Washington, DC – Urban Legends are extremely difficult to stop once they’ve reached the email circuit or the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for example, still receives thousands of petitions each year from Christians who have been told that Madalyn Murray O’Hair is trying to get all Christian programming removed from TV and radio. Mrs. O’Hair has been dead for many years now, but the petitions continue to reach the FCC from alarmed Christians.
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By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman,
Traditional Values Coalition |
Emails and the Internet contribute to the spread of urban legends, but these information sources are also useful in helping us dispel urban legends. Traditional Values Coalition has recently launched its own urban legend site to debunk misinformation spread by homosexual activist organizations about the nature and prevalence of homosexuality in our culture. Our Homosexual Urban Legend site has just added a new legend that needs to be debunked: The claim that homosexuals are “born gay” and that homosexuality is fixed and unchangeable from birth.
The “Born Gay” urban legend is actually being exposed as false by homosexual researchers themselves. Homosexual researcher Dean Hamer, for example, notes that homosexuality is not “purely genetic…environmental factors play a role. There is not a single master gene that makes people gay.” Homosexual researcher Simon LeVay, who attempted to find a genetic basis for homosexuality by examining the differences in the hypothalamus between “homosexual” and “heterosexual” males, has written: “I didn’t show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain.”
Therapists who treat men and women struggling with same-sex attractions say that there are several consistent factors that contribute to the emergence of homosexuality: gender confusion in childhood, a failure to internalize maleness, and sexual abuse by a same-sex predator. Dr. Gregory Dickson, whose doctoral thesis is on the relationship between a mother and son in the development of homosexuality, found that 49% of the homosexuals he surveyed said they had been molested, compared to less than 2% of heterosexuals. Other research confirms what therapists have known for decades: Homosexuals are made, not born. And they are frequently “made” by older men who molest them as youngsters.
Counselor Dr. Robert Hicks, author of The Masculine Journey has some sobering thoughts on the real origins of homosexual attractions: “…In counseling gay men for twenty years, I have not had one yet whom I would say had a normative childhood or normative adolescent development in the sexual arena. More often than not I have found stories of abusive, alcoholic, or absent (physically and emotionally) fathers; stories of incest or first experiences of sex forced upon them by older brothers, neighborhood men, or even friends. I sometimes find these men have been early exposure to pornography….” It is worth repeating: Homosexuals are made, not born.
This may not be good news to hardened homosexual activists who continue to engage in life-threatening behaviors. It should be good news to those men and women who struggle with same-sex attractions but who wish to lead normal lives. Organizations like Exodus International and the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality are available to help free these individuals from same-sex attractions and a sexual behavior that can ultimately kill them.
Christians who oppose homosexuality are frequently accused of being unloving, but there is nothing more loving than helping a person to become free of a life-controlling and self-destructive behavior. How many more patches will be added to the AIDS Quilt before someone says enough is enough: Homosexuality kills.
