“Luca was gay”(in Italy Luca is a male name) is the title of a song that will compete at the next Italian musical festival of Sanremo in few days.
Unluckily the regulation of the competition forbids circulating lyrics and music of the songs before the show begins, but this time the title and some previous public declarations of the singer make it easy to guess what this song is about.
Povia, which is the name of this artist, released during an interview that “one is not born a gay, but becomes gay depending on the friends he/she has. I also had a homosexual phase, but I overcame it”.
Activists defending gay rights believe the song will spread in the country a distorted perception of homosexuality as a disease and a perversion, and the president of the Arcigay association threatened to boycott the show. But the view that homosexuality is a disease is widespread.
The Lot Group consists of (ex)homosexual people who “overcame unwanted homosexual tendencies and support who wants to do the same” The president of the Lot Group (a man who happens to be named Luca Di Tolve) enjoys telling how, with the help of the reparative therapies of Doctor Joseph Nicolosi, he found again his lost heterosexuality.
The reparative (or conversion) therapy which this catholic (!) psychologist proposes “is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation” (as the American Psychiatric Association explains).
I have many doubts about the methods which Dr Nicolosi uses (according to him prayers are also useful), but I trust that persistency and placebo effect can help anyway. I honestly don’t see any moral problem if someone wants to change his sexual orientation if he feels unhappy with his current one. I believe that people should be free to pursuit their happiness in any case, even if sometimes this means they change relevant characteristics of their bodies or personalities.
The moral problem, as is often the case, concerns the ways people do something. If I am a man and I want to change sex, I’m not allowed to say that men are less than women. I better say that I don’t feel happy in a male body, and that’s all. If I want to change the colour of my skin (like for example Michael Jackson allegedly did) this doesn’t mean I’m allowed to suppose that black people are worse than white ones. Also in this case I better just say this is what I prefer. If I am affected by Down syndrome and I do have cosmetic surgery in order to hide the physical characteristics that show it, this doesn’t mean I should dare to say that all the people with the same condition should hide it, because it sounds really offensive. In short, I am morally free to change things I dislike about me, but I must be respectful of people who present the same characteristics I want to modify and are happy and maybe proud of what they are.
So what I find really disturbing and ethically repugnant is the way these ex-gay people look at homosexuality like it was a disease, a perversion and an abominable condition. These websites they run are explicitly homophobic and support a hostile attitude towards gay people. Many useless words are spent to tell how homosexuals carry on indecent sexual behaviours, corrupt the holy spirit of heterosexual families, live degenerate and repugnant lives and, in the end, they don’t want to change their condition because they’re morally depraved deep inside.
Since other people’s sadness shouldn’t contribute to make someone else happier, there’s really no need to be offensive while in search of our own lost happiness.
The question of choice to be gay depends on two things: 1. the degree to which you subscribe to free will and 2. the degree to which sexuality is determined — hard wired in — when you are born. As I understand it, there is now a respectable medical opinion that sexuality is partially determined by genes. The rest is …?
I have known homosexuals who functioned reasonably well with persons of the other sex, but “decided” to be homosexuals. One of them was in a long-term committed relationship with a person of the same sex. Another sort of was. What caused them to choose one sex-life over another? I don’t think it was a desire to belong to a despised minority group whose members were open to violence and discrimination directed against them. Nor do I think it was the work of the devil, or a desire to flout God and religion. At least, there is no evidence for that, and there is evidence of homosexuals who desire reconciliation with their childhood religions but simply can’t give up what they are sexually.
As to religion that finds some basis in either the Hebrew bible or the Christian bible, I have found no condemnation of homosexuality in the Gospels, only in the book of Leviticus. I would be grateful for any correction
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