No mind reading necessary. Just a knowledge of the empirical data. Saying someone is no longer gay is like saying they used to be white, but now they’re black. It’s just as retarded an assertion. Show me empirical evidence (not self-reporting, lying, closeted douchebags) of sexual orientation being a mutable condition, or of a single individual having verifiably changed his orientation. You can’t do it.
So what if it’s self-consistent? What does that have to do with whether it’s inclusive?
It’s hilarious that you think this means anything.
Indeed. My mom has a friend who got married and had kids, and several years later realized he was gay. They got divorced, and I think he got married not long ago. I think it was in CT.
It’s not inclusive, but why does it have to be? They probably don’t let Buddhists be members either.
The whole point of a religion is that it’s exclusive…only people who believe in what that church believes are members.
It doesn’t HAVE to be. They just shouldn’t go around saying they ARE inclusive, when they’re not.
It is true for every single person? WOW!
That’s some motherfucking empirical data. 100%!!! It’s like the Holy Grial of statistics.
As for someone saying they used to be white, maybe the guy comes from a Norwegian family and he, his siblings, parents and grandparents (and every other living blood-relative) is white as snow, but he has some DNA analysis that show he is adopted and one of his gradparents was from Indonesia and another from Egypt.
His race hasn’t changed (assuming, for the purpose of this post only, that race is an observable, empirical fact), but his own perception of his racial self has.
One-fucking-hundred percent. The “Law of the Unchageable Sexual orientation” must be up there with Newton’s Laws of Motion and Charles’ law of gasses.
Pretty much, yeah. Glad I could help fight your ignorance.
And maybe this guy can get it up to fuck his wife as long as he tries to imagine that she’s really his fishing buddy Bob, and he keeps his eyes closed all the way through the act. And he’s fathered two children this way. So his orientation hasn’t changed, but his own perception of his orientational self has. Even if he is delusional.
Of course, that doesn’t say what happens to that poor woman and those two poor children when Daddy finally snaps and realizes that he can’t keep lying about himself and either has to come out of the closet and be true to his nature or kill himself to keep from shaming his family because suicide is less awful of a scandal than being gay.
Funny how the ex-gay ministries never mention that part, huh?
It depends on the rationale of the alleged “cure”, I would think. If it’s solely divine intervention at work, then the practitioners of this “cure” are operating as shaman, more or less. But if their rationale is some sort of talk therapy mingled with inspirational encouragement, then they imply that much the same results could be obtained by professional psychologists, unaided by the interference of Jesus. But they don’t. Professionals won’t even try, knowing that they won’t succeed, and that the attempt itself can be harmful.
So it appears that they are operating this “cure” in a half-secular, half-religious scenario. They cannot “cure” without divine intervention, but they can’t “cure” by such intervention alone, not without the aid of some sort of “counseling” and group therapy, and what appears to be a ghastly perversion of “twelve stepper” techniques.
Neither fish nor fowl, neither faith nor reason, but using the weakest parts of the one to shore up the weakest parts of the other, and gaining the advantage of neither.
This is the thing. For an adult to voluntarily choose to undergo ex-gay therapy, or whatever they call it, that adult should have full access to information about the program. That means statistics about how successful the program is, and independent follow up studies to see how well the people have adjusted after the program and whether or not the program was helpful or damaging. I have never seen an ex-gay program attempt to even do something along these lines, which to my mind, makes them deceptive.
If someone has a cite showing that Warren does all the things I’ve mentioned, I’ll adjust my viewpoint.
Hell if I know, and that’s my point. As I said, my WAG was that he was always straight, but was “gay” for a couple of years when he went from being a desperate, confused, drug addicted 16 y.o. runaway who ended up hustling to survive , to getting taken in a couple of times by older men, to eventually moving, when last I saw him, toward some kind of healing. My own read on it was that he found the “I tried being gay, but now I’m gonna go back to being straight” narrative preferable to admitting he was a straight kid who sold himself for sex to survive. But again – I don’t know, and it’s not my place, or anyone else’s place, to tell anyone what they are or aren’t, and how they became that way.
Polycarp says that some people who are really bi and just convince themselves they’re gay or straight – and that seems entirely possible to me that some people do that. Hell, if you wanna say “large majority,” I won’t argue.
But IMO there is a galaxy of difference between making general statements about what many people are like and on the other hand saying what is or isn’t possible, and telling people that their self-identification can’t be true.
The same folks who will insist that people can’t change their sexual orientation, and that those who say they have are deluded, are the same folks who would be up in arms to hear a parent telling their kid “You can’t be gay. You’re just confused.” To me, it’s the exact same mentality.
No it isn’t. It’s exactly the opposite mentality.
I agree entirely that everyone has the right to define their own sexuality, and wouldn’t dream of telling someone to their face that their own definitions are wrong. That said, while I respect his right to define himself however he wants, I don’t necessarily have to believe that those definitions are going to last. Ten years is an exceptionally long time for someone who’s gone through this sort of “therapy” to maintain a heterosexual lifestyle. But if he decides tomorrow that he’s been lying to himself that whole time, he would be far from first person to ever find himself in those circumstances.
For anyone who’s interested…
You can find if there’s a demonstration near you here.
It’ll be cold, but I’ll be bundled up, candle aglow.
I’m sure a Nobel Prize is on the waiting.
I think one of the reasons Obama’s choice of Warren bothers me is that it goes against the grain of the brand he’s been developing lately: intelligence, competence, honesty and straightforwardness.
Warren has lately demonstrated himself to be an ignoramus who really doesn’t give a flip about the truth - doesn’t really care that he’s spouting nonsense. He’s repeatedly said, for instance, that marriage between one sexually mature man and one sexually mature woman who are not siblings, is a cultural and religious constant worldwide for the past 5000 years.
All of us know that polygamy was in the Bible, and it was practiced by one of America’s major religions in my great-grandfather’s day. Rick Warren should definitely know this. Most all of us know that brother-sister marriages were common amongst the Egyptian Pharoahs, also probably less than 5000 years ago. And most of us know that marriages involving child brides have unfortunately been endorsed by numerous societies and religions over the course of history. It’s hard to believe Warren’s ignorant of all this.
Surely there must be some relatively honest evangelical preachers out there, if that’s what Obama’s looking for. But this guy’s a buffoon. A buffoon with a following, but still a buffoon.
Since this seems to have become a debate on whether anti-gay therapy works, I’ll say this: we know - or at least the current state of psychology tells us - that homosexuality is innate, or at least not a choice.
We also know that humans can be innately bisexual.
It would be little surprise to me if it turned out that most of those who claim to be “cured” by therapy are just bisexuals who simply preferred men. Thus, I see little reason to believe that sporadic claims of successful therapy outcomes are true.
I see equally little reason to believe that any such programs could possibly have a success rate in double digit percentages, though.
I don’t have a problem with the programs themselves. I presume they’re entirely voluntary. However, my impression is that those who attend are mostly steamrollered into doing so by family and/or confidants - parents, spouses, ministers, etc.
I have a dozen or so gay friends. One was given the choice (by his mother) to attend therapy or be “cut off” from the family. Another (himself a believer) was “encouraged” by his family to “get cured”, and signed himself up.
The first lasted two weeks, and is now in another kind of therapy. The second pronounced himself cured, got engaged (to a girl) six weeks later, and “relapsed” a few weeks before the wedding.
Not for a lot of teenagers, they aren’t.
Anyway, since when does it excuse dangerous quackery to say that some of the marks volunteered?
See above - I’m okay with them to the extent that they are voluntary, and any that aren’t should be subject to strict state regulation.
Religion - for good or ill - excuses all sorts of dangerous quackery, and in this country religious quackery can’t be legislated against. This is no different than the churches which order their congregants to refuse [del]legitimate[/del] medical care because “Christ will heal them”.
It’s not that I think these programs ought to exist, simply that I don’t see how they can be stopped. They may be pointless and even dangerous, but they’re legal. 