Making LaHaye When He Hates

Was this a Freudian slip?:

"The Christian community needs a penetrating book on homosexuality."

"Penetrating"?  Hmm...What does that word choice tell us about the writer of that sentence?

Said author is Tim LaHaye. Yes, that Tim LaHaye. Actually, he was quoting someone with similar views, but that LaHaye used it as a rationale for--and in the beginning of--his book The Unhappy Gays still, I think, confirms something I've long suspected about him and lots of other "Christian" homophobes.

More to the point, the esteemed Mr. LaHaye took it upon himself to explain homosexuals for likeminded people, i.e., those who use their religious beliefs as a smokescreen for their bigotry.  He's the sort of person who's articulate enough to explain to people what they can't explain about people they hate, but--not surprisingly--not honest enough to call that hate what it is.

I remember reading The Unhappy Gays not long after it came out.  I was in college and had joined a campus Christian fellowship for all sorts of reasons, all of which had to do with my inability--at that time--to understand, let alone articulate or deal with things I'd felt for as long as I could remember.  I actually "came out" as gay because, frankly, I didn't know what else I was.  Some members of the fellowship said they would pray for me, and I don't doubt they did.  At least they didn't try to "cure" me by fixing me up with sisters or other females they knew.  And being around them spared me from a lot of those campus activities that begin with alcohol and end with rape.

Still, I knew I wasn't one of them.  I didn't see anything the way they did.  No matter how much some tried to include me, I knew I ultimately couldn't be a part of their world, any more than I would be part of the world of white picket fences.

And from other people I faced outright exclusion and rejection.  Ironically, La Haye cited such rejection as one of the reasons for the "intense anger that churns through even the most phlegmatic homosexual". Although he was wrong to categorize all gays as angry, he did understand that rejection makes people angry.  And although I didn't fit most of the stereotypes he claimed to be elucidating for his audience, I knew I was angry--or, at least, unhappy.

Not to make excuses for myself, but what else could I have been, really?  However, rejection was only part of the reason why.  Most important, I think, was that I was someone I couldn't understand and didn't ask to be.  Like anyone else one who's born different from other people, I didn't start off thinking I wasn't worthy of the things most people wanted and enjoyed.  But, like too many who are "minorities" or outcasts, I absorbed the subtle and not-so-subtle messages that I wasn't worthy.  Those same people and institutions that sent us those messages were also the very ones who stigmatized us for not achieving what they achieved in the areas of relationships and even careers.  

Anyway, it's because LaHaye understood that much that he was able to say he was being "compassionate" toward homosexuals.  You know, in a "love the sin, hate the sinner" sort of way. Not surprisingly, he thought that because God loves us, all we had to do was to accept that love and we'd be "saved".  From what?  Our "sin".  And for what?  "Eternal life", or some such thing.   

I got to thinking about all of this after a seeing a post on the Patheos Atheist Newsletter today.  The author of that post outlined some of the lies found in LaHaye's book.  That post is definitely worth reading.  If nothing else, it offer you some insights into some of the things Christian "fundamentalists" say about gay (and trans) people--and how much worse they were in 1978.

What Is Professor Regenerus Telling Us?

Whenever I teach literature, I have to explain the concept of irony.

Now, I am the sort of teacher (and person) who prefers to teach and define through examples, so I am always looking new and interesting ones.

I think I may have stumbled upon something:  A sociologist whose work has been used to bolster claims that same-sex couples can't be good parents may just have given me, and other women, reason to become lesbians.

Two years ago, Mark Regenerus of the University of Texas-Austin published his study about adult children(up to 39 years old) of lesbian and gay parents.  According to his findings, such children have higher rates of problems with their own relationships.  However, as he has taken pains to point out, his work cannot provide any conclusive evidence that same-sex couples make worse parents than heterosexual ones.  For one thing, the parents (some of whom are now dead) of those adult children most likely did not self-identify as gay or lesbian, as few parents would have done so until recently. Essentially, he classified any parent who had an extramarital sexual experience with a person of his or her own gender as gay or lesbian. He himself admits that this is, at best, a flawed way of identifying gay or lesbian parents.

If there is indeed any evidence that the children of such relationships have more problems, it probably has to do with the instability found in those parents' relationships. Even if the kid doesn't exactly know his or her mother or father is really doing when he or she is "working overtime" or "going out with the guys (or girls)", he or she can pick up on the tension engendered by sneaking around and  keeping it a secret--or of the fact that the spouse knows that the person he or she married is on the "down low."  The kid notices that the parents are fighting or not talking to each other, even if he or she doesn't know the reason why.

Regenerus himself acknowledges the flaws in his study and says that it cannot be used to draw any conclusions about the inferiority of gay or lesbian parents.  Of course, his warning has not stopped organizations like Focus on the Family or the editors of The National Review from doing exactly that.

Now Professor Regenerus (What a name, huh?) has published a new study in which he concludes that the "normalization of gay men's sexual behavior" will embolden straight men to demand, of their girlfriends and wives, the right to  "open relationships" (i.e., one in which they are allowed to stray) and anal sex.

Hmm...So let's see...Gay men are still sexually promiscuous, just like we thought they were in the 1970's.  They're going to give straight men ideas.  Hmm...Where does that leave us?

Now, if I ever get involved with a man again, I just might allow an open relationship, as long as he asks me nicely and  is honest with me. (Perhaps it's naive to think such a thing is possible. Oh well.)  But I don't know about the anal sex part.  It's not that I feel revulsion to the practice or even that I associate it with gay men, necessarily.  Let's just say it's not my preference, so I'm not sure of how I'd feel if a man started to demand it of me.

I was willing to give Professor Regenerus the benefit of the doubt on his earlier study (or, more precisely, doubt the reading comprehension skills of some who saw it).  But his study of the effects of the "normalization of gay men's sexual behavior" has me scratching my pretty little head.  Perhaps he can explain further.