Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz points out, “there is a difference between boys and girls.” Really? The Senator’s pronouncement denies or ignores significant and troubling truths about human sexuality.
Born with a vagina or penis and testicles defines us as biologically male or female. During puberty most of us discover a sexual attraction toward individuals of the opposite sex. For some however, unknown, perhaps unknowable, vagaries of genes and environment focus emergent sexual interest on folks of the same sex, both sexes, and other sexual aberrations. Some discover themselves in a physically male or female body but thinking and feeling like the opposite sex. Others, without regard to sexual attraction, feel drawn to dress as the opposite sex. Throughout human history, individuals exhibiting “abnormal” sexual proclivities have been reviled, persecuted, and killed.
I believe human sexual feelings are not a choice. We are born with them. I challenge Senator Cruz or anyone to argue that at age twelve or so a not insignificant number of humans decided, “I’ll be queer, bisexual, transgender, or transvestite.” No one makes that deliberate decision!
Why are some of us born with abnormal sexual predilections? Christians and Jews view God as the source of everything. Is this His doing? Or, does ol’ Satan sometimes trick the Big Guy?
Whatever the reason, some of us have aberrant sexual feelings or identities. They are wrong. Fix them!
A pubescent male’s initiating to adult sex occurred waking from a wet dream of copulating with a man! Born and raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the youngster launched into a battle between homosexual feeling and transgressions and living among a stridently anti-LGSBTQ church and culture. When variant sexual orientation grew impossible to ignore, The Church initiated groups aimed at turning gay men straight. The program emphasized men acting like men, playing basketball, baseball, football, working out at the gym, bulking up, and all the while, “Pray the gay away.” After two decades of emotional and mental Hell, the young man finally trusted his wisdom and feelings and broke from the Church.
“Pray the gay away” and any remedy for what are, I believe, congenital givens are like praying, willing, tricking, or manipulating brown eyes to become blue or red hair to turn black. Ain’t gonna happen! Ever!
Ted Cruz was high school valedictorian and cum laude from Princeton. He is a very smart man. But the Senator seems to ignore or deny basic truths about human sexuality. Why? For the answer, which explains much Conservative thinking, I am indebted to Saul Bellow, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is great.”
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