More light on the subject
Submitted by Heather on December 28 2000 12:42:32
In reply to Living in the Light submitted by Mark on December 23 2000 16:05:29
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"In his book 'And Then I Became Gay' (available at www.amazon.com), Cornell researcher Ritch Savin-Williams writes that isolation, secrecy, and feelings of being 'fake' lead gay males to retreat altogether from intimacy with others, resulting in a 'poverty of intimacy' (p. 161). (It should be noted that he did not study those who have found emotional health in the ex-gay approach)." I think that if he had talked with ex-gays, he would have heard similar stories. The "coming out" story is just as common among ex-gays as among gays; all of them report that being able to talk openly with other people about their sexual feelings brings a tremendous sense of relief. For example, when the TV character Ellen revealed that she was a lesbian, the head of Exodus, Bob Davies, commented, "I can understand Ellen's desire to come out of the closet. I spent many years hiding my own homosexuality. After finally admitting the truth to family members and friends, I felt an incredible weight slide off my shoulders. It felt so freeing to end the pretense of being 'straight' when my sexuality only pulled me toward my own sex." So I think that the sort of release you're talking about needs to be separated from the issue you go on to discuss, how you should regard your sexual feelings. People who feel negatively about desires they have for example, alcholics quite often talk about how their emotional health was strengthened through being able to share their secret with others. That's the whole point of self-help groups. "Savin-Williams writes that for gay men, while sex was a rare context for developing a positive self-concept, 'being in love, feeling lovable, and loving another formed the nucleus of having an overall positive view of oneself.' (p. 190) He claims that people are prewired for loving and strong emotional attachments in the context of which they can feel safe, secure, and nurtured." As you know, I'm not enamored with the pro-gay approach to this subject. While I appreciate Savin-Williams's willingness to separate having sex from being in love, I would argue that even in going that far, he's accepting, without questioning them, certain modern views on what constitutes a healthy person. I think it's been pretty clearly shown by literary scholars that up until the late Middle Ages, the idea that falling in love was necessary for a spiritually good life was not a common belief. So are we saying, then, that all of the people who lived before the invention of courtly love were emotionally truncated? Or is it possible that, while romantic love is the most common expression of emotional health in our society, other types of feelings can also bring about emotional health? It may be that we are prewired to love; I doubt very much (given the historical evidence) that we are prewired to engage in romantic love. That seems to be an optional part of the human makeup, turning up more often in some cultures than in others. As a fan of romantic love, though, let me take your argument further and ask whether romantic love is inherently good. I would argue that it is in fact a morally neutral feeling, akin to sexual desire. It can lead to good, or without in any way changing its nature of tenderness and generosity it can lead to horrible results for one or more partner. I think that the gay people who argue that "romantic love is always good" haven't thought far enough into the circumstances under which romantic love occurs in heterosexuality. This is hardly surprising; most heterosexuals don't either. Yet let me ask you, the next time you consider whether a romance is the pinnacle of all good, that you keep in mind this passage from the essay I wrote eight hours after my first visit to a boylover's site. "The moment I saw her I say in all truth that the vital spirit, which dwells in the inmost depths of the heart, began to tremble so violently that I felt the vibration alarmingly in all my pulses, even the weakest of them. As it trembled, it uttered these words: 'Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mini' ['Behold a god more powerful than I who comes to rule over me']. . . . And I saw that in all her ways she was so praiseworthy and noble that indeed the words of the poet Homer might have been said of her: 'She did not seem the daughter of a mortal man, but of a god.'" La Vita Nuova If I side with you and Dante in saying yes, it's not because I don't see the potential dangers of the situation. Dante certainly did; that's why he made such eerie parallels in The Divine Comedy between his love for Beatrice and the love of an adulterous couple whom he meets in Hell. Various commentators have pointed out that Dante showed a great deal of sympathy toward this couple well, of course he did. It was a case of, "There but for the grace of God go I." I think that the example of adultery shows that romantic love is not an inherently uplifting emotion; if pursued under the wrong circumstances, it can lead to just as much trauma if not more as so-called degrading emotions. Troy wasn't destroyed because Paris raped a married woman, Helen; it was destroyed because the two of them fell in love and ran away together, regardless of the consequences for their families. What I find missing from your post is a strong concern with consequences. The evidence of The Iliad shows that Paris and Helen had an "overall positive view" of themselves and had "integrated, soothing" selves and were, in short, deeply in love with each other and madly happy with each other. This didn't prevent Troy from going up in flames. Now, as to boylove: I'm sure that you understand (and this is true of all types of relationships) that what is good for you isn't necessarily good for the person you've fallen in love with. If a single friend falls in love with me, him having sex with me may give him high self-esteem and self-acceptance, but it sure as heck won't do much for my emotional health to know that I've broken my vows of marriage. You demonstrate your concern in this matter by talking about Savin-Williams' study of adolescent gay boys who had sex with older partners. I have just two comments about this: 1) I'd dearly love to see a bibliography of the books and articles you read. In the three years that I've known you, you've never once mentioned to me any writing about boys' reactions to man-boy sex that wasn't in some way pro-boylove. The cumulative result of your posts on this topic is like the other side of the coin of a series of posts from a CA: I don't see any indication that you're making an attempt to read the stories of the boys who didn't have positive man-boy sex experiences. If I'm right about this (and please correct me if I'm wrong), then saying that you want to read pro-gay books is no excuse; pro-gay books about child sexual abuse exist, and I'm sure that some of them have stories by male survivors. You might start by browsing through the male survivor sites online (see link below). At the rate you're going, you're just as unlikely to get a balanced view of this subject as is an offender who only seeks out survivor stories and never listens to the stories of boys who enjoyed man-boy sex. 2) I see another modernistic tendency in your post: the tendency to regard a romantic relationship as a matter that involves only the couple and is of no concern to the community at large. Even I fall into this tendency, and it must be even harder for someone who has sexual desires that are not accepted by the community. But I'd be interested to know how many of Savin-Williams' subjects (1) had sex before the current anti-boylove sentiment hit the gay community, and (2) entered into sexual relationships in isolation from other members of the gay community. The gay community (as a subculture) has existed for roughly fifteen hundred years; the boylove community (as another, different subculture) has existed for roughly a century. I really don't think that you could expect the same kind of community nurture of your relationship that you would receive if, for example, you dwelt in a subculture where man-boy was commonly accepted and had been accepted for many centuries. And that's quite aside from the fact that the Christian boylove community has only existed for two years. Every Christian writing I've seen on sexuality no matter what the type of sexuality is that is being discussed has emphasized the importance of the relationship occurring within the Body of Christ. That's why gay churches started popping up; that's why pro-gay writers have been so eager to establish a continuous gay Christian tradition. No doubt, as time goes on, Christian boylovers will attempt to do the same, but I'd hate to be the person who entered into a relationship (sexual or otherwise) in this pioneer atmosphere, and I'd especially hate to be the one who risked the welfare of my partner on the hope that such a skimpy support system would be strong enough to help sustain the relationship. I'm not saying that I have any easy answers on the two questions you raise whether to enter into a romantic relationship and whether to enter into a sexual relationship but I'd like you to at least be aware that the sunny view of romantic love that Savin-Williams presents in his book is in no way applicable to many heterosexual relationships, much less to many boylove relationships. If you're reluctant to read literature about child sexual abuse, let me encourage you to read Christian writings about homosexuality. These have less of a tendency than secular writings to fall into modernistic errors such as believing that romantic love is always a good thing or that whether to enter into a sexual relationship can be decided without considering the community consequences of such a decision.
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