prokopetz:

There’s a theme that keeps popping up in conservative Christian accounts of human sexuality whereby it’s supposedly natural for everyone to feel attraction for the same gender due to some sort of mystical, like-attracts-like affinity, and that attraction to the “opposite sex” is something that must be deliberately cultivated and vigilantly guarded against any sign of backsliding.

A lot of folks outside the conservative Christian community look at this stuff and conclude: “Wow, this was obviously written by a gay person in denial. Clearly these apparent virulent homophobes are really just self-hating gay people.”

This is not what’s going on.

I mean, yes, obviously a lot of folks in those circles are gay and in denial, but that’s not where this account of human sexuality comes from. We’re getting cause mixed up with effect there.

What you’re actually looking at is a calculated effort to make gay folks doubt their own sexuality by taking common gay experiences and reframing them as developmental speed bumps on the road to heterosexual maturity. They’ve basically weaponised their culture’s entire notion of human sexuality in order to trick gay folks into thinking they’re really just weak-willed heterosexuals.

I know that sounds pretty fucking extreme, but I’ve seen it from the inside – one whole side of my family tree is Jehovah’s Witnesses – and it ain’t just a handful of gay-and-in-denial Christians spinning confused theology; this type of pervasive deception is conscious and deliberate.

So, you know, maybe keep that in mind before doing the whole “wow, this homophobic asshat is obviously secretly gay” thing, eh?