July 28, 2005

Don't Dare Call it Love
by Jeff Langstraat

I didn't see last night's report on Paula Zahn Now, or this morning's on Good Morning America, but I did catch this evening's report on Love in Action, a homosexuality extirpation program. I'm fucking pissed.

From what I gather from John's report at Americablog (link above), this evening's report was somewhat better than last night's. At least this evening, the opposition of the APA and AMA to "reparative therapy" were brought into the report, and there were bits of an interview with a psychiatric opponent of this practice. However, there was still an overwhelming heterosexist bias within the story. For instance, while she was interviewing the program's director, John Smid, Deborah Feyerick asked about the "dangers" people would face upon leaving the "safety" of the program. The teens who have been committed to these programs were referred to as "straightening out." The overall tone of the segment was highly sympathetic to the homohaters at Love in Action.

Zahn's interview with a "graduate" (I forgot to write down his name) of the program was even more disappointing. She did ask, near the end, whether such programs contribute to overall homophobia. When the Graduate said, "Oh, no. I think it's just the opposite" she let it slide right by (as she did with his claim that "hundreds of thousands" of people had been helped in the same way he had...there is zero empirical evidence for this claim).

How does the extirpation of queers not contribute to societal homophobia?

While the "ex-gay" movement has become more sophisticated in its framing ("We're only trying to help people live in accordance with their faith" and "We don't get rid of desire, we just alter behavior") their goal is the eradication of homosexuality. Their tight links with the anti-gay industry were completely absent from the report. Indeed, the report itself treated the whole issue as a "controversy." The homohaters' support for the annihilation of my community is, apparently, just one "side" in the debate. And make no mistake, they are out to eliminate us. John Smid has makes that quite clear in his final indoctrination to program inmates:

"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery."

Yup, that certainly is love in action. Better dead than gay.

The heterosexist assumptions underlying not only the program, but also the report are clear. Feyerick's use of "danger" and "safety" in describing leaving the program bring this to the fore. It's not just that there may be "temptations" upon leaving the "isolation" of the program, but there are "dangers" around every corner. The old trope of predatory homosexuality can be very easily inferred to such rhetorical deployments.

Beyond that, however, treating this as merely a "controversy" doesn't deal with any of these issues. Instead, it elevates this abusive segment of the anti-gay industry to a respectable position it is unworthy of. The overwhelming power of heteronormativity remains invisible. Questions surrounding a failure to abide by the strictures of compulsory heterosexuality are rendered unaskable. Heterosexuality remains natural. The means by which heterosexuals are trained and shaped? Well, we needn't address those.

To illustrate this, I'll turn to Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick:

The number of persons or institutions by whom the existence of gay people--never mind the existence of more gay people--is treated as a precious desideratum, a needed condition of life, is small, even compared to thsoe who may which for the dignified treatment of any gay people who happen to already exist. Advice on how to make sure your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishoners, your therapy clients or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than you might think. By contrast, the scope of institutions whose programmatic undertaking is to prevent the development of gay people is unimaginably large. No major institutionalized discourse offers a firm resistance to that undertaking; in the United States, at any rate, most sites of the state, the military, education, law, penal institutions, the church, medicine, mass culture, and the mental health industries enforce it all but unquestioningly, and with little hesitation even at recourse to invasive violence.

Epistemology of the Closet, p. 42

How natural is heterosexuality when it requires so many institutional supports to make sure people are molded into straight adults? What would happen if we didn't, from birth, mold children with heterosexual reproduction as the only valued option in life? What would we say of a parent who tried to raise their children gay? We can see the power of heteronormativity in arguments over gay parenting; somehow, the fact that gay parents are no more likely than straight ones to raise gay kids is a positive aspect of queer parenting. Somehow, trying to raise gay kids would make those parents suspect; the fact that they raise the same number of straight kids as heterosexual parents makes them acceptable. Molding heterosexuals is good; molding homosexuals, not so much. Even gay and gay-positive folks fall into these heteronormative traps.

But, here's something to chew on, there would be no heterosexuals without us Queers. We're needed to ensure other people's "normality." Queerness is absolutely necessary to the existence of straightness. Heterosexuality isn't some natural category existing on its own; it's a relational category (as are all social categories). Without us, you don't exist. Our destruction is yours.

Posted by in Christian Fundamentalism, Culture War, Extremists, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Homosexuality, Queer, Sexual Politics
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