Good As You comments on an endorsement by antigay relatives’ group PFOX of author Dawn Eden, whose recent book The Thrill of the Chaste discusses a heterosexual woman’s journey away from promiscuity.
PFOX distorts the author’s thesis when it conflates promiscuity with same-sex attraction and points to “chastity” as a cure for homosexual persons — as if same-sex-attracted family members who are honest about their orientation were inherently unchaste. Author Eden probably won’t object to this reinterpretation of her book, however: Good As You says Eden has a history of equating same-sex-attracted persons with AIDS and misportraying the science (such as it is) of genetics as it relates to sexual orientation.
PFOX’s review of Eden’s book is not bylined — the anonymous writer speaks of the “ex-gay community” in the first-person plural “we” — as if PFOX’s leadership were ex-gay. (Executive director Regina Griggs is an antigay mother, and PFOX has been reluctant to identify its other current leaders.)
Of Eden’s search for the perfect heterosexual mate, the PFOX reviewer says:
Every ex-gay man and woman can relate to this experience. We didn’t start having interest in the opposite sex until we were in our 30’s or later. Dating someone whose genitals didn’t match our own was like experiencing puberty all over again at age 35. Marriage was not attainable for us until we finally achieved that clear vision Eden writes about, and that didn’t happen until much later in life. That an everstraight like Dawn Eden can perceive her situation and evaluate it so clearly is remarkable.
The reviewer’s effort to define all ex-gays according to his own experience of midlife change in self-labeling does a disservice to the many twentysomething ex-gays that Ex-Gay Watch has encountered: People who (like Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas) decided in their late teens or early twenties to blame homosexuality, rather than choice and youthful irresponsibility, for their teen-age promiscuity. Whether these early-blooming or midlife ex-gays have truly achieved any significant change in sexual attraction, of course, remains a matter of debate.
The quote sounds so much like Richard Cohen that I would be surprised if someone else wrote it.
There are all kinds of little ex-gay recipes out there. What will they cook up next? It is so sad that these people can’t just accept themselves and their orientation as God gave it to them. The blame game just creates more dysfunctional neediness and many of those who belong to such groups as Exodus will continue to have this desperate need to be accepted and have a deep dependency on Exodus for their well-being and self esteem. I ran across another website here ( http://www.peoplecanchange.com ) that is a sort of all encompassing website that links to and ties pretty much all of these groups together.
Peoplecanchange.com uses the same old worn out rhetoric that is commong in most of the ex-gay blogs and websites but it seems to emphasize this issue of “masculinity” and take it to an almost obsessive level. Their approach that you didn’t get enough nurturing from dad and were smothered by your mother and also could not bond with male peers is typical of NARTH and the whole ex-gay ilk. They use stats to back up their rhetoric yet none of their information appears to be peer reviewed using the major psychological organizations and their studies. They even discuss “change” and what change means stating that pro-gay people argue that change has to be 100 percent in order for there to be change. Again all they are emphasizing and stating is change in behavior which leaves a person to wonder as to how much one has to supress his feelings in order to meet the standard. When ex-gay organizations like the people can change site state that same sex romance is only a misplaced need for male bonding no wonder guys get confused and feel a constant need for outside acceptance by the group.
Now we get PFOX throwing this curve ball with the endorsement of Dawn Eden’s book as though gay people are inherently slutty and have just not awakened to the need to date someone who’s genitals don’t match their own. Talk about shallow and simplistic but what else can you expect from PFOX or anything that they might endorse. I find PFOX to be insidious and very stifling.
Dating someone whose genitals didn’t match our own was like experiencing puberty all over again at age 35.
Yeah, right. I just need to gain a greater appreciation for the labia, the clitoris, and the vagina and wham-bam I’ll be a proto-everstraight-teenage boy before you know it. I think statistics would show a startling number of self-identified gay men actually HAVE been involved sexually with a woman at one time or another. This quote, like much tortured ex-gay hokum, makes it sound like the vagina was some scary beast before ex-gayism set in. Give me a break.
(And I agree with a previous commenter that the excerpt sounds exactly like Richard Cohen.)
Am I the only one who thought “Everclear” (Tm) when I read “everstraight”? (“Everclear” is a brand name of raw grain alcohol often used by those not old enough to know better to make killer mixed drinks that produce even more killer hangovers).