Recently we've been putting a bit of focus on the issue of homosexuality. A few weeks ago we explored the topic quite thoroughly in episode 15 of "The War On Truth". If you haven't seen that episode already, here's a chance to catch up:
In this video, I touched upon what could be known as "The Trauma Link" - there's a clear connection between children who have had parental issues, suffered abuse, or bullying, and who have subsequently identified as homosexual. I quoted an ex-gay man, Joseph Sciambra, and an ex-lesbian Jackie Hill-Perry, who revealed that their own sexual brokenness had been caused by traumatic experiences they'd had as children. Jackie had grown up around abusive men which had caused her to hate the 'weakness' of her femininity and to despise masculinity, whereas Joseph even went as far as to say that every gay relationship he'd witnessed during his time in the lifestyle was glued together 'by shared memories of a childhood gone wrong'. Indeed, we saw that 50-60% of homosexual men report having been abused, while up to 85% of lesbians report having been abused.
The link between childhood trauma and homosexuality seems so obvious but it's rarely discussed, so I wanted to shine some more light on it with an "Answers" video last week. Again, if you haven't seen it yet, here it is:
This video sparked some good discussion in the comments section so I wanted to develop the dialogue for a third time by addressing some of the questions that popped up in response.
Firstly, even though no-one actually questioned this, I still want to emphasise again that I went into this video with no list of celebrities in mind. I knew that Milo had been abused, and I knew that Tom Daley had lost his father, but the rest I had absolutely zero foreknowledge of. And yet, every single one of them fitted the trauma hypothesis. They all either grew up with parental issues - whether that be absent parents or just emotionally distant parents - had experienced abuse, were bullied, or had an unnatural early experience. To be honest, I wasn't surprised by these findings but I was actually hoping that at least one or two of them wouldn't fit the theory, because then it wouldn't look like I'd cherry-picked my candidates. Yet that's genuinely the way it turned out.
With that said, let's deal with the points that people did make.
One person said she knew of people who had been abused as children but who hadn't turned out to be gay. Let me clarify. I'm not saying that everyone who has been abused, or had an emotionally distant parent, or absent parent, or has been bullied, will definitely turn out to be gay. Only that it will be the root cause for many who do. Perhaps I can explain it this way - not every soldier who goes to war will develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but the soldiers who do develop PTSD will do so because of the war.
Another tried to put the shoe on the other foot by asking, "then is it possible for trauma to cause heterosexuality too?" This argument is flawed from the start. Heterosexuality doesn't require justification because heterosexuality is clearly the normal position - nearly all studies report that around 97-98.5% of the world's population experience heterosexual attraction. In terms of raw biology, heterosexuality is the only way children can be produced and life perpetuated on earth. Where straight relationships have been proven to have health benefits, gay relationships have proven to have health hazards. Gay relationships are far more prone to domestic violence and infidelity too. Indeed from every angle, heterosexuality is clearly seen to be the natural way of things. Therefore, it is only homosexuality, as a deviation from the norm, that requires an explanation.
Others thought I was suggesting trauma is the only reason for homosexual behaviour. That's not quite the case. There are many ways in which complicated, sinful creatures can fall in a complicated, sinful world. I know girls who had homosexual experiences in their college years because of peer pressure; because perversely they thought it would make them more appealing to guys; because they wanted to be cool and edgy. People can deliberately break their own sexuality through pornography too as they sear their consciences and provoke lusts they otherwise wouldn't have had. This is why Paul writes, "Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body." (1 Corinthians 6:18) Yet when we recognise that up to 60% of gay men and 85% of gay women reporting abuse represents shockingly disproportionate figures, and when we discover all ten in a randomly chosen selection of gay celebrities fit the trauma theory, and when the vast majority of the gay people we meet in daily life fit the trauma theory, we would be foolish to pretend this obvious link doesn't exist in the vast majority of cases. You often don't even need to be a trained psychologist to see the mechanisms that are at work. Tom Daley is perhaps the most obvious example - he lost his doting dad at 40-years-old, and then swiftly proceeded to start dating...yes, that's right...a 40-year-old man. It's so obvious that Tom was grieving for his lost father's love and that he went looking for another man who could fill the void that I refuse to believe Tom doesn't even recognise it himself.
Finally, there were some who doubted that people like Joseph and Jackie could be "ex-gay" at all. So successful has the gay lobby been in convincing people that homosexuals are immutably 'born that way', that it seems many now believe it in spite of the scientific evidence. When other members of the Fuel community then posted further ex-gay testimonies from YouTube in the comments section to prove that it is indeed possible to leave the gay lifestyle, those people still refused to listen, instead saying that they must be paid actors. And it's at this point that our discussion must unfortunately end with that group. It's one thing to argue about what statistics mean but when you refuse to accept real stories from real ex-homosexuals and prefer to invent conspiracy theories simply because it doesn't suit your narrative, you reveal that you're no longer aiming for the truth at all. That there are people who were once gay and now are not is an undisputed fact.
The bottom line for those who are concerned with the truth remains the same - homosexuality is most often a result of inner brokenness caused by emotional trauma. Knowing this, we shouldn't affirm homosexuality or celebrate it but help people to be healed from it. The testimonies of thousands prove it's not only desirable, but possible too.