying enough, or you don’t have enough willpower.

Unless you’re gay and experience the aspersions cast from Christians, you will never understand the feeling of helplessness. It feels as though God Himself has abandoned you and sided with those nice heterosexual Christians.

 

[Catolico65]

Actually I know Downs Syndrome is the result of chromosomal anomalies, I was using it as an example of things that went wrong after the Fall.

How about Autism, ADHD, bipolar and schizophrenia?

Not in accordance with the natural law≠not biological

According to a dubious study≠fact

Oh, so you want them to be cured like John Paulk, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper?

That someone has gone from gay sex to a married life doesn’t mean they are straight, Melinda Selmys for example is happily married with kids and does not at all claim she is “straight” or “ex-gay” (she has been a speaker on Catholic Answers).

The study is based on a compilation of more than 10,000 other studies by a biochemist/geneticist and statistician. Your credentials don’t compare I’m afraid.

Please answer my question - would you like the CC to accept homosexuality as normal?

 

[Catolico65]

I wonder if the higher rate of suicide is due to the, relatively, new position that this is a permanent condition and there’s no way “out”. For a young person who does not want to embrace the homosexual lifestyle but who does not have any resources available to help him/her overcome, despair and depression could result.

Of course it is. Worse still is that homosexual sexual manifestations provoke not spiritual promise and fulfillment but despair and desolation. No wonder their is an epidemic, and our society is giving them the exact opposite of what they need.

 

[Catolico65]

Since we don’t know who (e.g., 100% homosexual, mostly homosexual, bisexual, mostly heterosexual with slight homosexual temptation) actually goes through with the unfortunate decision to end one’s own life, none of this speculation will ever be solved.

Homosexual inclinations are equated with disorder — but rarely do you hear about living a chaste lifestyle that is still acceptable to God. Mostly, people want/expect you to change orientation to be “good” because if you still have homosexual feelings, you’re not “healed” or “complete”.

How many people actually go from one end of the spectrum to the other? How many have some degree of bisexuality and choose to marry the opposite sex?

The success stories you hear are mostly with people who are capable of having romantic/sexual feelings for either gender but choose to foster the one that is taught to be natural and ordered.

One is expected to become straight because if you’re not, then clearly, something is wrong with you, or you’re not praying enough, or you don’t have enough willpower.

Unless you’re gay and experience the aspersions cast from Christians, you will never understand the feeling of helplessness. It feels as though God Himself has abandoned you and sided with those nice heterosexual Christians.

First of all I was sexually molested by an older friend that I considered a brother. Furthermore, I was small and shy and picked on and called homosexual in high school and wondered about my masculinity all the time to the point of having SSA. Jesus relieved that of me. I don’t believe in making fun of those that struggle with SSA because I was one of them, I want to help them. Not like you and the gay lobby who want to shackle them to hopelessness and despair by telling them they cannot change.

As far as your anecdotal comments, I prefer science.

 

[EIF5A]

First of all I was sexually molested by an older friend that I considered a brother. Furthermore, I was small and shy and picked on and called homosexual in high school and wondered about my masculinity all the time to the point of having SSA. Jesus relieved that of me. I don’t believe in making fun of those that struggle with SSA because I was one of them, I want to help them. Not like you and the gay lobby who want to shackle them to hopelessness and despair by telling them they cannot change.

As far as your anecdotal comments, I prefer science.

1. You’re ONE PERSON. Your experience does not apply to every other person with same-sex attraction. Most gay people have not been molested, and most grew up in stable homes.
2. YOU DON’T KNOW ME. Don’t you dare claim that I’m trying to shackle people to hopelessness. Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to make judgments about people’s motives and intent?

For the sake of not becoming irate and angry and committing more sins, I will no longer read or respond to your posts.

Why can’t people just be honest? Don’t promise complete change to heterosexuality when it cannot be guaranteed. Look at Exodus International and how they ended up.

The goal is chastity, not heterosexuality.

 

[Catolico65]

1. You’re ONE PERSON. Your experience does not apply to every other person with same-sex attraction. Most gay people have not been molested, and most grew up in stable homes.
2. YOU DON’T KNOW ME. Don’t you dare claim that I’m trying to shackle people to hopelessness. Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to make judgments about people’s motives and intent?

For the sake of not becoming irate and angry and committing more sins, I will no longer read or respond to your posts.

Why can’t people just be honest? Don’t promise complete change to heterosexuality when it cannot be guaranteed. Look at Exodus International and how they ended up.

The goal is chastity, not heterosexuality.

If you tell people they are born with SSA and they cannot change, you give them no hope and can cause them to sin.

*Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe [in me] to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. *

 

[Corki]

1. You’re ONE PERSON. Your experience does not apply to every other person with same-sex attraction. Most gay people have not been molested, and most grew up in stable homes.

But neither does **your **experience apply to all people with same-sex attraction. There is a number of people who can trace their disorder to abuse or a family situation. Whether that number is large or small, it exists.

The whole point of this thread is that treating SSA as a permanent condition and taking therapy off the table as a choice, abandons a certain segment of our youth.

 

[Catolico65]

But neither does **your **experience apply to all people with same-sex attraction. There is a number of people who can trace their disorder to abuse or a family situation. Whether that number is large or small, it exists.

The whole point of this thread is that treating SSA as a permanent condition and taking therapy off the table as a choice, abandons a certain segment of our youth.

 

[randomuser]

But neither does **your **experience apply to all people with same-sex attraction. There is a number of people who can trace their disorder to abuse or a family situation. Whether that number is large or small, it exists.

The whole point of this thread is that treating SSA as a permanent condition and taking therapy off the table as a choice, abandons a certain segment of our youth.

What about the abandon of words like “homosexuality,” which is specifically mentioned in the Catechism, for sake of ‘warm and fuzzy’, supposedly-less-threatening phrases like “SSA,” which we are led to believe may or may not be the same thing as homosexuality? It’s no wonder there’s so much confusion. There’s no mention of “SSA” in the DSM-IV or other diagnostic material used by doctors - “SSA” is strictly a pastoral term.

Nobody is born with SSA and it’s not a permanent condition, so obviously it can be cured because the semantics involved makes disproving it impossible.

Logic would dictate anyone cured of “SSA” would be relieved to know, “So, you mean I was never gay to begin with? Awesome- what a relief-!” But, no, anyone with the gall to suggest such a thing is accused of being mean and insensitive and uncharitable.

I will continue to pray for those dealing with a homosexual disorientation. God bless.

 

[EIF5A]

But neither does **your **experience apply to all people with same-sex attraction. There is a number of people who can trace their disorder to abuse or a family situation. Whether that number is large or small, it exists.

The whole point of this thread is that treating SSA as a permanent condition and taking therapy off the table as a choice, abandons a certain segment of our youth.

I never said it did. I also never said, “No homosexual was ever abused in the past”.

Therapy should not be false hope that after XYZ, the condition will go away. It shouldn’t be the expectation that if the condition remains, something is wrong with that person or that s/he didn’t have enough faith or didn’t work at it enough.

For some, SSA IS permanent. “Deep-seated homosexual tendencies” is just a neutral phrase for it. And from the Catholic perspective, the goal is celibacy.

But apparently, that’s not enough for the good Catholics here because those with SSA will always have a mark of disgrace and sin.

 

[frobert]

The gay lobby is frantically fighting reparative therapy even though they know it works. In the State of NJ the family of a boy who received this treatment that saved his life from suicidal thoughts is fighting Gov. Christies gay lobby legislation.

It is not only gays who are fighting it but every single legitimate professional association that has anything to do with counseling and therapy. They are fighting it for good reason. It does damage to the youth who undergo such treatment. It does not work, it never has and never will. I have personal experience as a therapist treating families and youth who have been terrorized by so called “reparative therapy.”

I have a lot of respect for you personally but please do legitimate research before you lobby for something that more often than not results in harmful consequences.

 

[randomuser]

But neither does **your **experience apply to all people with same-sex attraction. There is a number of people who can trace their disorder to abuse or a family situation. Whether that number is large or small, it exists.

The whole point of this thread is that treating SSA as a permanent condition and taking therapy off the table as a choice, abandons a certain segment of our youth.

Parents are entrusted with the best interest of that segment of our youth. And trusting those youths’ lives in the care of – are any of these “ex-gay” practictioners even physicians? – with diagnostics and methods that aren’t recognized in the DSM-IV, let alone how would it be billed? – borders on outright child abuse. As was already pointed out elsewhere, parents can already “treat” the “SSA” with sacraments and counsel with their parish priest.

 

[frobert]

Parents are entrusted with the best interest of that segment of our youth. And trusting those youths’ lives in the care of – are any of these “ex-gay” practictioners even physicians? – with diagnostics and methods that aren’t recognized in the DSM-IV, let alone how would it be billed? – borders on outright child abuse. As was already pointed out elsewhere, parents can already “treat” the “SSA” with sacraments and counsel with their parish priest.

It doesn’t just border on child abuse it is child abuse.

suicides due to reparative therapy

professional associations against reparative therapy

 

[EIF5A]

It doesn’t just border on child abuse it is child abuse.

suicides due to reparative therapy

professional associations against reparative therapy

Be prepared of being accused of liberal smear campaign.

As long as something sounds righteous, who cares about actual harm or (lack of) efficacy?

The Church teaches that having same-sex attraction but not acting upon it is not sin…yet saints of the past have taught that same-sex attraction is the worst possible unnatural proclivity to sin, even worse than any heterosexual sin because at least heterosexuals are natural.

I wonder why gay people end up depressed.

 

[Catolico65]

It is not only gays who are fighting it but every single legitimate professional association that has anything to do with counseling and therapy. They are fighting it for good reason. It does damage to the youth who undergo such treatment. It does not work, it never has and never will. I have personal experience as a therapist treating families and youth who have been terrorized by so called “reparative therapy.”

I have a lot of respect for you personally but please do legitimate research before you lobby for something that more often than not results in harmful consequences.

I am for reparative therapy with the Bible, do you oppose that?

As far it not working their are plenty of people that have changed because of it. In fact, there are more ex homosexuals than homosexual in existence. Homosexuality is not innate and we should not tell our youths anything different. Paz.

 

[Cavaradossi]

The Church teaches that having same-sex attraction but not acting upon it is not sin…yet saints of the past have taught that same-sex attraction is the worst possible unnatural proclivity to sin, even worse than any heterosexual sin because at least heterosexuals are natural.

Well, it’s a bit more complex than that. The majority view of the fathers was that sexuality is not even natural to humankind (St. Augustine, I should note, was a notable exception, and yet even he did not believe that we were meant to reproduce sexually as the result of sexual urges, but rather that we would do so in a manner which was stripped of any hint of being carnal, so that even for St. Augustine, sexual desire was not natural to man). Some like St. Maximus the Confessor even taught that God only created man with genders foreknowing that the fall would happen. They mostly taught that sexual reproduction was a product of the fall (believing that before the fall that we were to multiply and reproduce in a manner which was not carnal and sexual), and they believed therefore that sexuality was given to man after the fall as a type of condescension from God, that humans might continue to reproduce, albeit now in the base and carnal manner that beasts reproduce, which is why only under the specific context of a marriage did the fathers bless sexual conduct (and even then, only sexual conduct with procreation as its end: sodomy and other “unnatural” sex acts were considered by the fathers to be sinful in marriage as well). In fact, I would be inclined to say that the Fathers would not have understood heterosexuality as being something natural to man, because sexuality itself is not natural to man.

 

[EIF5A]

Well, it’s a bit more complex than that. The majority view of the fathers was that sexuality is not even natural to humankind (St. Augustine, I should note, was a notable exception, and yet even he did not believe that we were meant to reproduce sexually as the result of sexual urges, but rather that we would do so in a manner which was stripped of any hint of being carnal, so that even for St. Augustine, sexual desire was not natural to man). Some like St. Maximus the Confessor even taught that God only created man with genders foreknowing that the fall would happen. They mostly taught that sexual reproduction was a product of the fall (believing that before the fall that we were to multiply and reproduce in a manner which was not carnal and sexual), and they believed therefore that sexuality was given to man after the fall as a type of condescension from God, that humans might continue to reproduce, albeit now in the base and carnal manner that beasts reproduce, which is why only under the specific context of a marriage did the fathers bless sexual conduct (and even then, only sexual conduct with procreation as its end: sodomy and other “unnatural” sex acts were considered by the fathers to be sinful in marriage as well). In fact, I would be inclined to say that the Fathers would not have understood heterosexuality as being something natural to man, because sexuality itself is not natural to man.

As a biologist, I’d be fascinated to know how God had originally intended for humans to reproduce in an asexual manner. Is genetic diversity also a result of the fall? If the Church allows us to believe that God used the process of evolution to create humans, then there’s some…interesting…territory to jump into.

How much of the gender theology as taught by specific saints is binding to Catholics (or Orthodox in your case)?

What’s the Orthodox position on “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and “reparative therapy”?

 

[Cavaradossi]

As a biologist, I’d be fascinated to know how God had originally intended for humans to reproduce in an asexual manner.

We cannot be too sure. The Fathers only denied that this would have been sexual reproduction involving the genitalia, but never gave an affirmative answer to how humans would multiply without sexual reproduction.

Is genetic diversity also a result of the fall?

Possibly so. It could be that the human acquisition of genetics was part of the “garments of skin” in which Adam and Eve were clothed after their expulsion from the Garden. The Patristic interpretation of that verse was that we were given animalistic natures for the new fallen and carnal life which we had acquired through the fall. For contrast, we see that Christ after the Resurrection, though still being a material being, clearly did not possess such an animalistic nature, as he was able to perform acts (such as passing through walls, appearing suddenly from nowhere, etc.), which are not natural to animals. There was something very otherworldly about his body.

If the Church allows us to believe that God used the process of evolution to create humans, then there’s some…interesting…territory to jump into.

Yes, there is, because it presents an enormous challenge to the patristic notion that there was no death before the fall. I frankly struggle with evolution, because the biological evidence and fossil record seem to make it something which cannot be denied outright, but that is a discussion for another thread.

How much of the gender theology as taught by specific saints is binding to Catholics (or Orthodox in your case)?

For Roman Catholics, I cannot say. For the Orthodox, I cannot really think of what would be particularly binding, except to believe that the two genders differ, and that God intended to create man with genders (i.e., that gender was not a product of the fall, though it is acceptable to believe as St. Maximus did that genders were created because God foresaw the fall).

What’s the Orthodox position on “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and “reparative therapy”?

Orthodoxy regards “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” as a passion (as all inclinations towards sin are) which needs to be uprooted, so that the sexual urges do not control the life of whoever might be so unfortunate to suffer under such a spiritual affliction. The calling in such cases would certainly be to live chastely (though if one were capable of getting married, that would also be a possibility). On reparative therapies, I do not know. I know many who are suspicious of them, especially because they do not reflect the Orthodox view of sexuality as being a product of the fall; rather they would try to encourage one not to conquer his sexual passions, but to redirect them to another outlet (in this case, the opposite sex), a solution which would be inferior to living chastely and uprooting the passion altogether.

 

[Cricket2]

That doesn’t make sense because our society is a lot more accepting of homosexuality than 50 years ago and yet suicidal thoughts are apparently worse.

I think it really does make sense. We do have a culture of death in this country that I think contributes to suicidal thinking and even acceptance that may have been much more absent 50 years ago. Also, in many ways I think the level of acceptability is probably more superficial than many realize.

We live in times when a person can’t really state an opinion about anything without fear of censure, losing their job or being sued. So I have to wonder how accurate our notion of acceptance really is.

I had a friend for over 20 years that many people thought was gay. He was not, but had motor skill disabilities and was very “feminine” in his gestures that led people to think this. The trouble he had getting a simple job, including the recent past, in just ridiculous. At one time, for one job, he sent out over 200 resumes, had dozens of interviews based on credentials and took over two years to get a job. It all had to do with is “apparent” sexual orientation, not to do with reality.