Transgender teen who died of an apparent suicide: ‘Fix society. Please.’

[Ridgerunner]

I haven’t touched alcohol for 29 years but readily acknowledge I am still an alcoholic.

I don’t for a minute doubt that I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. But I have never actually become one because, as a child, I saw the effects of it very dramatically. One might call that “aversion therapy”, because for me, it sure was.

Even as a child, I noted that alcoholism is a progressive addiction; that one doesn’t become truly addicted unless one drinks in certain ways, and over a period of time.

I am not persuaded yet that the addiction to homosexual acts is not similar. There are lots of sexual addictions. Some have been arbitrarily declared “normal” and encouraged. Some are condemned severely. Some are only thought odd or even laughed at.

 

[Midwest88]

I’m not so concerned about doctors as I am about priests, ministers and others who might be accused of “conversion therapy” in telling homosexuals that homosexual behavior is sinful and should be avoided.

That’s a good observation. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone non-straight, who may visit a priest/minister for advice about their disorder, later accuses him or anyone of “conversion therapy” if they say don’t enter a same-sex relationship and don’t indulge in the lifestyle. Boom. Social media frenzy and headlines and another “intolerant” and “bigoted” story to add to the prancing ponies of the LGBT world ammo.

 

[EIF5A]

That’s a good observation. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone non-straight, who may visit a priest/minister for advice about their disorder, later accuses him or anyone of “conversion therapy” if they say don’t enter a same-sex relationship and don’t indulge in the lifestyle. Boom. Social media frenzy and headlines and another “intolerant” and “bigoted” story to add to the prancing ponies of the LGBT world ammo.

I don’t see that happening.

The priest didn’t tell him to enter a program to turn straight. (The Church also doesn’t teach it or require it either.)

The Church already teaches that premarital relations, masturbation, adultery, fornication, pornography, etc are wrong — gay AND straight.

And the Church already objects to homosexual acts.

There’s nothing new.

But phrases like “prancing ponies” do not help. In fact, it solidifies the view of Catholics as hateful.

 

[EIF5A]

I don’t for a minute doubt that I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. But I have never actually become one because, as a child, I saw the effects of it very dramatically. One might call that “aversion therapy”, because for me, it sure was.

Even as a child, I noted that alcoholism is a progressive addiction; that one doesn’t become truly addicted unless one drinks in certain ways, and over a period of time.

I am not persuaded yet that the addiction to homosexual acts is not similar. There are lots of sexual addictions. Some have been arbitrarily declared “normal” and encouraged. Some are condemned severely. Some are only thought odd or even laughed at.

Homosexual acts are probably as addictive as unrestrained heterosexual acts.

 

[ManOnFire]

How many of these sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids hunger for love and unconditional acceptance from their parents, only to have their proud, ambitious, rigidly legalistic parents not give them the love and unconditional acceptance they crave in order for the world to make sense as they struggle to become independent young men and women??? The kids empathize with what their parents are trying to make them accomplish, but adolescence is about developing one’s own identity, and the feeling of failing to live up to parental expectations can feel like one is trapped in a cage. It’s a Catch-22. If the child conforms to parental demands, he/she loses that critical stage of developing his/her individuality. What if the subconscious mind creates a new identity in order to satisfy the individual’s subconscious need to become an independent person in his/her own conscience? Can the subconscious steer, control, or escape the reality of the situation by subconsciously adopting anorexia, bulimia, escaping to alternate sexual identities, other obsessions with forms of escapism or rebellion? This is especially painful for the sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids who have tasted deep love, but then later felt like it had been taken away by rejection or lack of acceptance by parents. Super high and super low. Trapped and feeling betrayed. Maybe these kids just need someone who Understands how they feel and that they are not alone in this, and it doesn’t need to be this way. ?

 

[EIF5A]

How many of these sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids hunger for love and unconditional acceptance from their parents, only to have their proud, ambitious, rigidly legalistic parents not give them the love and unconditional acceptance they crave in order for the world to make sense as they struggle to become independent young men and women??? The kids empathize with what their parents are trying to make them accomplish, but adolescence is about developing one’s own identity, and the feeling of failing to live up to parental expectations can feel like one is trapped in a cage. It’s a Catch-22. If the child conforms to parental demands, he/she loses that critical stage of developing his/her individuality. What if the subconscious mind creates a new identity in order to satisfy the individual’s subconscious need to become an independent person in his/her own conscience? Can the subconscious steer, control, or escape the reality of the situation by subconsciously adopting anorexia, bulimia, escaping to alternate sexual identities, other obsessions with forms of escapism or rebellion? This is especially painful for the sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids who have tasted deep love, but then later felt like it had been taken away by rejection or lack of acceptance by parents. Super high and super low. Trapped and feeling betrayed. Maybe these kids just need someone who Understands how they feel and that they are not alone in this, and it doesn’t need to be this way. ?

…Where are you getting this information that people are gay because they want to escape from their parents’ expectations…?

 

[TheSeeker2014]

…Where are you getting this information that people are gay because they want to escape from their parents’ expectations…?

transexuality is not the same as gay

 

[EIF5A]

transexuality is not the same as gay

Ah, you’re right.

(The latest conversation was focused on conversion therapy, so I automatically assumed “alternative sexual identity” as homosexuality.)

But in a similar vein, what’s the evidence that transgendered people choose to be so in response to parental upbringing?

 

[Ridgerunner]

How many of these sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids hunger for love and unconditional acceptance from their parents, only to have their proud, ambitious, rigidly legalistic parents not give them the love and unconditional acceptance they crave in order for the world to make sense as they struggle to become independent young men and women??? The kids empathize with what their parents are trying to make them accomplish, but adolescence is about developing one’s own identity, and the feeling of failing to live up to parental expectations can feel like one is trapped in a cage.

A very interesting, albeit highly judgmental, view. “sensitive, caring,” vs. “proud, legalistic”.

It is also totally relativistic; “values” vs. “objective good”. It assumes the “self” is properly what it discovers its subjectively preferences, versus what it objectively ought to be. Not a good situation we’re in nowadays, philosophically and theologically speaking. But admittedly, it is a pervasive, if often unreflective, view.

Might be well to reconsider it.

 

[estesbob]

A very interesting, albeit highly judgmental, view. “sensitive, caring,” vs. “proud, legalistic”.

It is also totally relativistic; “values” vs. “objective good”. It assumes the “self” is properly what it discovers its subjectively preferences, versus what it objectively ought to be. Not a good situation we’re in nowadays, philosophically and theologically speaking. But admittedly, it is a pervasive, if often unreflective, view.

Might be well to reconsider it.

Also equates unconditional love with unconditional acceptance

 

[MarcoPolo]

“conversion therapy” is successful when all that’s happened is a change in behavior rather than orientation.

Do you know any current psychologists who believe it is possible or wise to “change” a person from one specific and actual orientation to another? I don’t. That’s not what the current movement of so-called “conversion therapy” purports to accomplish as far as I know.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Do you know any current psychologists who believe it is possible or wise to “change” a person from one specific and actual orientation to another? I don’t. That’s not what the current movement of so-called “conversion therapy” purports to accomplish as far as I know.

In today’s atmosphere, I don’t know one who would say it aloud or admit he was doing it. The last news story on the subject I saw (admittedly some time ago) some psychologist got his licensed pulled for saying it and attempting it.

For psychologists today, homosexuality is kryptonite unless it is fully accepted as “normal” and the “therapy” is persuading the patient that he/she should be comfortable with it.

 

[estesbob]

Do you know any current psychologists who believe it is possible or wise to “change” a person from one specific and actual orientation to another? I don’t. That’s not what the current movement of so-called “conversion therapy” purports to accomplish as far as I know.

I know of psychologists and individual who know that teen can be confused about their sexuality and believe they are homosexual when they are not. Of course in our culture trying to talk them through this confusion is nearly a capital offense.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I know of psychologists and individual who know that teen can be confused about their sexuality and believe they are homosexual when they are not. Of course in our culture trying to talk them through this confusion is nearly a capital offense.

Interesting, though, how there are at least two cultures. There is the official culture of this administration, the liberal media and a good part of academia. That culture is really an “anti-culture” in that it has cast itself as the enemy of the underlying culture to the extent one still exists, and fight against it relentlessly. Unsurprisingly, it endorses and virtually sanctifies homosexuality. But inasmuch as its only personal “value” is “self”, meaning all other “values” are relative, that’s not surprising. There is no such thing as right or wrong, only what one thinks fulfills one’s subjective view of his destiny.

Then there’s the underlying culture; vaguely Christian overlaying pockets of very strongly held belief in biblical and traditional morality. No matter what many say, most would be horrified at the prospect of one of their children becoming homosexual.

Since the “official culture” is at war with the underlying culture and severely at war with the pockets of biblical and traditional morality, it constantly seeks not only to encourage them to reject their own traditionally held beliefs, but uses force when and where it can.

And so, for example, government-encouraged public funding of contraception including abortifacients is “sold” to the public at large in the belief that most will accept them as “healthcare”. But to those whose beliefs are strongly wedded to the biblical and traditional (like the Little Sisters of the Poor) the purveyors of “official culture” show the iron fist of coercion.

And so, the proposed forcible banning of “conversion therapy” will inevitably become a war on biblical and traditional Christianity because, in truth, that’s its purpose.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

I haven’t touched alcohol for 29 years but readily acknowledge I am still an alcoholic.

Conversion therapy is about making someone heterosexual not a abstinent homosexual.

I don’t for a minute doubt that I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. But I have never actually become one because, as a child, I saw the effects of it very dramatically. One might call that “aversion therapy”, because for me, it sure was.

Even as a child, I noted that alcoholism is a progressive addiction; that one doesn’t become truly addicted unless one drinks in certain ways, and over a period of time.

I am not persuaded yet that the addiction to homosexual acts is not similar. There are lots of sexual addictions. Some have been arbitrarily declared “normal” and encouraged. Some are condemned severely. Some are only thought odd or even laughed at.

So then, where does the desire to love someone of the same sex romantically come from, even in virgins?

That’s a good observation. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone non-straight, who may visit a priest/minister for advice about their disorder, later accuses him or anyone of “conversion therapy” if they say don’t enter a same-sex relationship and don’t indulge in the lifestyle. Boom. Social media frenzy and headlines and another “intolerant” and “bigoted” story to add to the prancing ponies of the LGBT world ammo.

In California the ban is only for minors furthermore the activities of pastors and lay counselors who are unlicensed but provide such therapy through church programs are also not banned even for treating minors.

How many of these sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids hunger for love and unconditional acceptance from their parents, only to have their proud, ambitious, rigidly legalistic parents not give them the love and unconditional acceptance they crave in order for the world to make sense as they struggle to become independent young men and women??? The kids empathize with what their parents are trying to make them accomplish, but adolescence is about developing one’s own identity, and the feeling of failing to live up to parental expectations can feel like one is trapped in a cage. It’s a Catch-22. If the child conforms to parental demands, he/she loses that critical stage of developing his/her individuality. What if the subconscious mind creates a new identity in order to satisfy the individual’s subconscious need to become an independent person in his/her own conscience? Can the subconscious steer, control, or escape the reality of the situation by subconsciously adopting anorexia, bulimia, escaping to alternate sexual identities, other obsessions with forms of escapism or rebellion? This is especially painful for the sensitive, caring, deep, introverted kids who have tasted deep love, but then later felt like it had been taken away by rejection or lack of acceptance by parents. Super high and super low. Trapped and feeling betrayed. Maybe these kids just need someone who Understands how they feel and that they are not alone in this, and it doesn’t need to be this way. ?

I struggle with anorexia nervosa and that is definitely not the cause in me.

Do you know any current psychologists who believe it is possible or wise to “change” a person from one specific and actual orientation to another? I don’t. That’s not what the current movement of so-called “conversion therapy” purports to accomplish as far as I know.

Conversion therapy used to be all about “reclaiming your heterosexual potential” and other Freudian bits of tosh.

 

[Ridgerunner]

So then, where does the desire to love someone of the same sex romantically come from, even in virgins?

I don’t know that “love someone” is quite the proper way to put it because if, in a truly Christian sense, one loved one of the same sex one would not only not engage in sex with him/her, but would try to at least encourage celibacy in that person.

Now, if we say what it really is, which is to engage in sex with that person, I don’t believe, in our present time, that it’s possible to know where it comes from. At one time, psychologists were free to speak, research, and write openly about how they accounted for homosexuality. But now they can’t because departing from fiated APA formulations is forbidden and sanctioned within that profession.

So it’s really a 100% political issue now, and the big question is whether those who want homosexual relations to be regarded as “normal” and to be celebrated, are sufficiently powerful politically to suppress all dissent by religious people and their teachers who teach that it’s an evil. I would say we’re very close to that coercive outcome.

 

[Seamus_L]

I believe it was the liberal-secular world that encourages people like this young man to be “who you really are”, that are most responsible for his tragic death.

 

[Loly_Maria]

I believe it was the liberal-secular world that encourages people like this young man to be “who you really are”, that are most responsible for his tragic death.

Well, of course, it was the people who accepted her and used her proper pronouns and are trying to get rid of conversion therapy for minors who really hurt her.

Not the people who refused to let her be herself and kept calling her a ‘young man’, and encouraged the use of a harmful therapy on a minor. They are totally innocent.

 

[ucfengr]

Well, of course, it was the people who accepted her and used her proper pronouns and are trying to get rid of conversion therapy for minors who really hurt her.

Yes, those people did hurt him, by feeding into and supporting his delusion. They’re no different from people telling a paranoid schizophrenic that there really are “black helicopters” tracking him.

Not the people who refused to let her be herself and kept calling her a ‘young man’, and encouraged the use of a harmful therapy on a minor. They are totally innocent.

He was a young man who was suffering from a delusion. Psychiatric therapy is as appropriate to try to treat a young man who identifies as a young woman as it would be for a normally abled person who identifies as a paraplegic.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I know of psychologists and individual who know that teen can be confused about their sexuality and believe they are homosexual when they are not. Of course in our culture trying to talk them through this confusion is nearly a capital offense.

Exactly. Confused about sexuality yes. But are there psychologists who think they can convert someone unconfused? I don’t know of any. Yet this is the straw man advanced against so-called “conversion therapy.”