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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Anyone know any 'cured' gay folk?
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
I had a friend who was in a gay relationship for 4 years. He left his partner, joined a church and married a woman.
The term "LUG" Lesbian Until Graduation is used to describe those who are Lesbian until they have to go back to the family. Some of them are in relationships that are destroyed.
Now that Gay Marriage and Relationships are often tolerated, it seems like there would be less pressure to "be straight if you possible can" so people who are uncertain might opt for a gay relationship. Labels aside, it's not too different from the usual couple meets, couple splits up, couple moves on to new partners.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
Dennis,
Let's keep in mind that bisexuality is a thing: A person having a relationship with a man, and then having one with a woman, doesn't really need any kind of special explanation. And the Kinsey scale is somewhat helpful in thinking about this, as it reminds us that some people are predominately attracted to people of a given sex but do occasionally find people of the other sex attractive.
Probably a lot of people who think of themselves as "straight" or "gay" are really somewhere on the bisexual continuum and are actually attracted to the occasional person outside of the labels they have put on themselves. Those labels often represent generalizations. Also, no person has met everyone in the world so no one can be sure that there doesn't exist a person of the same/opposite sex out there somewhere that they would be attracted to.
In my own limited observation, people who say they don't identify with labels are usually people who I would describe as bisexual.
It's also not unheard of for a person's sexual orientation to change over time without any particular apparent reason. Various studies have found that it appears to happen over time to a very small percentage of people, more commonly women, who find they change from straight to bisexual or to gay or vice versa. (On average, there is no particular general trend towards or away from any particular sexuality over the course of people's lifetimes... ie we don't all become more bisexual as we age or less gay or anything like that) What people like and find attractive sometimes does change with time and experience.
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One hears of 'becoming gay' after many years of marriage but not the other way round, so to speak.
Really? I've never heard of that. I've heard of a lot of older gay men who were forced to marry women in their youth because that's what was allowed, who subsequently have got divorced and come out. But that's quite different to the idea of what they find sexually attractive actually changing.
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I wonder was he ever gay or is it a phase he is going through?
I hope that question is meant in jest.
A 22 year relationship is not "a phase". And no one would have spent 22 years in a same-sex relationship at a time when society was so anti-gay relationships unless they had strong same-sex attraction.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Dennis the Menace
Shipmate
# 11833
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Posted
quote:
I wonder was he ever gay or is it a phase he is going through?
quote:
I hope that question is meant in jest.
A 22 year relationship is not "a phase". And no one would have spent 22 years in a same-sex relationship at a time when society was so anti-gay relationships unless they had strong same-sex attraction.
Sorry I didn't meant the 22 year relationship as the phase, I meant the current one.
[ 12. August 2014, 22:42: Message edited by: Louise ]
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"Till we cast our crowns before Him; Lost in wonder, love, and praise."
Posts: 853 | From: Newcastle NSW Australia | Registered: Sep 2006
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
It's a difficult issue because often people are seen as making some kind of ideological stance when all they've actually done is met someone and fallen in love. I identified as a lesbian until the age of 29. Now I'm "er sort of bi, I guess, maybe?" and married to a guy. I do feel very strongly that I don't want my sexuality to be used as a cudgel to hit someone else with. I don't want it to be "see? She got married! There is hope for you, sad gay person!" because I don't think that people can consciously change their sexuality, and I don't think there's any reason why they should. There's nothing like having been in serious gay and straight relationships to know that there really, seriously, isn't that much difference in how they operate.
Human sexuality is broad and wide and weird as all shit, basically. It can do things that you'd never expect. That doesn't mean that it responds to people's efforts to change it though, and I didn't actively change anything. I do not want to be used as an example of how people can mould their sexuality into something more socially acceptable. Unfortunately I've met many people who I know don't respect that wish.
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Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous God that Desert Bluffs has. - Welcome to Night Vale
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
ISTM, there are a sizable percentage of people who do not question their own sexuality. They accept their initial attractions or societies expectations.
I am exploring this concept, it is new to me, so forgive me if I do not express it well.
I question myself constantly, about everything. The result being I am fairly certain my sexuality will not deviate or broaden. However, if one does not, I could easily see missing a component.
People are fascinatingly variable.
Well, as a species. Individually...
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
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Posted
I'm pretty sure I could broaden my attraction-focus to women if I worked on it, but since I don't think this will go anywhere useful for me, any hypothetical "her," and the offspring I really don't think would be wise for me to beget (since for me it would need to aim for marriage and children), I don't really think it wise for me to go out of my way to do so.
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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Bumping this thread because of development related to an earlier post.
quote:
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter F. Bariso Jr. granted a permanent injunction today [December 18, 2015] after an agreement by both parties requiring JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) to shut down entirely and prohibiting founder Arthur Goldberg and counselor Alan Downing from engaging in any form of conversion therapy commerce in New Jersey.
The jury in the case found unanimously on June 25 that by offering services it claimed could turn gay people straight, JONAH committed consumer fraud and engaged in unconscionable commercial practices.
The therapy, based on the idea that LGBT people are sick and need to be cured, has been denounced by every major U.S. medical and mental health association. Not only can it be psychologically damaging, the American Psychological Association has noted that it promotes a climate of bigotry and discrimination against the LGBT community.
“JONAH’s conversion therapy program harmed countless LGBT people and their families,” said David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director. “JONAH peddled discredited, pseudo-scientific treatments to people who weren’t sick, who weren’t broken, and who needed nothing but love and support.”
This seems right. The objection that sank JONAH wasn't so much that it was dressing up religious dogma in a medical cloak (though it was undoubtedly doing that as well), but that its "treatments" were a mass of fraudulent quackery (which was also true) subject to the same law as other forms of fraud.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
I know someone who was advised (by a DDO, no less) to "marry himself straight": moreover, he was told that if it "worked" he'd be recommended for training but if he stayed single he wouldn't because he might be "at risk".
Of course it didn't work because he is a gay man. The outcome is a woman who was almost destroyed by feeling that she had "turned" her husband gay (he didn't tell her pre-wedding - again at the suggestion of the DDO) and a man who would have made a fine priest so disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the church he no longer goes.
I'd say that's a negative on him being "cured" of his gayness.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Joesaphat
Shipmate
# 18493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
ISTM, there are a sizable percentage of people who do not question their own sexuality. They accept their initial attractions or societies expectations.
I am exploring this concept, it is new to me, so forgive me if I do not express it well.
I question myself constantly, about everything. The result being I am fairly certain my sexuality will not deviate or broaden. However, if one does not, I could easily see missing a component.
People are fascinatingly variable.
Well, as a species. Individually...
I agree, lilBuddha, my first boyfriend was simply not a highly sexed person. He grew up dating girls, because that's what everyone did, and simply concluded that sex wasn't all it's cracked up to be.
[ 09. March 2016, 07:12: Message edited by: Joesaphat ]
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Opening my mouth and removing all doubt, online.
Posts: 418 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2015
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
bumping up for housekeeping reasons
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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