How to make your child a gay activist
Eve Tushnet has my kind of tongue-in-cheek style…
2. Let your kid think your love is conditional. Again, you don’t even have to say this out loud. Many kids just assume, unless they’re told differently, that they’ll only be loved if they do what you want.
Best of all, your child will guess that God’s love is conditional too.
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6. The only good gay is an ex-gay! For minors, why not try ex-gay camp? Send your kid to a remote location, where he’ll enjoy outdoorsy, macho, sweaty activities with other virile, same-sex attracted boys. That’ll cure him! (The best camps don’t let the kids listen to anything but Contemporary Christian music–none of this fairycake Mozart business.)
If you can’t find a good camp, at least try counseling. Your daughter can still learn to be a Real Woman–with dresses and everything! (Jesus likes it when girls wear dresses.) Be sure your kid understands that if she doesn’t become heterosexual, she has no chance of being chaste.
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9. Most importantly, don’t pray. Don’t pray for your kid. Don’t pray for yourself. Don’t pray that you can model Christ’s love to your child. Don’t pray that your child will be a source of grace and blessing for others (including his boyfriend or her girlfriend–definitely don’t pray for God to bless those awful people!). If you absolutely must pray, just pray that your child will realize exactly how wrong he is and exactly how right you are.
That’s what Someone would want.
Go and read, and inwardly digest the whole thing. It’s clever and it’s right.
Yes, it’s clever. Given that I don’t have kids just now, II’m not yet sure whether I want to spawn a gay activist. So supposing I want to send my child to one of those straightening-out-the-genders type ex-gay camp thingies… I mean, could I find one in Britain? Or would I have to put my progeny on an airplane with a luggage label tied to his arm…?
Some good observations about ‘costly grace’ here.
Constructive criticism of ex-gay ministry is needed, but the field is too small in Britain to afford the luxury (and decadence) of snide sarcasm as found in the paragraph on ‘ex-gay camp’. Remember that Journey Into Manhood, for example, has benefited many men. There is no need to be dismissive of what benefits some people in order to forge a broader ex-gay ministry.
Grace,
You wouldn’t find one in Blighty. You will find a number of pastors like myself who will emphasise dying to self and rising to Christ and being open to the posibility of God moving in one’s past, but you won’t fund ex-gay hot-houses.
 Personally I object to the linking of homosexuality with deficiencies (real or perceivied) in one’s male identity; I consider myself more masuline (in the pre-woman’s lib sense of the word) than many heterosexual male christians I’ve met (isn’t there a book called “Why Men Hate Going to Church” dealing with the problem of many allegedly traditionalist churches being more limp-wristed than your average gay bar?)
personally i find the whole thing insulting. As a gay man reading that–I think it assumes way too much about those of us who are “activists”.
why are you trying to control your kids being gay is not bad you can’t stop them and no matter what the bible says they are not evil