As Norm Kent, editor of South Florida Gay News (SFGN) points out in Bilerico, the LGBT community is making incredible progress on a daily basis.
No longer do gay people have to live lonely lives in the shadows, pretending to be who they are not. No longer do we need bogus stories and beards to get through life. If we live openly and honestly we can accomplish anything — and live rich and fulfilling lives defined by hope and happiness. Success, not sadness — is often what personifies the modern LGBT person living in gay friendly environments.
Still, there are some miserable, damaged souls who can’t seem to accept their true selves and play convoluted and twisted games of mental hopscotch to avoid acknowledging a simple truth: They are homosexuals and attracted to the same sex. This includes the strong, nearly irrepressible desire to get buck naked and copulate like rabbits. It’s natural to admit this, and sexually healthy heterosexuals feel exactly the same way when viewing members of the opposite sex. There is no shame in acknowledging the desire to sleep with someone attractive.
Sadly, due to religious baggage, negative societal messages, and psycho-sexual hangups, some people spend their lives running a mental obstacle course of madness to avert their mind from the obvious. One such delusional individual is R.O. Lopez, a pro-ex-gay bisexual writer in Los Angeles. It seems this dude will do anything to say he doesn’t actually want to have hot, naked sex with a guy — even though it is quite obvious that he does.
Here is a bit of the twisted logic — typical of “ex-gay” literature — that one can observe on his vanity blog:
It is healthy to admit that one finds beauty in the same sex, because if you admit it, then it is easier to be practical about avoiding tempting situations. If you acknowledge the beauty, moreover, it is easier for you, it seems, to differentiate between looking and touching, between visual appreciation and physical consummation. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that the same sex includes breathtakingly gorgeous specimens, many of whom one might want to emulate for their grooming, poise, physical fitness, or God-given charisma. If you walk around thinking you’ve been “cured,” then you might not have control over your situation. You might get blindsided by an attractive object of temptation, and not understanding your sudden “relapse,” fall to the lure of pleasure.
Yeah, right, this phony is obviously lusting after “breathtakingly gorgeous specimens,” but wants us, and his poor wife, to believe that he is simply appreciating them and trying to “emulate” their grooming habits. Somehow, judging by the way this is written, I doubt that when Lopez is ogling a dude, he is focused on a body wax or arm pit trimming.
I really wish incoherent closet-cases like Lopez and other “ex-gays” would be honest about their genuine feelings and desires and stop the charade of claiming they are admirers of male beauty — but their feelings are primarily non-sexual. If Lopez wants to avoid intimacy with a man because he is a self-loathing homophobe, or he loves his wife (which is admirable), or a combination thereof, I can understand such psychological rationalizations. However, the so-called “ex-gay” industry and their supporters, such as Lopez, should dispense of the transparent nonsense that they are interested in appreciating our physical fitness routines or our charisma — when they really just want to do us.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about R.O. Lopez and would prefer he stopped discussing the details of his sex life on the Internet. However, I do want to address his extremism, ignorance of the First Amendment in regards to medicine, and irresponsible accusations about efforts to stop “ex-gay” child abuse against minors in California. In his blog post he wrote:
First, let me explain that I denounce Equality California and the Southern Poverty Law Center for using the courts and California lawmakers to pester, shut down, and humiliate the ex-gay movement. Wayne Besen’s Truth Wins Out is an entire network of people obsessed with sowing hate and contempt for people who call themselves ex-gay. The California law banning conversion therapy and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s malicious lawsuit against JONAH are reprehensible, and I encourage people of good conscience to push the government to investigate these supposedly pro-gay outfits and prosecute them for violating the free speech and free association of others, as well as imposing duress conditions on the field of psychology — something that undermines all of society’s ability to benefit from counseling and mental health treatments.
This is hogwash. A therapist is not entitled to unlimited free speech when engaging a patient in a therapeutic setting. A misdiagnosis, especially one due to cultural bias or religious ideology, and the resultant harm done by offering inferior medical advice, is not free speech — it’s malpractice. Doctors cannot say whatever the hell they want to clients without suffering career ramifications. If a doctor told New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that he could improve his health by visiting General Mills, instead of getting on a treadmill, the quack could be sued if the governor had a heart attack. The same goes with the reparative therapy industry and the heinous advice they offer children, which is little more than stigma in the guise of science.
Lopez should also be ashamed of himself for insinuating that gay people recruit children:
My objections to the LGBT movement are not by and large religious, so this may explain why I do not connect very well to the discourse about ex-gays. I applaud them for choosing their identity and fighting for recognition. They are my allies in the fight against LGBT excesses, such as the tyrannical play for power over children and the insistence on eradicating gender from our definitions of marriage.
No, Lopez, there is no “tyrannical play for power over children” as you sleazily and dishonestly suggest — without offering even one example to back your inanity. What we want is to create a world where LGBT youth can be free to be who they are without being harassed, beaten, and bullied. We want a world where an LGBT youth can develop a healthy sense of self-worth and enter adulthood with infinite possibilities, not glass ceilings, and societal imposed limitations due to ignorance and bigotry.
And ultimately, we are doing this so they don’t become you Mr. Lopez — a grown man who is clearly repressed and full of shame, who admittedly cruises dudes while pretending to only be admiring the way they trim their chest hair.
