There are however thousands who ARE disciples who struggle with same-sex-attractions and lead lives of holiness and saintliness. We all struggle with some form of sin and SSA, pornography, abusing our wives or husbands, doesn’t prevent any of us from being disciples of the Lord. That’s why we have that wonderful word “Recovering” that we can place in front of any sinful behavior (Recovering alcoholic, etc.)

You know one of the arguments for the gay gene or the inevitability of being gay is “Do you really think anyone would choose to be this way?” Paradoxically in the midst for advocating “Gay Rights” members of the gay political community advance the sheer misery of the gay lifestyle as an argument for supporting it. Go figure. Christians are the only ones who seem to have a solution and yet are widely regaled as being “homophobes.”

(PS. I’ll definitely have to check Fr. Barron’s book!)

I think there is the key, Tim. Problem is that people disagree on what is the truth about being gay. Some would say that a gay sexual orientation is both life-affirming and fulfilling — something you would want any child to grow up and be a part of.

Others point to lives shortened by depression, suicide, a host of STD’s and cancers and ask where there is ANY affirmation or fulfillment. Isn’t this all delusional, like some Frank Sinatra rat pack “swinger” coverup for booze and broads that puts a cool face on porn, prostitution and alcoholism? How does sodomizing your fellow man become an expression of human love?

The Church would ask how a gay sexual orientation leads one to the love that Thomas Aquinas and St. Paul, among others, has told us is true Christian love. If the “truth about yourself” is anything less than the truth that God demands, it is not worthy of being followed as an “identity” and is simply another secular fraud masquerading as a “Truth.”

Here is Fr. Robert Barron from a little book called “Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master” reminding us what a true identity in this fallen world is:

“God, who is nothing but love, has planted in the human heart an impulse to love. We are branded, marked, stamped with the image of love, and we are compelled, from our earliest days, by the hunger of love.

When we fail to love, we are miserable, and when we enter into love, we are filled with life. We are wired of self-forgetfulness, built for the journey out of ourselves, lured finally by the “love that moves the planets and the stars.” …

The greatest tragedy is the loss of vision, loss of breadth, loss of divine ecstasy, loss of soul. This mystical journey into the divine, does not take place in some rarefied spiritual realm cut off from the earth, from color and relationship and sight and sound.

Rather, it is an adventure of the entire person, of the embodied soul and the ensouled body, of the incarnate spirit that, in its strange beauty, uniquely mirrors something of God’s being.

God created us the way he did – flesh and spirit – because, like an artist, he loves wonderful hybrids, and he invites us to come even to the innermost courts of heaven clothed still in the body he gave us. To bring the grubby flesh right into the heart of the beatific vision is one of Aquinas’s humanist masterstrokes.

Enfleshed, built for ecstasy, destined for a deifying beatific vision, we are all in the image of Jesus Christ. Thomas’ “theological anthropology” can be summed up in Paul’s phrase, “to live in Christ Jesus.” To live in the self-forgetting and self-transcending love of God, to allow the divine and human to meet and mingle in one’s very flesh, to open the eyes of the soul to the vision of God is to live in Christo, It is, in a word, to be a disciple.”

THAT, in my humble opinion is what our “identity” should be. Following a gay agenda wouldn’t get you anywhere near it.

The APA, having dug itself into a hole is finding it very difficult to see the light.

Evidence of Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation

Little Recognition Given To Study of Sexual Reorientation Therapy at APA Convention
Findings contradict the APA position that homosexuality is not changeable.

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

TORONTO, August 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. Stanton Jones and his research partner, Dr. Mark Yarhouse, were given the opportunity, on Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m., to present their findings on a study of sexual reorientation therapy, at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) in Toronto.

The paper titled, “Ex Gays? An Extended Longitudinal Study of Attempted Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation,” was presented as a part of an APA symposium titled Sexual Orientation and Faith Tradition Symposium.

The six year study concluded that there is evidence that homosexual tendencies can be controlled and redirected toward normal sexual attraction.

The research was based on a study of 98 men and women who sought help from Exodus International, a Florida-based evangelical ministry that provides sexual-orientation conversion therapy and counseling. The group seeks to help individuals troubled by their sexual orientation to achieve “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Jones began his presentation by outlining the rejection of reorientation therapy for homosexuals by most professional mental health associations. Last week the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution urging mental health professionals to avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

“I had met people in the religious community who claimed to have changed,” said Dr. Jones, a professor of psychology at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois. “And at the same time I saw a growing momentum behind the view that change is impossible. As a scientist it is an empirically interesting question when you see a growing momentum behind a view but you feel that you also see exceptions to that view. So I thought it would be an interesting thing to study.”

Jones then noted an important limit and hypotheses of the study: “Our study addresses the generic questions of whether sexual orientation is changeable, and whether the attempt is intrinsically harmful, by focusing only on the religiously mediated approaches to change; this is not a study of professional psychotherapy.”

In light of the newly accepted convention that homosexuality is not a mental illness, the researchers stated that, “We hypothesized that sexual orientation is not changeable, and the attempt to change is likely harmful.”

However, the study found two forms of successful reorientation away from homosexuality in the study group.

Thirty percent of the study group categorized themselves as successful in chastity: “Subjects who reported change to be successful and who reported homosexual attraction to be present only incidentally or in a way that does not seem to bring about distress, allowing them to live contentedly without overt sexual activity.”

23% of the group reported a successful conversion to normal heterosexuality: “Subjects who reported change to be successful by experiencing substantial reductions in homosexual attraction and substantial conversion to heterosexual attraction and functioning.”

Drs. Jones and Yarhouse conclude that their findings contradict the APA position that homosexuality is not changeable.

“In conclusion, the findings of this study would appear to contradict the commonly expressed view of the mental health establishment that sexual orientation is not changeable and that the attempt to change is highly likely to produce harm for those who make such an attempt.”

The report also stressed the need to keep “a range of professional and ministry options open to clients who experience same?sex attraction, are distressed by this because of their moral or religious beliefs, and who may benefit from hearing about a number of intervention modalities.”

The full text of the paper presented by Dr. Jones yesterday at the APA convention is available here.

See previous LSN coverage:

APA Officially Rejects Reorientation Treatment for Homosexuals

APA Ignored Evidence that Homosexual Behaviour is Part of Psychiatric Disorder Says Noted Psychiatirst