October 5, 2008 10:13 PM
Jewish ex-gay: From homosexuality to health
Among my email subscriptions is one called Aish.com - which keeps me current with conservative, thoughtful Judaism. Today's post featured a story by a Jewish man who had left the homosexual lifestyle behind - a struggle he decided to undertake when he realized that it was based on problems in his background and that he could not live as an authentic man without overcoming it.
It's a compelling story:
The Straight Path Home
by David My personal struggles with homosexuality.Yom Kippur is the time for teshuva, to return, the time to work on faulty character traits and habits that have obscured our true selves.
But what if you have no healthy sense of self to return to?
What if the sense of being at fault, inadequate, is not the aberration but the norm? Not a localized effect relating to one bad act or trait, but the way you view yourself -- and the way you suspect that others see you.
What if the people who were supposed to build your strong, healthy sense of self -- to complete their creation of you -- do the opposite? What if they cut you down, shame you, train you to feel weak and dependent to bolster themselves?
What do you return to then?
I grew up in what psychologists call a "triadic family" -- it is so common in the backgrounds of men who struggle with homosexuality that it has a name. A distant or belittling father, an emotionally smothering or needy mother, and in the center a boy with nobody to guide him on the path to manhood. A boy for whom manhood has become dangerous, threatening, distant. A boy who grows up feeling different from other boys and men, yet yearns to connect with them, with his own masculinity.
When I was five or six years old, my cousin brought her boyfriend -- a strapping muscleman -- to a family party. I threw myself at him, climbing into his lap and onto his shoulders. He threw me in the air, wrestled me, and played with me as my father never did. I couldn't get enough. The adults were vaguely embarrassed at the intensity with which I pursued him; eventually they pulled me away to go to bed.
When I passed through the gay world years later as a young man, I saw the same thing -- men desperately trying to connect with other men. Over time, that yearning had become sexualized. In baths and gay bars, some gays dressed up as caricatures of the most macho of men. The gay community was full of men like me: boys still desperately seeking to crack the code of real manliness.
But consuming another man's masculinity can only temporarily substitute for an honest male self-image. So the search, for most gay men, becomes a series of compulsive, yet fruitless encounters.
Older men, never having found the dream lover that would quiet their inner hunger, and finding their charms fading, would seek out boyish younger men for affairs that parodied real father-son relationships. This arrangement exploited my emotional neediness, and I gloried in being celebrated for my youth and vigor.
The rush of sexual and emotional release created powerful experiences. I finally felt loved and accepted by men. I had grown up with a distorted sense of myself as less than a man. Now a new -- equally distorted -- set of beliefs was offered as an explanation, a "solution" to that earlier hurt. Given the home I came from, it was easy to feel that coming out would mean "coming home" to something better. Wasn't this what teshuva means -- returning to your "true" self?
Facing the Truth
To solve a problem you must admit it exists.
You can deny it -- but then you must keep on denying, as reality mounts around you. From the first kink of self-serving untruth, you can, like a snail, build a crooked little world of your own.
In our narcissistic generation, talk of "returning to one's true self" can feed unhealthy self-absorption, empty self-esteem, or be used to cover a sense of inferiority -- without leading to honest self-examination. It can be used to spin a cocoon of excuses instead of leading outwards, inspiring the effort to see -- and live up to -- the truth.
Kabbalists call this capacity for self-deception "klipah" -- from the Hebrew word for a fruit's peel or rind. Enmeshed in this physical world, our souls blinkered by limited horizons, we are susceptible to falsehood.
In our generation those who struggle with homosexuality have the option of wrapping themselves in the gay liberation narrative. The mantle of chic victimhood quiets a lot of the inner distress -- for a while. The haunting sense of otherness folds in on itself to become a virtue. It feels wonderful to finally renounce that sense of being less than a normal man by declaring you are something else entirely.
But it's a false identity. As I saw up close, brave statements do not end the compulsive search for masculinity. There is no resolution, no revelation of true self.
The pornographic mentality of the gay subculture focuses unrelentingly on physique and external appearances, further postponing the confrontation with true inner self.
My Struggle
So the first step in teshuva is to see clearly that an error has been made. The Torah demands that one verbally admit the transgression, to say it out loud. This is not a confession to anyone else but ourselves. God already knows.
It sounds simple, but we all justify our errors. It's even more difficult to pierce false fronts that we ourselves have constructed to cover deep wells of fear and shame.
My first struggle was for the truth of my own perceptions. I did not see the promised happiness and fulfillment in the gay community -- despite what "everybody" knew and told me. Despite what "everybody" knew about those backward observant Jews, I saw -- and received -- more real connection, trust, love, and joy in Jewish families and communities. However uncertain I felt about my worth, I didn't feel that I had been created differently from the Jews who were living that life of family and community.
I started digging for real facts.
I discovered that there is insufficient evidence for the claim that homosexuality is genetically or biologically predetermined. Instead I learned that homes like mine are common among men with homosexual urges. I found out that the great founders of psychology - from Freud and Jung up to the 1960s -- had described how the problems in those homes lead to homosexual attraction. I learned that their studies had never been disproved, merely shouted down. Just like people whose fantasy defenses were threatened by my own observations were shouting me down, telling me to disbelieve my own senses and feelings.
I found out that "out and proud" homosexuals still suffered depression, suicide, and substance abuse at rates several times higher than the general population. And that most gay men settle for a lifetime of brief, compulsive, and often anonymous sexual couplings, marked by elevated rates of physical abuse.
As I looked around me, I noticed deep cracks in the gay lifestyle, its broken promises.
My foothold in Jewish communities and attachment to the Torah -- to an external measure of moral values which has stood the test of time -- kept my perspective rooted in reality. Exploitation by mutual agreement was not love. The relationships I'd had with older men were not healthy mentoring. I could no longer deceive myself by making up my own, self-serving definitions.
I had to struggle to discover and admit truths, painful truths that would wind up leading me on a longer, more lonely way than the one offered by the "experts."
I had to accept that my pain was caused by internal trauma, rather than external prejudice. To admit that something had gone wrong, that I was wounded or damaged in some way. I flinched inside at such thoughts; they led directly to a pit of shame and worthlessness. How much more attractive to convince myself that I really was normal!
I had to accept that healing would require hard work to change my habits and mindset -- and on the way I would have to unearth and relive deeply painful episodes. To restore myself to the community of real men, I would have to relinquish the narcissistic comfort of being "special," overcome paralyzing fears, and risk rejection. I would also have to relinquish and mourn relationships that never would heal, and find others to love and trust.
As I took counsel with friends in both the gay and Torah worlds, a paradox emerged: those who called themselves liberal-minded humanists asserted that I was like an animal, my essential nature fixed -- and that there was no higher dimension to "fulfilling myself" beyond sexual abandon. And Torah Judaism -- dismissed by them as primitive -- asserted that I was free to define myself and bond deeply with others through the uniquely human qualities of free will, insight and choice.
Read the rest here.
David credits a Jewish group - JONAH - with helping him on his journey to wholeness:
JONAH, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, is a non-profit international organization dedicated to educating the world-wide Jewish community about the prevention, intervention, and healing of the underlying issues causing same-sex attractions.
Our Rabbinical sages explain that because mankind has been endowed by our Creator with a free will, everyone has the capacity to change. Furthermore, the Rabbis emphasize that parents, teachers and counselors have a special responsibility to educate, nurture, and provide an opportunity for those struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions to journey out of homosexuality.
Through psychological and spiritual counseling, peer support, and self-empowerment, JONAH seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope.
The problem for groups like Jonah and Focus on the Family's Love Won Out is that gay activists are so threatened by the challenge to their Born Gay/Always Gay religion that they HATE those who've left the lifestyle and want to help others who have a similar desire.
These groups do not go out to gay bars and proselytize. They simply offer help to whose who are seeking a way out. Isn't it obvious that if gays were secure in their lifestyle, this would not be a threat to them? And if people should be free to turn to the gay lifestyle, shouldn't they be just as fee to turn away from it? And if teens are supposed to be provided with information and support to come "out" as gay, shouldn't those who wish to transcend homosexual tendencies also be provided with information and support?
This is another of those leftist issues in which freedom of speech has been sadly curtailed by all kinds of iconic institutions like the National Education Association, PBS, the PTA.
Posted in Homosexuality | Permalink
Comments
Barbara,
The problem with groups like JONAH is their anti-gay rhetoric. I blogged about this very article at www.psychologytoday.com in my column called, Gay's Anatomy.
The author, "David" makes sweeping generalizations in his article--as does JONAH--about gay and lesbian lifestyles. It would be nice if they would stick just with what is right for them and people like them and not for everyone.
As a gay man, I feel no need to change. I never did and never will.
For others. they *do* feel the need to change. And they should if that is how they feel.
I won't tell them they shouldn't change if they don't tell me I should!
It is that simple.
Warmly, Joe
Posted by: Joe Kort | October 6, 2008 11:05 AM
These people are just closeted and self-hating, they cannot change their sexual orientation. The American Psychological Association and American Medical Association among others do not consider homosexuality an illness, and do not believe in reparative therapy. Many so called "ex-gays" later decide to be true to themselves and be gay the way god created them. If "conversion therapy" worked wouldnt you see thousands of so called "ex-gays"? why would anyone choose to live a life of being different, not having equal rights and being ostracized? "Reparative therapy" is dangerous and radical, not only does it not work, it creates psychological problems and low self esteem that often leads to depression and suicide among young teens. We need affirming professionals, not religious ideologues to help these kids accept their sexual orientation as healthy and god given.
Posted by: queerunity | October 6, 2008 12:41 PM
