It Gets Better …once you repent

There has been a lot of media coverage recently because of the suicides of some young students who had allegedly been the victims of bullying connected to their nascent homosxlity. Never before have we needed more clarity on this issue. Never before have we needed more honesty about this issue. But both are very hard to come by. What if it doesn’t get better? What if a life of sxl immorality is a meatgrinder that leaves people mangled, used, and desperately alone in the end? I hope we can have this discussion with honesty and love to our dear ones in the struggle.
Below is an abridged essay written by Ronald Lee who refers to himself as a former gay [of several decades] and now devout Christian [Catholic]. He has written bravely and frankly to set the record straight and this lengthy essay is well worth the read.


The Truth About the Homosxl Rights Movement
Ronald G. Lee

There was a "gay" bookstore called Lobo's in Austin, Texas, when I was living there. The layout was interesting. Looking inside from the street all you saw were books - like any other bookstore. It all looked so innocuous and disarmingly bourgeois. But if you went inside to browse, before long you noticed another section, behind the books, a section not visible from the street. The pornography section. Hundreds and hundreds of videos involving men catering to every conceivable sxl taste or fantasy. And you would notice something else too. All the customers were in the back, rooting through the videos. As far as I know, I am the only person who ever actually purchased a book. The books were, in every sense of the word, a front.

So why waste thousands of dollars on books that no one was going to buy? The money spent on books wasn't wasted. It was used to purchase a commodity that is more precious than gold to the gay rights establishment. Respectability. Respectability and the appearance of normalcy. Without that investment, we would not now be engaged in a serious debate about the legalization of same-sex "marriage." By the time I lived in Austin, I had been thinking of myself as a gay man for almost 20 years. Based on the experience acquired during those years, I recognized in Lobo's a metaphor for the strategy used to sell gay rights to the American people, and for the sordid reality that strategy concealed.

There are two kinds of people who are going to be looking in through the window: those who are tempted to engage in homosxl acts, and those who aren't. To those who aren't, the shelves of books transmit the message that homosxlity is not wrong, just different. Since most of them will never know more than what they learned looking in the window, that impression is of the greatest political and cultural importance, because on that basis they will react without alarm, or even with active support, to the progress of gay rights. There are millions of well-meaning Americans who support gay rights because they believe that what they see looking in at Lobo's is what is really there. It does not occur to them that they are seeing a carefully stage-managed effort to manipulate them, to distract them from a truth they would never condone.

For those who are tempted, the view from the street is also consoling. It makes life as a homosexual look safe and unthreatening - normal. Sooner or later, many of these people will go inside. They won't be distracted by the books for long. They will soon discover that the back section is where all the customers are. And, gentle reader, that is where most of them will spend the rest of their lives, until God or AIDS, drugs or alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age, intervenes.

Ralph McInerny once offered a brilliant definition of the gay rights movement: self-deception as a group effort. Nevertheless, deception of the general public is also vital to the success of the cause. And nowhere are the forms of deception more egregious, or more startlingly successful, than in the campaign to persuade Christians that churches should open their doors to same-sex lovers. The movement relies on a stratagem that is as daring as it is dishonest. I know, because I was taken in by it for a long time.

No single book was as influential in my own coming out as the now ex-Father John McNeill's 1976 "classic" The Church and the Homosxl. Most of the book is devoted to offering alternative interpretations of the biblical passages condemning homosxlity, and to putting the anti-homosxl writings of the Church Fathers and scholastics into historical context in a way that renders them irrelevant and even offensive to modern readers. It made me feel justified in deciding to come out of the closet. Were his arguments persuasive? Frankly, I didn't care, and I don't believe most of McNeill's readers do either. They were couched in the language of scholarship, and they sounded plausible. That was all that mattered. The efforts of people such as McNeill don't need to be persuasive. They only need to be useful.

Naïve theologians presume that McNeill believes his own arguments, and is writing as a scholar, not as a propagandist. But correctly parsing the sexual ethics of St. Thomas, was never really the issue. Winning admittance to Holy Communion was the issue.

I interpreted McNeill to be arguing that homogenital acts were moral when performed in the context of a monogamous relationship. And that [since] the author was aware of such relationships, and that I had a reasonable expectation of finding such a relationship myself.

Several years ago, McNeill published an autobiography. In it, he makes no bones about his experiences as a sexually active Catholic priest -- a promiscuous, sexually active, homosexual Catholic priest. He writes in an almost nostalgic fashion about his time spent hunting for sex in bars. Although he eventually did find a stable partner (while he was still a priest), he never apologizes for his years of promiscuity.

Although to this day McNeill, like all gay Christian propagandists, avoids the subject of sexual ethics as if it were some sort of plague, his life makes his real beliefs clear. He believes in unrestricted sexl freedom. He believes that men and women should have the right to couple, with whomever they want, whenever they want, however they want, and as often as they want. He would probably add some sort of meaningless bromide about both parties being treated with respect, but anyone familiar with the snake pit of modern sexl culture (both heterosxl and homosxl) will know how seriously to take that. In other words, the ex-Fr. McNeill is a bad priest and a con man. And given the often lethal consequences of engaging in homosxl sx, a con man with blood on his hands.

Let me be clear. I believe that McNeill's actual behavior represent the real aims and objectives of the homosexual rights movement. In other words, if you support what is now described in euphemistic terms as "the blessing of same-sx unions," in practice you are supporting the abolition of the entire Christian sxl ethic, and its substitution with an unrestricted, laissez faire, free sxl market. If you still believe that the debate is over the religious status of monogamous same-sx relationships, please be prepared to point out one church somewhere in the U.S. that has opened its doors to active homosxls without also opening them to every other form of sxl coupling imaginable. I am too old to be taken in by "Father" McNeill and his abstractions anymore. Show me.

When I first came out in the 1980s, it was common for gay rights apologists to blame the promiscuity among gay men on "internalized homophobia." But 35 years have passed since the infamous Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York, the Lexington and Concord of the gay liberation movement. During that time, homosxls have carved out for themselves public spaces in every major American city, and many of the minor ones as well. They have had the chance to create whatever they wanted in those spaces, and what have they created? New spaces for locating sxl partners.

Male homosxls are not promiscuous because of "internalized homophobia," or laws banning same-sx "marriage." Homosxls are promiscuous because when given the choice, they overwhelmingly choose to be promiscuous. And wrecking the fundamental social building block of our civilization, the family, is not going to change that.

But isn't it theoretically possible that homosxls could restrict themselves to something resembling the traditional Catholic sxl ethic, except for the part about procreation -- in other words, monogamous lifelong relationships? Of course it is theoretically possible. It was also theoretically possible in 1968 that the use of contraceptives could be restricted to married couples, that the revolting downward slide into moral anarchy we have lived through could have been avoided. It is theoretically possible, but it is practically impossible. It is impossible because the whole notion of stable sxl orientation on which the gay rights movement is founded has no basis in fact.

René Girard argues that all human civilization is founded on desire with an elaborate and unbreachable wall of taboos and restrictions. Until now. What we are seeing in the modern West is not the long overdue legitimization of hitherto despised but honorable forms of human love. We are witnessing is the reduction of civilization to its lowest common denominator: unbridled and unrestricted desire. To assert that we have opened a Pandora's Box would be a stunning understatement. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, it looks to be a bumpy millennium.

Two people of the same gender could (in theory) fall in love and live a life of monogamous commitment. Then bisxlity was introduced, and the real implications of the sxl revolution became clear. Monogamy was out the window. Moral norms were out the window. Do-it-yourself sxlity became the norm. Anyone who wants to know what that looks like can do no better than go online. The Internet offers front row seats to the circus of a disintegrating civilization.

Over the years, I have attended various gay and gay-friendly church services. All of them shared one characteristic in common: a tacit agreement never to say a word from the pulpit -- or from any other location for that matter -- suggesting that there ought to be any restrictions on human sxl behavior. If anyone reading this is familiar with them, let me ask you one question: When was the last time you heard a sermon on sxl ethics? Have you ever heard a sermon on sxl ethics? I take it for granted that the answer is negative. Do our priests and pastors honestly believe that Christians in America are not in need of sermons on sxl ethics?

Here is the terrifying fact: If we as a nation and as a Church allow ourselves to be taken in by the scam of monogamous same-sx couples, we will be giving our blessing to the suicide of Western civilization.

The media are biased and have no interest in telling the truth about homosxlity. I met Wyatt online. For five years he was in a disastrous same-sx relationship. His partner was unfaithful, and an alcoholic with drug problems. When Vermont legalized same-sex "marriage," Wyatt saw it as one last chance to make their relationship work. He and his partner would fly to Vermont to get "married." This came to the attention of the local newspaper in his area, which did a story with photos of the wedding reception. In it, Wyatt and his partner were depicted as a loving couple who finally had a chance to celebrate their commitment publicly. Nothing was said about the drugs or the alcoholism or the infidelity. But the marriage was a failure and ended in flames a few months later. And the newspaper did not do a follow-up.

Harry was a balding, middle-aged man with a potbelly. He was married, and had a couple of grown daughters. And he was unhappy. Harry persuaded himself that he was unhappy because he was gay. He divorced his wife, who is now married to someone else, his daughters are not speaking to him, and he is discovering that pudgy, bald, middle-aged men are not all that popular in gay bars. Somehow, Oprah forgot to mention that. Now Harry is taking anti-depressants in order to keep from killing himself.

Gay culture is a paradox. Most homosxls tend to be liberal Democrats, or in the U.K., supporters of the Labour Party on the grounds that their policies are more compassionate and sensitive to the needs of the downtrodden and oppressed. But there is nothing compassionate about a gay bar. It represents a laissez faire free sxl market of the most Darwinian sort. There is no place in it for those who are not prepared to compete, and the rules of the game are ruthless and unforgiving. The gay life is all about meat, and unless you are a good cut, don't bother coming to the supermarket

I have known a lot of people like Harry. But I have met precious few who bore more than a superficial resemblance to the idealized images we see in movies such as Philadelphia, or in The New York Times. What I find suspicious is that the media ignore the existence of people like him. The unhappiness so common among homosexuals is swept under the carpet, while fanciful and unrealistic "role models" are offered up for public consumption. There is at the very least grounds for a serious debate about the proposition that "gay is good," but no such debate is taking place, because most of the mainstream media have already made up their (and our) minds.

On one occasion, I was complaining to a lesbn about my disillusionment. She made a remarkable admission to me. She had a teenage son, who so far had not displayed signs of sxl interest in either gender. But she confessed to me that based on the lives of the gay men she knew, she found herself secretly praying that her son would turn out to be straight. As a mother, she did not want to see her son living that life.

A popular definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. That was me, the whole time I was laboring to become a happy homosxl. Several times I turned for advice to gay men who seemed better adjusted to their lot in life than I was. When was it going to get better? What could I do to make it better? I was told that there was something wrong with me and that I should shut up and stop bothering others with my "internalized homophobia." It took me twenty years, but I finally reached the conclusion that I did not want to be insane.

So where am I now? I am attending a militantly orthodox parish in Houston that is one of God's most spectacular gifts to me. My best friend Mark is, like me, a refugee from the homosxl insane asylum. He is also a devout believer, though a Presbyterian (no one is perfect). From Mark I have learned that two men can love each other profoundly while remaining clothed the entire time. We are told that the Church opposes same-sx love. Not true. The Church opposes homogenital sx, which in my experience is not about love, but about obsession, addiction, and compensation for a compromised masculinity.

So, what do we as a Church and a culture need to do? Tear down the respectable façade and expose the pornography beneath. Start pressuring homosxls to tell the truth about their lives. Stop debating the correct interpretation of Genesis 19. Sodom is hidden in plain view from us, here and now, today. As Cardinal Newman shows in his classic Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: Truth ripens, error rots. The homosxl rights movement is rotten to the core. It has no future. There is no life in it. Sooner or later, those who are caught up in it are going to wake up from the dream of unbridled desire or else die. It is just a matter of time. The question is: how long? How many children are going to be sacrificed to this Moloch?

Until several months ago, there was a Lobo's in Houston too. Recently, I was taking a walk through the neighborhood and I noticed something. There was a padlock on the door. A sign on the door read, "The previous tenant was evicted for nonpayment of rent." The façade and what it conceals, are gone now. Praise God.