Mike Huckabee Ain’t Here for CA’s Ex-Gay Ban
Former Arkansas governor and current Fox News personality (and current Mand of God – that’s how you say it in the Pentecostal Church of God In Christ, “Mand,” where you wear your finest church hat on Sundays) Mike Huckabee does not like that California officially banned ex-gay therapy from being practiced in the state. He’ont like it one bit!
Mike Huckabee
Source: Associated Press (AP)
“Let’s say a young person comes in and says, ‘You know, I’ve always believed I’m homosexual, believed that since I was 7 years old, but now that I’m 17, I’ve decided that I’m not, I’m heterosexual,’ and goes to a pro-homosexual counselor,” Huckabee told Staver. “Would that person be at risk?”
He then added, “It looks like some of those folks would be nervous that they couldn’t say, ‘Oh no, no you are homosexual all right because you thought that when you were seven, and therefore you have to stay that way.”
Sigh.
The purpose of ex-gay therapy, which I believe is based in homophobia (a made-up word to accurately depict the fear that people have of gays that turns into irrational hatred of them), was originally indeed the attempt to make gay men stop having sex with each other and marry women. Thus, they would be straight if they prayed, closed their eyes, and tried really, really hard.
Then the founders of the movement left their wives and were seen acting out at bars, clubs, and on Craigslist having sex with anything moving with three legs. They even did this at the ex-gay conferences put on by Exodus International (the most popular ex-gay group) and other groups. If you’ve ever gone to ex-gay camp as a teenager and shared a room with someone, I’m sure chances are good that you “just made sure you were really straight by having this liberating sexual experience one last fling” and that you’re completely straight now.
Okay, so the supposedly straight men were now going around and having sex with men discreetly whenever they could get away from their wives. What do we do now? One of the founders of Exodus International denounced what they were doing and went back to men, leaving his wife after years upon years of marriage. Exodus and other groups praised what they did and celebrated the marriages these men and women got themselves into (and the resulting kids) as “proof” that you can change your sexual orientation. It appears to me that all they did was think really, really hard, close their eyes, and concentrate in order to have sex a few times in order to have kids. Now, these men are no longer straight. What do we do?
We call them “ex-gay” now, noting that you can’t ever really change your sexual orientation. So, all that time spent on changing gay men into straight ones was wasted and now they say “ex-gay” and that the focus is still on stopping these men from having sex, which ultimately didn’t work because instead of affirming these men as MEN, they affirmed them as broken derelicts of society who could never be real men, but were encouraged to hang around straight men in order to get from them what the gay men’s fathers and/or father figures didn’t provide them growing up. Oh, and that their mothers did too much mothering.
So, the ex-gay movement is now banned in California and I say good riddance. It’s the wrong focus. If you’re answering questions that someone has issues with because they’re struggling to accept their gayness, or if they feel it’s wrong but it’s the hand they’ve been dealt, then you need to, as a professional, help them out where they are. They need to come out, admit they’re gay, and then decide what they want to do with it. If they want to try to change (and live a lie), then that’s on them. People do it every day. The choice, however, should remain up to them. I don’t think that an organization based in homophobia that never aimed to understand homosexuality or homosexual attractions is a good authority on telling confused people how to live their lives.
Mike Huckabee may not like that ex-gay therapies can no longer be (openly) practiced in California, but he needs to realize how the ex-gay movement has failed not only gays, but those who claim to love gays and want to help them live better lives. There were no real winners in this movement in California. Proponents of the movement now live with a system that has a 90+% failure rate and a law passed that prohibits them from doing more work/damage. Opponents of the movement now live with a system of gay men and women who were taught to hate themselves because of something they couldn’t help, which will require way more work to undo than any ex-gay therapist did in damaging them.
Furthermore, Rev. Huckabee, the aim of ex-gay therapy isn’t to turn someone straight now. Allegedly, it’s to get them to be “ex-gay” or formerly gay. They’re still gay, but not acting on it. You see the difference, I’m sure. Ahem.
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Category: Gay
