Monday, May 21, 2007

My Last Cure Attempt


My reader, Peter’s comments about religion reminded me of my last serious attempt to throw myself into religion and “cure” myself of my same sex attraction. With my son’s learning to surf getting me into the sport, and finding myself spending time on surf trips with him and some of his friends, I thought a good program for them (and me) would be Christian Surfers, a world wide organization originally founded in Australia with numerous US chapters (http://www.christiansurfers.com/). It seemed a good way to keep the boys out of mischief and to provide a counterweight to the spaced out surfer dude mentality sometimes found in the surfing community. Moreover, the chapter took surf trips and did a Saturday morning bible study followed by surfing in the summer. For me, I thought the Bible study and focus on faith would be helpful in achieving the enigmatic cure I sought.

Soon my son and were very involved in the Virginia Beach chapter, which was headed by a gorgeous young married guy (who has now moved up in the organization). Not only was he physically beautiful and charismatic, but he was also one of the nicest guys I have ever known. Eventually, I was even one of the assistant directors of the chapter. My "cure," however remained illusive. You guessed it – instead of curing my “secret affliction,” I was now utterly infatuated with the chapter leader. After one Christmas gathering, he hugged me and I absolutely thought I was going to faint.


My quest for a “cure” largely ceased after this – no matter what I did or how hard I tried, God simply would not allow me to be “cured” and seemed to just put one obstacle in front of me after another. The falsity of the promise that God can cure you of being gay and the cynical way that the Christianist far right plays upon the desire of so many of us to conform and/or be what our families want, is nothing less than a travesty. The simple fact is that God makes some of us gay for God’s unknowable purposes. To try to change God’s handiwork is, in my view, a form of blasphemy.

3 comments:

EncouragingWord said...

Amen Micheal! I'm sorry you've had to go through "cure" attempts to reach this point, but I praise God that you are there now.

God gave you and others the gift of homosexuality as He gave me the gift of heterosexuality. Like you, I have no idea why, and that's fine. We both need to develop our gifts and be the best people we can be. I can't be any more effective acting gay while being attracted to women than you can acting straight while being attracted to men.

We've both got to embrace the way God made us before we can truly find out who we are. I'm glad you seem to be on that path now.

Anonymous said...

Not to sound glib, but you being nobody-but-yourself Michael, honours all the people in your life.

I'll leave you with this thought that I posted on my blog a while back...

(from Dr. Leo Buscaglia)
"I dearly love the challenge that is presented all over India. When you're traveling through India, you will see everybody, as they meet each other and leave each other, put their hands together and they say namaste. Let me tell you what that means. It means I honour the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honour the place in you where lies your love and your light and your truth and your uniqueness and your peace. I honour the place in you where if you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. Namaste."

D-Man said...

My Dear Michael, how did you stand it? A closeted gay man hanging out with a bunch of hot surfers! Oy! You may as well have been dropped right in the middle of a nude college frat boy convention.