In a recent interview Joseph Prever had this to say about a friend who found lack of acceptance as a practicing Christian, and a gay man, at his church:
“I’m thinking of a particular Evangelical friend of mine who constantly has to deal with – he’s gay, but believes basically what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality – he has to deal constantly with people telling him that for him to call himself gay is for him to be embracing a sin. These are people who don’t, in fact, distinguish between the inclination and the action. These are people who say, ‘well, I might go around experiencing temptations to adultery, but I don’t go around identifying myself as an “adulterous Christian,” so why are you going around identifying yourself as a “gay Christian?”’
In my estimation, these Evangelicals were completely correct in their concern – for, when you hold onto and continue to accept and place upon yourself the “gay” label you are publicaly embracing all that goes along with that word; and, this is the case whether you are consciously doing that or not; or, whether that label any longer identifies or describes what you do in your personal life. Case in point, when I attend one of the many gay spectacles in San Francisco as a Christian Missionary – I immediately get asked the crucial pass-word question: “Are you still gay?” Without equivocation I say: “No!” Right away, this signals that I am not or no longer one of the believers. Therefore, when removed from the lifestyle – if you continue to self-identify as “gay” you have clearly not broken all of those soul ties which bind you to sin.
Immediately after that story about his friend, Prever continues when asked:
And what is your response to that?
“My response to that is that while it’s true that homosexuality means that a particular kind of temptation is prevalent in someone’s life, it also means a lot more than that. Since sexuality itself is so deeply tied to so many aspects of our personality, and our experience as human beings, then homosexuality has very wide-reaching effects into almost every aspect of our lives, or at least as many aspects of our lives as sexuality effects.”
In my experience, I have actually found the exact opposite to be true: since homosexuality is not an authentic form of being – it cannot be considered a sexuality at all, but a wound; a “disorder” to use Catholic terminology. In addition, using expressions such as “deeply tied” and “very wide-reaching” approaches too closely the theology of “born this way.” Remembering my own fractured childhood, I quite distinctly recall a gradual process by which my innate heterosexuality was warped into a homosexual inclination by way of: undealt with insecurity, peer bullying, isolation, pornography, and a culture (i.e. The Village People as national heroes) that increasingly presented gay men as happy and healthy. With that in mind, rediscovering who I was as a man made it rather easy to distinguish between that sick and hopeless part of myself that turned to homosexuality and the genuine sexuality that distinguished me as masculine and heterosexual. Therefore, my homosexuality was not a part of me – nor a part of my sexuality – but, a disorder that caused me to act out sexually in a vain attempt to deal with it. I think Catholic author and counselor David Prosen expressed this accurately: “For example, in many men the root of same sex attraction is not sexual. Many have said that they experienced this attraction as children before knowing anything about sex. For many, the attraction was really about admiring the qualities in those of the same-sex. As a child, he may have thought… “If only I was athletic like him, look like him, or strong like him, then I would be liked by others.” If a child has these thoughts of coveting others and self-pity, when he reaches puberty this can become sexualized and he may become confused.”