Category: Therapy for SSA

Another phenomenally bad teaching on Homosexuality claiming to be Biblical

I recently bought “Help!  My teen is gay” by Ben Marshall – and forgot that I had, and it sat in my mailbox for probably a few weeks.  In addition to large number of correct statements about salvation provided by Jesus Christ, Ben makes a large number of very simple logical fallacies.  It’s also obvious that he understands very little about homosexuality: that’s apparently fine with him.  I have wondered why the Church has been so severely misinformed about homosexuality and offered such bad advice, and now I know  …They must have been listening to him… or whomever lead him astray from the truth when he wrote the book.  Ultimately, his statements will lead people away from Christ, as they have in the lives of men I know.  It’s up to men like me, apparently, to lead them back.

One frequent logical fallacy is inferring on the whole a property of the part, and also inferring on the part properties of the whole.  Ben relies on such fallacies for his assertions.  Another way to think about this problem, which we deal with in science & engineering a TON is of “specific” and “general” solutions.  Ben quotes Jeremiah to say that the “heart is deceitful” and “who can understand it”.  Perhaps there are some things which lie unperceived in our hearts, but to assert we cannot understand any emotions, any thoughts, I think is outside the realm of realism.  As we’ll see later, we are explicitly commanded to do so.  Yet, Ben’s conclusion is that “for the struggling teen, this means that there is no chance that he or she can know the reason for the choice to sinfully think about homosexuality.”  So, I should mention here that Ben is apparently talking about “lost folks”.  Maybe he’s right about lost teens, but what about saved teens?  Do they not “struggle”?  It seems like maybe he thinks they don’t, as we’ll see later on.

Ben says “the teenager who is dealing with homosexual thoughts and desires can only hope to be saved by receiving a cure that will take care of the heart problem, not just the symptom of homosexuality.”  well…  yeah, but the problem is for every Christian I’ve met whose eroticized same sex attraction was alleviated as the result of prayer, I know hundreds who’s weren’t.  Are some not Christians?  Probably.  But for the most part, these men have been loving God, loving their neighbor as best they know how.  I also want to address this from the general / specific angle.  Ben writes “the only hope for the one struggling with homosexuality is to repent of personal sin and believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  Uh..  the need for salvation through Christ applies to everyone.  We might as well have struck the phrase “struggling with homosexuality”, and re-titled the pamphlet “Help! my teen is human.”  When someone picks up a pamphlet titled “Help!  My teen is gay”, from a church ministry, they probably want more than “tell them about Jesus”.  I’m trying to  imagine the Christian parent who thought, “oh, I never thought of that”.

Ben quotes Proverbs 17:9 to say the heart is deceitful, and then basically ignores any contribution our emotions can make, refusing to even name them.  In the practical exercises section towards the end, he lists 8 references to Proverbs, but skips 4:23, “keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”.  I began to get the sensation that Ben heard some lecture he liked, and found what scripture could support it and didn’t take actual observations of actual homosexuality, and the effects of various approaches into account when he wrote this.  Well, some of us don’t get the luxury of closing the book on our ‘gay’ like he does when he’s done with this pamphlet.  Some of us are stuck with reality.

Another easily recognizable logical fallacy is affirming the consequent.  Ben says “Romans 1:18-32 clearly states that homosexuality is the result of mankind exchanging the worship of God the Creator for the worship of the creation.”  I’ve already covered that one here.

By reading scripture, or maybe proof reading his own work, Ben could have realized his errors, or at least taken pause from publishing, because his logical fallacies lead him to contradict himself and scripture.

On page 29 he says, “no human can know or understand the heart of any other human”.  Yet on page 32 he says “bringing to your teenager the truth that he or she is not alone in this world … will be a relief”.  Now, his conclusion is right, but he has asserted that he could not know it.  After all, if he can’t know the heart of another person at all, how could he predict what emotion the other person will experience.  Ben has stumbled on basic empathy here; I’m not sure he realizes it.

In addition, Ben asserts to the parents that “first and foremost, you need to remember that you did not cause your teen to partake in homosexual behavior.  If you find yourself feeling as if you have caused your teen to fall prey to this sin…”  and then he comes up with an excuse.  Yet, Jesus says “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” in Matthew 18:6.  If Ben is correct, then this scripture from Jesus is apparently not useful in “teaching, training, correcting and rebuking in righteousness”, and now he has a much larger exegetical problem.  I take this warning from Jesus very seriously.  Apparently, Ben does not.

Now I want to go back to basic emotional competency, because it’s clear Ben has none.  Scripture describes what we call “core emotions”: joy, anger, fear, sadness.  You might recognize scripture about these, “do not sin in your anger”, “do not be afraid”, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.  Be of the same mind toward one another…”  in Romans 12:15. Yet, Ben’s grasp of emotions seems to be “feeling good” and “feeling bad”.  In doing work with men over just a few years now, I find it very common that men with eroticized same-sex attractions have trouble distinguishing emotions.  Well, ok, men in general have more trouble than women.  They use general words like “I feel good”, “relief” or “I feel horrible”, as Ben does on pages 37 and 47.  Having the emotional intelligence to say “I feel content”, or “I feel shame” or “I feel sadness” is for the moment outside of their grasp.

I submit that a recognition of these basic emotions is a prerequisite to being able to fulfill commands like “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” in Romans.  This is a great description of something called “empathy”, when someone else feels along (the same thing as) someone else; i.e. reflecting their emotions.  This entire activity seems to have been dismissed by Ben with his statements about there being “no chance” someone could understand someoneelse’s heart, let alone their own.  There are definitely unknown areas in our emotions, but are we entirely unknowable?

Richard Cohen describes in his book, “Coming Out Straight” that he regularly sees an increasing emotional distance between same-sex parent and child.  In other words, a child may develop homosexuality as a result of an unhealthy emotional connection with their same-sex parent.  This happens when a parent does not empathize with their child.  The parents seem “distant”, or “tuned out” to their child feelings.  Some researchers have found a lack of empathy from a parent literally causes a feeling of dying in infants.  Empathy is that “feeling the same thing as” stuff, that Ben asserts is impossible.  Ironically, Ben has already claimed this emotional distance is likely to happen.  In fact, according to him, it may be the set up for the parent ever reading this book in the first place!  In the opening paragraphs of the book, Ben describes a teen who tells his dad, Jon, that he’s gay.  It goes like this, “Jon heard very little after the phrase, “Dad, I think I’m gay.”  Jon tried to grasp what was going on, but it was too much to handle.  He had no idea what to do or where to turn.  Can you identify with Jon?  If you can, believe me, you are not alone, This booklet is designed to be a guide for any Christian parent whose son or daughter reveals that he or she is gay.”  Check out these phrases, “heard very little” “what was going on was too much to handle”.  These are common descriptions of a parent checking-out emotionally, checking-out of empathy, being swallowed up in their own sense of inadequacy, their own persistent sense of failure.  Right here in his own introduction, Ben Marshall has defeated his own argument by admitting that the parents of gay teens would have the exact problems that the same psychological researchers he so adamantly denies can know anything find happens, and he is apparently completely oblivious to it.

Ben’s solutions for homosexuality also fails the specific / general test.  His instructions for the parent are to ignore that anything other than the child could have caused this, writing of the “sinful heart”, “this condition is not due to some outside force that victimized your teenager in some way.  It is because of the passing down of a sinful nature from Adam that your teenager has a tendency to sin in the area of homosexuality.”  Now, there are several things wrong here.  1) If we got a sinful heart from Adam, then Adam is the outside force – and so is the parent.  2) Satan lied about God’s nature to Adam.  Since there was no sin in the world before this moment, I’m going to label Satan as an “outside force, victimizing your teenager”.  And 3) this “you’re gay because you’re a bad thing from the inside” blame is actually what contributes to many men’s origin of homosexuality in the first place.  Why?

Homosexuality is, as the author says, the sinful hearts attempt to feel better.  But feel better because of what?  “Shame-trauma”.  Shame is distinct from guilt.  Guilt is “I’ve done something wrong”; shame is “I am something wrong”.  Guilt is entirely appropriate in a Biblical worldview, and I don’t intend to explain why here.  But shame… shame is very different.  Ben quotes David as saying “I was conceived in sin”, but David also wrote “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Genesis tells us that in our created form as male & female we are “very good” and “made in the image of God”.  Specifically, the shame underlying homosexuality tends to be around genderedness.  Now, this is predominately pre-Oedipal disorder homosexuality I’m talking about here, but it’s the significant factor in 80% of men’s homosexuality.  When a man feels like there’s something wrong with “being masculine” (as distinct from “being feminine”) we call this gender shame.  We always encourage men to embrace their genderedness, after all, gender is part of the image of God.  More on that later.  This is why we use phrases like “man” and “woman” instead of “person” when referring to an individual.  This is why we refer to an individual as a “son” or “daughter” of God, not a “child” of God, which Ben does on page 35.

Another major cause of “homosexual” “feelings” is childhood sexual abuse.  This is well-known; I won’t go into it here.  But, keep in mind that Ben says “your child was not victimized”.  In the case of incest, remember Ben says “the parent did not cause the teen to sin”.

Ben’s advice will also provoke some fledgling Christians to leave the Church.  Let’s see how that’s unfolded in the lives of men I know.  You start with Ben’s recipe that the child admit they feel horrible.  Ok.  horrible is not a feeling, it’s a “judgement”, but skipping that for a minute.  Ben’s instructions are for your child to “twist” their worship back to God … cause you know, fallacy of affirming the consequent, have them think really hard about how God sees what they’ve done, and if you’re at this point, they’ve been taught how Ben sees it, not necessarily God, so I’m not sure how much good that will do.  Then recognize your child feels “horrible” and “sorry”, then when they make a true “confession”, “this confession should then lead to a drastic change in the teen’s life.  There should be a complete 180-degree change in most areas of his or her life.”  Ok, he’s moved on to using “his or her”, so that’s good.  But the reality is, Jesus will keep working on us until the day he returns.  It’s these kinds of “pray it away” approaches, clocked in spirituality that ultimately drive ‘gays’ out of the Church.  When they try this man’s recipe, and it doesn’t work, it will begin to erode their faith.  And I’ve met those to whom it has.  They aren’t going to get in much of a debate with you.  They’ve “already heard it”, “tried it”, and “it didn’t work”.  Why?  Because the approach they were offered was based on logical fallacies and a near complete lack of knowledge on the subject.  Please Church, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t give instructions.  Lead to Jesus, great, then let Jesus lead them to me, or help them take the short cut.

 

Under-sexed and over-eroticized

You’ve probably heard someone say that our culture is “over-sexed”, but truthfully, the word “sex” has become so overused that it has itself become a euphemism. In fact, I believe modern American culture has become under-sexed, though I am selecting a particular sub definition of that word. The other sub definition you would understand to be “erotic”, or the bow-chicka-wow-wow kind of erotic pleasure. That, on the other hand, has infiltrated into aspects of our society it was never intended. Erotic imagery is included in standard entertainment, and erotic attractions are used as “attention grabbers” in advertisements for other products. So, what most people mean when they say “over-sexed”, I call “over-eroticized”.

So why select that definition of sex to separate out? Because the word sex has a definition the others don’t: “of or respecting the differences between the two sexes” … realizing there are more differences between the sexes than just our genitals. God created an entire fabric of gifts to bestow upon the sexes, differently. Not as though one sex is better than the other, no, but that we’re complementary to each other.

My definition of sexual includes the psychological make up as well. In that regard, our modern American culture is under-sexed. I think in part because a movement began in the mid-1900’s as a result of Darwinian philosophy. Specifically, the movement began to devalue femininity, under the guise of enhancing femininity. Darwinian philosophy taught that the “fittest” or “strongest” survive, and apart from a Biblically-guided man to cherish his mate like Christ loves the Church, men began acting like male animals, and treated women as if they were nothing but animals. As Gloria Steinem finally said “we are becoming the men we wanted to marry”. I believe it’s unfortunate that these women were unable to find the value of their God-given femininity, and instead eschewed the blessings God had prepared for them, as though they themselves believed femininity itself was not valued.

Either way, our modern American culture devalues the unique gifts each sex has to offer, I.e. sexuality itself is repressed. Activists decry the differences in pay between men & women, neglecting to provide a valid theological or mathematical formula for why it would be good for all women on average to work as hard or as long as men. I might as well draw a line over freckle density and make a fuss about inequality with any arbitrary formula and selected precision as if it were immorality itself. As femininity now attempts to reassert itself in a shadow form, masculinity is becoming devalued, or worse, demonized.

This situation creates a perfect storm of sorts for increasing eroticization of same-sex attractions. Lacking healthy same-sex models for our children, they persist in a sort of androgynous stage for too long, they fail to see differences between the sexes as valuable, and don’t “get” what it really means to be a sexual being, before the erotic drive kicks in. And since our culture is over eroticized, it kicks in early. Erotic expectations and innuendo run roughshod over healthy expressions of physical affection.

Have you ever heard a sermon like this? “I know Paul says we should great each other with a holy kiss, but that was part of their culture and it’s not part of ours, so the appropriate command here is great each other with a holy handshake.” I gotta tell you, that’s a simple theological fallacy, and the counter example is easy. In our culture, erotic intercourse is expected early and without a lifetime commitment. Surely that hasn’t become ‘ok’? Let me dig a little deeper. God created the sexes, and he also created the erotic. He created them for a purpose and defines rules about how to use them. He also created non-erotic affection, as demonstrated in scripture many times over. Now, if God gets to make he rules about what is and isn’t allowed for erotic activities, doesn’t it make sense that He gets to define which activities are erotic and which ones are not? Or do we get to change His rules by moving the line with our “culture”? I think in that context, the true answer is clear. Culture may be important for understanding the meaning of scripture, but it doesn’t get to alter God’s law about morality.

In other words, I’m saying culture has corrupted the Church, and we need to return to Biblical standards for our affectionate behavior. Granted, Christian men do tend to be more physically affectionate than their secular counterparts, BUT both generally have an extreme dearth of natural, healthy physical same-sex affection. By taking the lessons from our culture, men have been taught that a desire to kiss or snuggle with a friend is a “gay feeling”, instead of a desire to express healthy male affection. According to Christian marriage counselor Dr. Gary Chapman, “physical touch” is one of our 5 love languages. Instead of focussing on healthy ways to do heathy touch, he spends most of the chapter on this love language explains that it’s not the same thing as sexual intercourse. And according to his research, about 20% of men have physical touch as a primary love language, but it is being starved in our culture, and in particular – in our churches. Yet, men still long for physical contact, they seem to only be able to justify it in percussive motions, like tackle football, or a slap on the butt.

My heart sinks when I hear Christian leaders relegating those who crave love expressed through physical affection to wonder down to their local gay bar in search for the perfect boyfriend who will only want to cuddle. The healing process from homosexuality actually speaks directly to this hidden dichotomy: that there is no such thing as a “gay feeling”; we have two God given desires: same-sex attraction, and erotic attraction, and the lines between them have been blurred. How do we draw the line between them? Perhaps stop pretending that pop culture gets to determine what’s moral or not.

Christ prayed that we would be known for our love for each other. I think it’s proof we’ve failed when two men with their arms around each other’s shoulders in public are immediately suspected of being a gay couple, instead of immediately suspected of being Christians.

Under-sexed, over-eroticized.

Why “change” doesn’t mean “change”

“Change” is a generic word; people project on it what they expect.  So what’s different in someone who seeks to “change” their “sexual orientation”?  It turns out it isn’t actually sexual “orientation”.  Why?  Well, simply put, the human erotic desire is always for the “other than self”, it’s never for the “like self”.  For someone to go from “gay” to “straight” they don’t need to change their sexual “orientation”, they need to get their legitimate needs for love met, and to heal their unrecognized and unprocessed traumatic emotional wounds.  Specifically, these needs for love are about the acceptance of healthy sexuality, and the emotional wounds are about both the self and the “other” (i.e. the opposite sex).

When these things happen, the internal emotional judgements about “sexual orientation” “change” by themselves.  The desire to find “self” is satiated, and the erotic attraction functions without interference.  In fact, not only do we not “hate” our same-sex attraction, and we do not seek to “suppress” them.  No, in fact we embrace same-sex attractions as a guide for finding the love needs and emotional wounds.  Far from “bouncing our eyes” off others we find attractive, we “bend each thought to the will of God” and learn about why we find that particular attribute attractive.  Each attraction is a message from our soul, and we know that filling it erotically is not healthy.  Trying to fulfill them erotically actually covers over the core need or wound and makes it more difficult to discern.

So “change” ends up meaning “feeling loved”, and “emotional healing”.  We don’t change into something different from what we were, as a word like “conversion” might imply.

God’s command is “love”, not “tolerate”, (Mozilla / Firefox)

Recently, Brendan Eich “resigned” because of his contribution to support Prop 8, in which a slight majority of Californians agreed with God that marriage consisted of a man & a woman and not two members of the same sex.  It is strongly believed that he was “encouraged” to resign by the company, and now some have started a boycott of the Firefox web browser which uses Mozilla.

Your choice as to whether to use the Firefox browser is up to you, but let’s not forget the Southern Baptist boycott of everything Disney because of their policy of providing medical insurance for live-in same-sex partners in the late ’90’s.  It didn’t work.

If we are right in our belief that eroticized same-sex attractions are caused by traumatic shame and attachment loss events in a person’s past, events which were strongly tied to the person’s concept of themselves as a gendered being, or to the concept of the “other than self” as a gender, then what does it look like for us to “love our neighbor as ourselves”.  In Matthew 5:4, Jesus says “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”.  In his book, Shame and Attachment Loss, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi summarizes same-sex attractions as a form of pathological grief.  If God intends on blessing those in grief with comfort, perhaps we should extend comfort to these men & women.  Each of us has been created in the image of the loving God, the Most High, the Lord of all creation.  He loves us and died for our sins;  there is no room for real shame in the Christian life.  In Gay Children, Straight Parents, Richard Cohen gives many examples of how to go about loving someone who is gay-identified.  I personally love some of these examples: invite them to dinner and don’t talk about being gay, invite them to a sporting or camping event with the guys (remember to pay extra attention to whether they feel connected and accepted by the group), explicitly affirm their gendered physical appearance, great them warmly and with physical affection, act in an absolutely trust-worthy manner, invite them to social events.  Let them bring their gay partner?  Sure!  (Their gay partner is your neighbor, too.).

Remember, “whoever loves the most and the longest wins,” again, Cohen.

The Gay Lobby’s succeeding plan to end religious liberty

The gay lobby, well, look ok, there’s not like a list or something, but check out the SPLC’s announcement to ban all sexual orientation change efforts “SOCE” across America.

They’ve first passed a law in California in November, 2012.  That’s what got my attention.  Before, that, my attractions had changed; I was just going to close that chapter on my life and maybe help mentor a support group or two.  But they actually made the therapy I’d been through illegal, well all of it, good & kooks, for minors.  Knowing what I know now, I wished someone had the knowledge to diagnose my symptoms when I was a minor.  It would have made this entire process soooooo much easier; so many emotional wounds I would never have gotten, so many needs for love which could have been filled sooner.  What about all those boys in California like me?  I realized I couldn’t stay quiet with my testimony; I had to stand up and defend our religious freedom.  I needed the Church to know the truth, instead of languishing in assumptions.

Then, instead of following his religious faith and vetoing a similar ban in New Jersey, Governor Chris Christy wholeheartedly endorsed a ban there as well.  No small coincidence.  See..  those of us from the South, well, we kinda think California is crazy.  But New Jersey?  What happened there? Turns out the most prominent Christian therapist who constantly succeeds in SOCE is Joe Nicolosi, who works in California and most of his practice is minors.  And the most prominent Jewish therapist is based in… you guessed it: New Jersey.  Oh, also, they’re just suing him.

While the whole nation pondered whether it was appropriate for Penn State to lose so many wins because of what Jerry Sandusky did, New Jersey gay lobbyists were inventing testimonies to ensure that once they sexually abused a child – they couldn’t get help.

Do we support coercing children into SOCE?  NOOOooo!  Do we support bashing gays or bullying?  NOOOOooo!  But come, on.  You’d think even Chris Christy could just say, “hey, religious liberty is cool in New Jersey.” but noooooo.

General Therapy for SSA

Richard Cohen gives perhaps the most concise and complete explanation of the general therapy process in Coming Out Straight.

Stage 1: Behavioral Therapy

Establishing a support group, curtailing addictive behaviors

My experience is many churches do a great job with behavioral therapy, but stop there.  They have 12 steps, but for an issue as big as SSA, it’s stage 1.

In addition, the client needs to begin forming a support community.  While it’s useful to have the company of other men who are also seeking to heal from SSA, it’s more useful to have a group of straight Christian friends who know how to meet the client’s love needs, and that’s based in empathy.  Without empathy from others, they will be unable to heal completely.  This is why the Recently Straight project is so important.  It can take months or years to establish the level of trust necessary for this to take place.  Watching dramatic re-enactments of true life stories leads to empathy for the viewer, projecting that empathy onto the client speeds up the process.

 

Stage 2: Cognitive Therapy

When successfully ending acting-out behaviors, the client becomes more aware of the underlying emotional wounds and unmet love needs.  Learning more about relevant issues, the client becomes better able to identify and articulate his own feelings.  Most church 12-step programs lack sufficient information to conduct useful cognitive therapy for SSA>

 

Stage 3: Psychodynamic Therapy for homo-emotional wounds

Once the underlying support framework is in place, psychodynamic therapy aims to heal deep emotional traumas.  In stark contrast to brainwashing, the client is encouraged to get in deep touch with his emotions, his goals, his inner troubles.  Psychodynamic therapy takes many forms.  One form is like role-playing, where the client can re-experience a situation in which they were wounded with the purpose of altering the ending.  For overwhelming traumas, EMDR may be employed by a trained therapist to make the recovery of suppressed memories or emotions easier to handle.  (Yes, they use that for PTSD, basically the same thing going on here.).  The goal is for the client to move from counter-emotions to core emotions, and then from fear anger and sadness to joy (anywhere from contentment to happiness).

It is during this phase that most clients begin to see an abatement of their SSA, though OSA may not develop directly.  It is important not to begin this phase until the client has ended addictive behaviors and established a vibrant support network.  Some therapies can be done one on one, others will require group participation.  “Experiential” weekends are particularly useful here.

Many churches will refuse to conduct, refer or even allow psychodynamic therapy.  Fortunately, I will demonstrate in a future post that the Biblical world view is forms a non-arbitrary rational foundation for psychodynamic therapy.

 

Stage 4: Psychodynamic Therapy for hetero-emotional wounds

Stage 3 saw the continuation of stages 1 & 2, and the application of psychodynamic therapies to homo-emotional and homo-social wounds, i.e. wounds that came from members of the same-sex, whereas stage 4 does approximately the same thing, but with hetero-emotional and hetero-social wounds, i.e. emotional wounds which came from the opposite sex.

It is usually during this stage that OSA will begin to develop.

Why I never say “childish” needs.

I’ve referenced on this website over and over again that eroticized same-sex attractions are caused by needs for love that haven’t been met.  Specifically, for pre-Oedipal disorder, these needs are those which arrive in early childhood.  Others have criticized our belief that meeting these needs as children have them met in healthy ways is inappropriate.  Thought not everyone uses the term “childish” needs, this is a similar implication.  Or rather, the implication is that you don’t need to get your childhood needs met.  And certainly, the fact that a man is full-grown complicates matters physically, but not psychologically.  Childhood needs can’t be skipped over, they are not silly: they are more fundamental.  That’s why God has us need them first.  It is on top of meeting our childhood needs that we build the rest of our lives.  When people haven’t had their childhood needs filled, they aren’t able to begin the next step in their psychological growth, at least not in a healthy way.

 

I’ve heard many well-meaning Christians offer terrible advice when someone with SSA reveals their troubles in life.  They hear unhelpful messages like “man up”, “grow up”, or the infuriating reference to completely inappropriate 1 Corinthians 13:11.  Little do they realize it’s through meeting our childhood needs – our more fundamental needs – that our ability to “man up” comes.

“Is it possible for anyone to change?”

I believe yes, but it is not easy, nor guaranteed.  It won’t come on it’s own, it must be guided and nurtured.  There is much talk about the definition of “change”, and much speculation as to what factors make it easier / more difficult.  We never graduate from the Holy Spirit sanctifying us in this life, anyway.  Everyone I know who has “tried everything” and “it didn’t work” are actually people who have flatly and continually refused to try what worked best for me.

 

“What do you mean by ‘need fulfillment’? Isn’t that just ‘diet gay’?”

Our over-eroticized culture has twisted many healthy expressions of same-sex affection, examples of which are replete throughout the Old and New Testaments.  Men who primarily speak the love ‘language’ of “physical touch”, as described by Dr. Gary Chapman in The Five Love Languages, appear to be especially susceptible to extreme need deprivation in our shell-shocked culture.  “Need fulfillment” is the practice of helping men get their legitimate, God-given needs for acceptance, affirmation and affection met in non-erotic ways.  By having these needs met, it not only helps us feel ‘ok’ and accepted and good, but also “fills our love tank”.  While these activities can be guided by a therapist, they are most beneficial when they happen in authentic relationships, with appropriate boundaries.  There are only a handful of support groups vibrant enough to offer this kind of help in everyday-life, so it is a goal for Recently Straight to train Church members across the nation how to erase the cultural corruption and fulfill the God-given needs.

Richard Cohen provides some of the best descriptions of what healthy holding therapy looks like and why it is so helpful and necessary in his text, Coming Out Straight, linked to from our resources page.