Same-Sex Attraction is Real

For some of you, this is just a “duh” or “of course!”—but it’s not for others, so bear with me while I address a topic others may need to hear more than you do: Same-sex attraction is real.

I think my main audiences here are

• 1) those of you who for whatever reason haven’t allowed yourself to see it yet,
• 2) those of you out there who experience same-sex attraction but are still coming to terms with it, wondering if it’s a real thing, maybe inclined to put some other (any other) label on it.

What does that mean—that it’s real?

Well, it means that when I tell you that I feel attraction toward men, I’m not lying. And when I tell you it’s something I’ve experienced all my life (even if you just recently found out about it), that’s true. It’s not something I just made up, a deception, or a phase I’m going through. I didn’t choose it, and it’s not something I get to control.

So to the first group—the outside nay-sayers:

No matter what your beliefs are with regard to how people should or shouldn’t act in response to feelings of attraction to people of their same gender/sex, and despite the fact that you don’t and can’t experience it firsthand (and also precisely because of that fact), it’s important for you to be willing to listen to the experience of others for whom it is a very real part of daily life.

Also, if listening to prophetic authority is important to you, read through mormonandgay.churchofjesuschrist.org—there’s not an ounce of doubt expressed there about whether it’s real or not—just perspective and counsel on how to understand and deal with something that is obviously real enough to have a whole set of pages devoted to it.

I recently had some conversations with some of my brothers and was a little surprised to find that despite their not having treated me differently or ridiculed me when I came out to the family or since, some of them actually didn’t believe me, and at least one didn’t believe that SSA was real at all. Those conversations were challenging, both because of the work of trying to break through their disbelief and because of the hurt of not being believed—that despite knowing me my whole life and knowing that I’m not crazy or stupid or whatever, they listened to me come out, and they effectively patted me on the head and said “there, there. Bless your heart. You think you have that thing that doesn’t exist. I’ll humor you and hope eventually you come out of it.” Yeah, that hurt a bit. (By the way, my brothers are awesome people, and this isn’t meant to throw shade on them).

The thing is, it doesn’t matter if you think it exists. It is a reality outside your decision or belief. The only thing your disbelief will do is make you unable to support those who could have really used your help. If you believe in God and want to be an effective instrument in His hands, this is something you’re going to have to figure out how to wrap your head around.

Let me address a couple of the common protests, or arguments I’ve heard:

• “I don’t experience that and don’t see how anyone could.” Uh… There are a whole lot of things that you don’t experience. It’d be an interesting world if all the things you didn’t personally experience didn’t exist.
• “How could God let someone be born like this?” What do you mean? Do you mean to say that being born with same-sex attraction is somehow worse than being born blind, or deaf, or both, or with a congenital heart defect, or with spina bifida, or into poverty or an abusive family situation? Sure, SSA isn’t easy, but people are born with or end up experiencing all kinds of different hard things, and the difficulty of those other trials doesn’t make you question their existence. What makes SSA any different?
• “How is this person just suddenly gay? They’ve been normal for so long.” Little secret…it didn’t just happen. You may have just found out about it, but guaranteed they’ve been dealing with it on the inside for a long time, if not for their whole life. If their mannerisms or behavior have suddenly changed, for some it could be acting, but for many it will just be that they finally stopped acting, stopped hiding. Either way though, they’ve been wrestling with it, and with what to do about it, for a long time. You may not agree with what they decide to do, and if they’re doing something like leaving their wife to date or marry a man, you may think it’s both stupid and incredibly wrong—but none of that in any way invalidates the reality of the SSA they experience, any more than a straight man leaving his wife for a woman would invalidate his experience of attraction to women.
• “What if my kid is making it up, just saying they’re gay because it’s popular or cool now?” I’m sorry, but despite how much people talk about it nowadays, it’s just not that easy of a road for people to go choosing it (if you could) just for fun or popularity.
  • If your kid is making it up, it won’t last. For most people, sexual feelings are too strong to be living a faked orientation. If your son were actually straight, eventually his feelings for girls would drive him to pursue them and drop the act.
  • If your kid isn’t making it up, but you don’t believe him, the scars you’re making are going to be way worse than whatever would happen if you believed him and he were somehow faking it.
• “So many more people are coming out as gay now, way more than 5-10 years ago. That’s got to be because it’s more socially acceptable now, even ‘cool.’ Seems like if someone feels different they convince themselves that they are gay.” This is related to the last one, but maybe bigger picture. Here’s the deal. I came out about 5 years ago…but I was attracted to guys 10 years ago, and 15, and 20, and–get this–30+ years ago. Yes, it’s more socially acceptable to talk about (thankfully!), and it’s getting easier and easier for people to open up about this part of their lives, but most of even the younger gay guys I know were already experiencing it more than 10 years ago, and some of the guys I know dealt with it in silence for 50 or 60 years before finally opening up in the last few years. None of us caught wind of a new fad and decided to jump on a bandwagon–we just finally felt safe enough to talk about what was there all along, and we existed just as much during that non-gay golden age you’re trying to contrast with as we exist now–you just happen to know about us now.

In the end, if you’re in this camp, please just open your eyes and your ears and your heart and respect people enough to listen to them and believe them. You don’t have to agree at all about how gay people should respond to their attractions, but SSA is real, and you will do far more good in the world if you can brave the truth you don’t want to see than if you continue to live in denial.

Ok, now for those of you out there wondering if it’s real for you:

I’m not going to tell you either way, because I’m not inside you, and I don’t know what you experience, but I have some thoughts for you as you come to terms with what you’re feeling.

The main thing is just that it’s a real thing, and that it’s ok for you to lean into figuring out what your feelings are, and to call them what they are once you figure it out. Maybe you (or an outsider) might wonder how it could be so complicated to figure out. I don’t think it’s all that hard when your feelings are the same things that the majority of your family and friends feel and talk about, and when the way you feel toward others is shown all the time in movies and described in most of the books you read. When your feelings are different, though, and especially when there’s a whole set of feelings you are afraid of and nobody in your life wants to talk about, it can be easy to run from them instead of really looking them in the face enough to understand them. To be clear, I don’t see that as including experimentation with sex or same-sex romantic relationships, which I believe are against God’s laws, and also unnecessary to figuring this out. You can explore your feelings without being disobedient, and you can be obedient without running away from feelings in fear.

I was in denial about SSA for a long time. In high school, I thought of myself (somehow) as a straight guy with lots of unwelcome thoughts about guys. Ha ha. I’d struggled with masturbation from an early age, and I thought maybe my feelings were a perverted outgrowth of that struggle (I apparently didn’t have any idea how common that struggle was). I thought that maybe once I overcame that masturbation struggle, the thoughts about guys would go away. Nope. I was afraid for years that if I named it (SSA), the naming would make it more real, would make it worse, and that the worsening would be a sin I would be accountable for. Somehow I didn’t see that the fact that there was an “it” I was afraid of naming indicated there was something real I was denying. When I did allow myself to recognize it, I thought/hoped maybe I didn’t have it that bad, that maybe it was a small enough thing that it wouldn’t get in my way, and I could manage to get married, and then I’d be fine, home run. I hoped that at least most of the feelings I felt toward other guys were feelings that other guys felt toward each other, even if they didn’t talk about it. I mean, other guys know when guys around them are good looking, right? And there’s definitely often some aspect of physical attraction (as differentiated from sexual attraction) in the formation of friendships between guys…right?

The thing is, as I think through my life, back to my earliest memories, and as I read through my journal entries back to when I was a little kid and remember the situations and people I wrote about, and how I felt about them (though few of those feelings were written down), I recognize that my feelings back then were as obviously SSA as my feelings today. I may have been in denial about it a lot of the time back then, but it was nevertheless a constant, daily part of my experience. It may have taken me a long time to come to terms with it, to put a name on it, but that was just gradually improved conscious understanding and recognition of a way of experiencing the world that has been the same all the way through. I sure wish I’d come to terms with things sooner, and I’ll be happy if anything I’ve said help you get there faster than I did, or faster than you otherwise would.

Next post (I’m committing now to write each week for the next six weeks) will be a “Day in the Life” kind of post, giving you a view into how SSA shows up in my everyday life, and some of the practical realities of life with SSA.