Interpreting Sexual Attraction

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Jeffrey Thayne

woman with hunger pang
When we feel that familiar pang of hunger in our stomach, we usually desire food. But is that the only thing it can mean to us?

What it means to be an embodied agent is a very perplexing philosophical question, particularly in our age of mechanical/scientific reductionism. Because we often envision physical events as being the inevitable product of impersonal scientific laws and forces, it is difficult to formulate how a physical being can experience genuine moral agency. For example, when a chemist mixes two particular chemicals together, he is usually able to predict beforehand precisely what the results will be. Few people would attribute any kind of moral agency to the chemical process. Also, the behavior of electrical signals can be predicted with such accuracy that engineers have been able to design and built the very computer that I am using while writing this. Again, few people would attribute any kind of moral agency to this computer.

Psychologists typically treat and explain human behavior as though it is the product of impersonal chemical/biological/electrical activities in the brain. The brain is so incredibly complex that it is difficult for them to predict what a person will do based upon the physical state of the brain. However, psychologists and neuroscientists tend to believe that, with enough research, they will be able to unravel and comprehend the complex bio-chemical operations of the brain and, by doing so, access and manipulate the mind itself. I believe that this philosophical framework obviates the possibility and reality of moral agency, because it turns the sum of human thought and behavior into the inevitable product of biochemical interactions.

The central question is this: are our thoughts really the sole product of bio-chemical reactions inside our head? Most Latter-day Saints would say no … at least, not all of our thoughts. Within a genetic paradigm of same-sex attraction, however, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at least some of our thoughts are the product of our biology (particularly, those thoughts that relate to sexual attraction). This may be true; however, there is presently no satisfactory way to explain or describe how a mental/social experience such as a thought or a “desire for something” can arise out of a chemical phenomenon. Also, if some of our thoughts are the product of our genes, which ones aren’t? It is difficult to answer this question at this point using anything more than arbitrary criteria.

A Comparison

Rather than claim that our biology exerts a causal influence on our thoughts and desires, I would like to explore an alternative way to discuss the relationship between our thoughts/desires and our biology and how this relates to human sexuality. To describe this alternative, I would like to embark on a short but extremely relevant tangent.

When I am thirsty, I experience a dry sensation in my mouth. When this happens, I usually think of orange juice. This is because I am in the habit of drinking orange juice when I am thirsty, and it is therefore the first thing that comes to mind when I experience a dry sensation in my mouth. My roommate, however, is in the habit of drinking milk. Milk, therefore, is the first thing that comes to his mind when he experiences a dry sensation in his mouth. I also enjoy milk (thought not as much as orange juice), and I will sometimes drink milk when orange juice is not available. Although not my first choice of beverage, it will quench my thirst just as well.

Sometimes, when I am thirsty, I will say, “I am thirsty for orange juice.” I sometimes talk as though orange juice is the object of my thirst. This means, in essence, that I am experiencing a dry sensation in my mouth and am thinking of orange juice in response. Let’s consider, however: does the dry sensation in my mouth really have an object before I give it one? Or have I simply learned through experience that orange juice will, in a pleasant way, soothe the discomfort I experience? I am inclined to think that, in this case, the very real biological phenomenon known as thirst has no inherent object, and that I interpret that experience as a craving for orange juice.

Jeffrey Robinson uses a similar example. “I experience hunger as a pain right here in my stomach,” he said, “[a] very unpleasant sensation. I don’t like it.” He claims that what that sensation means to him, however, is a matter of interpretation. He continues (forgive the lengthy quote):

For me, that sensation happens to be very similar, if not identical, to the sensation that I feel when I’m nervous. … There have been a number of times in my life when I have said to my wife, “Oh, I am so nervous about something. Something—I don’t know what I’m so nervous about—something’s just eating me up.” And she has said to me, “Have you eaten today?” And I’ll say, “Well, no, I haven’t had time.” And she’ll say, “Oh, sit down.” And so I’ll sit down, she’ll feed me, and it goes away.

Interesting. I had a physical sensation in my stomach, but in and of itself it had no meaning until I put meaning on it, till I interpreted it, till I decided what it meant, till I told a story about it.

I might have that sensation, and I might think about Mexican food, or I might think about all kinds of different things pop into my mind when I think about hunger or feel hungry. I might also feel that sensation and think, “I am fasting. This pain in my stomach represents a spiritual endeavor, to become closer to my Heavenly Father.” I might think when I feel that pain in my stomach, “I’m dieting. This represents an effort to lose wait.” I might think, “I’m on a hunger strike. It represents defiance and anger.” I might also tell a story that would go something like this if it was told out loud: “My life is completely out of control and hopeless. I have no control over anything, and I am in constant depression and anguish. The only thing I can really control in my life is what I eat, and I will lose weight. In fact, when I feel anxious and out of control, I can feel that sensation in my stomach, and it soothes me. It gives me a sense of control in my life until it reduces my anxiety and I literally become addicted to that feeling in my stomach, until I can starve myself to death.” Happens all the time: anorexia.

From this perspective, although we often describe the very real sensation of hunger as a craving or a desiring for something, it doesn’t become such until we interpret the experience in a meaningful or, most often, a mundane way. Another example is an itch. Very few biological sensations demand a person’s attention as immediately as a strong itch on the tip of his or her nose, but the person may scratch that itch in any number of ways. The itch itself does not demand that be scratched with any particular object.

Interpreting Sexual Attraction

Because sexuality (particularly homosexuality) is such an emotionally and politically charged issue, it is sometimes difficult to present alternative ways of making sense of the issue. Dr. Robinson, however, compassionately suggests that we explore the possibility that sexual attraction is an interpreted experience. He continues:

I use [the example of anorexia] because when I talk about things regarding [sexuality being] interpretations, stories, or meaning, people are sometimes offended and think, “No, this is very real.” But the meaning and the interpretations that we put on things in our world are incredibly powerful. They are the means by which we interpret all of our experiences, who we are, and what we are. When we talk about hunger this way, it feels a lot less like some innate, physical drive and more like an experience of meaning-making, of interpretation. Now the same thing is true when it comes to sexuality, except now instead of having an unpleasant physical sensation, we have the ability to become strongly sexually aroused, an incredibly pleasant sensation. But I believe that that sensation in and of itself has no meaning until we interpret it, till we place meaning upon it.

In a similar way, there is historical and anthropological evidence that the attributes that people find sexually attractive has not remained consistent. Of course, the research is not particularly conclusive. However, Robinson continues,

African woman with disc in lower lip
What people find attractive can vary immensely. The questions is, where does that variation stem from?

Let’s say that I grew up in the South Pacific a hundred years ago in some island in the South Pacific; what kind of women might I be attracted to then? Heavy women. Why? Because being heavy meant that women were healthy and well-off. In fact, the same thing is true today: there are places in Africa where beauty queens can pay money and go to gain weight so they can be heavier for beauty pageants, because in places in Africa, being heavy means that you are healthy and well-off.

In our own culture, if I took a beauty queen of today and entered her into a beauty contest in 1930, what would people say about her? She would literally be comic relief; they would just hoot and holler and slap their knees. It would be the funniest thing they’d seen. She would be so incredibly tall and gangly, she’s look like a beanpole; so skinny that she’d look sickly; and tanned like a common field laborer, like a lower class person. She’d have no chance at all.

In other cultures, men might be attracted, however, to women who stretch their necks out with brass rings or stretch their earlobes down to their lips or who shave their heads or knock their front teeth out. And men in those cultures find those attributes to be erotic. When we talk about sexuality that way, it sounds a lot less like some innate physical drive and a lot more like an interpretation, a way of viewing things, a way of understanding things.

Indeed, I believe that it is important that we recognize this alternative way of understanding our relationship with our biology. If we continue to think of ourselves, our thoughts, and our actions as victims of our genetics, we risk diminishing the reality of genuine moral agency and meaning-making in human experience. Is sexual arousal a desire that has a built-in object, or is it a physical sensation which becomes a desire as we interpret it? I believe that we cannot dismiss outright either possibility; however, I presently see a stronger case for the claim that it is an interpreted experience.

For example, the very existence of masturbation leads me to believe that sexual arousal is a biological sensation that in and of itself doesn’t care what satisfies it (much like an itch, or the dry sensation in the mouth). In other words, if it has to be man or a women that satisfies our sexual urges, how could we ever experience sexual pleasure in the absence of both? However, being such a morally and socially relevant subject, the manner in which we satisfy our sexual urges is incredibly important to us. Thus, while the biological sensation itself doesn’t differentiate between what satisfies it, we do. The “desire for y” is our interpretation of the “biological sensation x.” This doesn’t make the “desire for y” any less real. It simply shifts the source of that desire from our biology to the world of social, mental, and relational phenomena. For example, from this perspective, the question of why some men think of and desire other men when they are aroused is not a biological question.

Caution Necessary

In the first post of this series, I claimed that we need an account of same-sex attraction that both (1) preserves agency, and (2) does not dismiss the very real experiences of those who struggle with it. It is easy to see that Robinson’s thoughts invite us not only to reconsider the way we think about same-sex attraction, but also about sexual attraction in general, including heterosexual attraction. If we believe that sexual attraction is an interpreted experience, this preserves moral agency in the process. However, how does it meet the second qualification?

I am attracted to members of the opposite sex, but I do not remember choosing to be that way, and most people who struggle with same-sex attraction do not recollect any choice to be involved in that struggle. Certainly there is more to the picture than simply a conscious act to interpret sexual arousal as a desire for either men or women, because this is not the way most people experience the phenomenon. It would be tragedy to conclude that same-sex attraction is no different than a preference for Mexican food or orange juice. The food/drink comparison made above is simply to illustrate the fact that physical sensations can be interpreted in different ways, that there are different ways to scratch the same itch.

Without caution, these comparisons can easily trivialize the experiences of those who struggle with same-sex attraction. Why do a significant minority of men and women experience and interpret their sexual arousals as a desire for members of the same sex? Why, if it is an interpretation of a biological sensation, do they experience it as something they did not choose, and cannot help but experience? These are serious questions that Robinson cautiously proposes an answer to. In my next post I will detail the way Robinson accounts for the development of both homosexuality and heterosexuality.

58 comments

  1. I might also feel that sensation and think, “I am fasting. This pain in my stomach represents a spiritual endeavor, to become closer to my Heavenly Father.” I might think when I feel that pain in my stomach, “I’m dieting. This represents an effort to lose wait.” I might think, “I’m on a hunger strike. It represents defiance and anger.”

    This analogy seems to be misguided. In all of these examples, the speaker is not reinterpreting hunger as a basic need, but rather assigning value to hunger. That he assigns value to hunger does not change the fact that it is a biological response to not eating, nor that the only way to stop feeling that way is to eat something.
    Likewise, this argument only supports the idea that a person can choose to assign value to his or her unsated sex drive–to interpret his or her frustration as a feeling of submission to God. Of course, the idea of trying to associate a negative physical response to God seems to be a bad idea from a behavioralist perspective. Try as we might to reinterpret physical pain as spiritual pleasure, our biology means that only the pathological can succeed in that endeavor. For the rest of us, it just means experiencing God as pain.

  2. I see your point about there being only one way to stop a hunger pang. I think that’s why Robinson includes the example where the pang was not from hunger, but rather from nervousness.

    Trying to associate a negative physical response to God seems to be a bad idea from a behavioralist perspective. Try as we might to reinterpret physical pain as spiritual pleasure, our biology means that only the pathological can succeed in that endeavor.

    Maybe from a behavioralist perspective, but isn’t that what the scriptures tell us to do, when they say, “We glory in tribulations,” and, “[I] rejoice in my sufferings for you,” and “Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings”?

  3. Nate W.

    That he assigns value to hunger does not change the fact that it is a biological response to not eating, nor that the only way to stop feeling that way is to eat something.

    You are right. The nature of the sensation is the same, regardless of the interpretation we put on it. Also, I agree that we shouldn’t become Christian masochists. I think Robinson is trying to show that being an interpreted experience does not make it an illusion… it simply repositions the meaning of our experience into the realm of interpretation rather than biology. The grumbling in my stomach won’t stop until I eat. However, whether my stomach is grumbling for apple sauce or mashed potatoes is an interpretation, not inherent in the grumbling itself.

    Nathan,

    I think that’s why Robinson includes the example where the pang was not from hunger, but rather from nervousness.

    In correction, Nathan, he thought it was nervousness, but it was really hunger.

  4. Nathan,

    I would say that this is a classic example of prooftexting–you could come up with a dozen scriptures saying to glory in tribulations, and I would come up with a dozen more saying that “men are that they might have joy,” “for my yoke is easy, and my burden light,” “Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

    But this doesn’t get us anywhere. What we need to ask is whether a normal, healthy person who is asked not to bring his or her urges under control and integrate them into the whole of the person, but rather sacrifice them completely, and to associate that feeling with God, can be expected to associate God with anything but longing and frustration. I’m not advocating that sacrificing and associating that with God is bad, but there’s a reason why we are not to fast for over 24 hours, and it isn’t just for physical reasons. When we deny natural drives beyond the point of self-mastery, we set the body and spirit at war rather than reconciling them with each other.

  5. Thanks, Connor!

    Nate W.,

    I don’t think Dr. Robinson is advocating a masochistic point of view. I think he is simply saying that the grumbling in our stomach can take on various meanings (and not all of those meanings are good and healthy). When people become addicted to pain and think it’s good, that is bad. Dr. Robinson (above) describes anorexia as something very similar to that, and he would be the last to recommend it.

    I think we’re in basic agreement here.

  6. The key here is no small thing; once the brain begins to interpret something one way, changing can be next to impossible. Most people have an impossible time trying to change sexual orientation. The problem is, the brain is like a muscle. The same (or similar) neural pathways that are used when we do something, are also used when we think about not doing that exact thing.

    If we want to overcome sexual temptation, (homosexual or otherwise) we should not focus exclusively on the sin itself – we need to focus on something higher to replace it. We need to focus on Christ.

  7. Zen,

    You are exactly right! That is the subject of my next post, because you have described a crucial part of Dr. Robinson’s ideas. Tune in next week!

  8. So, we’ve already discussed the main point in the previous thread so I’ll throw this out:

    Sigmund Freud suggested that humans are born essentially “bisexual” (meaning that they are born with the capacity to be attracted to either or both sexes) but are influenced by psychological and societal conditioning into their eventual “sexual identity.”

    Now, you may balk at some of these terms but they seem to describe what you are outlining here. We would have to add the caveat that human sexual attraction itself is an interpretation of sexual feelings brought on by hormones and the like, meaning that this feeling could essentially be mapped onto anything conceivable. Would you agree?

  9. Nate W. I’m not advocating that sacrificing and associating that with God is bad.

    OK, thanks for clarifying, because that was how I interpreted your previous comment. In that case, then, we’re agreed.

    Clumpy: Meaning that this feeling could essentially be mapped onto anything conceivable.

    Just speaking for myself, I think there’s some truth to that. I’m still trying to sort out in my head the extent of it, though. I recognize that sexuality is somewhat plastic, but I also kind of think that, even a person raised alone on a desert island would have have a stronger inclination to heterosexuality than otherwise. But I’m still trying to read more and figure it out.

  10. “. . . but I also kind of think that, even a person raised alone on a desert island would have have a stronger inclination to heterosexuality than otherwise.”

    There’s no evidence for human pheromones as far as I know, but the presence of such might be a subtle way of pushing people in that direction. And, even going by Robinson’s theory if certain hormones or receptors were awry in certain people (again, I have no idea if this has any basis) we could include genetic associations with “alternate sexualities” without compromising choice (of course, this doesn’t matter if it turns out to be flat wrong).

    I don’t know that Jeff believes in Pavlovian responses but the reward/risk factor in a human’s response to stimuli (even subtle stimuli that they might not notice they’re responding to) is pretty amazing.

    Oops – I responded without really responding to what you said. I have no idea how a Desert Island Person would respond in this situation. It would be interesting to find out. Trying to teach somebody functional language without exposing them to human culture (or other humans at all) may help us learn if “attraction” can occur following a vaccuum.

  11. Michael,

    Which comment do you refer to? We haven’t deleted any. If you are thinking of your comment about re-incarnation, that is one a previous post.

  12. Clumpy,

    I’m not convinced that Freud makes the best comparison… his fundamental assumptions about the nature of sexuality are quite different. I can see where you might see similarities, although I think those similarities are incidental, because the theories are based upon different world-views.

    I think there is a potential comparison to an agentive re-interpretation of the James-Lange theory of emotion, which says that we interpret physiological phenomena as emotional responses. Oftentimes, I’ll be irritated, but as soon as I eat, the irritation goes away… it turns out that I had low blood sugar or something, and I interpreted the feeling as irritation. Research shows that the physiological changes that are associated with various emotions are often indistinguishable. I’m cautious to make this comparison, because psychologists typically read this theory of emotion to say that our physiology exerts a causal force on our emotions (rather than the other way around), a claim that I don’t make. There is also the danger of turning emotions into a mere epiphenomenon.

  13. Interesting article over at Slate . com

    http://www.slate.com/id/2215123

    The money quote is:
    “That’s the thing about therapy: It’s about real people, and they don’t necessarily fit your grand theory or mine. Conservative evangelists are arrogant and wrong to assume that therapy can alter a patient’s sexuality. Don’t repeat their mistake by insisting that it can’t.”

    I didn’t realize there had actually been as much success as the article mentioned… and hardly a conservative source!

  14. Jeff, you know I always like to compare your beliefs to Freud because he’s pretty antithetical to what you believe in nearly every way. Still, in a vaccuum, at least, that statement seems pretty analogous to your main thesis. (Which you admitted of course while making the absolutely valid point that if you were to read even a couple of sentences of his actually theory it would be quite different from yours.)

    “Research shows that the physiological changes that are associated with various emotions are often indistinguishable.”

    Well, you can measure endorphins, adrenaline and activities in parts of the brain but I’m not sure such a micro view helps to explain emotions. Apathy or sloth, for example, is quite different from depression but probably has quite similar physiological effects.

    No grand point here. Just chitter-chatter. On a related note, I have a friend who feels no distinction between being tired and thirsty. He has to drink a glass of water and see if he’s still sleepy before he knows if he’s not just thirsty.

  15. I think that any attempt to define or understand sexual attraction whether directed at the opposite sex or the same sex is very flawed if it is restricted to sex. Same-Sex Attraction is not about sex. It really isn’t. It has a lot more to do with deeper emotional and psychological needs than the physical interpretation of sexual feelings. To confine discussion of same-sex attraction to sexual desires is really saying that any of us with SSA are just a bunch of sex consumed weaklings.

  16. Kevin,

    To confine discussion of same-sex attraction to sexual desires is really saying that any of us with SSA are just a bunch of sex consumed weaklings.

    You are right that there are other emotional/psychological components to same-sex attraction. This post, however, is written to address one particular facet of the issue. I don’t see how providing an account of this particular part of the challenge accuses anybody of being a sex consumed weakling. That is like saying that if I write a post dedicated solely to William James’s epistemology, I’ve accused him of being nothing but an epistemologist. Well, of course he had things to say about metaphysics too, but that wouldn’t be the topic of the article.

    If that is the impression you’ve received, I think you may be reading something into what I’ve said that isn’t there. I would hope that nothing I’ve said indicates that I believe such a thing. The analysis above, if true, would apply to the most chaste of people.

  17. Oh, I sure am sorry. I went back and read my comment and I’m rather embarrassed. I didn’t mean to imply that your post meant anything of the sort. My comment was written way to quickly. I was trying to add another level of thought to the discussion. I think it is easy for people who have not dealt with SSA to think of it primarily as a sexual attraction. While your article does not convey that attitude, Jeff Robinson’s article is directed almost completely on that facet of the attraction. If sexual attraction is really the only, or even the most important, part of the issue, then it would be completely reasonable to tell someone to just not think about it or act on it.

    Any “straight” person can have very real attractions to someone besides their spouse. They need to simply not act on those attractions. If we accept that same-sex attraction is essentially congruent to opposite sex attraction, individuals with same-sex attraction should just not act on their attractions. Now, I’m not saying that they should act on those feelings, but if those feelings of same-sex attraction are nothing more than a misinterpretation of sexual feelings, anyone who is really struggling with those attractions is no worse off than any other member of the church who is single and cannot act on their sexual desires. It would seem then that those who struggle with SSA are just too focused on sex. They should just stop thinking about it so much and get on with their lives.

    That is what most men with SSA feel that Robinson is saying. I’m not making the assumption that that is what you believe. While I feel that there is a lot that we can gain from Robinson’s article, I fear that there is a great risk that youth who are facing this challenge will experience discouragement and frustration. They may get the feeling that if they are having difficulties with their attractions while other members of the church have sexual attractions and aren’t having problems, they are weak or simply not celestial material.

    It was not until I understood the deeper root issues that were contributing to the feelings of attractions I was experiencing that I realized that I was not a bad person. Only then was I able to successfully cope with the attractions. When I moved the focus away from the sexual component I found out that the sexual component was a very minor issue. I hope we don’t give youth the impression that this issue is just about controlling our sexual desires, because that is far from the truth.

    Again, I don’t believe that you feel that way. I just wanted to add that perspective to the discussion.

  18. I have to admit that I think it’s pretty funny to imagine the phrase “struggling with same-sex attraction” used outside of Utah. What type of struggling are we talking about here?

  19. In response to your “central question” I have to say no, with J.B.S. Haldane:

    “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.”

    (One of my favorite quotes ever)

    It’s kind of an untenable position to suppose that our beliefs/thoughts/feelings are determined completely by the stochastic motion of electrons. I really do like the post though… it makes sense to me that we do some kind of interpretation above and beyond the initial signal coming in from the body.

    Another great example is that of pain. We have neurons in the skin that are designed specifically to respond to different kinds of painful stimuli. However, the way we interpret those signals can change drastically depending on the state of mind we are in, and what other inputs we happen do be receiving. What is dreadfully painful in one setting may not even be consciously noticed in another.

  20. Clumpy: I have to admit that I think it’s pretty funny to imagine the phrase “struggling with same-sex attraction” used outside of Utah.

    It’s a pretty common phrase, even in non-Christian circles, for anyone who doesn’t desire SSA. I guess it can sound funny, though. 🙂

    Zen, that was a great article. The author seemed unsure at times what he thought of the matter, but I’m glad that professionals are at least beginning to talk about the possibility more openly.

  21. It’s interesting. What is the requirement for “intelligence”? My favorite definition in a more mechanistic sense is “an entity with the ability to ‘talk about itself’ and develop dynamically and independently.” Douglas Hofstadter believes in this definition and argues that meaning is inherent in the universe, and not something manufactured inside the human brain (of course I’m paraphrasing; he could no doubt take up 300 pages and wind up with the same conclusion).

    Thus a mathematical system with self-referentiality fails the test as well as a patch of lichen :). Still, even if it’s possible to build a brain with the two characteristics defined above (assuming that those are legitimate requirements of intelligence), we hit the fuzzy realm of religion where the existence of a soul (in my belief) mucks things up. (Knowing how the body and soul interact would answer so much, though since we don’t know how our own brains work or their function given a soul it’s probably best not to think about that even headier issue too much.)

    Could something be “intelligent” but not alive and eternal in a religious sense?

  22. Kevin L: They may get the feeling that if they are having difficulties with their attractions while other members of the church have sexual attractions and aren’t having problems, they are weak or simply not celestial material.

    OK, I think I understand what you mean. To me, one solution here would be to point out that even people without SSA do have problems controlling their thoughts and feelings. As a teenager, I often felt that I had a uniquely dirty mind, that I was bad for even having certain sexual thoughts. It helped me a lot any time a teacher or speaker would talk about the fact that everyone has those thoughts, and that we all need to learn how to control and redirect our thoughts to keep them clean. I know there are unique challenges to SSA, but do you think knowing that would have helped you at that age?

    It was not until I understood the deeper root issues that were contributing to the feelings of attractions I was experiencing that I realized that I was not a bad person. Only then was I able to successfully cope with the attractions.

    It seems that one of your concerns is that, while Robinson’s strategy of reducing our reaction to SSA thoughts, you fear it might lead people to stop searching for root issues that lead to the SSA. That is, if they are satisfied with just ignoring the SSA, they may not ever discover what led to it. Is that your concern?

  23. Thanks for being patient with me as I try to express myself. This is really good for me. I do feel strongly that talking more openly about the realities of same-sex attraction would have greatly helped me. Especially at a young age.

    I don’t know that if a person is successfully ignoring SSA, there is any need to do anything else. It’s just that I haven’t talked to an individual for whom that worked. Same-sex attractions are not the same as opposite sex attractions. There is a level of compulsion and intensity that accompanies them that makes simply ignoring or resisting them next to impossible. I’m not talking about resisting sin. That is always possible. However, there are certain core needs that we have as human beings. Some are part of mortality and some are of a more eternal nature. We can control the way we react to these needs, but these needs simply cannot be ignored.

    Look at hunger: no matter how we choose to interpret our feelings of hunger there is a root need that we need food. We can choose to tell our bodies to wait (fasting). This control of our natural urges is one of the reasons we come to earth. So, shouldn’t a person who is truly spiritual be able to resist the temptation to eat completely? That sounds completely ridiculous, and it is. Although we have the choice to control when we eat and what we eat, there is no denying that we have to eat.

    Now, I’m not saying that sex is a need. In fact just the opposite. There is a need–as real and powerful as hunger–for same-sex companionship and love; a need to be affirmed in one’s gender. Although a person won’t die if this need is left unfulfilled, our being will do everything in it’s power to get it. The way to God has planned for a boy to get this need met is through a father who affirms his son’s masculinity, a mother who lets go of her son and encourages him to grow into manhood, and peers (brothers whether biological or spiritual) who accept and affirm the boy as a member of the male community. Not all boys get this. Or they may experience some personal roadblocks to feeling those things. In this case the need is still there and the mind and soul are determined to get it.

    But few young men even understand that this process is going on, let alone know how to fix it. So the mind turns to another way to feel, (at least on a superficial level) that another man loves and accepts him. Then the thought patterns go a lot like Robinson suggests. It is simply a misinterpretation of a real need. So even if we just try to ignore the feelings, the real need is still there screaming and insisting that it get met. It can wait for a little bit, and we can definitely decide to meet it in a number of different ways, but it needs to be met.

    That is why I think that figuring out the root cause and addressing it is so important. If I can learn to feel loved and accepted by other men without any sexual element, then the need it met and it quiets down. Then it is a lot easier to start learning to ignore the attractions until I don’t remember how to think them. But until the dragon has been fed it will follow me no matter how far away I run. I don’t have to kill the dragon, I just have to feed it. Then I can walk away and forget about it.

    Does that make any more sense?

  24. I’ve only so-far read the first paragraph, but I wanted to point this out: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604079. The paper cited there claims to prove that electrons exhibit something that seems an awful lot like agency. I offer this in response to your observation that “Few people would attribute any kind of moral agency to the chemical process.”

    If you have ever had the privilege of hearing W. Cleon Skousen’s talk known as the “A Personal Search for the Meaning of the Atonement,” you will (I hope) understand why such a result in physical science seems obvious to some of us.

    I hope to be able to comment more after reading the rest of your essay.

  25. Capt. Moroni,

    Thanks for the link! I’ve actually read up on that before. It’s always fun when others are familiar with the same literature. I find it refreshing that some scientists are willing to step beyond the traditional confines of tradition, and explore the fundamental philosophical commitments of their discipline.

    The premise of most claims that quantum mechanics allows for free will, I think, rests largely on the assumption that agency (they call it free will — a topic for another post I plan on writing… moral agency is the term we find in scriptures, and free will is a term rooted in Greek philosophy and is accompanied by many unscriptural assumptions) is the ability to act randomly, capriciously, or unpredictably — or, at least, due to factors unknown to the actor. I think there are likely more meaningful ways to define agency than the ability to act in an unpredictable, erratic way. It’s refreshing that the authors of the article make an effort to clarify that free will is something more meaningful than that. Of course, this conversation is best had in context of a post I wrote about this very subject called, “A War for Chance.” Here is the link:

    http://www.ldsphilosopher.com/2008/08/25/a-war-for-chance/

    That post might be a more relevant context and location for a discussion of quantum mechanics and agency.

    I’m also very familiar with Skousen’s talk, and I appreciate many of his ideas. Unfortunately, that isn’t really the turn that most modern science has taken. Instead, they’ve taken the turn that I describe in a post called “Shackled by Determinism,” which can be found here:

    http://www.ldsphilosopher.com/2008/06/18/shackled-by-determinism/

    Thanks for your comment!

  26. I found this post fascinating. I even read it aloud to my hubby because I thought it was so good.

    I also really appreciate Kevin L’s comments. I have never thought about SSA that way. I admire your ability to help us feel empathy and more understanding about those challenges.

    Your comments really underscore the need for fathers and mothers to provide a safe environment for sons and daughters.

  27. Kevin L: Same-sex attractions are not the same as opposite sex attractions. There is a level of compulsion and intensity that accompanies them.

    That is the same thing that other friends have reported to me about their SSA. I think that’s interesting. To me, it’s a sign that homo- and heterosexuality are not just two equal-value alternatives to each other. One is qualitatively different than the other.

    That is why I think that figuring out the root cause and addressing it is so important. If I can learn to feel loved and accepted by other men without any sexual element, then the need it met and it quiets down. Then it is a lot easier to start learning to ignore the attractions.

    That makes a lot of sense to me. I think Robinson would agree with that, too. (Wouldn’t it be great to get his input in this conversation?) 🙂

  28. Kevin L: Same-sex attractions are not the same as opposite sex attractions. There is a level of compulsion and intensity that accompanies them.

    Nathan: That is the same thing that other friends have reported to me about their SSA. I think that’s interesting. To me, it’s a sign that homo- and heterosexuality are not just two equal-value alternatives to each other. One is qualitatively different than the other.

    Perhaps I’m just dense, but what is the basis for claiming that homosexual desires are more intense and compelling than heterosexual desires? Just because someone experiencing same-sex desires says they are? I’d like to see a bit more evidence or reasoning before concluding that one sort of sexual desiring is qualitatively different than another. I guess I could grant that one could convince oneself that what one was experiencing is more compelling than what other people might experience OR one might well experience a desire as particularly compelling when it is not so compelling, but to categorically state that homosexual desires are by nature more intense and compelling than heterosexual desires is going to need some better justification before I’ll buy it.

  29. Maybe I was generalizing too much, or leaping to conclusions. I have a friend who told me that after he stopped living a homosexual lifestyle, he found that the people he was around weren’t as focused on the physical, and that it was a relief to not always be surrounded with that kind of talk. But I shouldn’t take his one experience, combine it with one other description, and generalize it to all cases. My apologies.

  30. Ed,

    I think you’re right to an extent. It does seem unwise to make the claim that homosexual desires are more intense than heterosexual desires. That is not what I am saying. I do, however, agree with Nathan’s statement that the two are qualitatively different. This stems from two basic facts about nature of same-sex attractions:

    (1) The compulsive nature of homosexual attractions develops just like any other compulsive behavior or thought pattern. Whenever an individual uses a behavior or thought pattern to mask or deal with an unpleasant emotion of circumstance long enough, the brain creates a very strong connection between the emotion and the behavior. This is how a compulsive pattern begins. The more we use a behavior or thought pattern to cope with the emotion (which must be dealt with one way or the other), the stronger the brain’s connection. So picture a young man who is struggling to cope with the rejection he feels from other boys, or his father, or with feelings of shame from not being perfect. If that young man finds that fantasizing about other boys helps him forget his problems, even for a little while, his brain will associate the pain of rejection with the relief found in fantasizing. This happens even without the young man being aware of it. When that compulsive addiction is formed, a person needs a lot more than willpower to re-shape those thought patterns. This (from my discussions with “straight” men) is not the case with heterosexual attractions. Those sexual attractions are natural and very controllable with basic behavioral and spiritual solutions. (For more informat ion on compulsive behaviors and thought patterns see “Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior” by John and Martha Beck and “Willpower is Not Enough” by A. Dean Byrd and Mark D. Chamberlain.)

    (2) Same-sex attractions and opposite-sex attractions have two very different root needs. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the physical, emotional, and psycho-social needs that all human beings experience are not all of equal importance. For example, a person is not going to be overly concerned with his self-esteem issues if he is not meeting his need for food. In the same vein of logic, the need to feel accepted and affirmed in one’s own gender comes before the need to have an intimate relationship with a person of the opposite gender. Even when a young man misinterprets his need to be accepted by other boys and to feel confident in his masculinity as a sexually based feeling, the root need is still to be affirmed as a man. The more foundational and basic a need is the more determined our being is to get it.

    So with the combination of the compulsive nature of a large number of same-sex attractions and the fact that the root need for same-sex affiliation is more foundational than opposite-sex intimacy, homosexual attractions are fundamentally different than opposite sex attractions.

    Does that make any sense?

  31. I don’t think you get it. It’s not just about sex. It’s not just about preference. It’s not about satisfying a carnal desire or appetite.

    Have you ever met a real gay couple? I know lots. I know gay couples that have been together for decades. I have heard of gay couples that consist of people in their 80’s and that are just now able to be married. Do you really think they’re getting married for the sex? NO!

    If it were just about sexual attraction, then why would men marry each other when they are old and completely unattractive?

    Sexuality- Homosexuality- is about love. When you fall in love, no amount of analogies is going to convince you not to be with that one that you love. I am not going to fall in love with a woman. I know that. I am a man who falls in love with men. A woman could satisfy my appetites for sex, but if I wasn’t in love with her, I’m not willing to do it. In fact, I find the idea of sex with a woman repulsive physically and emotionally. This isn’t drinking milk when you want orange juice.

  32. This is going to be a bit of long post. I apologize in advance, but there are a number of issues that I feel need to be addressed before a genuinely enlightening discussion of these matters can take place.

    Kevin L: This stems from two basic facts about nature of same-sex attractions.

    The two items you cite as facts about same-sex attraction are really more like assertions about the nature of same-sex attraction—and problematic ones at that.

    Kevin L: (1) The compulsive nature of homosexual attractions develops just like any other compulsive behavior or thought pattern.

    Unfortunately, the way in which compulsive behaviors or thought patterns develop is far from clear – though it is often presented in the popular media as being quite clear. While there are dozens of theories in the social scientific and clinical psychological literature proposing to answer the question of how compulsive behavior originates, there is very little general agreement on which of any of them offers the most accurate or informative account. Indeed, there is surprisingly little consensus regarding how exactly compulsivity is to be defined in the first place. About the only thing that is agreed on is that compulsive thoughts and behaviors are pathological. Do you really want to argue that homosexual attractions are compulsive in nature and heterosexual attractions are not, given that doing so would thereby identify homosexual attractions as pathological? Perhaps you do, but I know that most people who experience homosexual attractions strongly reject such characterizations.

    Kevin L: Whenever an individual uses a behavior or thought pattern to mask or deal with an unpleasant emotion of circumstance long enough, the brain creates a very strong connection between the emotion and the behavior.

    I don’t mean to be an offender for a word here, but brains don’t “create” anything – much less a “strong connection between emotion and behavior.” I realize that it has become quite commonplace in both our daily conversations and our scientific communications to endow the brain with all sorts of human qualities and capacities, but not only is this not conceptually warranted, it is also quite misleading. For example, we hear a lot of talk these days about how the brain “identifies,” “creates,” “interprets,” “processes,” “decides,” “chooses,” “thinks,” “perceives,” “associates,” “desires,” “wants,” “communicates,” and so forth. However, brains do none of those things, persons do! Brains are organs of the body whose functions – though implicated in important ways in meaningful human activities – are electrochemical and mechanical in nature. The human brain is neither the source of meaningful action nor is it anymore capable of initiating or engaging in intentional, rational acts of its own than the pancreas or the liver.

    Kevin L: The more we use a behavior or thought pattern to cope with the emotion (which must be dealt with one way or the other), the stronger the brain’s connection.

    Again, I’m going to have to take issue with your language here – not because you have been personally sloppy or unclear, but because you employ a form of expression common in the social sciences that is sloppy and unclear. We do not “use a behavior or thought pattern to cope” with anything. We behave and think and cope. Behaviors and thoughts are not tools that are in some sense separate or separable from us as whole beings in meaningful, relational contexts. They are not the sort of things we can pick up or put down or use to further some other ends we might have. Rather, we are our behaviors, our thoughts, and our feelings. These are things we do as complete persons. We don’t use thought patterns to cope with emotions, we feel and we cope and we think – usually all at the same time. To divide all of these unitary and holistic phenomena into constituent pieces and parts so we can try to put them all back together again in some sort of causal sequence is to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the phenomena in question (the human way of being) from the beginning. And, by so doing, one ends up generating far more smoke than light.

    Kevin L: So picture a young man who is struggling to cope with the rejection he feels from other boys, or his father, or with feelings of shame from not being perfect. If that young man finds that fantasizing about other boys helps him forget his problems, even for a little while, his brain will associate the pain of rejection with the relief found in fantasizing. This happens even without the young man being aware of it.

    See my point above about the inaccuracy of maintaining that brains “associate” anything, especially – as in this case – the psychological pain of rejection with the psychological relief of fantasy. Any associating of meanings – whether it is the meaning of rejection, relief, fantasy, or any other genuinely psychological phenomenon – is done by persons, not bodily organs. To anthropomorphize the brain and endow it with all sorts of psychological, rational, and intentional abilities only serves to make the bitter (and rationally indefensible) pill of biological reductionism and necessary determinism go down more smoothly. To have anything approaching a sophisticated and fruitful discussion of human desires and desiring (sexual or otherwise) that preserves some possibility for human agency and meaning requires that we keep the whole person (i.e., the moral agent) at the forefront of our discussion.

    Kevin L: When that compulsive addiction is formed, a person needs a lot more than willpower to re-shape those thought patterns.

    Again, you’ve introduced the language of pathology here by arguing that homosexual desires are compulsive addictions. Are you sure you want to discuss it in that fashion? I see two immediate results of employing such language: (1) homosexuality becomes a sickness, a disease and, as such, (2) it is something with which individuals are afflicted and something for which – because they have little or no control – they cannot in any reasonable way be held responsible. Likewise, if homosexual desires are fundamentally pathological in nature, then they are inherently meaningless. That is, at most one’s homosexual desires constitute signposts of dysfunction or a symptomology that reveals an underlying disorder. In the same way that aphasia or “word salad” often indicate the presence of a underlying malady (i.e., a brain tumor), same-sex desires – if pathological in nature – would simply be symptomatic of whatever underlying causal dysfunction is producing them (e.g., maladaptive genes, dysfunctional neurotransmitters, patterns of behavioral reinforcement, low self-esteem, or whatever). Plenty of folks have discussed these implications, so other than just noting them here I won’t go over them again. I will make a quick – and underdeveloped or defended – point about the concept of addiction, however.

    Our society – encouraged by the social sciences – has forgotten that the language of addiction is fundamentally descriptive in nature, not causal. That is, when I say that someone is addicted I am really just describing their behavior NOT explaining it. Addictions aren’t formed, they are enacted. I don’t engage in a particular behavior – whether it is in terms of sexual relationships and desires or in terms of alcohol and drug consumption – because I am addicted to the behavior. Rather, my desire for a certain ting or relationship (and all of its attendant and constitutive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors) IS the addiction. Addictions don’t cause behaviors, they are characterizations and descriptions of behaviors. Offering up the term “addiction” as a causal explanation for repetitive behaviors or for compulsive experience provides no actual information whatsoever. I don’t know anything more about why a person is engaging in a particular form of repetitive behavior by saying that they are doing it because they are addicted than I would know by simply noting that they are engaging in a particular repetitive behavior. To wit:

    A: John sure seems to drink a lot of alcohol a lot of the time. I wonder why?

    B: Well, that’s easy! John’s addicted to alcohol.

    A: Really? How do you know that?

    B: Well, because he sure seems to drink a lot of alcohol a lot of the time.

    A: Why?

    B: Because he’s addicted to it, silly!

    As a form of scientific explanation, this approach is a total non-starter. In the end, it makes no rational sense to say that a person desires companionship (sexual or otherwise) with members of the same-sex because an addiction has formed. Furthermore, doing so only leads us away from considering real people in real relationships experiencing (and participating in the creation of) real and meaningful desires. Instead, we are left to contemplate the causal relationships between sets of empty abstractions and what can only be seen as meaningless or reflexive and determined behaviors.

    Final point: I don’t think that Jeff or Nathan or Dr. Robinson ever made a case for brute willpower being the answer to overcoming same-sex attraction. The change process that Dr. Robinson describes is not so simplistic as to boil down to “just will yourself to be attracted differently.” I am thoroughly convinced that sexual desires are not primarily or solely a matter of conscious deliberative choice. I am also just as convinced that such does not mean that moral agency is not involved. The dichotomy of either homosexuality is the result of conscious deliberative choice (and, thus, can be cured by an exercise of willpower as conscious deliberative choice) OR the result of unconscious mechanical and deterministic causes is both overly simplistic and thoroughly false. However, just because the answer to the issue of changing sexual desire is not the use of brute willpower that does not mean that will (or choice or moral agency) is not vital to successfully addressing the problem.

    For example, even though you employ the language of compulsion and addiction above, you also use the language of agency and meaning when you speak of “struggling to cope” and finding that “fantasizing about other boys helps him forget his problems.” I’m going to suppose that you would see such acts as agentive in nature; that is, reflective of the power of the will (to speak very loosely) to engage in, assent to, and choose particular actions and meanings (otherwise, what could it possibly mean to struggle with competing desires or consent to some act as being helpful?). If so, then clearly “willpower” or agency had something important to do with bringing about one’s compulsive desires in the first place, why shouldn’t it then play a vital role in changing such desires and bringing about new or different ones at another time?

    Kevin L: This (from my discussions with “straight” men) is not the case with heterosexual attractions. Those sexual attractions are natural and very controllable with basic behavioral and spiritual solutions.

    There’s a very extensive literature on sexual attraction that indicates that heterosexual desires – particularly when excessive and experienced as being compulsive (e.g., excessive viewing of heterosexual pornography, opposite sex-attraction pedophilia, compulsive heterosexual promiscuity and “sex addictions,” etc.) – are just as challenging, powerfully experienced, and all-consuming of one’s psychological, moral, emotional, and spiritual resources as you state that homosexual desires are. I am not buying the notion that heterosexuals don’t or can’t experience their sexual desires in every bit as compelling and all-consuming as the way homosexuals do. Court’s Exhibit #1: Hugh Hefner.

    Now, perhaps I have misunderstood you here and you are not talking about the compulsive and powerful nature of the desire for sexual intimacy or intercourse, but by “sexual attractions” you mean the desire for recognition, esteem, belonging, mutual concern and social engagement. If so, that’s an odd use of the terminology. But, nonetheless, even if this is what you meant, I have a hard time believing that homosexual persons desire social engagement and recognition with other same-sex persons more than heterosexual persons desire social engagement and recognition by other opposite-sex persons. Having grown up as a robustly heterosexual teen and been close friends with many other robustly heterosexual teens (and now being the father of four robustly heterosexual teens), I can assure you that we thought about, talked about, obsessed about, fantasized about, desired, flirted with, and wanted to be around girls all the time! I do not think that my experience here is idiosyncratic, nor did it end with the end of adolescence, young adulthood, or marriage.

    Kevin L: (2) Same-sex attractions and opposite-sex attractions have two very different root needs.

    Despite the fact that you offer up Maslow’s (highly debatable and frequently discredited) theory about the hierarchy of needs, I am unaware of Maslow himself ever stating or even implying that same-sex attractions and opposite-sex attractions arise from different root needs. I am also unaware of Maslow ever making the distinction that one needs to be affirmed in one’s own gender before needing intimate relationship with a person of the opposite gender. Maslow’s hierarchy is not that nuanced, nor did he ever make the case that it needed to be.
    In addition, the argument that same-sex and opposite-sex attractions have different root needs – and the clear implication that same-sex attractions are rooted in a more basic or primary or powerful need – seems terribly self-serving and self-aggrandizing here. I’m not sure if that is how you meant it, but it comes across as though you are saying that those experiencing homosexual attraction have a tougher go of it in life simply by virtue of their having to deal with a more basic or primary need than what heterosexuals have to face. This seems less an analysis of a difficult issue and more a plea for pity. I hope that was not your intention.

    As to the concept of needs, however. . . . Once again you’re employing a deeply problematic and conceptually confused terminology – something we can one again blame on the social sciences. The language of needs is highly metaphorical, and the metaphor is drawn from the discipline of economics, but breaks down quickly when imported into psychology. We run into trouble when we forget that a need is a metaphorical concept and begin to think of it as a real causal or explanatory one. When we do that, we have all the same problems that we discussed with “addiction” above. For example:

    A: Why is Mike going over to Taco Bell at 2:00am?

    B: Well, that’s easy! Mike has a hunger need requiring gratification.

    A: Really? How do you know that?

    B: Well, because he’s headed over to Taco Bell at 2:00am.

    A: Why?

    B: Because he has a hunger need, silly!

    Again, there is no explanatory value in this language at all. We know nothing more about why Mike went to Taco Bell at 2:00am after we’ve postulated the presence of a motivating hunger need than we did before postulating such a need. What we have done, however, is reduce Mike to a passive object acted upon by impersonal and mechanically determinative forces (i.e., needs). We invented a term (“need”), then endowed it with all the causal power necessary to make Mike do something (i.e., behave in such a way as to satisfy the demands of the need). Mike’s agency plays no role whatsoever in this sort of explanatory discourse. Mike is simply a passive victim of the needs that comprise him and cause his behavior. Now, perhaps one could argue that Mike got to choose Taco Bell over Wendy’s but, then again, that so-called “choice” can be explained in terms of certain stimulus-response features of Mike’s environment, so maybe he didn’t even choose that!

    Two final points about Maslow’s hierarchy and the conceptual language of needs:

    First, the language of needs assumes that to be human is to fundamentally be egocentric, governed by hedonism. That is to say, needs only make sense in terms of gratification and frustration. To presume that all human action is the product of the operation of needs is to presume that to be human is to be fundamentally driven by matters of self-interest, to be governed in all ways by the quest for the maximization of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Although this notion is commonly take-for-granted as true in our culture, it is by no means a fact of human nature – it is really only an assumption used as an explanation. One of the most problematic implications of this assumption is that it reduces all human relationships to the status of means-end instrumentalities. Persons, like any other objects in the world, are fundamentally sources of either gratification or frustration to the self. In such a model, persons are not qualitatively distinct from candy bars, just quantitatively different (i.e., persons possess infinitely more possibilities for gratification and frustration than simple candy bars). Thus, in a scheme like Maslow’s, we associate with, seek the approval of, and fall in love with other people as a means of gratifying our own personal needs because it is in our self-interest to do so. Other people are reduced to being means by which the self meets its own needs by reducing tension and/or gaining pleasure.

    In short, then, persons are reduced to being objects to be consumed so that individual needs can be met and pleasure realized. So much for genuine love, altruism, friendship, compassion or fellowship. Such things are, if Maslow’s is right, merely pretty words to cover over the sophisticated games of mutual manipulation we engage in so as to gratify our selfish drive for pleasure. Ironically, Maslow is typically identified as being a representative of a “Humanistic” psychology. Is this really what it means to be human?

    Second, the gospel of Jesus Christ as restored in these latter-days makes it pretty clear (I think) that the possibility of meaningful sexual intimacy is one of the most human – indeed, most divine – features of human existence. As Elder Holland has pointed out in his talk “Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments,” in sexual intimacy we participate with God in a most sacred union of souls, and in so doing find our place in the universe and (have the possibility) of transcending the mundane and experiencing the miraculous. In the selfless giving of oneself to another – both in the sexual act itself and in the shared life of commitment that such sexual relationship requires and encourages – we find the possibility of genuine communion and redemption and self-forgetting.

    However, for Maslow – and almost all contemporary psychological and naturalistic understandings of human sexuality – sex is primarily animalistic, natural, and without genuine moral significance. Note how Maslow lumps sex in with the hunger and thirst as basic physical needs – needs that (unlike the higher, presumably more uniquely “human needs”) we share with all other animal organisms and which, as such, do not distinguish us in any way from them. So, not only is the desire for sexual intimacy the necessitated product of some impersonal, natural, and biological need, but there is also nothing particularly human about it at all. Granted, social scientists such as Maslow would say, human beings have devised a staggering number of ways of expressing their sexual desires and manipulating one another to gratify these basic needs, but that does not mean that there is anything intrinsically human about sexual desire or the resultant forms of relationship that have been devised to gratify it. This, I am convinced, stands in stark contrast to the message of the Restored Gospel as pertaining to the divine and agentic nature of human beings and the moral meaning and context of their sexual desires and relationships.

    In closing, beyond your reliance on Maslow and his problematic theory of motivation, I must say that I am confused by your argument thus far. On the one hand, you seem to want to say that same-sex attraction is about more than sexual intimacy, that it is really about being affirmed in one’s gender by others of the same gender and being accepted and cared about by those others. And, yet, on the other hand, you argue that for homosexuals sexual attractions are more intense and compelling than sexual attractions are for heterosexuals. Which is it then? Is the desire for social acceptance from other persons experiencing same-sex attraction the central distinguishing feature of same-sex desires, or is it the desire for sexual relationship that is the compelling distinction?

    Kevin L: Does that make sense?

    If you meant to ask if what you wrote was understandable, then yes it was. If you meant to ask if what you wrote made conceptual sense and offered a cogent account of homosexual and heterosexual attractions, then the answer is no.

  33. Ed,

    Wow! I’m sorry that you felt the way I attempted to express my experiences and feelings was so poorly worded. I stand by my experiences. They are true for me. I also stand by my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in which God allows certain circumstances to occur in mortality which are totally and completely out of our control in order to help us become more like Him. I don’t apologize that you don’t like either my experiences or my testimony.

    I find it interesting that you do not propose any thoughts that contribute to the conversation. Rather, the entire content of both your posts has simply been to attack my statements, which in many cases you’ve grossly misrepresented. I am not going to take time away from more constructive pursuits to answer each of your criticisms. It would be different if I could feel that you were actually interested in learning about same-sex attractions so that you could respond with true Christ-like charity to those who experience them. However, there are too many other things for me to do that would help my brothers and sisters far more than engaging in such a fruitless discussion.

    Nathan and Jeff,

    I look forward to the next installment in this series. You guys are doing a great work in bringing these issues to light! Thanks for all you do.

    Kevin

  34. Kevin L: Wow! I’m sorry that you felt the way I attempted to express my experiences and feelings was so poorly worded.

    Kevin, I’m very sorry that you took my response to be a personal attack. It was not, nor was it meant to be. I simply responded to certain assertions that you made that I believe to be conceptually problematic and to certain ways of expressing ideas that I believe “muddy the waters” when trying to get some clarity in discussing these issues.

    Our culture generally, and the behavioral sciences in particular, employs the same phrases, terms, and conceptual language that you did and it only serves to make it more difficult for the discussion of such important matters to achieve any real clarity or coherence. It matters deeply how we say things. The terms we use, the language we employ, the images and metaphors we rely on profoundly shape the contours of any intellectual debate and guide it in significant ways.

    I just want us to all be as clear as we possibly can so that the implications of certain assumptions (often buried in the language we use) are clear and clearly understood. After all, many people from various backgrounds are going to be reading this blog and this discussion thread. In light of that fact, it seems important to me that as a group and as individuals we do everything we can to be as coherent, logically consistent, and sophisticated as possible in regards to what we write, claim, and defend. None of this is meant to constitute a personal attack on you.

    Kevin L: I stand by my experiences. They are true for me.

    That’s fine. I have no real problem with you standing by your experiences. Perhaps the most influential schools of thought in my own training as a theoretical psychologist have been the Radical Empiricism of William James and the Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Continental philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. What unites these folks is a profound respect for actual human experience and meaning. I am convinced that human experience as lived is a fundamental starting point for any meaningful scientific, philosophical, or psychological inquiry.

    Having said that, however, I do feel it is important that we be careful whenever we make the claim that experiences “are true for me.” Clearly, experiences are true for the person having them in so far as they are genuinely and sincerely experienced by that person. I never meant to imply that you haven’t had the experiences you say you have, or to accuse you of “faking it” or lying in any way. I am willing to accept at face value that you have had the experiences you say you have.

    That being the case, however, does not mean that I or you or anyone has to accept that the experiences we have—while truly experienced—are always and necessarily experiences of truth. If there is anything that psychology has taught the world it is that the phenomenon of self-deception is real, pervasive, and deep. Just because we might have a particular experience does not necessarily mean that the experience is a truthful one. Thus, it is possible to argue that a person who experiences their sexual attraction as overpoweringly compelling is indeed experiencing an overpowering sexual compulsion, while, at the same time, admitting that such compulsive experiences may be fundamentally self-deceptive and false. (The work of the LDS philosopher C. Terry Warner is particularly instructive on this issue of self-deception.) In short, I’m convinced that to come to as full an understanding of human experience as possible requires that we carefully interrogate our experiences, as well as critically scrutinize our formal and informal theories of those experiences.

    Kevin L: I also stand by my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in which God allows certain circumstances to occur in mortality which are totally and completely out of our control in order to help us become more like Him.

    I don’t disagree that God often allows certain circumstances to occur in mortality which are totally and completely out of our control in order to help us become more like Him. I find this to be true in a wide variety of cases, ranging from disease, deformity, and death to natural disasters, violent crimes, and traffic accidents. I don’t, however, agree that sexual desires fall into the category of things over which we have no control whatsoever because God made us have one type of attraction and not another. When a strong case can be made that sexual desire is rooted in something physical (like disease, deformity, or death) or is imposed from an external source on the unwilling (as in natural disasters, violent crimes, and traffic accidents), then I’ll be more open to the notion that sexual attractions (of any sort) are “circumstances” that occur to us and are “totally and completely out of our control.”

    Now, having said that, I would also say that there is one category of circumstance that God allows to occur in mortality in order to help us become more like him: sin. We live in a fallen and sinful world. We are born into it, immersed in it, and all through no fault of our own. However, God has allowed us to live in a fallen world of sin in order that we might—through our struggles against sin and our surrender to Christ—come to be more like Him. Homosexual attractions are attractions that are sinful and are the sort of thing against which we ought to struggle. Inappropriate heterosexual attractions (e.g., adultery) are likewise attractions that are also sinful and the sort of thing against which we ought to struggle.

    Kevin L: I don’t apologize that you don’t like either my experiences or my testimony.

    Again, this is not a matter of whether I like or don’t like your experiences or your testimony. In my view, this entire discussion is a matter of how we talk about our experiences and our testimonies, how we understand sexual attraction—and, thereby, how we understand ourselves.

    Kevin L: I find it interesting that you do not propose any thoughts that contribute to the conversation.

    I get this sort of response from colleagues all the time when I critique their pet theories in psychology. The truth of the matter is that I proposed a great number of alternative “thoughts” in my critique of your post. Could I offer more? Could I spell it all out in a great deal more detail? Certainly I could. Unfortunately, there are two mitigating reasons why I didn’t do that: (1) the post was already more than long enough as it was, and (2) unless a thorough critique is made first and a conceptual space is cleared for more fruitful discussion, then the alternative usually gets absorbed back into whatever interpretive framework is already in place and never gets really understood or appreciated.

    For example, often in my work I have started to offer up a critiques of biological psychiatry, only to be stopped midstream by someone saying: “Oh, I get it, you’re a touchy-feely humanistic psychologist, right? That’s why you don’t like Prozac-based treatments of depression.” The thing is . . . I’m not a humanistic psychologist at all. I have just as many problems with humanistic naturalism as I do with biological naturalism—i.e., they are both antithetical to the foundational message of the Restored Gospel. The problem is that if the full critique isn’t done, then it doesn’t get appreciated. We have a great deal of conceptual critique that needs to be done before a fruitful discussion of human sexuality (homo- or hetero- or otherwise) can take place because so many false ideas, terms, metaphors, and concepts have built up over the years that it’s very hard not to go wrong unless you really start fresh.

    Finally, I take issue with the assertion that critique contributes nothing to the conversation. I don’t have to present you with a completed and fully functional bridge over a chasm to show you that if you keep dancing blindly there near the edge you’re going to fall to your death and not get to the other side. Showing how our conceptual ladder is often leaning against the wrong wall is the first important and major step in making progress in these matters, and, as such, is in fact a significant contribution to the discussion.

    In no way do I mean to compare myself with Joseph Smith, but I think it interesting that he didn’t emerge from that grove of trees in 1820 with a fully formed church or set of doctrines in hand. He did, however, emerge knowing quite specifically why all the other churches were wrong and why their creeds were an abomination to the Lord. I can imagine some of the religious leaders of young Joseph’s day responding to his claims of having seen the Father and the Son in vision by saying, “Well, that’s fine son, but until you have re-written our creeds to our satisfaction or developed your own doctrinal foundations and organized a fully-functioning church, you have nothing to contribute to the discussion!”

    Kevin L: Rather, the entire content of both your posts has simply been to attack my statements, which in many cases you’ve grossly misrepresented.

    Please show me where I’ve grossly misrepresented you? Don’t just accuse me of having done so. Demonstrate it. I really don’t want to misrepresent you, I want to understand you and I want our discussion to be as clear and fruitful as it can be for as many others as possible. I feel like I took exceptional pains to directly address exactly what you wrote, relying on your exact words and not on my re-phrasing or paraphrasing of them. If I have grossly misrepresented you, please enlighten me. I’m more than happy to repent and reconsider when I’m wrong. However, I’m not going to apologize for or renege on my analysis if all you mean by “grossly misrepresented” is that I’ve caught you in some conceptual confusion and thereby made you uncomfortable.

    Kevin L: I am not going to take time away from more constructive pursuits to answer each of your criticisms.

    Okay, then, just answer a few of them. How about just one? What could be more constructive than helping me out of my errors so that I stop grossly misrepresenting you? I truly believe that we owe it to each other (meaning both you and I and everyone else out there) to take seriously our sacred obligation to serve one another by helping one another to see the light, cease from error, and be better people.

    Kevin L: It would be different if I could feel that you were actually interested in learning about same-sex attractions so that you could respond with true Christ-like charity to those who experience them.

    I’m sorry that you feel that I am uninterested in learning about same-sex attractions. I’m very interested. I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort over the years studying the issues and discussing them with a wide variety of folks. I am deeply interested in learning how people develop such attractions, experience them, struggle against them, and reconcile them with various moral, interpersonal, and theological realities and commitments. However, I don’t believe that learning such things requires that the only response I can offer those who experience such attractions is one of simple tolerance, cheery-eyed encouragement, or smug resignation. To my mind, responding with Christ-like charity involves far more than just patting someone on the back and saying, “It’s okay, little fella. I love ya, so no matter what you say or do it’s okay with me.” That’s not Christ-like charity, it’s a just a wishy-washy form of moral relativism that refuses to take our relationships with one another and our covenants with Christ seriously.

    Nathan and Jeff, I look forward to the next installment in this series. You guys are doing a great work in bringing these issues to light! Thanks for all you do.

    Amen!

  35. Thank you both for being willing to talk about this. I am learning a lot!

    Kevin, I just want to assure you, I really don’t think Ed is criticizing you or your testimony. He’s questioning ideas, not people or character. It’s obvious to anyone who’s read your blog that you’re putting the gospel first in your efforts to overcome SSA and have a Christ-centered temple marriage and life. Ed would be the first to agree with that (in fact, he has!). 🙂 I hope his directness doesn’t keep you from continuing this conversation, because I think it will be a very worthwhile one.

    I’ll admit, I was a little rattled by this conversation as I drove home the other day, because I kept thinking, “But there are differences between the two.” When I was talking about qualitative differences, though, I think I was using messy phraseology. (Thanks for pointing that out, Ed.) Now I think I have a better idea of the point Ed is making—I think he’s saying that there can be features of our experiences that we misinterpret.

    For example, growing up I heard some family stories so many times that the telling began to shape my memory of the events. When I check the facts now with my parents, I discover that I have some facts wrong, or wasn’t even present for some parts of those events, even though I have vivid images of them that replay in my mind the same way when I recall the event. Like, I’ll remember someone being there who wasn’t actually there. The events were real, and I really experienced them, but the retelling by family members has inadvertently reshaped my memory of them.

    Ed, I have a question for you that I think could really elucidate things, especially for me. Can you think of another common human experience or habit, besides homosexuality or SSA, in which it often appears we have no control in their shaping, but later it becomes clear that we did?

    Like, I think about how I had a quick temper as a kid (my brother used to provoke me just to see me fly into a rage 🙂 ). If someone had told me at the time that there was some agency involved in my feelings, I would have thought they were crazy. My reactions, including physical reactions of blood pumping, etc., were so fast and unconscious, I would have dismissed the idea that agency was involved based solely on the fact that no time seemed to elapse between stimulus and response, much less the fact that I don’t ever recall choosing my response. But as time went by, things gradually changed until I didn’t react so strongly (even when my brother intentionally tried to set me off). It wasn’t my environment that changed, and I really don’t think it was my biology. I think it involved agency, learning to harness my passions—so much so, in fact, that you could almost say my passions changed.

    Is that a good example of the point you’re making? Do you have any other examples you could give us?

  36. Thanks for your reply, Ed. I will try to address some of the things I saw in your “Critique.”

    Ed Gantt: The two items you cite as facts about same-sex attraction are really more like assertions about the nature of same-sex attraction – and problematic ones at that.

    I will grant that they are not facts, per se. They are assertions. However, they are not mine. Have you read Dave Matheson’s writings on same-sex attraction? Most of my assertions come from his work. Two of his articles can be found at http://www.genderwholeness.com.

    Ed Gantt: Unfortunately, the way in which compulsive behaviors or thought patterns develop is far from clear

    I’m sorry, but that is true of pretty much everything. Hardly any philosophy or idea that doesn’t have more than one point of view. As far as compulsive behaviors go, I still believe in the concepts and principles as taught in the two books I cited. You may disagree, and that’s your right.

    Ed Gantt: Do you really want to argue that homosexual attractions are compulsive in nature and heterosexual attractions are not, given that doing so would thereby identify homosexual attractions as pathological?. . . . That is, at most one’s homosexual desires constitute signposts of dysfunction or a symptomology that reveals an underlying disorder.

    Yes!!!!! That is exactly what I am saying. Homosexual attractions are NOT really sexual attractions.

    Ed Gantt: About the only thing that is agreed on is that compulsive thoughts and behaviors are pathological. . . .That is, when I say that someone is addicted I am really just describing their behavior NOT explaining it.

    You contradict yourself here by saying that a compulsive behavior is pathological, but an addiction is just a description of behavior. Perhaps to you those two words are completely different. To me they are the same thing. It’s interesting that I don’t know of any professional would agree with your definition of an addiction. Just because you claim it’s true, doesn’t mean that it is.

    Ed Gantt: I don’t mean to be an offender for a word here, but brains don’t “create” anything—much less a “strong connection between emotion and behavior.”

    Sorry, but synapses are formed. To me that equals creation of a connection. And again I don’t believe that many professionals would agree with your extreme dichotomy. Doctrinally, what is a “person?” The soul of man is made up of the body and the spirit. The brain seems like part of the body. Do you choose to have your heart beat 60–70 times per minute? When you hear “Rudolph the Red-Nosed-” you choose to think reindeer? This claim that the brain is just like the liver or pancreas really doesn’t make any sense to me.

    Ed Gantt: We do not “use a behavior or thought pattern to cope” with anything. We behave and think and cope. Behaviors and thoughts are not tools that are in some sense separate or separable from us as whole beings in meaningful, relational contexts.

    Again I disagree with this claim. I don’t buy that you making this assertion means that it is true. I have used thought patterns and behaviors in order to cope with unpleasant emotions. I don’t know what definition of the word “cope” is, but I use the one generally accepted by people: to deal with and attempt to overcome problems and difficulties. If I have an emotion that is difficult to endure or problematic to me and I deal with it by masturbating I am using masturbation as a tool to cope. Sorry you don’t like the definition.

    Ed Gantt: Rather, we are our behaviors.

    I reject that statement completely. I cannot see that statement fitting into my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    Ed Gantt: Any associating of meanings – whether it is the meaning of rejection, relief, fantasy, or any other genuinely psychological phenomenon – is done by persons, not bodily organs.

    Do you not believe in any form of subconscious? If you do, are we held accountable for our subconscious thoughts? If a person has control over the subconscious, isn’t it the conscious?

    Ed Gantt: If so, then clearly “willpower” or agency had something important to do with bringing about one’s compulsive desires in the first place, why shouldn’t it then play a vital role in changing such desires and bringing about new or different ones at another time?

    I completely agree that agency has some play in the development of SSA. And I completely agree that agency has a role in the change process.

    Ed Gantt: There’s a very extensive literature on sexual attraction that indicates that heterosexual desires—particularly when excessive and experienced as being compulsive (e.g., excessive viewing of heterosexual pornography, opposite sex-attraction pedophilia, compulsive heterosexual promiscuity and “sex addictions,” etc.) – are just as challenging, powerfully experienced, and all-consuming of one’s psychological, moral, emotional, and spiritual resources as you state that homosexual desires are.

    Now, perhaps I have misunderstood you here and you are not talking about the compulsive and powerful nature of the desire for sexual intimacy or intercourse, but by “sexual attractions” you mean the desire for recognition, esteem, belonging, mutual concern and social engagement. If so, that’s an odd use of the terminology. But, nonetheless, even if this is what you meant, I have a hard time believing that homosexual persons desire social engagement and recognition with other same-sex persons more than heterosexual persons desire social engagement and recognition by other opposite-sex persons.

    First of all, you use the term “homosexual persons.” Persons are not homosexual. That would imply that God created them homosexual. I can’t believe that.

    Second, At the beginning of your second paragraph there you didn’t read what I was saying. I misinterpret my desire for same-gender affiliation and affirmation as a desire for sex (with other men). THAT IS THE KEY to my argument. You had to feel like a man and feel comfortable in your masculinity before you were ready to be interested in girls. Freud’s psychosexual stages explain this point. I know a lot of members of the church hate anything with the word Freud in it. I don’t agree with everything he says, but the fact that his latency stage comes before puberty when opposite sex attractions become sexual echoes the truth. When a boy misses out on that ability to establish a concrete masculine identity, he doesn’t just go on with his life. I’m happy for you and your boys that you did get that opportunity. Lucky you. I wasn’t that blessed. When puberty did set in, I was focused on getting affirmed as a male. That crossed the wires, so to speak. (you’ll probably complain about that metaphor, too.)

    I don’t know how to make that any more clear. When I “desire” sex with other men, I don’t really want sex. I want to be accepted by other men and feel like I am masculine–that I’m one of the guys and just as good as they are. I don’t actually want anything romantic. It is just that (perhaps this wording will be acceptable to you) I have associated the desire for same-sex affiliation with a physically sexual sensation or a romantic feeling on a subconscious level to the point where I am no longer capable of distinguishing my real desires. When you want sex with a woman, you actually want sex with a woman. Desire for intimacy (sexual and emotional) with the opposite sex only occurs once an individual feels comfortable in his masculinity. Therefore this is a more basic need.

    Ed Gantt: Despite the fact that you offer up Maslow’s (highly debatable and frequently discredited) theory about the hierarchy of needs, I am unaware of Maslow himself ever stating or even implying that same-sex attractions and opposite-sex attractions arise from different root needs.

    I guess that this is the point where you most grossly misrepresented me. I only referenced Maslow to support the claim that not all needs are of equal value. I then said “In that same vein of logic. . . ” leaving Maslow behind and moving on. However, Malsow put “sex” in the bottom or physiological needs. However, he didn’t mention sexual intimacy until the social level. I understand that he understood that an identity in one sex or the other was a fundamental need.

    Ed Gantt: In addition, the argument that same-sex and opposite-sex attractions have different root needs – and the clear implication that same-sex attractions are rooted in a more basic or primary or powerful need – seems terribly self-serving and self-aggrandizing here. I’m not sure if that is how you meant it, but it comes across as though you are saying that those experiencing homosexual attraction have a tougher go of it in life simply by virtue of their having to deal with a more basic or primary need than what heterosexuals have to face.

    I’m sorry you don’t like the idea that individuals experiencing homosexual attractions have it harder than those with heterosexual attractions. But that is only unfair if you look at them as equal sexual attractions. Would you agree that someone who experiences extreme poverty and hunger has it harder than someone who eats on a regular basis? That is impossible to say. If you only compare those two circumstances and assume all other things to be equal, then yes I would say that the individual who experiences hunger due to poverty has a tougher life. This is true whether the person experiences poverty due to his own sins or through circumstances out of his control. Dealing with SSA is tougher than not having to deal with it.

    Ed Gantt: As to the concept of needs, however. . . . Once again you’re employing a deeply problematic and conceptually confused terminology – something we can one again blame on the social sciences.

    I define a need as anything a person needs to experience joy–not pleasure–joy. Or to put it differently, if not having something causes misery. That is not a problematic definition.

    Ed Gantt: I must say that I am confused by your argument thus far. On the one hand, you seem to want to say that same-sex attraction is about more than sexual intimacy, that it is really about being affirmed in one’s gender by others of the same gender and being accepted and cared about by those others. And, yet, on the other hand, you argue that for homosexuals sexual attractions are more intense and compelling than sexual attractions are for heterosexuals. Which is it then?

    I have explained this as clearly as I know how. You completely twist my words. Those two “alternatives” are not mutually exclusive. This is due to the reality of the root needs and their interpretation–or in this case, misinterpretation.

    Ed Gantt: Is the desire for social acceptance from other persons experiencing same-sex attraction the central distinguishing feature of same-sex desires, or is it the desire for sexual relationship that is the compelling distinction?

    Again you misquote me and misrepresent my arguments. The need for social acceptance is not for others who experience same-sex attractions to accept them. It is for other members of their on gender (other men–just plain old regular men)

    Now in your most recent post: Homosexual attractions are attractions that are sinful.

    I respectfully but completely and whole-heartedly disagree with you on this one. The Brethren were very clear when they said:

    “Attractions alone do not make you unworthy. If you avoid immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even if you feel such an attraction.”

    I have a strong testimony of that statement.

    So this has taken pretty much my whole evening to respond. I think I’ve covered the most important points, I hope.

  37. Kevin L: This (from my discussions with “straight” men) is not the case with heterosexual attractions. Those sexual attractions are natural and very controllable with basic behavioral and spiritual solutions.

    Phew, I don’t know where this falls on the continuum, but I’ve just got to say it was not easy or natural for me to control my heterosexual desires growing up. But yes, I guess knowing the purposes and eternal principles behind sex helped in many ways. So I think I see what you mean.

    Ed Gantt: There’s a very extensive literature on sexual attraction that indicates that heterosexual desires—particularly when excessive and experienced as being compulsive … —are just as challenging … as you state that homosexual desires are. I am not buying the notion that heterosexuals don’t or can’t experience their sexual desires in every bit as compelling and all-consuming as the way homosexuals do.

    My question is whether homosexuals can experience their sexual desires in a non-compelling, not-all-consuming way. That is, I believe it’s possible for heterosexual desires to be experienced in the right way, in a state of perfect peace and spiritual harmony, but I don’t believe that’s possible for homosexual desires. I believe both are difficult when experienced as compulsive; I believe heterosexual desires are entirely fulfilling (in all the areas you mentioned) when experienced in a spiritually healthy way. Ed, do you think homosexual desires can be experienced that way?

    (And if I’m using assumptions that make the question impossible to answer, I understand. If you don’t mind, help me frame the question in terms you would use.)

  38. Kevin,

    Thank you for taking the time to respond to my previous post in such a thorough and thoughtful way. I really do appreciate it. I feel like I understand your perspective far better than before, and (as will be apparent in what follows) while we still have many things to hammer out – and may never reach agreement on some things – I think this is real progress and real dialogue.

    Kevin L: I will grant that they are not facts, per se. They are assertions. However, they are not mine. Have you read Dave Matheson’s writings on same-sex attraction? Most of my assertions come from his work. Two of his articles can be found at http://www.genderwholeness.com.

    I am familiar with Dave’s work and, beyond what I’ve read, I’ve heard good things about it from people whose opinions I trust. I have some trouble with some parts of his conceptual/explanatory model, but there is a great deal there that I find quite valuable and refreshing.

    Kevin L: Yes!!!!! That is exactly what I am saying. Homosexual attractions are NOT really sexual attractions.

    Okay, so maybe we are much closer on this point that I originally thought. I agree with you that homosexual attractions are pathological – one of many opinions (as you point out below) that I do not share with the majority of my colleagues in the social sciences. So, to make sure that I’m getting you right, what you’re saying is that homosexual attractions are really not about sex, but that feelings of sexual desire is the misinterpretation of a different desire (i.e., the desire to be recognized and accepted by other men, and affirmed in one’s own masculinity)? I’m not sure I’ve restated that as well as I could so if not, help me get it right.

    Kevin L: You contradict yourself here by saying that a compulsive behavior is pathological, but an addiction is just a description of behavior.

    Sorry for not being clear. When I took on the issue of compulsive behavior and addiction, I was (somewhat ineptly, to be sure) trying to address the way in which the social sciences (for example) usually discuss the relationship between compulsions and addiction. Typically compulsive behaviors are deemed pathological (which I think, for the most part, they are), but then social scientists cast around for a way to explain where these compulsions come from. At that point, they typically insert the concept of addiction to fulfill some explanatory role. Thus, we are told compulsions arise from addictions . . . and we can know that someone has an addiction because they act compulsively – it’s the addiction, after all, that makes them act that way. However, the concept of addiction – as an explanatory concept anyway – doesn’t tell us much because it simply re-describes the thing we were interested in to begin with (i.e., compulsive behavior). I don’t have a problem with describing behavior as either compulsive or addictive, but as a scientist I can’t countenance explaining compulsive behavior by saying that it is caused by an addiction.

    The whole thing reminds me of a scene in Moliere’s “Candide” where Dr. Pangloss responds to a student’s question about why it is that his medications are so good at putting his patients to sleep. Dr. Pangloss answers that it is the “Virtus Dormativa” of his medicines that put his patients to sleep and the student nods appreciatively at the knowledge the good doctor has just bestowed on him. The problem is that “Virtus Dormativa” is Latin for “Sleep-inducing Power” – so, the good doctor’s explanation for his medicine’s sleep-inducing power is that it has a sleep-inducing power. All I wanted to do in my original post was draw attention to the fact that we need to be careful when using common social science forms of explanation because they are so often empty of any real explanatory power.

    Kevin L: Perhaps to you those two words are completely different. To me they are the same thing. It’s interesting that I don’t know of any professional would agree with your definition of an addiction. Just because you claim it’s true, doesn’t mean that it is.

    Oddly, I think that the two words are very similar. I also agree with you that most professional psychologists wouldn’t agree with my definition of an addiction. I take pride in my disagreements with the naturalistic and deterministic mainstream of psychology and psychotherapy. What I am trying to do is make a case that addiction is not something we have or suffer from, some abstract entity with immense causal power that makes us be a certain way or do certain things, but rather is something we do. As such, it is a descriptive term and not an explanatory one. When someone is being quiet and withdrawn and introspective, we describe that as being shy – and that’s fine. However, in psychology, we often commit the nominalistic fallacy when we seek to explain (in causal terms) why someone is being shy by asserting that they are shy because they possess a shyness trait or they have an introverted personality or they were born with shyness genes. These are empty explanations in the same way that the “Virtus Dormativa” explanation of Dr. Pangloss is.

    So, in short, I guess I want us to avoid saying that people engage in and experience sexual compulsions because they have an addiction. I’d rather we stay at the level of concentrating on how they are behaving, thinking, and feeling (i.e., compulsively) so we could make sense of it directly without reducing it down to some other hypothetical and reified causal construct that ultimately denies the reality of human agency and meaning.

    Kevin L: Sorry, but synapses are formed. To me that equals creation of a connection.

    I agree with you. Synapses are formed and connections (between neurons – not connections between meanings) are created. To say that, however, is to say something that is very different than “the brain creates” things. As I said, I didn’t mean to be an offender for a word, but maybe I’m just sensitive to any discussion of human experience and action that employs biologically reductive language in such a way that brains or genes or hormones get anthropomorphized and, thereby, endowed with all sorts of intentions and capacities that are really the proper province of real persons. It is increasingly common to hear psychologists (and laypersons) offering up explanations of why we do the things we do or think the things we think by say that “the brain decides” or “the brain interprets” or the “hypothalamus communicates to the amygdala which then tells you to be angry” and so forth. We seem to easily forget that such talk is highly metaphorical and really not explanatory at all. I just don’t want us to forget that.

    Kevin L: And again I don’t believe that many professionals would agree with your extreme dichotomy.

    True enough. As I said, I take some pride in that fact. There aren’t a lot of professional theologians that would agree with either of the two of us regarding matters of theology. That doesn’t, therefore, make us wrong.

    Kevin L: Doctrinally, what is a “person?” The soul of man is made up of the body and the spirit. The brain seems like part of the body.

    You are correct here. The brain is a part of the body and a necessary condition for behaving or experiencing emotions and thoughts. However, to note that the brain is a necessary condition for experiencing desires and thoughts is not the same thing as saying that the brain is the source or the cause of such desires and thoughts. Brains are vitally important and we must take account of them if we are to have a genuine and viable account of sexual desire (or anything else uniquely human, for that matter). I just want to be sure that we don’t fall into the naturalistic trap (so common in contemporary psychology and modern culture) of reducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to biology.

    Let me try this on as an example to maybe illustrate what it is that I’m trying to say here. The eyes are a necessary condition for sight. Without eyes you can’t see anything. However, having functioning eyes is not a sufficient explanation for sight. In other words, in order to see you have to have eyes, but eyes aren’t the cause of seeing things. There is a lot more going on in the phenomenon of sight than just the presence of fully-functioning eyes. Likewise, the brain is a necessary condition for the experience of sexual desire, but there is far more going on in sexual desire (or any other human experience, for that matter) than just brain function. I think you’d agree with me on that, but the mainstream of my discipline (psychology) and an increasingly significant portion of our larger culture would not.

    Kevin L: This claim that the brain is just like the liver or pancreas really doesn’t make any sense to me.

    I didn’t say that the brain is just like the liver or the pancreas. They are clearly different organs of the body with different functions and structures. What I said was:

    “The human brain is neither the source of meaningful action nor is it anymore capable of initiating or engaging in intentional, rational acts of its own than the pancreas or the liver.”

    I’m going to stand by that one for the reason laid out above. Brains don’t think and neither do livers. Brains don’t desire and neither does the pancreas. Now, without a brain, I’m going to have one heck of a time thinking anything or desiring anything. Likewise, without a liver I’m going to have a heck of a time thinking anything or desiring anything. Brains and livers are necessary conditions for experiencing sexual attraction, but they are not the source of it. This is a point that, while very simple, has been all but forgotten by psychology and our modern culture. I suspect, however, that now that I’m starting to understand your perspective better, you would agree with me that homosexual attraction (indeed, any attraction) isn’t really just a matter of brain function or genes or hormones and nothing else.

    Kevin L: Again I disagree with this claim. I don’t buy that you making this assertion means that it is true. I have used thought patterns and behaviors in order to cope with unpleasant emotions.

    Maybe I’m just splitting too fine a philosophical hair here, but thought patterns and behaviors are what we do, not what we use. Our thoughts and behaviors and feelings are constitutive of our identity as persons, they are not external to us like tools laying around the workshop waiting to be picked up and used. After all, “using” something is itself a behavior, so how do we use a behavior when all that means is that we’re behaving in a particular way such that we are behaving in a particular way.

    Now, having said that, let me say that I think I now understand what you might have meant – and that was not to make some utilitarian point invoking some sort of dualism. I suspect – correct me if I’m wrong – what you were really trying to communicate was a more mundane (meaning: down to earth) point about how when we experience certain feelings, we may respond to them by behaving in certain ways that have biological (brain) consequences – and that those biological consequences may have a profound effect on subsequent feelings and the ways in which we can take up those feelings behaviorally. (Wow, that took a lot more time to write out than I expected.) I think that, in a way, we’re in agreement here as well. I am convinced that brains and emotions and behaviors are all intimately connected and mutually influential. Behavior can alter brain structure and function, which can in turn provide significant constraints on the range of our behaviors and the intensities of our emotional experiences.

    On further reflection, I’m not sure that the point I was originally making is all that central to the issues at hand. It has some importance in other contexts – for example, discussions of dualism and utilitarian individualism – but not so much here. Sorry if it muddied the waters.

    Kevin L:
    Ed Gantt: Rather, we are our behaviors.

    I reject that statement completely. I cannot see that statement fitting into my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    First off, that is not the complete sentence I wrote. The sentence I wrote was:

    “Rather, we are our behaviors, our thoughts, and our feelings.”

    What I was trying to get at was that we are not dualistic beings, possessed of an immaterial mind or spirit and a material and mechanical body. We are souls, embodied spiritual beings, moral agents fundamentally constituted by and constituting meaningful relationships with others. Now, that claim requires a very lengthy defense and exposition (which has been made by many others and not just me). Such an exposition will, unfortunately, lead us to wander far afield of the current discussion so I am going to forgo it for now. Suffice it to say that I reject any account of personhood that neglects or omits our divine nature as relational beings and moral agents. Were I to rewrite the sentence you cited above, it would probably read more like:

    “Rather than meat machines, on the one hand, or hopelessly divided dual beings possessed of material bodies and immaterial spirits, on the other, we are fundamentally embodied moral agents whose behaviors, thoughts, and feelings occur in a holistic context of meaningful relationships that is entirely shot through with spiritual significance.”

    (Okay, so that sentence doesn’t do such a great job, but it’ll have to do for now.)

    Kevin L: Do you not believe in any form of subconscious? If you do, are we held accountable for our subconscious thoughts? If a person has control over the subconscious, isn’t it the conscious?

    I believe that there is much about our lives and experience that is subconscious or unconscious – that is, outside of our immediate awareness and/or very difficult to bring to full focal awareness sufficient to render an account of it in precise declarative English sentences. There may even be some things going on of which I can never become adequately conscious (e.g., the digestive events going on in my upper and lower GI tract, the neurological events occurring in my brain while I type these words, the profound ways in which my identity and perceptions of the world have been shaped by the English language and modern American culture, etc.). I don’t believe that we are fully aware of everything going on in our lives or experience. I accept that there are some meanings that we live that we can’t easily identify or don’t fully appreciate (though others can – that’s what so great about therapists and honest friends: they tell us what we’re really “up to” because they can often see and understand it when we can’t).

    I don’t, however, believe in “a subconscious” or “the unconscious” (as in Freud, for example). I think that such hypothetical constructs not only make it difficult to make adequate sense of human agency and meaning (by introducing both dualism and determinism), they also constitute very poor explanatory constructs.

    As for being able to be held accountable for our “subconscious thoughts” – I guess I’m going to have to say it depends on what exactly we’re talking about. I think you would agree that we can’t be held responsible for unconscious processes like digestion – but, of course, that isn’t what you’re asking about. I think that there is much about us that is deeply embedded in each of us and about which we are mostly unaware (cultivated dispositions, cultural traditions, habits, moral sensibilities, etc.). However, just because we are mostly unaware of these things, just because they deeply constitute our identity and give form and texture to our day-to-day experiences in profound yet subtle ways, that doesn’t mean that agency plays no role in these matters or that I don’t share in some responsibility for them. There are degrees of responsibility, just as there are degrees of consciousness. Would you agree with that, or do you find something problematic in here?

    Kevin L: I completely agree that agency has some play in the development of SSA. And I completely agree that agency has a role in the change process.

    I understand that about your perspective now – better than I did before you took the time to enter into this dialogue with me. I increasingly get the sense that we may not be that far apart in how we are looking at these things, but that I may have been tripped up by some of your terminology because in my professional context these words mean certain things and have a great deal of philosophical baggage that can be very harmful to those of us seeking to affirm human agency and the reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If I misrepresented you or misunderstood you, please be assured that it was not intentional and that I am genuinely interested in generating a fuller and mutual understanding.

    Kevin L: First of all, you use the term “homosexual persons.” Persons are not homosexual. That would imply that God created them homosexual. I can’t believe that.

    You’re right. You got me there. I completely agree with you on this point. I got sloppy and used a term (repeatedly) that I have real problems with because it is cumbersome to write “persons experiencing and struggling with homosexual desires.”

    Second, At the beginning of your second paragraph there you didn’t read what I was saying. I misinterpret my desire for same-gender affiliation and affirmation as a desire for sex (with other men). THAT IS THE KEY to my argument.

    Thank you for this clarification. It really is key to your argument and I understand it much better now than I did before. As I re-read your previous posts now in light of our discussion here, the essence of what you are driving at is making more sense to me. I’m still a stickler for precision in the language we use – even as I butcher it myself – and you’re right there are some metaphors that I just don’t like – but I can see how much of what you’ve been trying to say is not an explanation (especially not a reductive or deterministic one) of your experiences, but rather the sharing of a description of your own experiences (and others’ similar experiences).

    Kevin L: I guess that this is the point where you most grossly misrepresented me. I only referenced Maslow to support the claim that not all needs are of equal value. I then said “In that same vein of logic. . . ” leaving Maslow behind and moving on. However, Malsow put “sex” in the bottom or physiological needs. However, he didn’t mention sexual intimacy until the social level.

    I’ll have to wait until one of my graduate students returns my copy of Maslow’s book (“A Theory of Human Motivation”) to brush up on his work sufficiently – so I may be wrong here – but I don’t think that it is “sexual intimacy” that Maslow places among the Social Needs but rather just “intimacy” (of which sexual intimacy is just one of many sorts of intimacy). Be that as it may, however, my point was (and is) not that Maslow said that all needs are of equal value or anything like that (which he didn’t). My point was (and is) that conceptually speaking the language of “Needs as Motivators” (which is the language Maslow employed) is fundamentally undergird with some very problematic assumptions – especially for those of us who wish to take human agency seriously. For, if we are constituted by needs and our behavior, thoughts, and feelings are ultimately driven by these needs, then:

    (1) we are inescapably egoistic beings incapable of genuine or selfless concern for others,

    (2) we are fundamentally divorced from one another and can never share experience or be truly intimate with one another (after all, while needs may be had in common, they are not the sort of thing that one can intimately share with another because they are fundamentally individual and individuating entities), and

    (3) we are inescapably determined beings whose actions are the result of the mechanical operation of impersonal and causally efficacious forces (i.e., needs).

    In such a scheme, there is no room for meaningful agency, genuine intimacy, or moral agency. The problem I have with Maslow’s presumably humanistic hierarchy of needs is that it just is not sufficiently human!

    Now, despite my problems with Maslow’s theoretical formulations of needs, I do not deny that human beings are the sorts of beings who are capable of “needing” things. For example, I am currently “needing” to use this keyboard to type these words. I am also “needing” to view the screen in front of me to see what words I have actually written. And, in a few hours, I am going to be “needing” to eat some lunch. The difference between saying that human beings are capable of needing to do something or needing something to happen and that they have “needs” that need to be satisfied is that in the former way of talking about human beings they are seen as active, agentive beings doing meaningful things for genuinely human reasons; whereas in the latter way of talking about us human beings are seen as passive objects being pushed forward into action by mechanical (and usually biological) forces beyond our control. That’s just the philosophical baggage that comes with any attempt to explain human behavior in terms of needs.

    So, I can appreciate the existential fact of real people needing to be loved and recognized and affirmed by others, but I reject the notion that people are passive objects constituted by needs. As with a lot of the other things I’ve been carping about in this and previous posts, this matter of needs seems to have arisen because a metaphor has been taken to be a mechanism.

    Kevin L: I define a need as anything a person needs to experience joy–not pleasure–joy. Or to put it differently, if not having something causes misery. That is not a problematic definition.

    I don’t think I have a problem with the way you are defining this here. It is quite different than most psychologists would understand the concept, however. What I take you to be saying is that a need is a sort of necessary condition for something to happen. For example, in order to not be hungry, I need to eat something. That is a very different than postulating that I start searching for food to eat because I am motivated into action by a hunger need. It may seem like I’m just splitting hairs here, but the difference is very important – for the reasons I laid out above. The way you define need here is much closer to the way I would think of it than the way Maslow and others in psychology think of it. We may not be that far apart on some things, after all.

    Kevin L: Now in your most recent post: Homosexual attractions are attractions that are sinful.

    I respectfully but completely and whole-heartedly disagree with you on this one. The Brethren were very clear when they said:

    “Attractions alone do not make you unworthy. If you avoid immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even if you feel such an attraction.”

    I think what we have here is an instance of us understanding the same terms in very different ways so that we end up talking past one another and unintentionally misunderstanding one another. It much clearer to me now that by “homosexual attractions” you do not necessarily mean just the “desire for sexual intercourse with another male.” However, that was exactly what I was taking the term to mean. I wholeheartedly agree with the quotation you supply above. The key is the avoidance of “immoral thoughts and actions” – which is the same standard for heterosexual attractions. However, the confusion resulted from my taking the phrase “homosexual attraction” to mean “the immoral and inappropriate desire for sexual relations with someone of the same sex” which was not how you were using or understanding the phrase. I think your use of the term reflects a potentially more fruitful and broader conception, but that mine reflects the more common (and perhaps less nuanced and sophisticated) conception found more generally in the discipline of psychology and our larger culture.

    I wonder, however, if the terminology itself doesn’t present some problems to communication and understanding, such that we get tripped up by the imprecision and vagaries of language.

    I’m not sure where to go with this, so maybe you can help me out. It seems like the very word “homosexual” in the term “homosexual attraction” lends itself to understanding the issues here primarily in terms of sexual desires, rather than in a broader context of relational meaning and the desire to be cared for and affirmed by others of the same-sex. How, for example, is the desire to be cared for and affirmed by others of the same-sex not just a desire for friendship and the sort of relational intimacy that deep (or even not so deep) friendships with others of the same-sex can offer? If it’s affiliation, affirmation, companionship, and social and emotional intimacy that is fundamentally desired – and which gets confused with sexual desire – then why are we identifying it as “homosexual attraction” given the heavily sexualized connotations of that term? Like I said, I’m not sure where to go with this and I would appreciate any clarifying feedback you might have since there may be some very important conceptual distinctions that need to be made in order to achieve more clarity in discussions of these matters.

    Kevin L: So this has taken pretty much my whole evening to respond. I think I’ve covered the most important points, I hope.

    Been there, done that! 🙂 This response – and the previous ones – took up pretty large chunks of my time as well. However, I really do appreciate that you took the time to keep “talking” with me, clarifying your meaning, and exploring the issues at hand. I feel like it has been a very productive exchange so far – at least for me. And I hope it proves to be of some worth to others reading the blog.

  39. Nathan: My question is whether homosexuals can experience their sexual desires in a non-compelling, not-all-consuming way. That is, I believe it’s possible for heterosexual desires to be experienced in the right way, in a state of perfect peace and spiritual harmony, but I don’t believe that’s possible for homosexual desires. I believe both are difficult when experienced as compulsive; I believe heterosexual desires are entirely fulfilling (in all the areas you mentioned) when experienced in a spiritually healthy way. Ed, do you think homosexual desires can be experienced that way?

    Nathan, your question here picks up where one of my last comments to Kevin leaves off – and I’m not sure I have a firm answer. Much depends on what we take the term “homosexual attraction” to mean. What’s the phenomenon to which it refers? If by homosexual attraction we mean “the immoral and inappropriate desire for sexual relations with someone of the same sex,” then the answer is no. Homosexual desires – by definition – couldn’t be experienced in a spiritually healthy way. However, Kevin talks about homosexual attraction as a desire – more fundamental than a desire for sexual intercourse – as a desire for affiliation, recognition, companionship and affirmation of one’s gender by others of the same gender. In that sense, I think such desires could be experienced in a non-compelling, not-all-consuming way (and often are).

    However, as I posed the question to Kevin, I’m left wondering what the real distinction is between the concept of homosexual attraction as a desire for companionship, affirmation, and regard by others of the same sex and the concept of meaningful friendship. On the one hand, it seems that a desire for sexual relationship is central to the concept of homosexual attraction, at least as I’ve encountered it in the professional literature of psychology and in the discourse of our larger culture. But, on the other hand, I think Kevin is onto something when he notes that homosexual attraction isn’t necessarily or even fundamentally about sexual relations because desires for affirmation and acceptance get misunderstood to be desires for sexual relations.

    So, while I’m left with the sense that homosexual attraction doesn’t have to refer solely to what it is usually meant to refer (i.e., the desire for same-sex sex), I’m also left with a question about how we might meaningfully distinguish homosexual attraction as the desire for social and emotional intimacy with members of one’s same sex from the desire for meaningful friendship.

    Help me out here. I’d like to think this through better.

  40. Kevin L: I have associated the desire for same-sex affiliation with a physically sexual sensation or a romantic feeling on a subconscious level to the point where I am no longer capable of distinguishing my real desires.

    Ed Gantt: If it’s affiliation, affirmation, companionship, and social and emotional intimacy that is fundamentally desired—and which gets confused with sexual desire—then why are we identifying it as “homosexual attraction” given the heavily sexualized connotations of that term?

    Yes, this question has repeatedly occurred to me during this conversation. I think Kevin describes the condition very well—a mixing-up of desires. A desire is hard enough to label as it is, but a collection of confused desires is even trickier. 🙂

    I strongly hesitate to use the term “homosexual attraction” or “homosexual desires” to mean “desires for sex with men, as well as the other underlying/associated desires that lead to it.” I think Kevin’s right that we should always talk about desire-for-same-gender-sex in the context of those other appropriate desires to clarify its nature, but the term “homosexual” only seems useful and clear if we confine its use to sexual things, not to fraternal, amicable, or platonic things. It’s true that a shelf by nature is integrally connected to a wall, but when I say, “Paint the shelves,” I don’t want the guy to paint the wall as well. That’s actually what my response would be to Daniel’s earlier comment:

    Daniel: It’s not just about sex. … If it were just about sexual attraction, then why would men marry each other when they are old and completely unattractive? Sexuality—homosexuality—is about love.

    If you’re talking about aspects of a relationship other than sexual, then you’re not talking about homosexuality (at least, the way I define it, and the only useful way I believe it can be defined).

    I have nieces and nephews whom I love intensely, but it is not pedophilia—because sexual desire it not an aspect of my love for them. My friend shares intense love, tender moments, and adamant loyalty with his dachshund, but it is not bestiality—because sexual desire it not an aspect of his love for the dog. I imagine that pedophilia frequently includes genuinely good desires and feelings, but what makes it pedophilia is the sexual aspect mixed into those appropriate desires. If we say pedophilia isn’t just about sex, it’s fundamentally about love, I think that muddies the water.

    I think we’re clearest and safest when we say something like, “homosexual desire is integrally linked to other desires,” rather than, “homosexuality is any form of love between men.” Because by that latter definition, I have homosexual desires, or have experienced aspects of homosexuality.

  41. Ed,

    I get the sense that for the most part we really do agree on most things. It seems that our language is where the “conflicts” arise. I really am glad that we continued this conversation.

    Ed Gantt: So, to make sure that I’m getting you right, what you’re saying is that homosexual attractions are really not about sex, but that feelings of sexual desire is the misinterpretation of a different desire (i.e., the desire to be recognized and accepted by other men, and affirmed in one’s own masculinity)?

    Very well put. I think it is important to note (and I feel like you agree) that the misrepresentation is not a conscious one. It happens on a level approaching unconscious. That interpretation (I think I like that word a little better) is also formed over many years and strongly reinforced by the pleasure or relief that can be found in fantasies/thoughts. Eventually, it becomes next to impossible for me to feel that need for affirmation and acceptance without interpreting that feeling as a desire for same-sex sexual/romantic intimacy. I wrote a lot about this on my blog when I realized that ultimately in order to be free from that deeply ingrained misinterpretation I had to allow the Savior to break the chains of sin (even though it was only the sin of thoughts and self-gratification). This was more than being forgiven, I needed him to restore the correct understanding to me that I had given away through sin.

    As far as compulsion and addiction go, I can understand your problems with the popular use of the words. I think that an addiction is a behavior that has become compulsive–which to some degree (at least as far as I understand the Prophets on this one) means that through previous acts of agency, an individual has given up his agency to the point where he can no longer simply choose not to do the behavior. At this time the use of agency to correct the problem is going to require a lot of work in changing one’s thought patterns, trying to view the world and one’s circumstances in a new way (repenting), and relying on the power of the atonement to make whole again.

    I don’t get the feeling that we see things all that differently.

    I think I get what you are saying about the brain. If I understand you correctly, I agree. I used the word “brain” to help me distinguish between my conscious thoughts and my sub- or unconscious thoughts.

    As far as that goes, I think that we do agree that if I choose to interpret anything (personal experience, cultural perceptions, etc.) or indulge in unrighteous thoughts, and as a result of that choice affect my subconscious or unconscious thoughts then I am accountable for that choice. I don’t know how accountable we are for subsequent thoughts and resulting behaviors. Whatever the case, I trust in the Lord and the power of the Atonement to heal us. By the way I also reject Freud’s model of the sub and unconscious.

    I think that you are ultimately right about the wording when it comes to coping. I appreciate that you made the effort to understand where I was coming from and what I meant.

    When we experience certain feelings, we may respond to them by behaving in certain ways that have biological (brain) consequences—and that those biological consequences may have a profound effect on subsequent feelings and the ways in which we can take up those feelings behaviorally.

    I really liked your analysis of what I meant. It made it more clear to me. I was saying, “Yes!” That is what I believe. I’d just never thought of it that way.

    I liked your re-written sentence about behaviors:

    “Rather than meat machines, on the one hand, or hopelessly divided dual beings possessed of material bodies and immaterial spirits on the other, we are fundamentally embodied moral agents whose behaviors, thoughts, and feelings occur in a holistic context of meaningful relationships that is entirely shot through with spiritual significance.”

    I think this takes into account (and you can correct me if you don’t agree with this) the fact that the unconscious plays into our behaviors. Only God can correctly judge the interplay of agency and all other mortal conditions including our biological make-up, personality, external circumstances, past experiences, and much more. Only God can assign a level of accountability to any act.

    This is what I think it means to respond with Christ-like charity. I have to admit that I don’t understand to what level an individual is accountable for his behavior, i.e., how much of it is pure rebellion against God and how much of it is anything else like upbringing, mental health, etc. This DOES NOT mean that I have to condone or accept the behavior. Behavior (including thoughts) can be classified as sin and sin is always wrong. However, there are also things for me that would be a sin, that would be perfectly acceptable for you. As we grow closer to God, He blesses us with more commandments. Through the Spirit He tells each of us what we are to do in a given situation. I’m not claiming that engaging in sexual activity with anyone other than a legally and lawfully wedded spouse is acceptable in any situation. I just know that it is part of my responsibility not to judge others.

    Again I don’t think that means I have to believe someone who says, “Well, gay sex is okay for me, God told me so.” It means that it is my responsibility to help him come closer to Christ and let the Lord work on his heart. I think this has a lot to do with compulsive behaviors (which I would say are the same thing as addictions.) Each episode of, say, looking at pornography may not be of equal severity. An individual will be held accountable for those choices that led him into the cycle of compulsive behaviors, and he will also be held accountable for making choices that will enable him to break free from that behavior. But I firmly believe that only the Lord can accurately judge the accountability an individual has. This is not to say that anyone is out of control or has no choice but to sin. However, I do not buy that all sin (even the very same outward act) is of equal value or accountability in the eyes of the Lord.

    Perhaps most importantly, the solution to sin (which actually changes our natures) of any degree of accountability is the Atonement. No matter what the source of our behavior is—personal agency, or other circumstances of mortality—the Atonement can fix that, too.

    Does this fit into what you are talking about regarding our behavior and agency?

    One other thought I’d like to interject here. It pertains to agency but also to whether sexual attractions are a sin or not.

    I also believe that to an extent we need to know the consequences of our actions to be fully responsible for those consequences. A slightly extreme example that I think proves the point. Say I were to tell you to jump on one foot while patting your head and rubbing your stomach. Whether you choose to do so or not is up to you. You can choose to obey or to think I’ve got a few screws loose and ignore me. If you ignore me and I pull out a gun and shoot your son in the head, you would be furious with me. It would make no sense for me to argue, “It’s your fault. I told you what to do and you disobeyed me. You are responsible for his death.” It would be different if I were to tell you to jump, etc. and then pull out the gun and inform you that if you didn’t comply I was going to shoot your son. If you then looked at me and said that my demands were just too absurd or too difficult, and I shot your son, you actually would be responsible for your son’s death.

    The same sort of problem exist when a young man is confronted with the need to be affirmed and accepted by others of his own gender. He is told not to have sexual thoughts (this is to say nothing of the fact that most boys are told not to think about girls inappropriately and boys are never mentioned—although I do grant that the light of Christ and Holy Ghost will help a boy know that even this is not appropriate.) But he chooses to anyway. Yes, I believe that he is accountable for having those thoughts. But those thoughts eventually become a compulsive habit and lead to feelings of sexual attraction to other boys. Are those feelings a result of previous sin? Yeah, I think they are. Are they a sin in and of themselves? I don’t buy into that train of thought.

    This also comes down to an important clarification of how we define any sexual attraction. I don’t define sexual attraction to a male or female differently. To me, sexual attraction is NOT “desire to engage in sexual activity with another.” It is a recognition that the natural man in us would enjoy sexual activity with that individual. It doesn’t mean that I actually want to have sex with that individual. That would be a sin. It simply means that I could reasonably enjoy it—but I can’t go so far as to entertain inappropriate thoughts. To me that is sexual attraction.

    Is it a sin for a man to think that _____________ (insert celebrity name here) is attractive—that she has pleasing facial features or that her body is well-shaped—in essence to recognize that the natural man inside him would enjoy being with her sexually? I don’t believe so. I think it does cross into the border of sin when he begins to desire or want to have sex with her. That is not a serious sexual sin. Thinking about or fantasizing about sex with her would be a sin. But desires are in a different realm even than sin. I think that this is the same thing as a boy experiencing a burst of anger. Is it a sin to have feelings of anger or a desire to have something that you can’t afford? I don’t believe that. I do believe that it is possible to improve upon our desires until our natures are perfected. However, a young boy shouldn’t feel guilty that he has a feeling of sexual attraction toward a girl. Even if he wants to have sex with her. If he doesn’t entertain impure thoughts and doesn’t have sex with her, I can’t believe that he is a sinner because he has a desire for sex, even though that sex would be out of wedlock = fornication = sin.

    I don’t believe there is any difference in that scenario and one in which the boy experiences a sexual attraction to another male.

    The whole quote is actually:

    Many people with same-gender attractions have strong testimonies of the gospel and, therefore, do not act on those attractions. Attractions alone do not make you unworthy. If you avoid immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even if you feel such an attraction. The First Presidency stated, “There is a distinction between immoral thoughts and feelings and participating in either immoral heterosexual or any homosexual behavior” (letter, Nov. 14, 1991). This principle applies to all of God’s children, for He has declared that all sexual relations outside of marriage are unacceptable. Everyone has temptations, but one of the purposes of mortality is to learn to overcome them. President David O. McKay beautifully defined spirituality as “the consciousness of victory over self” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1969, 8). These temptations, which are generally uninvited, may be powerful, but they are never so strong as to deprive us of our freedom of choice. Elder Dallin H. Oaks said, “All of us have some feelings we did not choose, but the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us that we still have the power to resist and reform our feelings (as needed) and to assure that they do not lead us to entertain inappropriate thoughts or to engage in sinful behavior” (“Same-Gender Attraction,” Ensign, Oct. 1995, 9). Improper thoughts diminish if you replace them immediately with uplifting, constructive thoughts.

    So, I think that while I do strongly believe that the basis for same-sex attraction is the need for same-gender affirmation and affiliation. However, when the “wires get crossed” and I learn to misinterpret that need as a desire for sexual intimacy I actually do experience that need as a desire for sexual intimacy. Just because it is a misinterpretation doesn’t mean that I don’t experience it as real.

    I think that it is very important to recognize as Daniel said it isn’t always about sex. The need for same-gender affirmation and affiliation can be misinterpreted as a desire for romantic intimacy as well. Even without sex, this is categorically different from the kind of intimacy shared by two close friends of the same-sex. I believe that the same-sex romantic attractions are experienced in a way that is just as real as, possibly even more powerful than, same-sex sexual attractions. I often lump the two together when I refer to same-sex attraction, because they are both misinterpretations of the real core need. I like the term same-sex attraction rather than homosexual attraction. Homosexual has way too much political, social, and cultural baggage with it.

    Aurthur Goldberg, the founder of JONAH, an organization for Jewish men who experience SSA, said that he even dislikes the term same-sex attraction. He says that all men have same-sex attraction. All men have a need and desire to associate and be friends with other men. Men are attracted to other men. He says he believes it ought to be Same-Sex Sexualized (and I would add Romanticized) Attraction, but then instead of SSA you get SSS(R)A which is really a mouthful. So I don’t know the answer to how we can create a truly accurate vocabulary without using really long definitions. I get the sense that (at least in circles where “homosexuality” is discussed as “Unwanted Same-Sex Attraction) the term SSA is currently used to portray feeling of attraction that are experienced as a sexual or romantic attraction to members of the same gender whether those feelings have a non-sexual root or not.

    I want to continue our discussion of needs, etc. but I’ve gotta go for date night, so I’ll write that as a separate post tomorrow.

  42. Kevin L:… through previous acts of agency, an individual has given up his agency to the point where he can no longer simply choose not to do the behavior.

    That is a great description.

    All men have same-sex attraction. All men have a need and desire to associate and be friends with other men. Men are attracted to other men. He says he believes it ought to be [called instead] Same-Sex Sexualized (and I would add Romanticized) Attraction.

    And that one, too.

    Even without sex, this is categorically different from the kind of intimacy shared by two close friends of the same-sex. I believe that the same-sex romantic attractions are experienced in a way that is just as real as, possibly even more powerful than, same-sex sexual attractions.

    That idea has me curious. I’m delaying my conclusions about it for now so I can learn more about what you mean. But I’ll say this much: if there are any unique aspects of same-sex romantic attractions, I don’t think they are good things or desirable things, mainly because a person has to enter into the tangle of a sin-darkened mind in order to experience it. In other words, I don’t think a heterosexual is missing out on anything. I say that because, as Kevin said earlier, “Sin is always wrong,” so Heavenly Father wouldn’t require us to sin in order to experience some genuinely good thing.

  43. Kevin L: I believe that the same-sex romantic attractions are experienced in a way that is just as real as, possibly even more powerful than, same-sex sexual attractions.

    I don’t understand the distinction you’re making. What distinguishes “same-sex romantic attractions” from “same-sex sexual attractions?”

  44. Jelaire and Nathan,

    I didn’t have the time to explain what I meant about same-sex romantic attractions as well as I would like. I think this is what Daniel is talking about when he says that 80 year old men get married even when they are clearly too old to have sex together. I believe that the love they have for each other is a good example of same-sex romantic attraction. It includes the desire to be with another person, to hold hands with them, to cuddle, to sleep next to, and share life with that person. I think that there are core elements of that relationship that are good. For example two male friends can enjoy spending time with each other and sharing many intimate aspects of their lives with each other. I also think that physical contact between men is very important. Nowhere near “cuddling” but a good hug (one that just might last longer than 1.25 seconds), a pat on the back, etc. I think our society is contributing to the development of SSA by making any form of emotional or physical relationship between two men inappropriate or “gay.” Those are things that all men need to one degree or another. But I also think that it is possible for the desire for that sort of relationship to become distorted to the point where one perceives that core need as a desire for a romantic relationship similar to what a dating opposite-sex couple would have. I agree with Nathan that a same-sex romantic attraction is every bit as . . . (I’m really not sure what word to use here, maybe distorted, or misinterpreted) as a same-sex sexual attraction. I think that the root (or real) desire is for friendship, love, and acceptance from others of the same sex.

    I don’t think they are good things or desirable things, mainly because a person has to enter into the tangle of a sin-darkened mind in order to experience it.

    No, I would not say that any aspect of same-sex romantic attractions are desirable. However, I do believe that a true love between spiritual bothers is not only appropriate and good, it is very important for us to develop. I think of the number of times the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve express their love for one another. I think of how often we are counseled to foster the feeling of brotherhood in our quorums. This kind of brotherly love between men is an eternal part of God’s plan.

    I would add a little bit of a side note that I feel this is where the Church as an organization is not doing all that it could to help prevent the development of same-sex attraction (SSS/RA). It is far to common for a young man to feel like he doesn’t belong ion his quorum. He might get picked or ignored all week at school and then Sunday it’s the exact same thing. If each priesthood holder would follow the counsel to care for his brothers, that young man (or Older Man, too!) might start to experience the love and acceptance that he so desperately craves. I think that this is much more than a smile and a handshake and a cursory “Good morning, Brother So-and-so.” It extends beyond the three-hour block.

    I would be very careful about the using language like “the tangle of a sin-darkened mind.” There are many individuals who experience same-sex attractions(sexual and/or romantic) who are as worthy and clean and pure as any “heterosexual” person. I think that while for many some degree of sin does have some role in the development of same-sex attractions, this is hardly the primary source of those attractions. While hard for some “heterosexual” individuals to understand or accept, it is very possible that these attractions are primarily “no-fault” mortal trials, as unchosen as developing cancer or diabetes. The official status of the church is that the attractions are not sinful. It is not sinful for a “heterosexual” man might find another woman attractive. I think we are lying when we say that “I’m not attracted to anyone but you, sweetheart.” One of the most healthy things my wife and I do is to almost always express when we are attracted to another individual. Rather than dwelling on it in my mind, once I express it, it’s gone. (Interestingly enough, this actually brings the sexual energy into the relationship!)

    Final note: I have tried to use quotes when refering to heterosexual or homosexual because I want to make a distinction that I do not buy into all of the societal baggage associated with those terms. However I also think that always using phrases like “individuals who experience same-sex sexualized/romanticized attractions” and “individuals who do not experience same-sex sexualized or romanticized attractions” is painfully tedious to type and confusing to read.

  45. Kevin L: I would be very careful about the using language like “the tangle of a sin-darkened mind.” There are many individuals who experience same-sex attractions (sexual and/or romantic) who are as worthy and clean and pure as any “heterosexual” person.

    Sorry, I don’t mean necessarily personal, guilty actions per se. Since we’re all born into a sinful world, I think a lot of humankind’s problems come from sin in that way. Like depression—the mind is darkened, vulnerable from living in a sinful, fallen world.

    Ditto on the use of quotes—clarifies while avoiding cumbersome phrases. On a related note, check out this interesting suggestion for a new term.

  46. I LOVE the term Delta!

    Gotcha on your use of the term sin. I tend to think of sin as a choice in which agency (with knowledge of right or wrong including Light of Christ) has some role. I tend to use the term transgression for any act which violates eternal laws. I guess I tend to just use “mortal,” “fallen,” or “mortality” to reference any condition brought about without personal, guilty actions–and I think this includes the actions, even sins of others.

    I really think we do see eye to eye on this, it’s just a terminology difference. I think some people would take the word sin to imply personal guilt. (I know many men were told by well meaning, but ignorant local church leaders that they had brought same-sex attractions upon themselves–that it was all their fault. I think it’s very sad, but also understandable that many of those men gave up, convinced that they just didn’t have what it takes to be church members.) Overall, too many young people who experience same-sex attractions feel shame (never a good thing) for them, and too few understand that they need more than prayer ans scripture study and fasting to overcome them. That is something that we (as a church culture on the whole) are not doing very well at.

  47. A person’s actions are not always culpable sin. For example, a 16-y-o girl who is date-raped or abused might respond by hating and acting out in ways that might look sinful. But is she willfully sinning? Maybe not. Maybe the responsibility for her sins remain with her abuser instead of with her. People are damaged in all sorts of ways while growing up and even while adults — and this damage sometimes manifests itself in the thoughts and actions of the victims. Just as the body can be damaged by life’s experiences, so can the spirit and the inner man. In such a case, other men might see that person’s actions as sinful, but at the final day God might not.

    Thus, we do not judge others. We leave it to God to call other men sinful — to us, they are our brothers.

    The grace of Jesus Christ is sufficient for all of us — each of us — and he will make up for every failing and hold each of us accountable according to his mercy and justice rather than our own imperfect (and often narrow) understandings of right and wrong.

    It might be at the final day that some men who suffer from same sex attraction but who trust in Jesus Christ will have a higher place than some heterosexual men who during their mortal lives judged their brothers and glorified in their own heterosexuality. Imagine re-reading Luke 18:10-14 as follows:

    “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a [heterosexual Latter-day Saint], and the other a [Latter-day Saint facing same sex attraction]. The [first man] stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this [second man]. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the [second man], standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

    Our calling is to love and strengthen our brothers, not to judge them as sinful. What one man (who sees imperfectly, with darkened vision) calls a sin in his brother might not be seen as a culpable sin in the eyes of our God (who sees perfectly and forgives and punishes perfectly).

    I appreciate Kevin L’s insightful and carefully nuanced offerings here. His offerings and the resulting dialogue will help me as I try to better serve my brothers in the Church.

  48. Honestly, after having followed this very interesting conversation for quite a while, I think you all are seriously trying to justify, reconcile, and fit homosexuality into the Restored Gospel using modern social science techniques and convoluted theories.

    With all due respect, you are making it much more complicated than it is. As a gay Latter-day Saint living the law of celibacy, MY EXPERIENCE is much more simple. Homosexuality is not an aberration nor a pathological issue. It is eternal, constant, consistent, natural and spiritual. Just the same as heterosexuality.

    The only way we will find out how it fits into the Restored Gospel is when the Lord’s Prophet asks Him where it fits. All we are doing with our intellectual posturing is trying to justify our condemnation of homosexuality. Such a path was tread before with our treatment of our black brethren and the priesthood. Be careful of trying to justify something that has not been fully explained by the Lord or clarified by the scriptures (Matthew 19:12). Remember that Elder McConkie got mud on his face when he did that and had to retract everything he said before.

    I have no respect for those who try to play with my mind, discount my experiences, or tell me my exaltation requires me to force myself into a heterosexual box. Once the Prophet asks the Lord where homosexuality fits into the plan of salvation, we shall be in a much better position to deal with it from a moral agency perspective.

    Just my thoughts.

  49. Micheal,

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I want to make it clear that I do honor you experiences. I honor your commitment to live the Gospel.

    I think it is important to note that just as you have felt that homosexuality is a “eternal, constant, consistent, natural and spiritual” part of your being, many men with same-sex attraction feel that those feelings are mortal and inconsistent with their eternal nature and purpose. I am NOT trying to say who is wrong and who is right. However, it would not seem just to discount our experiences either. I have successfully reduced my same-sex attractions. I am happily married. I have taken the Prophet’s words in the Proclamation on the Family and God Loveth His Children and tried to apply them to my life. As I have done so it has been important for me to understand where my feelings of same-sex attraction came from and how they developed. I feel a strong spiritual confirmation that what I am doing is right for ME. I am not trying to say what is right for everyone, but those are MY EXPERIENCES.

    Thank you for sharing your perspective of homosexuality. I apologize if my writings have made you feel like I was discounting you personal experiences or playing with your mind. That was not my intent. I was simply trying to explain what my experiences had been.

    Kevin

  50. Jeff,

    You have said a few times during this series that a view that homosexuality can be changed is a hopeful one. I disagree that this is a hopeful view unless you can illustrate that it can change, because if it can not how hopeful or uplifting is it to the homosexual that spends his life trying to change it and finds it impossible. May this be why three times the gay men in the church commit suicide that strait men in the church. Is because it is difficult to maintain any hope in the face of the fact that no matter what they do to try and change who they are, they are unable too.

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