I have a friend whom I haven’t now seen for years, since he moved away to another part of the country, although we’re still very occasionally in touch by e-mail and telephone, and we still exchange Christmas cards.

He is homosexual (as I am). I say “homosexual” because “gay” would imply that he had a positive attitude to his sexual orientation – and at the time that he was living near me he certainly hadn’t. At university, back in the late ’60s / early ’70s, he had minored in psychology, and he had absorbed all the “classic” theories about homosexuality. He regarded his homosexuality as a developmental aberration, for which he blamed his parents, and his father in particular.

I once asked him exactly why he thought that his parents had caused his homosexuality, but he could give no specific explanation, except that he did once, when pressed, relate to me an incident which occurred when he was quite a young boy: he and his brother had been unjustly (i.e. mistakenly) and harshly punished by their father for something for which they were not in fact responsible. He could not explain logically how that incident had caused (or even partially caused) his homosexuality, nor could he explain why it had not had a similar effect on his brother. Clearly he had swallowed the “classic” theories that he had been taught as if they were infallible dogmas, and dogma overrides reason.

He was by then living several hundred miles away from his parents, and it was obvious to me that he had built a wall between himself and them. He often went back to the part of the country where they lived, but he avoided going to see them. He once told me that he felt that life would be easier for him if his parents were “out of the way”, and he also wanted to make sure that they didn’t know that he was “queer”, as he put it. He even had his mother one evening in tears on the telephone saying, “We’re getting old now. Please come and see us!” They did once come down to see him and he invited me to meet them for a drink and a meal. Frankly, I was appalled at the way that he spoke to his parents: not rudely, but with a dreadful, cold politeness of the sort that one might display towards rather tiresome strangers. His parents seemed to find it easier to talk to me, whom they had never met before, than to him. That invisible wall that he had built was going to stay in place! I later suggested to him that life might be better for both him and them if he came out to them. I said, “Even if they are absolutely horrified they’ll get over it eventually, but if they think that you don’t love them they’ll never get over that.” He said, “I don’t want them to have to think of me as their queer son, thank you very much.”

By the time that he had begun to re-think his attitudes his mother was already dead, and his father was on the way out.

So why am I telling you all this, quo III? I know nothing at all about you, and what I’m saying may not be relevant to your situation at all. But just in case it is – and even if it isn’t, it may be relevant to someone else who reads this blog – here’s what I’d like to say:

Are your parents still alive? I hope they are. If so, do they know about your sexual orientation? If not, then for God’s sake tell them. And don’t blame them for it, because there’s nothing to blame anyone or anything for. Let go of all the superannuated theories about the “cause(s)” of homosexuality. Don’t let enlightenment come too late, as it did for my friend.

He’s right. You’re the one who pushed the topic in this direction. You’re normally better than this. This is beneath you.

What about the millions of men who’ve had bad relationships with thier fathers and still “turn out” straight?

I think you need to start listening to real people and their real experiences instead of repeating ad nauseum something you read from discredited “experts” who also refuse to listen to real people and their real experiences.

It’s funny. No matter how many people stand up and say “I did not have a poor relationship with my father”, some folks will choose to believe that lie. It’s what they WANT to believe and they care far less about truth, facts, or honesty than they do about repeating their chosen dogma.

Nonetheless, here goes:

I did not have a poor relationship with my father.

Part of what you describe as “the classics” is a perfectly accurate view of homosexuality. Having a “poor relationship” with one’s father is certainly a factor in the development of homosexuality.