Answering Seattles challenge ...
 

I have no desire to convince but I will offer a completely honest and valid opinion on the matter …

Unfortunately for you SU I am not an apologist. Your unsophisticated reading comprehension skills leave one wanting. I am not arguing my point to rationalize the position of the church from an intellectually dishonest position. I am arguing from an intellectually sound personal position based on unfortunate events in my life. In fact I have not once mentioned the church!

In your arrogance you fail to pick up on some key consistencies in my opinions on the subject. Anyone who says I am in over my head is ignorant of the history of this board and the many things I have said over a long period of time. The idiocy of their bantering should not embolden you to even greater heights of arrogant and willful ignorance in the hopes of continued mockery.

As I have stated in the past I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I am not embarrassed to admit that I was sexually abused when I was a small child. It’s important that I stand up and share my story confidently, along with the opinions on sexuality that come with it. I have spent a good deal of time in therapy as a result and an even greater amount of time pondering the issue of sexual identity, dealing with feelings of depression and the motives that drives one to ponder suicide.

Furthermore, I have spent many years in support of a non-profit anti-child porn and exploitation group. I have read countless reports on the numbers of children exploited each year. Many of you who ignorantly vote yes in a inane yes or no poll would be alarmed at the numbers of children who are abused each year let alone the percentage of homosexuals who were abused as a child. The connection of abuse to a homosexual lifestyle is valid and a tragically ignored aspect of our humanity.

You can continue to mock and look like a fool or you can spend more time considering my position not as the caricature you have made me out to be but as a real person with real experience with the subject matter. I attended Art school where 30% or more of the population is gay. I have worked with and gone to church with a number of homosexuals. Many are friends and great people. However I will not idly stand by and submit to the woefully ignorant opinions of many on this board that environmental and nurturing issues are not as significant a factor as potential genetic predispositions in the choice of a homosexual lifestyle.

thanks for sharing.

Tooblue, that takes real courage and personal strength to tell your story. Thanks.

Out of curiosity, have you found a measure of catharsis in working with the non-profit on behalf of abused children? I have often wondered about the healing process for those who volunteer in the very area that negatively impacted them in the first place.....does the repeated exposure to the issue make it more or less difficult to move forward or does it empower the individual to a self-realization that their experiences were not their own fault, but the doing of someone else?

If it is too personal to discuss, no worries and apologies for asking an inappropriate question. Just wanted to say that I really respect your post.

There is an idea in psychology that if you confront and immerse yourself in the trauma, that it may lose its saliency. Such work is done in post-traumatic stress disorder.

This however is slightly different than helping in a cause, but the same principle applies. You are not avoiding the subject and cues that remind you of the past abuse.

Without talking "about" tooblue too much.....he had mentioned that he had engaged in therapy, but also volunteered. So I was wondering if such volunteerism is often a natural extension of traditional methods of therapy and healing. In other words, do professionals encourage their patients to actually seek out these opportunities as a means of expression and self-empowerment. I can definitely see the benefit, but could also appreciate the difficulty.

Again, tooblue, apologies. not intending to talk about you, only using your initial post as a frame of reference for my general questions. no disrespect intended.

Yes, thank you tooblue.

The issue of abuse and homosexuality has always puzzled me. In college, while working with some teenage boys, one came out to me. He was the outcast from the group and my job was to try to maintain as cohesive a unit has possible. I was dumbfounded, but offered support. Later I found out that he had been abused the previous year by a predatory adult male.

Let me put my common sense amateur psychologist hat on. Here's a kid who is obviously confused. He had an experience that, while forced upon him, ended up providing sexual pleasure. He's probably feeling a fair amount of guilt and shame over it. He really can't share it with anyone for any number of reasons, so he is shut off from the world in a sense. His being somewhat of an odd duck (which is probably why the pedator targeted him) is even more enhanced by this experience. He probably wonders if he is gay. He knows the other boys find him odd. He comes to some tentative conclusion that he is. Where is he to go to feel accepted?

Why is choice automatically ruled out in every case? People make choices everyday, knowing very well the destructive or negative consequences of their actions, yet they go forward.

I never found out what happened to Roger. But his experience made me wonder why we never hear of studies to explore possible linkages between child abuse and homosexuality. I really don't wonder anymore, I know the answer.

I don't have an answer. But I see most therapists as supporting the idea and working through it if the patient initiates it. I don't see most therapists injecting it into the therapy.

Thanks for sharing that, Tooblue. It was a powerful post.

I honestly have not read much of the other threads on this topic, but in skimming quickly it seems that you are arguing homosexuality is a choice and others are saying it isn't.

Can I ask what you mean by saying it is a choice? Because if what you mean is that a traumatic event (such as sexual abuse) can cause you to have homosexual feelings, I don't know that I would call that "choice." It isn't genetic, but it is the product of an experience so overwhelmingly powerful that it overrides genetic programming, so to speak. Is that really "choice?"

This isn't meant as a comparison, but it is peripherally similar to eating lots of your favorite food to the point you are sick to your stomach, vomiting, and then never being able to eat that food again. A very bad experience, it seems, can overcome other "natural" desires of the body and reprogram you, so to speak. If this happens with something as mildly traumatic as vomiting, I can't imagine what the effect would be with something as overwhelming as sexual abuse. Maybe the reprogramming can also be fought against, I don't know. But if this is the "choice" you speak of, I don't know that everyone is talking about the same thing. Like I said, I was only skimming.

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/6/1107

Are you saying that sexual abuse is a choice? I don't think so. But that's what you are implying.

What makes you think we never hear of such studies?