Mark's Cafe Moi: Remembering compassion in the ex-gay storm

I’ve never wanted to not be gay. Being same-sex attracted was something I was aware of at a very young age, and something I did not question in the slightest until I was older and realized that a great many people – essentially the entire culture I was living in then – considered it unacceptable. In that way I think I was fortunate. Like most children, what I experienced as natural was, well, natural. It was the opinions and beliefs of others that caused conflict, not my own self-awareness. I’ve been many things in my life, but tortured about my sexual orientation is not one of them. Nonetheless, there are many people in the world who, mostly from the same experience of living in cultures that claim there is something wrong or immoral about us, struggle with themselves. It’s important that we retain compassion for them. It’s come to mind for me as I watch the recycling of the ex-gay phenomenon in the media regarding Michele Bachmann and her husband. While it’s one thing to sneer at those who run these programs, some of whom are clearly taking advantage of troubled people, it’s not acceptable to include in our mockery the people who turn to these organizations. This isn’t something I see brought up much. It’s mostly howling about the absurdity (and the cruelty) of pushing the idea that anyone can change their sexual orientation through prayer or “reparative therapy,” or anything else. I’m also reminded of two men I knew in the early 1980s. One ran a gay recovery house for alcoholism and substance abuse in Los Angeles, another was a man I knew who came to the house often. Both of them decided, for reasons of their own, to marry women and have children, after years of living as openly and, as far as I know, self-accepting gay men. It is very important that I accept their decisions, then and now. They were not tortured, they were not trying to gain salvation from some gay-occupied hell. They were fine men who made choices I would not make and they saw them through. Compassion is not so much something we give as something we are. It is not piety. It is not surplus. It is a quiet realization that we are all truly the same. It’s a mark I often fall short of, but as I see once again the dustup over ex-gay therapy, ex-gay therapists, and the proponents of what amounts to spiritual charlatanism, I must remember that the people who matter most in this are the ones in emotional turmoil looking for peace. I hope they find it, each and every one, whether it takes a form pleasing to me or not.]]>