(Please note: in the following, I use the term “gay” for people who have “come out” and either practice same-sex genital acts, or are open to such acts. “People with SSA” is a broader category, including both “gay” people as well as people with unwanted SSA who neither practice nor are open to same-sex genital acts.)
Certain family constellations or childhood and adolescent experiences have been consistently linked with the development of male SSA. All are based on the boy’s failure to attach to and identify with his father, leading to a starving for healthy male affection and bonding; or a failure to connect healthily with same-sex peers through competition, companionship, and rough-and-tumble play, also leading to a hunger for male connection. The trauma of not making the connection leads to 1) “defensive detachment”, in which the boy puts up an emotional wall against the father or male peers to avoid the continued hurt; and 2) sexualization of the needs for paternal and male peer connection, experienced as SSA.
The classic, but certainly not universal scenario is of the passive, abusive, or emotionally distant father and the dominating, smothering mother. Another more benign scenario involves a father whose job or health has unavoidably led to extended absences from the family, especially during the crucial window of male identification with the father, between ages 2-5. It is crucial to note that this is not about “blaming the parents”, since the psychological trauma can have so much to do with the SSA male’s perceptions of parental connectedness.
A third scenario includes healthy connections with parents, but a disruption of male peer relationships upon entering school, for a variety of reasons. These can include childhood illnesses such as rheumatic fever or severe asthma, preventing participation in sports; or a more sensitive, artistic nature making connection with male peers more difficult (although in this case, a good connection with Dad goes a long way). A fourth scenario involves sexual abuse by an older male before or at the start of puberty. This leads to confusion about sexual identity: it is particularly outrageous that gay affirmative therapy frequently seeks to confirm this confusion as “gay identity” when it is so clearly rooted in abuse – effectively compounding the abuse.
In any case, the God-given, powerful need for a boy to connect with his father; to separate appropriately from his mother; and to connect healthily with same-sex peers gets short-circuited, usually quite early in life. This need gets sexualized as puberty kicks in (although sexual feelings may begin well before then), and it is experienced as a deeply rooted drive. However, acting out sexually with other males ends up in disaster: it is “scratching the wrong itch”, since the sex actually blocks the paternal and peer connection so desperately needed.
The lack of male identification makes heterosexual men and masculinity seem mysterious to the SSA male; leads to a sense of inferiority around such men; and results in a sense of greater comfortability with females. This is why gay men often have many (male) sexual partners, but their closest friends are much more commonly female. That is, although very few gay men wish to be female, they generally experience the masculine as “different”, and the feminine as “familiar”.
The main argument for gay marriage and for the steady pressure to forbid any discrimination against gay people in the workplace, even for religious institutions, states that gay people are an oppressed minority exactly as are, e.g., African-Americans or Latinos. Underlying such an argument is that gay people are “born that way”. Hence, just as it would be wrong to wrong to deny marriage or employment at a religious institution ot other minorities, so it would be wrong to deny these rights to gay people.
There are several problems with such an approach. First, whereas there is scant evidence to support the gay-as-genetically-determined hypothesis, ancestry (and therefore, genetics) obviously underlie African-American and Latino identity. While a person’s identity as African-American or Latino gives me some broad information about his/her ancestry, it gives me no information whatsoever about his/her behavior. In contrast, gay identity is defined by participation in or openness to a particular kind of behavior, not by ancestry or genetics: gay people are those who are either practicing same-sex genital acts, or are open to them. Christianity, orthodox Judaism, and Islam (although the latter deals with this with a harshness the former two find abhorrent) all view such behavior as immoral, so that those working in their institutions should neither model nor condone such behavior.
Second, because all people, whatever race or nationality, possess gender, all people are capable of contracting the legal union of two people of opposite genders that is marriage. To so alter the definition of marriage that it can include two people of the same gender is to destroy marriage altogether. Any two (or more) people are free to contract legally any number of lifelong associations. However, only the union of husband and wife is, by nature, capable of producing children; provides for the safety and nurture of the offspring in a way that will prepare those offspring to marry and raise children themselves at the appropriate time; and (I would argue) possesses not only the anatomical but also the personal complementarity that marriage requires.
Marriage is the building block of society, because society must provide for and protect its children. No other relationships (however committed and sincere) inherently, in the normal course, result in offspring; no other relationships therefore require the unique societal and legal status that marriage – one man, one woman – enjoys. In a powerful talk about coming from the gay lifestyle into committed Catholicism, Wade Ryan (who had been a pioneer in the gay rights movement) offeres a further, Christian perspective. He noted that the state does not “make” marriage. Marriage was instituted by God, His first act after creating the universe; and it flows out of the reality of male and female complementarity and fruitfulness.
I should note that some committed Catholics with SSA believe that they and some proportion of others with SSA are “born that way” – but they see this as due to the disorder in creation stemming from Original Sin. That is, one can be “born gay” in the same way one can be “born anxious” or “born bipolar” or “born prone to alcoholism or depression”. Being “born that way” doesn’t excuse people with SSA from being chaste, just as a genetic predisposition to alcoholism doesn’t excuse me from sobriety. Further, in this view, people who move from SSA into heterosexual identity are born heterosexual, but sexual abuse or other traumas first have to be resolved for them to move into their heterosexual identity.
Those with this view are experiencing from the inside something I am viewing from the outside. I don’t want to shoehorn people’s experiences into my theory. However, I do offer an alternative hypothesis: the trauma preventing maturation into heterosexual identity could occur so early that the person has no awareness of it; and the wound may be so deep that reparative therapy would have little or no effect. But by definition, anything rooted in the unconscious can never be proven. In the end, “born that way” or not the essential question.
Reparative therapy is not required for those with SSA; nor should those with SSA who attempt reparative therapy without benefit be accused of “just not trying”. An inspiring blog by a faithfully Catholic man with SSA (www.stevegershom.com) illustrates that reparative therapy is appropriate for some, not others. In fact, the main Catholic group – Courage – supporting chastity for committed SSA Catholics has no official stance on reparative therapy. Living a holy and fruitful life is attainable for all Christians, with or without SSA. As Patrick Coffin on “Catholic Answers” quips, “Be a saint! What else is there?” And as Wade Ryan wisely noted, in Heaven, any lacks, wounds, or disorders will be completely healed, transformed, loved into wholeness beyond our wildest imaginings.
