Unlike New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie, who simultaneously banned talking therapy for minors who wanted to pursue maximizing their heterosexual potential and maintained the legality of cutting their balls off, Texas Republicans have adopted a plank to the state party platform to not ban therapy for unwanted same sex attractions. Since the info has come out, we’ll now reveal that spearheading this effort was good buddy Jeremy Schwab, founder of the Joel 2:25 online support group, and assistant casting director for our very first production here. We fully support Jeremy in his common goal, and ask for prayers from the Church to support him as he now faces the onslaught of the gay lobby who hates that we have these freedoms. While we were successful in adopting the party plank, there are those in the party who still do not understand what we mean, including he chairman, and basically governor perry. We still have an uphill battle to get out the truth, and hold the elected representatives to the platform when the vote comes this session.
Category: Politics
“Gay” is a social-political label, and as such we cannot avoid avid discussions of the implications of the truth about eroticized same-sex attractions impacts moral governance.
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.
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.
Tim Cook talks about “Equality”
Apple, Inc. CEO Tim Cook received Auburn University’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement award, and gave a short acceptance speech at the UN. First, War Eagle!, Auburn runs deep in my veins, and though we haven’t produced it yet, the tight relationship of the Auburn family features prominently in the sequel to our Act 1 video. If you want us to produce it, click the Donate button. Certainly Tim has achieved a high level of success in his professional life. Besides athletes, he is probably the highest profile Auburn grad in pop culture, and rightfully deserves this lifetime achievement award. We expect him to continue guiding Apple, Inc. on a path of innovation and making complex technology accessible to everyone.
However, Tim used this opportunity to engage in hate speech and campaign for abolishing our critical 1st-amendment-protected rights. Drawing an analogy with his time spent in the racist south, he associated people who do not believe in same-sex marriage with cross-burning racists. Depending on how you view the speech, he either associated LGBT with blacks who had their civil rights abridged during the decades leading up to the 1960’s, or with physically disabled persons.
Specifically, Tim Cook is backing Federal legislation, called “ENDA”, which would be a direct violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 1st amendment, which prohibits the Federal Congress from passing legislation respecting the free exercise of religion. In this legislation, called “Employment Non-Discrimination Act”, employers are prohibited from not employing self-identified members of the “LGBT” community.
Business policy vs. Love vs. Law.
Please understand, here at Recently Straight LLC, we do not use a person’s self-identitfied membership as L, G, B or T as a sole determining factor as to whether we will contract with them, but that’s policy, not law. The main reason I don’t use someone’s self-identified membership in LGBT community is because, as actors, their job is portray someone else, or as crew their job is to help me produce art. Those kinds of jobs don’t see a lot of interference from someone’s unmet love needs and unhealed emotional wounds which lead to eroticized same-sex attractions. That’s also why I don’t advocate discrimination in other business associations, unless for some reason it’s directly tied to their ability to fulfill their job.
As someone who experienced unwanted eroticized same-sex attractions I know how scary it could be that if someone discovered my “inner” feelings that I might be let go, or kicked out of Church, or shot, or abused, or end our friendship, or well anything really. Anticipatory shame, and defensive detachment are hallmark symptoms of eroticized same-sex attractions. Far beyond anticipating, working the Recently Straight project, we’ve been discriminated against on several occasions. We’ve been black-balled by some Dallas talent agencies, actors and actress have failed to fulfill their roles after deciding they don’t like the purpose of the project, marketing agencies have decided not to take us on as clients, and supposedly-conservative websites have decided not to allow us to advertise, Google has “disapproved” our ads, Vimeo has cancelled the accounts of other ex-gay clients, and even pastors have told me not to tell my testimony. We’ve seen more than our share of prejudice and discrimination. But I don’t complain much, because as a private business, that’s their right. I wonder how those businesses will feel once they realize I can sue for $M’s when they use our stance on the origin of eroticized same-sex attractions as the sole reason they don’t work with us, which is pretty much all we are. Lest they forget a Federal court has ruled that if L, G, B and T are protected gender identities, so is ex-gay.
The difference between business policy and law is that business associations are always voluntary. Governments use coercion to enforce laws. What level of coercion is appropriate to force a Christian Counseling group to continue employing a therapist claiming to provide Reparative Therapy for homosexuality after he announces that he identifies as “gay” and continues to engage in a gay-partner relationship? (Don’t laugh, it happens.) What level of coercion is appropriate to force a cake baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding when the cake baker does not believe that same-sex marriage can exist? (Don’t laugh, it happens.) Under this law, the Federal government would be in the position of prosecuting a religious organization which refuses to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony. Don’t laugh, it’s already happened to public facilities. They react by discontinuing all marriage ceremonies. These situations are already happening under some state laws, if ENDA is passed, they will begin happening in all states.
ENDA presumes truth contrary to science
The ENDA legislation is problematic for another reason: it hinges on the concept that “gay is how someone is born” by using the term “sexual orientation”. Science shows this isn’t true. Studied on identical twins have found that if one twin identifies as ‘gay’, in approximately 90% of cases, the other one does not. Instead, we know that eroticized same-sex attractions are the result of unmet love needs and unhealed emotional wounds. That’s why we promote love and acceptance of persons with eroticized same-sex attractions – because that’s what they deserve as being made in the image of God, it’s what Jesus commands us to share with each other, and it’s what they need to heal.
The need for “equality” has already been met
It is not coincidental that the gay lobby, of which Cook is clearly a proponent, uses the flag of “equality”, and is yet never satiated by their achievements. They’ve now moved beyond wanting tolerance, and acceptance: now they want to harm others who do not believe as they do. The sad truth is that they already are equal. There is no such thing as a “gay man” or a “lesbian”, but instead all human beings are inherently heterosexual. We are all created “men” and “women”. But not feeling the equality is a major contributing factor leading to the eroticized same-sex attractions. It is in fact the goal of Recently Straight to help them feel the belonging, the oneness, the equality. My motivation has been to do that with love, I see now that if we fail: their ‘stick’ will be to use the powers of government to coerce us.
5 arguments to make for legal same-sex marriage
I’ve been called a bigot for my belief on same-sex marriage, but “bigot” means “not easily persuaded”. Here I outline a 5 arguments for persuading me that governments ought to issue certificates of authenticity of same-sex marriage.
1) Demonstrate that there is a theological basis for same-sex marriage.
The Biblical God created marriage and defines its purpose. Some people were incensed to hear Megan Kelley say, “aside from a theological argument, there is no good argument against same-sex marriage”, but she was totally right. The trouble is that’s misleading, since marriage is a theological concept, so aside from a theological one, there’s no argument for same-sex marriage. In the Biblical worldview, the sexes were created for marriage, not marriage for the sexes. God has an intention to “create man in Our image”, he creates an individual man with a task to do (Mankind’s first occupation? Landscape architect.), and but seeing him alone, God says “a man alone is not complete” – which is the sense of the scripture “not good” in that spot. He encourages Adam to find a companion, and Adam acknowledges that none of the animals meets the qualifications; God himself creates the first woman. (Check out Genesis 2). This is why people get married (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:7 and Ephesians 5:31).
In addition, We learn that marriage is the metaphor God uses for the relationship between Himself and His people, and between Christ and the Church. Check out the entire book of Hosea, Matthew 25, Mark 2, Luke 5 and Relevation 21. God creates the relationship, creates another relationship as a metaphor for it, and institutes the metaphor, even before sin happens.
The Biblical God establishes rules for marriage and sex, and prohibits same-sex sex. Having created the concept of marriage for a purpose and the sexes for that purpose, God has the right to do so. He declares that erotic sexual relations are to be kept inside marriage. Throughout Leviticus, Jesus’s own words, and reiterated by the apostles, God delivers rules about how marriage is to be carried out. In no case does He allow same-sex sex. (Actually, since same-sex sex doesn’t exist, the scriptures go through a contorted description of what that would be, but our culture calls it sex, but it’s not.) As Jesus’s sacrifice removes the ultimate punishment from our sins giving us grace and mercy instead, still Jesus persists in leading us to obey the law. From the woman with five former husbands, Jesus says “Go and sin no more”, and Paul’s caution, “Should we sin more that grace may abound? May it never be!” we see the principal that even if the sin is forgiven, it can still harm you, so don’t do it.
I cannot support same-sex marriage because there is no theological basis for its existence, and there are theological prohibitions against its would-be implementation.
2) Demonstrate observability of an authentic same-sex marriage.
Governments can not create or destroy marriage. Twice Abraham lied about his marital status to Sarah (Genesis 12 and 20) in lands and to rulers who (apparently) did not respect the Biblical God. In both cases, the locals treated her as a free woman, and God was angry. He sent plagues on the Egyptians for it, and made the women of Abimelech’s and infertile. Evidently, God is more concerned with the reality of the marriage than the local government’s perception of it. God even came to Abimelech in a dream and ordered him to respect the marriage. Furthermore, Jesus tells us that it is God who creates marriage: he said “What God has joined together let not man separate”, accounted for both in Mark’s Gospel and Matthew’s (Matthew 19, Mark 10).
Governments must observe, respect and defend marriages. Before pastors and preachers perform weddings, they evaluate a couple over several weeks or months to verify whether they are fundamentally ready for marriage. Ok, never “Really” ready, but got the basics. There are Biblical standards for what the relationship looks like, and many clues for what unhealthy relationships look like. In engineering, we have tests to tell us whether our devices are functioning as we expect, and in science we use “sanity checks” to check our progress in developing new methods and equations. Part of the true stories that inspired the first episode of Recently Straight were that people who appeared and professed to be truly in love with each other (and gave all outward appearances of such) are not really. You think I’m talking about Kevin & Kendrick, don’t you. Ha! You haven’t seen Act 3 yet. With so much deception in gay relationships, how can we determine that any particular gay relationship is authentic? What are the standards by which a same-sex marriage is authenticated?
So I do not say that marriage is a thing a government can make, only that it can observe. In that sense, marriage licenses are not charters of marriage, but certificates of authenticity. Without a set of observable criteria, how does the government determine the authenticity of a same-sex marriage? Without a theological basis for what constitutes a “same-sex marriage”, there is no non-arbitrary, moral definition for what it is, and therefore it cannot be mutually observed.
3) Demonstrate that same-sex marriages would be healthy or good.
What we find in the “gay lifestyle” doesn’t usually rise to the level of phileo (Greek word for brotherly love), much less agape (Greek word used in the Bible as the command for “love”). Instead, emotional dependency and codependency are enshrined as “love”. Men make failed attempts to meet their unmet child-hood love needs with eros, or suppress their unhealed emotional wounds with eros, accepting storge instead of phileo. Neither eros or storge bring ultimate fulfillment. Statistically, same-sex monogamous relationships are few and far between, but the biggest problem I see with presuming that they could all be monogamous if same-sex marriage were the law is the belief that they would be good if they were monogamous. Monogamy is a Biblical principle for healthy opposite-sex marriage. Children need multiple other same-sex friendships in order to form a true and healthy image of themselves as a member or their own sex. If we eroticize that, we call it promiscuity. But if it is true that many eroticized same-sex attraction get that way because they are based in a true realization that the man needs to find intimate connection with many other men, why would monogamy be a healthy principle for a same-sex marriage? In fact, many same-sex marriages finally turn into “open marriages”. How do we know whether same-sex marriage, if it exists, is healthy or good?
In The Netherlands, where there is nearly no “homophobia” and same-sex marriage has been the law since 1996, research found suicide rates amongst married “gays” were eight times higher than amongst heterosexual marriages. I don’t believe that same sex marriage creates suicide: I believe that the same shame-grief double-bind which so prevalently leads to eroticized same-sex attractions leads to a sense of “there’s no way out”. Believing there is no way out, or no path to fulfillment in life, may lead one to suicidal ideation. I believe that upon discovering that same-sex marriage was not the solution as the believed it would be, the sense of “no way out” is heightened. The authors of the study also point out that HIV and suicide appear to be strongly linked, with HIV far more prevalent amongst those in same-sex marriages.
We do not find that same-sex marriage, if observed, is healthy. Instead, traditional indicators of unhealthy relationships and emotional distress are high amongst persons identifying as ‘gay’.
With no basis for an argument that ‘same-sex marriage’ is ‘healthy’ or ‘good’, we cannot even begin to make an argument that members of society must respect and defend it.
4) Demonstrate that if a government does not coerce respect for same-sex marriage, there would be harm.
Creating good is not sufficient to make something a law, one must demonstrate that harm will result if the law is not enforced. This is an argument the gay lobby is adept at making. They frequently list of complaints of various ways in which laws unjustly affect the “LGBT community”, but most of these can be addressed in different ways, most of them by repealing existing U.S. laws.
a. get married to “be happy” – The Bible tells us that marriage is not a path to make one happy. Any argument to “let a couple get married so they will be happy” is contrary to Paul’s suggestion in 1 Corinthians 7:28, that marriage causes trouble – or rather, sinners in a marriage cause trouble, and we’re all sinners. We deal with this issue in Act 1 of Episode 1, though we don’t see the end. You’ll have to fund our the rest of the episode by clicking our Donate button for that.
b. hospital visitation / medical decision rights – This can be solved easily with a “power of attorney”. Most hospitals will require a written copy.
c. health-care benefits – If health insurance were taxed like all other goods and services and available in the free market for all, instead of handed out only to employees, it wouldn’t matter what your employer’s policy was on subsidizing health insurance which provides same-sex partner benefits. I support repealing laws giving specific tax breaks to people who work in the medical profession or for the big health insurance providers.
d. federal tax breaks for married couples – This perhaps seems like the strongest argument, mostly because people are not aware of alternatives to the “progressive” income tax. I’m against all Federal taxes on individual citizens. We had a way for the Federal government to fund itself before the covetous personal income tax was passed: the Federal budget was levied on states to pay apportioned by the headcount of the state. States could levy taxes as they saw fit, some had income taxes, some did not. Some still do not. I’ve moved from supporting a flat income tax, to a sales tax, to the realization that getting direct taxation out of the hands of the federal government is the best course of action. Returning to Federalism, and away from our course towards national socialism, is in the best interests of all Americans, except for the ones who want tyrannical control. Don’t support eliminating the personal income tax just because that would provide equality for ‘gays’, but because it moves us back toward Federalism.
e. same-sex divorce – The societal problems solved by opposite-sex marriage: fatherlessness, child abandonment, verifying rape, have basically nothing to do with a same-sex relationship, because by design it cannot produce children. But American culture has abandoned Biblical marriage many decades ago. We now live with “contractual marriage” or “age-of-consent marriage”: i.e. anyone is legally allowed to engage in sexual relations with anyone else, at any time, with any number of participants, for any duration, as long as all participants consent and are above legal age for such consent. Instead, “marriage” as a label is used merely for social status, slightly more formal than Facebook status, but Facebook status is climbing up. Even though it’s a government status, government truly has no power over the same-sex couple. In what way is marriage enforced? What does that even look like?
With so many examples of defending supposed same-sex marriages harming others so needlessly and disproportionately, I cannot make an argument that we must be coerced to tolerate same-sex marriage.
5) Demonstrate that harm produced by not enforcing same-sex marriage rises to the level of powers which may be used to enforce it.
This isn’t an argument concerning same-sex marriage specifically, this is the argument for all laws. All governments have 3 and only 3 powers: fines, imprisonment & death. And when you don’t pay your fines, they imprison you, and when you try to escape from prison, they shoot you. It’s easy to remember these 3. Remember the Declaration of Independence, our “Creator”-“endowed” rights? “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” ? Well, the original draft read “life, liberty and property”. Just take those three, reverse them, and you get death, imprisonment and fines (taxation); these are governments’ 3 powers. Whatever law government passes they can only enforce it with these; without these powers, government is a bunch of narcissistic & opportunistic scam artists with no good or service to sell to earn their keep. Most people have forgotten that, and that’s why people are stunned Obama’s solution to a perceived health insurance shortage was to fine people who don’t get insurance. What did you think the legislators were going to do? earn doctorate degrees and diagnose you and prescribe medicine while you had a chat in their office about tort reform? Earn chemistry and molecular biology degrees and develop new life-saving treatments and drugs? They won’t do that: they’re the government, they will only coerce you into the desired behavior: it’s their job.
So…
Any behavior which would be justly prohibited by a government must result in the detrimental effects greater than the detrimental affects of the power used to prevent the behavior. Otherwise, enforcing the law would increase the level of Creator-given-right infringement rather than reducing it.
a. A baker who was prosecuted when she declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. She was coerced by the courts to bake the cake, not to mention the legal fees, and loss of time to do other work. A basic human right is that we have the freedom not to engage in trade for any reason, whether that reason is good or bad. Violating that freedom is what we call a boundary violation, and there’s a book on that, conveniently named “Boundaries”. The result of the “anti-dicrimination” laws is not liberty: it is tyranny. Coercing someone to work for you is not equality, it’s subjugation, i.e. slavery. In this case, “drive-by slavery”. People have less individual freedom now, because of so-called “equality” laws. Is going to another baker really so harmful, as to inflict legal proceedings on them?
b. Catholic adoption agencies in Illinois are prohibited from assisting in finding homes for children in the foster care system because they do not allow adoption to same-sex couples. Children have fewer options for parents now because of so called “equality” laws.
c. Persons who do not believe in same-sex marriage are not permitted to serve on the city counsel in San Antonio, TX. That’s right: because their religious beliefs differed from the city counsel, they are not permitted to serve on the counsel; that’s the law. Business owners who do not believe in same-sex marriage are being harassed in that city as well. People lose their right to select their representation in government because of a single religious issue.
d. Brendan Eich was removed from his CEO position because someone dug up that he supported California’s Prop 8 (a state constitutional amendment passed by the people which ensured that marriage in California would only be between a man and a woman), and changed his mind about it. Well, they say he resigned, but please, who really still believes that? That’s right, private companies are now starting boycotts of people who support God’s definition of marriage, or natural marriage.
We find the history of Government enforcement of same-sex marriage is violations of basic human- and citizenship-rights.
The law does not have the power to make a man righteous
As Christians, we are called to offer something greater than the law: we are called to give love, agape love, to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we are right, and eroticized same-sex attractions are partially caused by unmet love needs and unhealed emotional wounds, and it is God’s desire for us as Christians to love and to heal, Matthew 5:4, Matthew 22:37, then hope abounds for blessings from God. As straight Christians, please use the resources of the Recently Straight project to help meet the unmet love needs of people with eroticized same-sex attractions, and to support them as they heal their emotional wounds with God’s help.
“What is this about higher suicide rates amongst married gays in The Netherlands?”
That’s just science. Bottom line is The Netherlands have a very “accepting” culture, and same-sex marriage has been legal there since 1996. Not only are suicide rates higher amongst the gay population, but it’s even higher amongst the married gay population. I don’t believe that gay marriage leads to suicide: I believe the same emotional wounds which lead to same-sex attractions can also lead to suicide. It’s when those wounded people realize that the gay marriage isn’t what they really want, they tend to give up completely. The Church can share what they truly need, what will truly fulfill them; it’s incumbent on us to share that.
“What’s your position on ENDA?”
1) The Federal government is explicitly prohibited from making laws respecting the free exercise of religion in the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, therefore it is prohibited from making laws prohibiting employment decisions based on religious beliefs or a standard of employee conduct related to religious exercise. Because it may not make these laws, it has no basis for jurisdiction involving them, with the exception of invalidating Federal laws which attempt to do so. 2) “Sexual orientation” lacks foundation as an entity in scientific literature. Instead, evidence supporting the opposing belief: that all individuals are inherently heterosexual and SSA develops as the result of emotional wounds and unmet love needs finds increasing relevance in research and in formulating therapies to restore a healthy psyche. Basing legislation on a condition which has not been observed is not sound governance. 3) It is the policy of Recently Straight LLC not to make SSA or OSA a sole determining factor in conducting business, nor to answer questions about the attractions of any contractee. The beliefs of the contractees may vary, and are not necessarily the beliefs of the LLC.