This is a tale featuring so much heterosexuality I just don’t even know how to describe it:

Steven Wilson is a member of the Church living in the San Francisco Bay area. Twenty years ago, he was introduced to the Church by a recently returned missionary he met in a gay bar. The two eventually moved in together and during the next seven years, Steven developed addictions, contracted AIDS and became severely depressed. As Steven’s condition worsened and he began to feel that he was going to die, he turned to an in-depth investigation of the Church.

This is his story about how he joined the Church, and eventually became an ordinance worker at the Oakland Temple. He is now happy and no longer experiences temptations with same gender attraction. He was baptized by the same returned missionary that first introduced him to the Church and with whom he has lived for the past 20 years. During the past 13 years of active Church membership, the two men have maintained a close bond of love, friendship and brotherhood within the gospel.

AWWWW, they met a gay bar, then seven years later, Steven joined his “roommate’s” church! How sweet, it is like 1965 all over again!

I would make further fun of this supposed “conversion story,” or point out that for two Mor-men, it’s exceptionally WEIRD to move in with another guy for TWENTY YEARS, but The General already re-told the story for us:

“Hi there, Brother Hairybear,” the missionary presumably said, “have you heard the story about how an angel gave Joesph Smith a second testament of Christ and how Joseph translated it by staring at a stone in a hat? Would you like to be baptized, move in with me, and spend the rest of our lives living the heterosexual lifestyle together?”

Touched by the Spirit of the Lord in a very heterosexual kind of way, Steven immediately responded, “Take me, Elder InDenial, take me to your home, baptize me, and let us live the heterosexual lifestyle, together, as brothers.”

Twenty years later, they’re still living together in that house, living the life of chaste and fervently heterosexual bachelors.

Amen!

Yesterday, over at the American Family Association’s hilarious “news” website, OneNewsNow, Peter LaBarbera said the following regarding openly gay megachurch pastor Jim Swilley:

“There’s no doubt in the Bible about whether homosexual practice is a sin,” the conservative advocate points out. “He says he knew he was — quote — ‘gay’ since he was a boy. Most boys don’t think about sex, much less homosexuality, so we’re wondering what happened in his early life. Obviously, he’s a confused man.”

Commenters here and elsewhere made fun of that statement, and quite rightly, because it’s self-evident to most of us what Swilley was talking about there. But when Peter reposted his comments at his own site, he expounded further:

In the One News Now article below, when I made the comment, “Most boys don’t think about sex,” I was referring to very young boys. I am always perplexed to hear adult homosexual men talk about how they “knew they were gay” from a very young age, say, five years old. Normally, boys don’t even know what sex is, much less homosexuality, in their early years, so such comments in an of themselves seem to indicate dysfunction, at best, or victimhood at the hands of a predator, at worst, in the young lives of these homosexually identified men.

This leads me to believe that what is self-evident to us actually needs to be explained, so I will do so. Because the Religious Right has lied so long about the nature of homosexuality, and indeed, sexuality itself, that they actually believe their own lies, they have reduced homosexuality to a “temptation” or an “affliction,” and moreover, they have convinced themselves that being gay is All About Sex. It’s an asinine belief, but it is what they believe.

Peter: Sexuality is not all about sex, thoughts of sex, or having sex. Sexuality, whether hetero, homo, or somewhere in between, is about which gender/s a person is geared to connect with on ALL levels. This starts to manifest in childhood. Think about kids on the playground. Little boys pushing girls down in the sandbox. Little girls harassing the crap out of the boys around them. A friend of mine was telling me the other day about how his four year old son is COMPLETELY the Don Juan of his preschool daycare. When he gets there, four or five girls glomp all over him, and he stands there with his arms around them like “Lookuh me. These my girls!” Are ANY of these kids thinking about sex?  No.  But I’ll bet money that most of the kids I just described will end up being heterosexual as adults.

LIKEWISE, kids who grow up to be gay have those same feelings about kids of the same gender.  Again, they are not sexual feelings, by any stretch, but they’re just the completely normal first pangs of what will, one day, be their full adult sexuality.  And yes, many gay men can look way back, in hindsight, and say “Yeah, I knew I was drawn to the boys.”  Likewise for lesbians.  Even at age five.

Personally, I can’t look that far back, but I can go back to age eleven, a good two years before I hit puberty and started thinking about sex.  That was the first time I had a crush on a boy.  So, at the time, I didn’t have any concept of “gay” or sexual desires of any sort, but when I look back now, I realize that that was the first indication that I would several years later realize that I was gay.  And I can’t emphasize enough that there was no “turning point” or anything where my thoughts went from girls to boys or anything.  From the start, if I was going to have a crush, or think somebody was cute, regardless of how deep my thoughts about it were, if it was genuine, it was about a boy.  I point that out because I went through times when I dated girls, had crushes on girls, etc., but that was mostly a manifestation of Trying To Fit In.

So that is what it’s about, Peter.  You can continue oversexualizing it, painting gay people as predators and victims, as if it hasn’t been explained to you, but that would be just another permutation of your pathological, loathsome dishonesty, because it has now been explained to you.

Some people decide, for a variety of reasons, that they are morally opposed to expressing their own personal same-sex orientation. However, they refrain from the lie that anyone can “change” their sexual orientation.

In fact, some of these people acknowledge that no significant change of sexual orientation occurs in most (if any) so-called ex-gays.

Depending upon the context, a lifetime of celibacy may be depressing, self-defeating, a bit selfish, or even unloving. Do we at Truth Wins Out strongly encourage it? Not especially. But what people choose to do (or not do) with themselves is their business.

However, when celibate gay people present the public with celibacy as an honest alternative to the fraudulent healings of the ex-gay movement, some politically correct ex-gays are bound to retaliate. (Read More)