Identifying as gay

"I wonder, if I identified in my church as 'gay', but agreed to be committed to celibacy, but still called myself gay, would that be good enough for them?" Not unless you had an especially discerning congregation, because "gay" has come to mean "a same-gender-attracted person who believes that homosexual behavior is morally acceptable." Thus "ex-gays" haven't necessarily lost their sexual attraction to the opposite sex – they are called ex-gays because they have ceased to hold the belief that homosexual behavior is morally acceptable. I have in fact met a celibate gay who believes that homosexual behavior is morally acceptable for others but will never be morally acceptable for himself. He's part of a dying breed, though; leaving aside gays who are celibate for reasons of personal choice (religious vows, staying a virgin until they meet the right person, etc.), saying that you're gay is virtually a way of announcing that sooner or later you're likely to have sex. There's a similar problem with the word "boylover," which to most outsiders – and, as a recent poster here has demonstrated, some boylovers too – means "a minor-attracted man who believes that man-boy sex is morally acceptable." We all know that boylovers (whether Christian or not) hold different views on the morality of man-boy sex, and that the term "boylover" does not reveal in itself what the person's views are on man-boy sex. Yet the more restrictive definition of the word comes through quite clearly in writings against Christian boylovers – people believe that the only two choices are believing that man-boy sex is morally acceptable (in which case you call yourself a boylover) or believing that it isn't (in which case you call yourself something else). This is why I think that CBF is always going to have an uphill battle in explaining itself to outsiders. That doesn't mean, of course, that the battle isn't worth fighting. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]