There are many reasons why I may need therapy, but this is not one of them. Society pressures all kinds of people into doing things to fix what is "wrong" with them - girls starve or purge because they are too fat, many women inject poison into their face to look younger (but end up just looking embalmed), some men take hair from the back of their head and sew it on the front. So why not take a child, already confused and scared and looking for answers that are often nowhere to be found, and teach him that his feelings are so wrong that they must be eradicated and replaced with a veneer of "normality". For you straight readers, consider how much brainwashing and intimidation would be needed to persuade you to be gay, or at least to pretend to be? No wonder so many kill themselves along the way.
What is being done in these clinics, often in the name of God, is disgusting and inhuman. What's more, to have it tied into our national politics through Ms. Bachmann and her family business makes us seem no better than the African nation of Ghana, where as recently as today the government is actively seeking gays and lesbians to arrest, prosecute, and execute.
You don't have to like homosexuals, just like I don't have to like chicken liver. Smile to my face and then talk behind my back, if you will. I will gladly settle for the lip-service version of equality that African-Americans often receive from those wish the Confederacy had won the Civil War. But someday it will be single mothers or mixed race children or Methodists that the powers-that-be think require "fixing". Remember what German concentration camp survivor Martin Niemoller said:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
Very well said. That's something that scares me about my own family. My nephew is barely 8 years old, and his father has been pushing into his head from much younger than that that there's something wrong with boys liking boys, and they are only supposed to like girls. Because of that alone I sincerely hope my nephew isn't gay, because I don't know if his father could, or would, accept that. I don't know if Bowen could accept that, or if he'd have all the problems that so many gay children have when they don't think they can turn to their family for answers. I don't want to go to my nephew's funeral because his father is a hateful bigot.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Catey! I'm lucky to have not had this problem in my own life, and I know most parents don't willingly try to damage their kids, but it horrifies me that this happens in 2011 in the US. Just be a supportive aunt as much as possible and hope for the best!
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