This post has been getting a lot of attention in the last two days. Ex-Gay Watch referred to it here yesterday, and Scattered Words posted the following today:

This blog brings up an interesting point, one I’ve spoken out against — that homosexuals are encouraged toward abandoning sex and healing to make themselves feel better.

It’s interesting that the author feels the way she does, which I agree with, yet basis her assumption by misconstruing another post about masturbation — particularly the fantasy part.

It’s not real hard to understand that a guy conditioned to fantasize about other guys is going to have a lot of trouble controlling his thoughts. If he tries to fantasize about women, he’s real likely going to slip back into those old familiar habits. In reality, he’s trying to force the issue beyond when he’s ready and in turn, fighting really engrained and highly developed neural pathways. Attraction, absent the emotional tie in, is in large part due to chemical processes in the brain (so is emotion, for that matter, but we don’t know/understand the metaphysical aspects to it). Point is, it takes time for the brain’s wiring to be altered and put back the way it should be.

Forcing it is a bad idea — it really doesn’t help.

So, I agree with the post she quotes from, and I agree with a lot of what she says about abandoning our God given nature as sexual beings with sex drives and desires. I just disagree that the post is a good argument for that point.

I have trouble believing there are many men who are conditioned to fantasize about other men. I certainly was never conditioned to fantasize about women. Actually, I was never conditioned to fantasize about anyone.

This is from a comment left on my original post:

Maria, I definitely agree about the asexual thing. That’s more of what I was as an ex-gay, than “straight.” I wouldn’t have thought that at the time, though. I really thought I’d changed. But the thing is, being asexual feels different from being gay, and I wanted so badly to be straight, and I really thought that’s what I had ended up as. In retrospect, it was really a lot of fantasizing about getting married (what I saw as the ultimate proof of “change”) and suppressing my normal same-sex desires and sexuality. It’s not a recipe for long-term success.

I’m still left where I begun. I’m against ex-gay recruiting (yes, I’m also against gay recruiting). As for a voluntary change, anything someone voluntary wants to do with their lives is their business.