This young man sounds like a fine fellow, but he’s simply wrong.
As I’ve said before:
Fully half the men and women I’ve met in my life who have told me they were gay — and dated members of the same sex, went to Pride, came out to their folks, friends and employers — later turned straight.
Not because they went to some “pray away the gay” program — they would have laughed off the idea — but because they were doing the “gay until graduation” thing that was big in the 1990s, and was a trend adopted by more than just college students.
Some were also acting out after being sexually abused as children.
Either way, for them, being gay (to counter the author’s statement) created opportunities in life that anyone would “willingly choose”: membership in a glamourous, semi-mysterious and therefore alluring group of people who are catered to by entertainment, advertisers, the cops, politicians, universities and corporations.
The chance to be part of a community for the first time in their lives — a community with its own books, clothes, lingo, lore, history, movies, jokes, bars and even a church — was too appealing to resist.
And if you’re wondering about the obvious: it is amazing what you are capable of doing (and enjoying) under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
UPDATE — one of my favorite readers remarks wryly:
‘Being a Christian in the Roman Empire in the first couple of centuries AD creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose’.
‘Being a Christian [or Jew] in the Soviet Union creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose’.
‘Being a Christian [or a practitioner of Fulong Gong] in the People’s Republic of China creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose’.
‘Being a human right’s advocate in Castroite Cuba creates problems and obstacles in life that no one would willingly choose’.
