A FOOLISH AND GODLESS DREAM!

The life of faith, to which all believers are called, is difficult one. As Watchman Nee notes, “All temptation is primarily to look within; to take our eyes off the Lord and to take account of appearances. Faith is always a mountain, a mountain of apparent contradiction in the realm of tangible fact–of failures in deed, as well as in the realm of feeling and suggestion—and either faith or the mountain must go. They cannot both stand. ...The trouble is that many a time the mountain stays and faith goes. This must not be. If we resort to our senses to discover the truth, we shall find Satan’s lies are often enough true in our experience; but if we refuse to accept as binding anything that contradicts God’s Word and maintain an attitude of faith in Him alone, we shall find that Satan’s lies begin to dissolve and that our experience is coming progressively to tally with that Word.” [The Normal Christian Life, (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1961), p. 56]

Sadly, too many, struggling with same-sex attractions, who once looked for the freedom Scripture promises, abandon their trust in the living God when things go more slowly than they wish and are more difficult than they expect. Finding change slow and difficult work, they say to themselves, “It’s no use! I’ll never make it! If I keep on pursuing freedom from homosexuality, the only result will be that I will get older, be less desirable, and end up alone. I quit! I’m going back out there, find someone I can love who will love me, and settle down to a life of bliss.”

This is a foolish dream.

It is foolish because it has virtually no chance of being realized. We can liken it to a man who is dying of thirst in the desert who leaves the trail to the oasis to chase after a mirage because the path is difficult and the oasis seems too far away. It is foolish for him to do so because the mirage is only an illusion. It is deadly for him to do so because the mirage, being an illusion, can only result in the loss of valuable time, disappointment, and possible death.
Now please don’t be angry and cut me off, as we are all prone to do when someone challenges our illusions. Please hear me out. Listen to the evidence before you commit yourself.

Dr. Robert Kronemeyer, a noted psychologist, warns, “One of the benchmarks of homosexuality is promiscuity; it connotes the intensity of underlying fear and panic. The need for ‘proof’ of desirability is insatiable. Driven from partner to partner, the gay skips from one ‘conquest’ to the next along the interminable yellow brick road to ‘love everlasting.’ His sexual compulsion is like the drug addict’s need for a fix or the alcoholic’s un-quenchable thirst. ‘To be gay is to go to the bar,’ lamented one male in a series of profiles on homosexuals, ‘to make the scene, to look, and look, to have a one-night stand, never really to love or be loved, to know this and yet to do this night after night year after year...’” [Overcoming Homo-sexuality, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1980), p. 30] He writes, “Three of ten homosexual men have never had a relationship that survived the one-night stand, and most gay men have never had an exclusive relationship that lasted as long as six months. Gay magazine pertinently remarked that what ‘starts early in one’s experience as a way of avoiding involvement can become a life-style that leaves in its wake a genuine emptiness’” [Ibid, p. 32]. What makes you think that you will be different, that your chances of success are any greater than those of others? And there is more!

Dr. Robert J. Kus notes, “Research on gay male couples indicates that total monogamy in gay male couples is rare.... In the study of Blumstein and Schwartz, 82 percent of the gay male couples were nonmonogamous in their current relationships and in later years, monogamy was virtually nonexistent among gay male couples...” [“Sex, AIDs, and Gay American Men,” Holistic Nursing Practice, (August 1987, p. 45-46]

“Oh,” you may be saying, “this is just the view of professionals who don’t really know what ‘gay’ life is all about.” If you are telling yourself something like that, please listen to the statements of two gay men.

“Homosexuality can sometimes be a world fraught with jealousy, envy, and conquest. When it becomes known that so-and-so has a lover, he immediately becomes a greater prize than he was before.... Would-be suitors are led to become more intensive and subtle in their efforts to have a sexual affair...or perhaps even to win the lover for themselves. Intense jealousy, secrecy, covetousness, and suspicion become more and more manifest.... It sometimes takes no more than a week or two for the partners to find out that they cannot stand each other. Those with greater endurance take longer—sometimes several years.” [Donald Webster Cory, The Homosexual and His Society: A View From Within, (New York: The Citadel Press, 1963), p. 12-13]

They warn that if a homosexual “expects that his casual sexual partner will, somehow or other, turn out to be a lover or life companion, his chances of having these hopes fulfilled by reality are rather small. In the few instances in which this sort of thing does happen, it is an event that excites widespread excitement among gay circles. Stories, true or exaggerated, are handed down to the effect that the invert met his lover at a gay bar, bath, or what have you, and is now ‘happily married’ for umpteen years. The impressionable young homosexuals who hear these stories see it as the realization of the Cinderella legend and do what they can to try to make it come true for themselves.... Unfortunately, far too many homosexuals view gay life as a means of finding a lover when its function is primarily one of finding a trick!” [Ibid. p. 29-30] Again, please let me emphasize that these words are written by two “gay” men with extensive and bitter experience with-in the homosexual community.

“Oh,” you may say, “but they were writing about gay life in the past. Things are different now.” I’m afraid they aren’t.

Mark Simpson, a “gay” man who has every intention of remaining so writes to raise the question whether “gay” marriage is a wise thing for homosexuals to pursue. Why?

Writing in the Guardian in the United Kingdom on December 2, 2008, Mr. Simpson notes, “First of all, there’s something gay people and their friends need to admit to the world: gay and straight long-term relationships are generally not the same. How many heterosexual marriages are open, for example? In my experience, many if not most long term male-male relationships are very open indeed.” He further states, “...most gay men...are single and probably will be single for most of their lives. With or without gay partnerships.”

As Robert A. J. Gagnon warns, “...All the data for homosexual conduct indicates that it has a very poor track record so far as enduring monogamous relationships are concerned” [The Bible and Homosexual Practice, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 453]. He notes that “one of the largest studies to date of the sexual habits of homosexual men (nearly 5,000 was the Multi-center AIDS Cohort Study (published in 1987). It found that ‘a significant majority of these men... reported having fifty or more lifetime sexual partners’” [Ibid., p. 454].

“In 1994, the largest gay magazine in America, The Advocate, published the results of questionnaires returned by 2,500 of its adult male homo-sexual readers. In the course of the relatively short average life-span of the respondents (thirty-eight years old), only 2% had had sex with just one man. Fifty-seven percent had more than 30 male sex partners, and 35% had more than 100. In the past year alone, about two-thirds (63%) had more than one male sex partner and the large majority of these (over 60%) had five or more...” [Ibid., p. 455]

Gagnon notes, “Even within the context of a relationship, homosexual males rarely exhibit serial mono-gamy, let alone lifelong mono-gamy.... Indeed, male homosexuals themselves often argue that the stifling model of heterosexual monogamy should not be foisted on homosexuals” [Ibid., p. 56-58].

Dr. Gagnon reviews a number of other scientific studies all of which come to the same conclusion. If you are looking for someone to settle down with in a lifetime of faithful monogamy, you have virtually no chance of realizing your dream.

This is a deadly dream

But this course is foolish, not only because there is almost no hope of finding what you seek, it is foolish because of the danger of pursuing it.

Two-thirds of the AIDS cases in the United States are found in men who have sex with men (MSM). This means that there is a very high infection rate in a small group of people making the likelihood of anyone who chooses to engage in homosexual behavior being infected very high.

Please learn from the experience of one man about whom “gay” journalist Randy Shilts wrote in his monumental study of the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He tells the story of Ken Horne, a young man who moved from Oregon to San Francisco in search of love, looking for a man he could “marry.” “When he did not find a husband, he took the next best thing—sex—and soon sex became something of a career. It wasn’t love but at least it felt good.... As the focus of sex shifted from passion to technique, Ken learned all the things one could do to wring pleasure from one’s body. The sexual practices became more and more esoteric; that was the only way to keep it from getting boring” [And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 46]. Yet he still felt, “Life is a disappointment” [Idem.]. Ken Horne was the first reported AIDS case in San Francisco [Ibid., p. xiv] and “at 1 A.M. on November 30, 1981, George Kenneth Horne, Jr., gasped one last tortured breath and lapsed into perfect darkness” [Ibid., p. 100].

Sadly, Randy Shilts had AIDS when he wrote those words. He did not know it, however, and refused to be tested until the book was finished lest his objectivity be adversely affected. He learned that he was HIV positive in 1987, and, despite aggressive medical treatment, on February 17, 1994, aged 42, in his own words he “gasped one last tortured breath and lapsed into perfect darkness.”

God loves you and seeks to spare you the hurt, disappointment, disillusionment, despair, disease, and possible death that comes with engaging in homosexual behavior. Thus He forbids such activity (see for example Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26,27; I Corinthians 6:9-11)—but he does so for your good!

Unfortunately, the danger is not only physical, it is also spiritual. To live contrary to God’s Word is to disbelieve His wisdom, goodness, love, holiness, justice, and truth and to walk away from Him and all He would give you in time and eternity.

Why would anyone do this? C. S. Lewis explains the problem that faces all Christians. “When once passion takes part in the game, the human reason, unassisted by Grace, has about as much chance of retaining its hold on truths already gained as a snowflake has of retaining its consistency in the mouth of a blast furnace. The sort of arguments against Christianity which our reason can be persuaded to accept at the moment of yielding to temptation are often preposterous. Reason may win truths; without Faith she will retain them just so long as Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve. If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of Faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have delivered to us for truth” [Christian Reflections edited by Walter S. Hooper, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), p. 43].

And so, dear friend, will you seek from God the faith that will persevere in obedience to His Word to the end, or will you walk away from Him into unutterable darkness? Choose carefully, for your whole life hangs on that choice.
--John J., Reading, PA

SPURGEON’S PROVERBS

“True religion is common sense enlightened by uncommon grace.”

“God pities weakness, but punishes wickedness.”

“Forbid a fool, and he’ll do it directly.”

“Faith honors Christ, and Christ honors faith.”

“Nothing should be done in haste except catching fleas.”

Other ladies who have made progress in their own recovery might want to consider starting a women’s chapter in their area. We encourage you to do so as God guides. For information call Doug M. at 281-712-2676 or write HA, 16506 FM 529 Rd - 115 Box 113 Houston, TX 77095

OPPORTUNITY FOR SERVICE

A vital part of recovery is becoming less self-centered. That’s what Step 14 is all about.

There are people who have no HA chapter near them (some in prison) who would find great encouragement if someone would be willing to correspond with them.

If you’d be willing to write a fellow-struggler, please let us know, giving your permission to send your name and address to those requesting a pen pal. We’ll let those who ask know of your willingness. We’ll tell them nothing about you and you nothing about them—that’s up to you both. We’ll just put people looking for a pen pal in touch with those willing to be a pen pal. Are you ready to do some Step 14 work?

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