There are so many things in life that we accept without demanding an explanation. People generally don’t spend a lot of time inventing theories as to why they like going to the beach. They just do. And they enjoy it. It’s important to them. They look forward to it. They plan for it. They don’t pay quacks to tell them why or help them get over “unwanted”, “broken” vacation desires. But some people demand an explanation for homosexuality.
A former straight homophobic friend of mine told me about her son’s friend whom she thought might be gay. It made her terribly nervous that her son was friends with this boy. This kid spent the night at her house when he was 14, and she went into detail about a conversation she had with him late that evening when everyone else was in bed. And she apparently asked a bunch of nosy questions that were none of her business. He ended up telling her that when he was younger he and one of his cousins used to engage in sex play, and suddenly the 12-year-old cousin was turned into an evil child molester and the “abuse” this kid supposedly suffered was the “reason” he was attracted to boys.
That’s exactly how the nonsense starts. My former friend demanded a reason why this kid felt the way he did, and she got it. And she made it clear to him that the only why she was going to let him off the hook was if he played the victim. He figured that out fast.
When I read about all of this--she explained the encounter in a letter--I was horrified. She had earlier accused gay men of molesting boys in order to turn them gay, but she had revealed herself to be the molester. She wasn’t worried about that kid. She took that late night opportunity to quiz that 14-year-old boy about his most private and intimate feelings, and to plant the idea in his head that those feelings were the result of abuse of some kind, because that’s what SHE wanted. That wasn’t for him. It was for her. And who knows what kind of lasting damage she did to him that night.
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