My son’s turning Gay and I’ve got to stop it.

My, much too long essay as I try to come to terms with my client's Homophobia- Bruce Brown

These are the basics of a lecture, a client gave the other day. I didn’t copy it down word for word but I have included many exact quotations and have tried to capture, without exaggeration, the feeling of what he was trying to convey.
His words:
"The other day I found my 6 year old son in the bathroom trying on make-up. I told my son that he’s not to play with that make-up stuff any more and that goes for the Barbie dolls too! Guys don’t wear makeup and they don’t play with dolls. That’s the difference between guys and girls.
Now I have nothing against homo’s as long as they stay away from me. If my son comes to me when he’s a teenager and says he likes guys better, I’m going to tell him that he’s got to try chicks first. I want him to go out with chicks to see the normal side of things before he goes Homo on me.
If he’s gotta do that , he’s not doing it in my house. It’s not normal. There wouldn’t be any human race if everyone were homos. Don’t tell me that is just part of some peoples nature. Something has turned them into a homo and you can turn them back again."
Is this man is wrong and people are born with a tendency to be gay or, is he’s right and something in the way he has raises his son may cause the son to be gay?

Let’s say he is right and his environment caused him to be gay. What could have caused that? Could it be that Dad was so hard and demanding that he retreated into a softer more feminine place. A place where people are gentle with each other; where people are not threatening, but supportive; a place where you can hold and caress your friends when you, or they, need comfort?
Perhaps, the outside world is not one he wants to face. Perhaps the men’s violence in the media and the aggressiveness of many of his friends in the school yard is just something he is fearful of facing. Putting on makeup and playing make believe with Barbie Dolls is a much less threatening.

Perhaps a male friend of his, is kind, soft and supportive of him, always friendly, never harsh, while the girls he has met are taunting, teasing and mean.
Perhaps his Father is aggressive, unsympathetic and yells at his mother who he sees as his protector. He decides to choose the more agreeable of his two parents as his roll model. He decides he would like to be more like his mother than like his father.
All the stuff mentioned above is Possible but if that sort of thing Caused people to be gay. Then half the people in the world would be Gay and that’s not the case.
The personality of your Mother or Father, the behaviour of the people around you, the media and your own self-esteem can all contribute to how you interpret your own sexuality. As a woman, you might feel pressured to behave in the same way that the women around you behave. As a man, you might feel pressured to behave like the men around you behave. Yet that behaviour might feel uncomfortable to you.
Every one of us has found ourselves in a situation where the behaviours or the expectations of the people around us have made us feel uncomfortable. That is the case with a certain proportion of people in our society who feel more comfortable relating sexually and/or emotionally with others of their own sex.
They often feel they have to hide it so they won’t be discriminated against. The sad truth is that merely because they are having a loving relationship with someone of their own sex, they may be denied employment, rejected from their religion or from participation in a club or organization. They may be ridiculed as less of a person. Is this a sad statement on our society?

Just as in every segment of society, there are Gay people who flaunt their sexuality in public as a sort of an ‘In your face’ protest of the bigotry against them. There are others who, just like in the heterosexual community, have sex with multiple partners with flagrant disregard for hygiene, and disease transmission. No one, regardless of his or her beliefs, respects that sort of behaviour. That is not what Homosexuality is about any more than the "Swingers" society represents what Heterosexuality means.
You, or Society, does not have to fear women who cut their hair short and wear pants. You needn’t fear men who wear colourful ties, speak in overly expressive voices or compliment you on your attractive head of hair. These people may not even be Gay! Frankly, unless they wish to discuss it with you it’s none of your business.
Two men, or two women, who live their lives together, who hold hands in public and who give each other a parting kiss also may not be gay and they may or may not have a private sexual relationship. Unless they wish to discuss it with you . . IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!
If you feel uncomfortable when you see people who look or dress or act differently from you, do you need to ask yourself why you are uncomfortable? Do you believe, perhaps, that you have the right to tell other people how they should look or act?
How did you come to believe that?
Is their behaviour disrespectful of you?
Does it really have anything at all to do with you?
If these people work for you, will their behaviour and attitudes make them incapable of doing their jobs?
If they sit beside you at the theatre and their leg happens to touch yours, does that make you fearful? And why?
If your son or daughter grow up and decide to take a partner of the same sex, does that reflect on who you are?
Would your friends or the members of your church think less of you because your son is Gay?
If that is the case does that reflect on you and your son or does it reflect on them?
The whole point here is that we’re all individuals. We are tall or short, we are young or old, we are white or black, we are out-going or inward turned. We prefer people of our own sex or of both sexes or of the opposite sex. In any given group of people, we have many similarities and always a few differences.
Here are some questions to consider:
If your differences don’t injure other people, should you be forced to change your differences and conform to be just like everyone else?
If your differences, DO injure other people, should your behaviour change and
Who should be responsible for changing your behaviour?
If your differences, DO injure other people and you refuse to change, what should happen next?
Do you feel you have the right to dictate how others in the group should look or should be?
If a few people in the group try to control the whole group, what are some of the things that may happen?
When a few people succeed in controlling or dominating the whole group or excluding certain people from their group, what has, through-out all of history, always been the long term result?
If either a man or woman acts aggressively towards you in a way that makes you fearful, you have the right to tell them you are uncomfortable and to ask them to stop. Being fearful, and saying stop doesn’t make you any less of a man. It only makes you a person who knows the level of personal interaction that you are prepared to allow. There may, somewhere, be aggressive, homosexual predators who wait to find unsuspecting men to sexually approach. These men are rare in our society, especially in proportion to the heterosexual predators who are prepared to make advances to unwilling or unprepared women.

Is your fear that you will be embarrassed by an encounter with a gay man who will touch your arm and ask you if you would like to have sex?
Is your fear that your son will be openly gay or even worse, do you fear that he might act in an effeminate way?
Are you afraid that if your son is effeminate that it reflects on your own manhood?
Are you afraid that if Gay people attend your church and vow to spend their lives together, that it will reflect somehow on your own religious beliefs?
Are you threatened by the fact that men are losing some of the privilege they once held over women?
Do you fear that gay or effeminate men are the thin edge of the wedge which will mark the end of a male dominated society?
WORSE, Do you fear that, unconfronted, these people will take over the earth, make everyone Gay and end society as we know it?
If your answer to all the above questions is NO, why do you feel so upset and negative maybe even violent towards this portion of our society? These people have always existed in our society. They existed in the past,they exist today, and they will exist in the future. If your answer to all the questions posed above is NO, then how could you relieve some of your upset, tension and concern. If your going to be able to live with yourself, your answer must be wise, fair and respectful. Good luck, coming to terms with this.