Childhood Brainwashing?

Over the past couple of months I've been doing as much as I can to raise opposition to Proposition 8 in California.  That has included volunteering at the phone bank for "No On 8" and just reaching out to friends and family to spread the word.  But for every bulletin I post on Myspace about Prop 8, I am met with resistance...by a thirteen-year-old.

My thirteen-year-old cousin has really enjoyed challenging me on my beliefs, interpretations, and opinions on politics.  However, he shares information with me that I've heard before, because I used to be in the same place he was at his age.  But he disregards that and chooses to put down my marriage and call me a sinner.  This is the last message I received from him...

VINCE AT LEAST 75% OF PASTORS AND CHURCHES THINK GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG AND IT IS. GUESS WHAT I JUST TURNED SOME ONE WHO WAS GAY INTO A STRAIGHT MAN HE WAS MY NEIGHBOR, I TOOK HIM TO CHURCH AND HE FEELS WRONG THAT HES GAY SO I CHANGED HIM AND I SHOWED HIM THE PAPER I MADE THAT I SENT TO YOU. I'M PRAYING FOR YOU AND HIM. I THINK GOD IS USING ME TO CHANGE GAYS. I ALREADY CHANGED ONE AND I CAN CHANGE 2 MORE.

I was left speechless.  There are so many things wrong with this message.  Where does a thirteen-year-old get the idea that God has chosen them to "change the gays?"  Not to mention that he thinks he's been successful in converting at least one person and has the power to change more.  I politely responded that I tried reparative therapies and they don't work and that using guilt to push someone back into the closet is not the same thing as converting them to heterosexuality.  But what are church leaders teaching young people today?

It is not okay for a junior high student to believe that God has given him superpowers to make people straight--it's not okay for anyone to believe that.  Granted, when I was that age, I believed that homosexuality was wrong and I would voice that, but I never thought I could change gay people; but I also never thought it was fixable, I just thought they were out of luck and were destined for hell.

It is disturbing that there are church leaders that would be very proud of this young man's efforts.  Churches are using dangerous indoctrinating messages to turn children into mini-reparative therapists.  That is a scary abuse of religion.

Somehow I'll Make a Man Out of You

How many of you have heard that song from the Disney movie Mulan, "I'll Make a Man Out of You?" I feel like that song represents an interesting part of my ex-gay experience. I've been visiting San Diego State University for the past two weeks (my husband is a student here) and they've been having Greek Week, which is a time for students to find out about the fraternities and sororities on campus and then perhaps rush for them. There was one fraternity that really caught my eye, Alpha Gamma Omega, SDSU's only Christ-centered fraternity. So I decided to check out some of the things they do. They do: Worship Night, Wakeboarding, Beach Football, Broomball, and then "Bigger or Better" (I'm not sure what that means exactly).

Their activities they have planned really got me thinking about gender roles and how they could possibly be trying to re-assert their masculinity by these activities. I was taught through my reparative therapy counseling sessions that men engage in these activities not to necessarily "butch" ourselves up, but because sports are a natural way for guys to connect with another.

Because I was told that my father did an inadequate job raising me to be a "man of God," I was assigned to male mentor in the church.

For us guys in the program they partner us up with straight male mentors, particularly men who are a little older, overweight, and balding. Well, the therapeutic theory behind this is that they believe that these guys will serve as less of temptation for us. But I have a little confession to make. I find those guys kinda hot. --Chad, Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House

My male mentor's job was to pretty much be the good Christian example that my father wasn't. We went out to play catch at the lake, we went to go see action flicks at the cinema, and like every good Christian "dad" he took me to a Promise Keepers convention where I was supposed to learn how to become a "man of integrity." From my mentor I was supposed to receive constant reaffirmation for the good things I did that were representative of an authentic "man of God."

However, through my attempts to "reconnect with my masculinity" I ironically began to feel like less of a man through the activities that I was doing. I felt like masculinity was being defined for me. I always knew that I was a feminine guy. I had heard that since I was a small boy and I had learned to accept it. But my male mentor didn't know how to respond to that. He had 2 sons that were older than me and I'm sure he was just doing what he done with his sons when he raised them. Eventually he had starting feeling like he was doing something wrong as a leader, but then changed his mind to the belief that there was just more that was wrong with me.

So as these fraternity brothers play their beach football and tackle one another with no shirts on, I wonder if they do so because they too believe that sports are just the natural way for men to connect with one another.

M Butterfly

For those that haven’t seen or read the play, or even seen the movie, I highly recommend you do so. M Butterfly is an absolutely amazing play about love—love that defies convention and really sparks your mind to begin thinking about gender in a whole new way. It is a story of a French man that finds his true love in a Chinese woman, his “butterfly,” but later discovers that his precious “butterfly” is indeed a man posing as woman to spy for the Chinese government.

In my Religion and Film class we just finished watching the movie and had an interesting discussion about the film. We discussed the different elements of love and spent a great deal of time examining the deception that took place in their relationship. The question that we spent the most time discussing though was: Did Rene Gallimard know that Song Liling was really man?

Everyone in the class was in utter shock! This couple had been together for over 20 years and the gender of Song was never discussed. There is a scene where Song is asked, “Did Mr. Gallimard know that you were a man?” The response from Song is deliciously perfect, “I never asked him.”

There was this thought floating around the class that Song deceived Rene and distorted his image of what or who his “butterfly” was. I challenged everyone to ask, “Does it matter?” Rene got everything he wanted out of his relationship with the “ideal Oriental woman.” He was loved, he got a child, he was sexually satisfied, he was happy! So in what way was his “love” distorted? Even after he discovered that Song was a man (although I argued along the lines of Song being gender queer) he was still in love!

The author of the play wrote in his afterword that it is Western mind that gets preoccupied with knowledge. We have a “false knowledge of gender, sexuality, etc.” It is the abuse of knowledge that sets us behind in a quest for equality. I have provided the final scene of the movie that was brilliantly done and shows the intensity of their love they had in their relationship. But I highly encourage everyone to either read or see the movie!