Perhaps the reason why I’m gay is that I wasn’t molested as a child. I’m not suggesting, of course, that not being molested automatically causes homosexuality – it very clearly doesn’t – but it could be the cause, or at least an important factor, in some instances. Perhaps a particularly nasty incident of molestation by an adult male might have inoculated me against any potential same-sex attraction and caused me to develop other-sex attraction. Who knows? After all, we have to bear in mind that the causes of sexual orientation are, surely, very complex and poorly understood, and that different people can respond differently to the same things. This being so, how can I rule out the possibility that the absence of molestation was a relevant factor in my case?

Naturally, I don’t believe the above for one moment, but there’s always the possibility that I could be wrong. I mean to say, you can never be quite sure, can you?

No matter what hypothesis you come up with, you can nearly always find someone to whom it seems to apply and then triumphantly say, “There you are. That proves it!” In the eighteenth century a book appeared entitled Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy [i.e. homosexuality – the word hadn’t then been invented] in England. It claimed that homosexuality was caused by drinking tea and listening to Italian opera. As a friend said to me, “Well, it certainly did the trick in your case, didn’t it?”

Frankly, Patrick, I wouldn’t believe the LWO organizers if they told me they had oatmeal for breakfast. Love Won Out has a consistent pattern of deliberate deception and continues to illustrate that politics is a far greater concern for them than are the concerns or lives of any actual living breathing ex-gay struggler.

I’m very sorry to learn about your experience. Specifically of your abuse, and secondarily of the bind it puts you in, where you feel you have to justify yourself. I’m glad that you have come forward to share your experience.

Your experiences are profoundly important — far more important when compared to “conforming to stereotype.” I cannot imagine anything more demeaning to you (other than the abuse itself) than when others use stereotypes to make you feel that you are letting LGBT’s down with your own very real experience. You can never let anyone down — not that way anyway. Please, never be afraid of that. We all conform to some stereotype or another. When there are so many stereotypes to choose from, it’s bound to happen to all of us.

This is such a politics-driven organization.

As best I am aware, no study has yet shown that there is a correlation – or even an increased level of incidence – between sexual orientation and childhood molestation.

It would not surprise me if there was some increase for the reasons I stated above, but those who make this claim do so out of ignorance and limited perspective.

I had been thinking about this due to an earlier post and wondered if there was a correlation between being gay and having been molested, it might be due to the fact that many children who later identify as gay are perceived as different and therefore more likely to be targeted by sexual predators due to those differences. It is an interesting idea. I wish that those who use these statistics would remember that correlation does not imply a cause and effect relationship. Like it has all ready been stated, not everyone who was molested ends up gay, and not all gay men and women were molested.