Fred Hutchison : The dark, intolerant, and abusive nature of the gay agenda

The dark, intolerant, and abusive nature of the gay agenda

Fred Hutchison, RenewAmerica analyst

March 22, 2012

Originally published April 28, 2004

Over twenty years ago, I had an intermittent conversation about homosexuality with a gay man at work. Although he persistently brought up the subject, he would periodically fly into a rage and call me a bigot when I disagreed with him. That man went on to become a key homosexual organizer in my city.

Five years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of my newspaper concerning how the paper was becoming an organ of gay advocacy. I forwarded the letter to a group who received regular mailings from me. One man responded and disclosed himself as a gay. He accused me of wanting to submit gays to the equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. He used several abusive terms which reminded me of other encounters I have had with gays, including the individual mentioned in the first paragraph. I replied that I refused to be bullied and intimidated into silence.

Are gays inherently hysterical, hateful, and intolerant of disagreement, I wondered, or are they reading off the same script? Are they systematically organized to strike out at opponents, and to silence them through intimidation? The answer is that no, homosexuals are not necessarily hysterical, hateful, or intolerant by nature — but yes, this is something they have learned. It is a technique called "jamming," which is part of an elaborate program to further the gay agenda.

Propaganda and thought control

I learned about jamming by reading the articles How America Went Gay, and Thought Reform and the Psychology of Homosexual Advocacy by Charles W. Socarides, M.D., President of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the author of the book Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far (1995). Socarides drew a lot of his information about the program that involves "jamming" from the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1990's (1990) by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. This book is a blueprint for gay activists for applying brainwashing techniques developed by the totalitarian regime of Communist China. These techniques were catalogued in Robert Jay Lifton's seminal work, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China (1989).

The program borrowed from the Chinese and put forward for gay activism by Kirk and Madsen involves three steps: 1) desensitization, 2) jamming, and 3) conversion.

1) Desensitization — Through constant exposure to homosexuals on television, in the movies, on radio, and in the newspapers, the public would become accustomed to gays being a normal part of their life. The image conveyed would be that gays are ordinary people like everyone else. As the gays came out of the closet to show a public face, the startling aspects of gay perversion and pathology would be left in the closet — concealed from the public eye. The goal of desensitization is public indifference.

2) Jamming — The object of jamming is to shame gay opponents into silence. The shame comes from the accusation of bigotry and from social stigmatization.

"All normal people feel shame when they perceive that they are not thinking, feeling, or acting like the pack...The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicted twinge of shame....when his homohatred surfaces.

"Thus, propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths.... It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred-suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause." (Kirk and Madsen)

Notice the two elements — the shaming of the alleged "bigot" by making him feel like a social pariah and the depiction of the suffering gay to win sympathy. In my personal experience, I have met with two versions of the shaming tactics from gays. The first is the personal attack (ad hominem, meaning "against the man"). The ad hominem attack ignores the logic and facts put forward by the opponent and accuses him of being a bigot — i.e., a shameful being. The insult is pure assertion and unsupported by facts. It is essentially a threat to socially stigmatize the person if he does not desist from his opposition to the gay agenda.

This tactic is very effective in a politically correct group-think environment — such as college campuses and newsrooms. Politicians as a class are extremely sensitive to the threat of being publicly stigmatized. Remember Kirk and Marsden's idea that "people feel shame when they perceive that they are not thinking, feeling, or acting like the pack." These may be primitive wolf-pack group-think tactics, but they are powerful nonetheless.

Almost all of us have been through this kind of thing. A perfect example is the high school clique. Retribution for violating the code of the clique involves public shaming and demonization. One becomes an "untouchable" — a pariah to every clique and caste in the school.

A study of the life cycle of a business found that the terminal stage of decline was when group-think prevailed. At this point, the in-group became an end in itself and the customer became an inconvenient nuisance. James F. Welles, Ph.D., wrote The Story of Stupidity, which examined historical eras in which many people were seized by a self-destructive collective stupidity. In each case, group-think prevailed, and rationality and independent thought were driven out. "Political correctness" is a form of contemporary group-think that drives out common sense. This poisoned environment has created the opportunity for the abusive nonsense of gay "jamming" to flourish. However toxic and destructive wolf-pack group-think is, it is a powerful temptation that man, a social animal, is prone to, and which dictators make use of.

When I testified before the Ohio Senate Committee on the Defense of Marriage (DOM) Act, the Republican committee chairman, who favors the act, allowed those against DOM to repeatedly make charges of bigotry and hatred against those who favored DOM. He allowed them to run on with no time limit as they painted the gay lifestyle in glowing terms and wallowed in their personal pain from bigotry. Unfortunately, he did not allow those in favor of DOM to answer the charges of bigotry or refute any of the assertions the anti-DOM folks made. He refused to allow experts to speak about the tragic realities of the homosexual lifestyle. Why? He probably did not want to be called a "bigot" in front of the TV cameras. He was scared to death of public jamming and shaming. Even though he voted for DOMA, he was terrified at being publicly branded as not being "one of the pack." This accords perfectly with Chinese brainwashing techniques. Consider Kirk and Marsden again:

"...our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof. Just as the bigot became such, without any say in the matter, through repeated infralogical emotional conditioning, his bigotry can be alloyed in exactly the same way, whether he is conscious of the attack or not. In short, jamming succeeds insofar as it inserts even a slight frisson of doubt and shame into the previously unalloyed, self-righteous pleasure. This approach can be quite useful and effective — if our message can get the massive exposure upon which all else depends."

The gays have indeed been given massive public exposure by liberals on TV, in the movies, and within the print media. This aggressive use of the media has been a priority of the agenda of gay leaders at least since 1971.

The "frisson of doubt" inserted through emotional conditioning is especially effective on men in the clergy. They view themselves as men of conscience and compassion — and like to be seen by others as such. Thus, when the pastor speaks in accord with the scriptures and calls gay sexual practices a sin, he may feel an almost unconscious shiver of doubt and shame. It is not the shame of violating a universal moral law or upholding the truth of the Bible. It is the shame of violating a social taboo and the fear of being seen by men that he is lacking in compassion and sensitivity. It plays to the ultimate fear of many pastors, the fear of public disgrace.

Denominations like the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, and the Methodists are in a pitched battle over whether to ordain gays, or to bless gay unions. Many of the theological moderates and many of the Bishops have taken to saying that they are "open" to hearing both sides. By taking no public position, they hide from the threat of being defamed by one side as being a "bigot" and a "hater," or being charged by the other side with being unscriptural.

The resistance against the gay agenda in the churches is left to the most conservative, the most principled, and those most willing to stand alone. Those who love God and truth more than they hate being publicly slimed by the gay activists and their liberal allies must often bear a heavy cost. When the liberal clergy seize control of a denomination and back the gay agenda, they ostracize the conservatives who oppose the gay agenda and exclude them from the seminaries, from denominational committees, and from speaking engagements. So much for liberal "tolerance" and "inclusion."

One aspect of the shaming technique is to portray how much pain the gay suffers as a result of the intolerance of the bigot. The movie Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks, is a media tour de force in getting wide audiences to sympathize with the sufferings of a gay man and to be disgusted with the persecutions of his bigoted tormentors. Everyone who places a high value on compassion is bound to be swayed by the movie. It is one of the greatest masterpieces of propaganda ever put on screen. The not-so-subtle message is — "Shame on you bigots for not giving your approval to the cute and sensitive Tom Hanks — who just happens to be gay." With one stroke, the bigots are jammed and shamed and the gay wins sympathy. Brilliant propaganda — that. The Chinese would be proud.

3) Conversion — The third step is conversion of the public to be receptive to the gay agenda. Conversion requires a change of heart. The change of heart will occur "...if we can actually make them like us," says Kirk and Madsen. "Conversion aims at just this...conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the media." When the audience begins to sympathize with Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, the process of conversion has begun.

On television, gay comedienne Ellen DeGeneres once used abrasiveness in comedy. Since her public disclosure that she is a lesbian, she has emphasized personal likability. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy emphasizes a goofy cuteness and sweetness. Public likability has eluded the hard-boiled Ellen, but the "fab five" of Queer Eye have been fantastically successful in winning the sentimental favor of the public. No line is too sappy and no situation too mushy for the fab five. Don't you just want to hug them? Folks, this is conversion. Serious conversion. Never underestimate the gushy sentimentality of the American public. The cuteness of Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin did more to turn public sentiment away from slavery than all the abolitionists combined.

The big lie

The big lie technique has been used by almost all totalitarians. As explained by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, "Tell a lie, make it a big one, repeat it often enough, and a lot of people will believe it." The Chinese propaganda techniques used for the gay agenda are more sophisticated than the bombastic Nazi methods. But as true totalitarians seeking mind control, the people behind the gay agenda are promoting three big lies: 1) Homosexuality is genetically determined, 2) Change is not possible, and 3) Gay rights are part of the civil rights agenda. Homosexuality is placed on a par with race and gender. According to the gay agenda, these truths are obvious. No debate is needed. Opposition to these points signifies bigotry.

1) Genetic determinism — Genes determine human choices and the trajectory of human development, we are told. This means that the gay is a programmed automaton and has no choice but to perform those sexual acts which the genes dictate. A full menu of sexual perversions are written into the genes and require only the right opportunity and stimulation to express themselves. This is nonsense, of course. Gays have free will and choice, as do every human being. Sexual perversions must be learned through some combination of experimentation and instruction.

At present, there seems to be no scientific evidence linking particular genes to particular sexual practices. But there is scientific evidence to the contrary. A sample of 90,000 identical twins (who have the same genes) shows no meaningful correlation of the sexual preference for twins raised apart. Fraternal twins had a higher correlation. If genetic determinism was true, there should be 100% correlation. (Source: Bearman & Bruckner, American Journal of Sociology, Vol 107, No 5, 2002)

The Journal of Homosexuality, a gay publication, reports that certain gay-gene studies and gay-brain studies do not stand up to critical analysis. Many gays want the truth instead of the big lie. Others prefer the big lie. The author of one of the criticized gay-gene studies is under investigation for science fraud by the National Institutes of Health for Science Fraud.

2) Gays can't change

Dr. Socarides says that one-third of his former gay patients are now married and most have children. This corresponds with the success rate of the Betty Ford clinic. Another third of Socarides patients remain homosexual, but are not part of the gay scene. They report more control over their impulses and a more responsible approach to sex. The point is that two-thirds of his patients made positive changes to some extent. This excludes the blanket assertion that gays can't change.

3) Discrimination against gays is a civil rights issue

Race and gender are permanent innate characteristics that are fixed at birth. No moral judgment can be made of race and gender, because no one chooses their race or gender.

By contrast, gay sexual activity is a behavior — and a homosexual orientation seems to emerge in developmental stages. Individual choices and social environment profoundly influence the trajectory of development. Sexual perversions must be learned through experimentation and instruction. Such practices are subject to moral judgments.

In view of these facts and controversies, what we need today in America is a moral citizenry immune to such brainwashing and disinformation. If we are to preserve civilization in the face of the relentless lies and deceptive techniques of the gay agenda, enough God-fearing Americans must be willing to stand up for what is right, courageously, and make a difference in the culture war.

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Charles W. Socarides : How America Went Gay

How America Went Gay
by Charles W. Socarides, M.D.

[COMMENT:  A clear, accurate, and brief history of how America Went "Gay". 

Dear reader, the powers that be, the globalist crowd, are able to determine to a fairly precise degree what will and will not be taught in our government-run schools.  They own the media and many if not most politicians.  They own must of world-wide commerce.  The success of homosexualization could happen only with their permission, or more likely, their command.  This whole program, like the so-call Muslim threat, is being fostered, to a great degree, by these people.  Both the homosexual population and the Islamic population is too dysfunctional to mount any global threat by themselves.   

The book by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball, referred to below, is a classic in the exposition of evil - deliberate subversion of truth to attain ends not attainable in the light of day.  It is a mainstay of homosexualist strategy. 

See also Socarides' book, Homosexuality: a Freedom Too Far.

    E. Fox]
 

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Charles W. Socarides, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York. He is president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, and author of Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far (Adam Margrave Books, Phoenix, Arizona).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Socarides

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For more than 20 years, I and a few of my colleagues in the field of psychoanalysis have felt like an embattled minority, because we have continued to insist, against today's conventional wisdom, that gays aren't born that way. We know that obligatory homosexuals are caught up in unconscious adaptations to early childhood abuse and neglect and that, with insight into their earliest beginnings, they can change. This "adaptation" I speak of is a polite term for men going through the motions of mating not with the opposite sex but with one another. 

 

For most of this century, most of us in the helping professions considered this behavior aberrant. Not only was it "off the track"; the people caught up in it were suffering, which is why we called it a pathology. We had patients, early in their therapy, who would seek out one sex partner after another-total strangers-on a single night, then come limping into our offices the next day to tell us how they were hurting themselves. Since we were in the business of helping people learn how not to keep hurting themselves, many of us thought we were quietly doing God's work. 

 

Now, in the opinion of those who make up the so-called cultural elite, our view is "out of date." The elite say we hurt people more than we help them, and that we belong in one of the century's dustbins. They have managed to sell this idea to a great many Americans, thereby making homosexuality fashionable and raising formerly aberrant behavior to the status of an "alternate lifestyle." 

 

You see this view expressed in some places you would least expect. The Pope says same-sex sex is wrong, but a good many of his own priests in this country (some of whom are gay themselves) say the Pope is wrong. Indeed, in much of academe and in many secondary school classrooms gays are said to lead a new vanguard, the wave of the future in a world that will be more demographically secure when it has fewer "breeders" (which is what some gay activists call heterosexuals these days). 

 

How did this change come about? Well, the revolution did not just happen. It has been orchestrated by a small band of very bright men and women-most of them gays and lesbians-in a cultural campaign that has been going on since a few intellectuals laid down the ideological underpinnings for the entire tie-dyed, try-anything-sexual Woodstock generation. In various ways, Theodore Reich, Alfred Kinsey, Fritz Perls, Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse and Paul Goodman preached a new countercultural gospel: "If it feels good, do it." 

 

It was all part of a plan, as one gay publication put it, "to make the whole world gay." I am not making this up. You can read an account of the campaign in Dennis Altman's The Homosexualization of America. In 1982 Altman, himself gay, reported with an air of elation that more and more Americans were thinking like gays and acting like gays. There were engaged, that is, "in numbers of short-lived sexual adventures either in place of or alongside long-term relationships." Altman cited the heterosexual equivalents of gay saunas and the emergence of the swinging singles scene as proofs that "promiscuity and 'impersonal sex' are determined more by social possibilities than by inherent differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, or even between men and women." 

 

Heady stuff. Gays said they could "reinvent human nature, reinvent themselves." To do this, these reinventors had to clear away one major obstacle. No, they didn't go after the nation's clergy. They targeted the members of a worldly priesthood, the psychiatric community, and neutralized them with a radical redefinition of homosexuality itself. In 1972 and 1973 they co-opted the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association and, through a series of political maneuvers, lies and outright flim-flams, they "cured" homosexuality overnight-by fiat. They got the A.P.A. to say that same-sex sex was "not a disorder." It was merely "a condition"-as neutral as lefthandedness.

This amounted to a full approval of homosexuality. Those of us who did not go along with the political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional meetings. Our lectures were canceled inside academe and our research papers turned down in the learned journals. 

Worse things followed in the culture at large. Television and movie producers began to do stories promoting homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. A gay review board told Hollywood how it should deal or not deal with homosexuality. Mainstream publishers turned down books that objected to the gay revolution. Gays and lesbians influenced sex education in our nation's schools, and gay and lesbian libbers seized wide control of faculty committees in our nations' colleges. State legislatures nullified laws against sodomy.

If the print media paid any attention at all, they tended to hail the gay revolution, possibly because many of the reporters on gay issues were themselves gay and open advocates for the movement. And those reporters who were not gay seemed too intimidated by groupthink to expose what was going on in their own newsrooms. 

 

And now, what happens to those of us who stand up and object? Gay activists have already anticipated that. They have created a kind of conventional wisdom: that we suffer from homophobia, a disease that has actually been invented by gays projecting their own fear on society. And we are bigots besides, because, they say, we fail to deal with gays compassionately. Gays are now no different than people born black or Hispanic or physically challenged. Since gays are born that way and have no choice about their sexual orientation, anyone who calls same-sex sex an aberration is now a bigot. Un-American, too. Astoundingly now, college freshmen come home for their first Thanksgiving to announce, "Hey, Mom! Hey, Dad! We've taken the high moral ground. We've joined the gay revolution." 

 

My wife, Clare, who has an unerring aptitude for getting to the heart of things, said one day recently in passing, "I think everybody's being brainwashed." That gave me a start. I know "brainwashing" is a term that has been used and overused. But my wife's casual observation only reminded me of a brilliant tract I had read several years ago and then forgotten. It was called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1990's, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.

That book turned out to be the blueprint gay activists would use in their campaign to normalize the abnormal through a variety of brainwashing techniques once catalogued by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal work, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China.

In their book Kirk and Madsen urged that gay activists adopt the very strategies that helped change the political face of the largest nation on earth. The authors knew the techniques had worked in China. All they needed was enough media-and enough money-to put them to work in the United States. And they did. These activists got the media and the money to radicalize America-by processes known as desensitization, jamming and conversion.

They would desensitize the public by selling the notion that gays were "just like everyone else." This would make the engine of prejudice run out of steam, i.e., lull straights into an attitude of indifference. 

 

They would jam the public by shaming them into a kind of guilt at their own "bigotry." Kirk and Madsen wrote:

All normal persons feel shame when they perceive that they are not thinking, feeling, or acting like one of the pack....The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame...when his homohatred surfaces. Thus, propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths....It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred-suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause.

The best thing about this technique, according to Kirk and Madsen: The bigot did not even have to believe he was a loathsome creature:

Rather, our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof. Just as the bigot became such, without any say in the matter, through repeated infralogical emotional conditioning, his bigotry can be alloyed in exactly the same way, whether he is conscious of the attack or not. In short, jamming succeeds insofar as it inserts even a slight frisson of doubt and shame into the previously unalloyed, self-righteous pleasure. The approach can be quite useful and effective-if our message can get the massive exposure upon which all else depends.

Finally-this was the process they called conversion-Kirk and Madsen predicted a mass public change of heart would follow, even among bigots, "if we can actually make them like us." They wrote, "Conversion aims at just this...conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media." 

In the movie "Philadelphia" we see the shaming technique and the conversion process working at the highest media level. We saw Tom Hank's character suffering (because he was gay and had AIDS) at the hands of bigots in his Philadelphia law firm. Not only were we ashamed of the homophobic behavior of the villainous straight lawyers in the firm; we felt nothing but sympathy for the suffering Hanks. (Members of the Motion Picture Academy felt so much sympathy they gave Hanks an Oscar.) Our feelings helped fulfill Kirk and Madsen's strategy: "to make Americans hold us in warm regard, whether they like it or not."  

Few dared speak out against "Philadelphia" as an example of the kind of propaganda Kirk and Madsen had called for. By then, four years after the publication of the Kirk-Madsen blueprint, the American public had already been programmed. Homosexuality was now simply "an alternate lifestyle." Best of all, because of the persuaders embedded in thousands of media messages, society's acceptance of homosexuality seemed one of those spontaneous, historic turnings in time-yes, a kind of conversion. Nobody quite knew how it happened, but the nation had changed. We had become more sophisticated, more loving toward all, even toward those "afflicted" with the malady-excuse me, condition. 

 

By 1992 the President of the United States said it was time that people who were openly gay and lesbian should not be ousted from the nation's armed forces. In 1993 the nation's media celebrated a huge outpouring of gay pride in Washington, D.C. Television viewers chanted along with half a million marchers, "Two, four, six, eight! Being gay is really great." We felt good about ourselves. We were patriotic Americans. We had abolished one more form of discrimination, wiped out one of society's most enduring afflictions: homophobia. Best of all, we knew now that gay was good, gay was free. 

 ==================

 

Excuse me. Gay is not good. Gay is not decidedly free. How do I know this? For more than 40 years, I have been in solidarity with hundreds of homosexuals, my patients, and I have spent most of my professional life engaged in exercising a kind of "pastoral care" on their behalf. But I do not help them by telling them they are O.K. when they are not O.K. Nor do I endorse their "new claim to self-definition and self-respect." Tell me: Have we dumped the idea that a man's self-esteem comes from something inside himself (sometimes called character) and from having a good education, a good job and a good family-and replaced that notion with this, that he has an affinity to love (and have sex with) other men?

 

In point of fact, many of my patients had character; they had an education; they were respected ad men and actuaries and actors. But they were still in pain-for one reason and one reason alone. They were caught up in this mysterious compulsion to have sex with other men. They were not free. They were not happy. And they wanted to see if they could change. 

 

Over the years, I found that those of my patients who really wanted to change could do so, by attaining the insight that comes with a good psychoanalysis. Others found other therapies that helped them get to the bottom of their compulsions, all of which involved high motivation and hard work. Difficult as their therapeutic trips were, hundreds and thousands of homosexuals changed their ways. Many of my own formerly homosexual patients-about a third of them-are married today and happily so, with children. One-third may not sound like a very good average. But it is just about the same success rate you will find at the best treatment centers for alcoholics, like Hazelden in Minnesota and the Betty Ford Clinic in California. 

 

Another third of my patients remain homosexual but not part of the gay scene. Now, after therapy, they still have same-sex sex, but they have more control over their impulses because now they understand the roots of their need for same-sex sex. Some of these are even beginning to turn on to the opposite sex. I add this third to my own success rate-so that I can tell people in all honesty that my batting average is .667 out of more than a thousand "at bats." 

 

Of course, I could bat .997 if I told all my patients in pain that their homosexuality was "a special call" and "a liberation." That would endear me to everyone, but it would not help them. It would be a lie-despite recent pieces of pseudo-science bolstering the fantasy that gays are "born that way." The media put its immediate blessing on this "research," but we were oversold. Now we are getting reports, even in such gay publications as The Journal of Homosexuality, that the gay-gene studies and the gay-brain studies do not stand up to critical analysis. (The author of one so-called "gay-gene theory" is under investigation by the National Institutes of Health for scientific fraud.)

I was not surprised to hear this. My long clinical experience and a sizable body of psychoanalysis research dating all the way back to Freud tell me that most men caught up in same-sex sex are reacting, at an unconscious level, to something amiss with their earliest upbringing- overcontrolling mothers and abdicating fathers. Through long observation I have also learned that the supposedly liberated homosexual is never really free. In his multiple, same-sex adventures, even the most effeminate gay was looking to incorporate the manhood of others, because he was in a compulsive, never-ending search for the masculinity that was never allowed to build and grow in early childhood. 

 

When I tried to explain these dynamics to the writer who helped me put together a kind of popular catechism on homosexuality, I found he had a hard time understanding what this "incorporation" meant. He said, "Your patient would be more manly if he took in the penis of another man? Sounds a little dumb. Would I run faster if I ate the flesh of a deer?" 

I told him, "You have to understand that we are talking about feelings that come from deep in the unconscious mind. They are very primitive. In fact, if you have ever read any Indian lore, you may remember that Indians would, in fact, eat the flesh of a deer in order to become faster afoot. To us, that is a very primitive idea. But it had a mythic significance for a young Iroquois brave. And Madison Avenue still makes use of such mythic meanings. The ad people sell us things based on the notion that we will become what we eat or drink or possess." The point I was making was this: We do not understand same-sex sex until we realize that the dynamics involved are unconscious. 

 

This is one reason why psychoanalysis is the tool that gets us to the heart of everything. Once my patients have achieved an insight into these dynamics-and realized there is no moral fault involved in their longtime and mysterious need-they have moved rather quickly on the road to recovery. Their consequent gratitude to me is overwhelming. And why shouldn't it be? They were formerly caught up in compulsions they could not understand, compulsions they could not control. Now they are in charge of their own lives.

Their former promiscuity may have looked a lot like "liberation." But it was not true freedom. It was a kind of slavery. And it was not a lifestyle. With the onset of AIDS, as the playwright and gay militant Larry Kramer said in a 1993 interview, it turned out to be a death style. I have had some patients tell me, "Doctor, if I weren't in therapy, I'd be dead." 

 

Testimonials from my recovered patients make me feel my work is worthwhile-despite regular demands from the gay rights community for my silence. What would they have me do? Pack my bags, find a new profession, lock up a lifetime of research and analysis, hide my truth under a bushel? It is not my psychoanalytic duty to tell people they are marvelous when they are out of control, much less ask disingenuous rhetorical questions like, "What kind of God would afflict people with an 'objective disorder' in the disposition of their hearts?" 

 

Giving God the credit for their gayness is a persistent refrain in much gay literature today, and I am saddened to see people of evident good will become unwitting parties to the blasphemy. Gays ascribe their condition to God, but he should not have to take that rap, any more than he should be blamed for the existence of other man-made maladies-like war, for instance, which has proven to be very unhealthy for humans and for all other living things. God does not make war. Men do. 

 

And, when homosexuality takes on all the aspects of a political movement, it, too, becomes a war, the kind of war in which the first casualty is truth, and the spoils turn out to be our own children. An exaggeration? Well, what are we to think when militant homosexuals seek to lower the age of consensual sexual intercourse between homosexual men and young boys to the age of 14 (as they did in Hawaii in 1993) or 16 (as they tried to do in England in 1994)? In the Washington March for Gay Pride in 1993, they chanted, "We're here. We're queer. And we're coming after your children."

What more do we need to know? 

 

[This article first appeared in America (November 18, 1995). Used by permission of the author.]

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