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The Fight for Equality–from the Right
Ken Williams already has two strikes against him. He is a Christian pastor. He was gay at one time and found his way back to a heterosexual life and is now married with four kids. And he has a third strike against him as he fights legislation in California that could prevent counseling gays who want to explore the possibility of living as heterosexuals.
Williams was interviewed on the Daily Signal podcast and told his story of realizing he was homosexual, how he re-discovered his male sexuality with a friendship with a woman, and then fell in love with that woman who became his wife. (A partial copy of the interview is here.) He now counsels people who want to deal with same-sex attraction and works with them in a very loving, compassionate way. In a sense, he has lived their story.
When asked if his work with clients was conversion therapy, he was firm in his belief that it was not, and in fact didn’t know anyone who had gone through it:
What’s so common though is people are confused about their identity or their sexuality. They go and they talk it out with a counselor, and the counselor helps them figure out what they want to go toward and leads them that direction … follows what they’re wanting to pursue and helps them go that direction.
So I know tons of people who have been so helped by things that could be labeled as conversion therapy that were merely a person talking with the counselor and figuring out, ‘Why do I feel the way that I do?’
He also acknowledged the damage that Christianity had done to those who believed they were gay:
For so long and in Christian circles it was, this is the mandate, ‘Gay people are detestable. They’re going to hell. They’re terrible,’ or whatever. And there wasn’t any offering for, ‘OK, wait a minute, God loves you and he wants to help you.’ It was just, ‘You shouldn’t be who you are,’ and that can’t be God first of all. And who wants to behave that way?
So I feel some of what we’re experiencing today is a reaction from a society that was holding expectations of people without helping loving them into what that expectation might be.
I so regret that that happened, but the way to fix it now is for all of us to be loving of people without necessarily agreeing.
A number of thoughts came to me as I listened to Williams. He was candid about his own history, and shared his struggles and his fears about his own sexuality. His compassion and caring for others were apparent. Although I am quite sure that he hoped, at some level, that people he counseled would turn to the sexuality they were born with, he also demonstrated that his primary concern was to be an empathetic listener, to help people explore their history, and to help them heal, however it may occur.
Another thought I have been exploring is the process for a person changing his or her sexual orientation. Some research shows that the brain can influence sexuality, although there is not consensus in the medical community:
The functionalities of regions in the brain like the amygdala and the hypothalamus have been proven to be determined genetically and are influenced by hormones. Developments in these regions kick in even before an individual learns cognitive skills or is exposed to environmental and educational settings. But scientists still do not negate the role of environmental factors.
I’m not a scientist, but I do know from my years of practicing and studying meditation that the brain is altered through regular practice. The number of neural pathways is increased, the pre-frontal lobe thickens (which increases a sense of well-being), and many people have other improvements in health-related areas.
Ken Williams cited the fluidity of sexuality and his marriage of 13 years:
As we’ve gone further through marriage, and I’ve continued to work on my own heart and being part of that men’s purity group, where I feel like I’m constantly getting better as a man and taking more responsibility for my life and just, I don’t know, continuing to grow.
A lot of my friends that I know that share my similar experience, it becomes kind of fluid that way, as far as your understanding of yourself and of your sexual desires, they can shift. Even the APA will tell you that, that there can be a shift in sexual desires. So contrary to popular opinion, they can shift both ways.
Given the fact that the brain actually can change, why couldn’t a person who wanted to be heterosexual develop neural pathways that would be focused on developing heterosexual attitudes? If people who were deeply religious wanted to change, in order to serve G-d more appropriately, and took steps to do so, why shouldn’t they be allowed, even encouraged to change? Again, I want to emphasize that this type of counseling should be voluntary and can’t be forced on a person.
Deeply concerning to me is that we are making alternative lifestyles normal, and even criticizing people who want to follow their gender of birth. Why shouldn’t this type of therapy be encouraged, if they are interested? Why should they be pressured to pursue a gay lifestyle that makes them feel inauthentic and irreligious?
The problem in 2019 is that a bill in California that was tabled in 2018 is being proposed again. It is called the Equality Act and would essentially override the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). These types of laws have been used in other states:
These state laws have been used to shut down Catholic adoption agencies that only place children with a mother (biologically female) and a father (biologically male). They have also been used, famously, to compel people working in the wedding industry, like florists, photographers and bakers, to provide their services for same-sex ceremonies, in violation of their religious conscience and without regard to the availability of such services from vendors who would be happy to provide them.
But the future implications are even worse, if that’s possible. Monica Burke of the Heritage Foundation describes what has already occurred:
The Equality Act would be used to compel speech. Virginia high school teacher Peter Vlaming lost his job for something he did not say. A county school board voted unanimously to fire the veteran teacher over the objections of his students after he refused to comply with administrators’ orders to use masculine pronouns in referring to a female student who identifies as transgender. Vlaming did his best to accommodate the student without violating his religious belief that God created human beings male and female, using the student’s new name and simply refraining from using pronouns altogether.
Unfortunately, the school still considered this a violation of its anti-discrimination policy.
Ken Williams is taking a stand against the Equality Act. Ironically, he is the one fighting for equality, not those who sponsor this bill. Since California is historically in the lead for cultural change, let’s hope they can be stopped.
Published in Law
I’ll let Stina speak for Stina although I’m not sure I understood the comment that way. In any event, conversion therapy does still exist. See also this. It’s illegal in some states (including Illinois where I live, as of a couple years ago), and it’s not considered ethical by people like the American Psychological Association, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And many of the people practicing it consider themselves ministers, not psychologists, and don’t have the education or licensing to worry about anyway. I wish you were right that it’s been eradicated, but we’re not there yet.
I agree with you in principle about the state, the schools, etc. being indifferent. I wish it were that easy. Here’s the problem:
Little Billy and Little Bobby beat up Little Johnny every day at school and call him a faggot. Little Johnny is, in fact, gay and terrified about what that’s going to mean for his future. He doesn’t even know how Billy and Bobby know. But the fact that there’s violence and name calling going on in the school makes it an issue the school can’t turn a blind eye to, can it? I hope we agree that the answer’s “no,” it can’t. So how do you put a stop to it without talking to the kids? And what if in the course of talking to them the truth comes out? Little Johnny’s gay? Now Little Billy and Little Bobby take the position that that justifies their abuse. Is the school supposed to be “indifferent?” Obviously (I hope) not. Little Billy and Little Bobby have to be told in no uncertain terms that that won’t cut it. Maybe they can believe whatever they want but in school they’ll hold their tongues and their fists or there will damn sure be consequences. I hope we agree on that.
Now that doesn’t mean that tolerance of gay kids has to be built into the curriculum. I think there’s a case to be made that doing so is a reasonable prophylactic effort to avoid the scenario I described above, but it’s also fraught with complications, I get that – especially at younger ages where the school might be introducing the kids to something they’re unaware of. That might be something better left to communities or schools to handle differently depending on a variety of circumstances and values. But regardless, when you’re talking about an institution that’s trying to manage and educate a horde of children, there sometimes comes a point where indifference just isn’t possible.
We really have get into specifics in order to have a meaningful discussion.
I think that any techniques not illegal in the given municipality are reasonable for an adult – assuming that adult is of sound mind (and body as applicable).
For children, talk in general is reasonable, a snapped rubber band is wholly under the kids control, and ‘attempting to change thought patterns by reframing desires, redirecting thought patterns, or hypnosis’ seems reasonable as well, though I have some general distrust over hypnosis.
I agree about the adults. My concern is really with children. If an adult chooses to subject him or herself to some kind of treatment in hope of getting a result, I might feel bad for him or her. In the case of a gay adult, I’d think “why can’t you just accept yourself as you are, life is so much better once you do.” But if you’re an adult and you want to try, godspeed.
I think you lack a real understanding of what this kind of therapy means to kids though, and the contexts in which it occurs. “Just talk” can really be much more damaging than your comment suggests.
I agree about the damaging talk, and that is a problem that plagues therapy. One has only to look at recovered memories and the suggestibility and vulnerability that patients have.
“Just talk” seems ok if part of that talk is finding out if the kid even wants to change, and keeping track of whether and when he changes his mind going forward – as well as trying to establish that change is something he wishes to pursue for his own reasons. I realize this is idealized, and less likely to occur in a largely untrained faith-based clerical counseling session than an expensive research facility. But at that point, are we really talking about a gay problem, or are we talking about a problem of quackery that affects gays disproportionately?
This particular sort of quackery is directed straight at gay kids. I don’t know if there’s anything else quite like conversion therapy businesses/groups/churchs/camps, or whatever form they take for anything or anybody else. Nice evangelicals are fond of saying that sin is sin and homosexuality is no different than any other sin but from the perspective of a homosexual, I can tell you it feels like it’s a “sin” that carries an unusually strong stigma, and generates an unusually strong sense of dread and horror, in some circles. I think some of these parents would rather their kids were murderers. But sure, talking to a kid about it when he tells you (his parent/pastor/counselor, etc.) that he’s gay is fine in principle. But these programs aren’t set up to ask the kid what he wants from life. They’re set up to change him. And the kids are often (I suspect usually, though I can’t back it up with evidence) put in them involuntarily by parents who simply can’t stand the thought that their child is gay. That’s not a good recipe.
If this is still going on, it’s terrible:
Some practitioners have also used “aversion treatments, such as inducing nausea, vomiting, or paralysis; providing electric shocks; or having the individual snap an elastic band around the wrist when the individual became aroused to same-sex erotic images or thoughts.” I’d be interested to know how many people use these techniques, but one is too many.
I certainly don’t consider indifference as a best practice, but there is a lot of room for overreaction and codified overreaction (which is the definition of ‘zero tolerance’) too. Two-on-one beating up of anyone is something that has to be addressed hard. Repeated picking on of a given target needs to be addressed medium, as does a serious physical fight in general. Tussles and name-calling need a lighter touch, but this is where I think the difficulties come in.
The weighting and freighting of epithets is a messy thing indeed. I have no idea how old Johnny is, or which decade it is that he is being called a ‘faggot’. These variables matter, as does the animus of the speaker. Epithets can be hurled, or merely lofted. Sure this is heading into hate crime territory, but we’re talking school discipline and that needs to have some leeway for nuance.
[Con’t.]
I think bullying (name calling, physical bullying, etc.) is completely unacceptable, and the schools have been trying to ignore it. Also, didn’t kids call each other faggot just to say it, not even knowing what it meant? I believe they did in CA when I was growing up. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s possible they were saying a word they didn’t understand but figured it was a pejorative.
As we discussed earlier, the opposite happens, too, with kids being pushed into a trans lifestyle. It’s such a tough issue. It had to be hard growing up for you, too, Cato.
[Con’t.]
My main point is that an extended dissertations on Racial Injustices in US History, Judaism is an Important Component in Our Western Heritage, Homosexuals are Much Like Any Other Pair-Bonding Couple, and similar, are not likely to be helpful and not likely to end in a ’70s After School Special New-Found Respect and Comity.
It was. I think you’d find that gay people of my generation and older get very exercised about the mistreatment of gay kids because more than anything we want growing up to be easier for them than it was for us. By analogy, I’m concerned that trans kids get a fair shake. But still, the whole “everybody’s now trans” thing is almost as difficult for me to sort out as it is for you. I don’t have much patience for people who claim it’s a delusion that they just need to be relieved of, end of story. That smacks of the conversion therapy problem and I just don’t think it’s going to help a lot of these people all that much. I think the goal ought to be to allow them to flourish as productive, happy people to the extent at all possible – with whatever gender presentation and social and romantic attachments best accomplish that. But still, I can’t help feeling like suddenly something that was exceedingly rare has become almost faddish, and I’m concerned about medical interventions being done on people who might grow out of it fairly quickly.
This.
Seems the best thing is for schools to not try to divine where a kid is headed sexually or where they should be headed and instead stay out of their way, discourage those in your charge from getting in their way, and let the little bastards figure it out for themselves. Similarly, it seems the best thing is for governments in general to not try to divine where people are headed or should be headed in general and instead stay out of the way, discourage those in their charge from getting in their way and let the little taxpayers figure it out for themselves.
Edit: Fixed it so the people quoted were accurately represented by their words.
Maybe. I honestly don’t know. I think it might depend a bit on how it’s presented. Can I tell you a story? This is a bit of a digression but I felt kind of cool about it and I’ll try to be brief.
You might be familiar with Lambda Legal Defense Fund. It’s a gay rights legal organization that does “impact” litigation to try to make the law more favorable to gay people. In some cases I think it’s done some great work and I’ve been both a donor and a cooperating attorney for it at various points in my career. There have also been times when I have walked away from it in disgust because for one reason or another I concluded that it had jumped the shark and started pushing an unreasonable left wing agenda. I’ve essentially been in one of those “keep my distance” postures since Obergefell. After that victory, which I was thrilled about and donated quite a bit of money (for me anyway) to help make possible, the folks at Lambda seemed to look around in search of a new mission, and largely decided that bathrooms and bakers were now their raison d’etre.
Well Lambda has about 5 offices nationwide including one in Chicago where I live. Lo and behold, a few months ago, Lambda names a new director for their Chicago office and it’s a guy my husband (who is not a lawyer, not involved in Lambda, and not particularly political) dated in college. This new director did what non-profit directors are expected to do immediately – he started reaching out to people to raise money. Since our names were on the list of past donors, and he recognized Mr. Rand’s name, we got the personal sell to come back to the fold and start donating again.
Well Mr. Rand didn’t care and of course I did, and so I took over the conversation, which resulted in an email exchange about why we were no longer donors. At one point he made a comment about needing to fight the “onslaught” from the Trump administration and I stopped him short. I told him that Martin Luther King’s genius was in appealing to the better natures of his opponents, not in demonizing them, and that he’d do well to learn from that. I think I may even have gotten through to him.
But to come full circle, that’s why I think the “extended dissertations” you dislike don’t necessarily have to be counterproductive. I don’t deny that as presented by our woke overlords, they are counterproductive. “You’re a racist” or “you’re a homophobe” does not change hearts and minds, whether it’s true or not. But most of us are capable of generating some empathy for the struggles of people who are different from ourselves and curricula material designed to spark that empathy might not be counterproductive at all. That is, in fact, what MLK’s success was built on and it is why he is remembered as a great civil rights leader while Al Sharpton will just be remembered as a race hustler.
I can’t believe any school in this age allowing this and not stomping on it.
Absolutely not, see above.
Agreed.
All walks of life are to be treated with respect. In this day and age, Billy and Bobby become pariah’s.
Look, your team has won in the schools. People of faith are the one’s that have difficulty being tolerated, accept for the religion of peace of course.
I understand that but I was responding to a specific point that someone else made – about the need for schools to be “indifferent.” I was just pointing that sometimes children do things that create circumstances that make indifference impossible.
That was me on the “indifference” policy. To elaborate. Indifference is the sop posture until circumstances require attention. Address it, then return to indifference.
I think we agree in principle.
Now I understand, and we do.
I figured this fits neatly into Augustine’s conversion.
This type of prayer features heavily in my prayer life.
Thus far, these specific prayers were answered 3x. The nature of the answer should teach me to be careful what I pray for. And yet, I persist.
The fact that Little Johnny is gay (or Hasidic or handicapped or a nerd or obese) is irrelevant, and the school shouldn’t go into the matter. To do so is to imply that gays are a special class that shouldn’t be bullied, while leaving open the possibility that other classes, not specifically mentioned, may be. If the bullies insist his being gay “justifies their abuse“, the answer is to tell them nothing justifies their abuse, not try to convince them homosexuality is great.
Of course, in a school system run for the benefit of the kids instead of the teachers, a kid who was being bullied could simply be moved to a different school.
I would amend this to moving the bullies to a different school, provided it was 2 or less.
The idea that you should ignore the cause of the bullying (whatever it is) is silly. (I agree that it doesn’t matter the cause – homosexuality, handicap, yarmulke, whatever) And for what? Because it would be awful if a school imparted the value of not hating the neighbor who is different from you? Was that really what you meant to say? If so, our values are so divergent that there’s probably little hope of productive discussion between us.
And move the victim? Really? That’s your solution to the bully? Send the victim to a different school? Have you ever met a bully? Are you oblivious to the fact that he’ll find another victim before Little Johnny’s bus gets out of the parking lot? What have you solved with this silly “solution?”
You win the award for the most disconnected from reality comment on this thread IMHO.
Cato, you put Taras statement and my addendum in the worst possible lite, while arguing a situation that has almost been eradicated. I can just imagine the local news and the school district going to town on the ” gay bashing at the local school “.
I realize you were unjustly mistreated as a kid . I am sorry that was so. However, Toto we are not in Kansas anymore. I suggest you are a bit disconnected too !
It may be that putting a demonym above being bullied will do more harm than good – the bullies might resent that group even more, and target them for more clever abuse. Also, members of the group might decide that their status entitles them to mistreat their former adversaries – this might not even be particularly malicious (how do you know the bounderies are real unless you test them?).
I remember ‘smear the queer’ from my youth. I don’t remember the targets ever being gay – just disliked.
I think it’s important that when we think there’s a possibility we’ve been misunderstood (and that applies to all of us) we check first for understanding, rather than assume our interpretation must be correct. It’s really a better way to go. All of you have shown an awesome ability and commitment to talking through incredibly difficult issues. Don’t blow it now. Check to see if you understand, then move forward. Please.
By the way, bullying doesn’t get quashed by the schools. In many cases they make a half-hearted effort to deal with it, then ignore it. Parents who are told their kids are bullies either get defensive or defend their kids and often do nothing. So it’s still an issue.
Agreed. It can only be mitigated. However, woe to the student that has a reputation of gay bashing. Homosexuals and Blacks have extra rights now for some time.
One other thing. Big education and media has been successful in molding the youth into accepting homosexuality. How do I know this? From my kids. That was 10 years ago, for they have been out of edu for that long. That view since then has changed from acceptance to advocacy and protected status. How do I know this ? My brother works for a local school district here in St. Louis county Mo.
This is one of the disadvantages of living a homosexual life and having no offspring. You get disconnected from the emerging culture.
I believe Cato’s view is a relic of the past.
The militant secularists and homosexual are dancing on my world views grave.
If the parents could move the kids, then the schools that did a bad job at preventing bullying would find their enrollment declining – which would be a powerful motive to do something about it, even though it’s a lot of trouble and they’d rather not bother.
Note that this would work without accusations and acrimony and lawsuits. Rather more practical than trying to teach everybody to love everybody else!
No question singling out particular groups for special protection creates resentment. According to Obama policies that Trump is unwinding now, teachers would have to let black kids off for behavior that would get whites punished, so that the statistics don’t look “wrong”.