Post 79

Post 79                                   Posted Saturday, May 10, 2025 – 7 PM

Hello again,

There are men happy being same-sex attracted and others who perceive their inclinations toward other men as foreign and something to be rid of. I was surprised at less interest shown in my last post. It suggests perhaps three things: First, some are opposed to reading longer posts. Second, most readers value gay behavior and are not interested in concepts supporting change. (So many ineffective approaches have been advanced.) Third and most concerning is that readers did not understand the implications of the ideas I shared.

t wasn’t long ago that gay men flocked to therapists who promised change through reorienting approaches. A common goal was diminishing or eliminating “unwanted same-sex attraction” and replacing it with attraction to women. Gay men’s attraction to other men has generally been viewed negatively by both gays and therapists, something to be gotten rid of. Nowhere was there consideration that same-sex attraction was a positive force, the powerful and enduring engine for change. When used for non-erotic social and emotional relating, same-sex attraction can be the impetus that facilitates belonging and personal growth. That enduring draw is only harmful and self-defeating when it is eroticized.

                  Edward Sagarin was known as Donald Webster Cory, author of The Homosexual in America. He was honored as the “father” of the American gay revolution. He was later vilified after studying sociology and sharing his changed views that gays were disturbed through early family trauma and in need of clinical support. He declared:

                        …there is no such thing as a homosexual, for such a con-

cept is a reification, an artificially created entity that has no

basis in reality. What exists are people with erotic desires for

their own sex, or who engage in sexual activities with same-sex

others, or both. The desires constitute feeling, the acts constitute

doing, but neither is being. Emotions and actions are fluid and

dynamic, learnable and unlearnable, exist to a given extent for

a limited or longer period of time, but are constantly in a state

of change, flux, development, and becoming.

These ideas have glorious implications for opportunity and responsibility. Another important point was introduced by psychologist, Elizabeth Moberly. Each individual must be his own primary therapist, the one directing the force and process of his personal change. No one can go to a therapist and expect to be “fixed.” No therapist can provide the social and emotional experiences  with other men needed for personal growth and change. Each must look inward and discover his own history of injury and estrangement and work to encounter “corrective emotional experiences.”