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Coming Out of the Pantry 9/23/2004 So what do obesity and homosexuality have in common?
My friend Pete just wrote to ask how we should respond when people ask us, “Are you saying they [homosexuals] chose their attractions?” Here’s my reply.
It's time for me to come out of the pantry, Pete -- as New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey might put it, "I am a fat American." I've been fat ever since I was four. Family legend has it that I was skinny until my brother went to kindergarten, and I chose to respond to the trauma of separation by drowning my sorrows in peanut butter and jelly.
I never chose to be fat, I've been that way ever since I can remember. However, I see now that being fat is the natural result of my love affair with food, both garden-variety gluttony and my lifelong habit of using food to medicate emotional hurts. Early on, I adopted the destructive behavior, and over the years I unwittingly cultivated it, until it became a life-corrupting monster. As a child, I learned to identify myself as the fat kid, and grew comfortable in the uncomfortable role. I never knew what I was doing, never understood what obesity would do to me. Regrettably, I'm now suffering the consequences of obesity, the culmination of those thousand little choices I made over the years: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, painful joints, increased risk of cancer.
The good news is, I don't have to play this role forever. Every time I open my mouth, I have a choice over what goes in. Dealing with the emotional problems, transforming my self-image, and losing the excess weight, is a very, very tough battle, but it is possible to make progress. So far, I've lost 40 pounds, and I still have 40 to go.
No analogy is perfect, but the parallel to homosexuality here seems clear. The best psychiatrists and therapists (check out Charles Socarides and Jeffrey Satinover) acknowledge that same-sex attraction is a deep-seated emotional disorder, often triggered by a traumatic event, but shaped largely by choices made even as a child in responding to the trauma. In this respect, homosexual attraction is chosen, though unwittingly.
The adult homosexual can honestly say that he never consciously chose same-sex attraction. However, he does have the power to decide whether to indulge in the behavior. Every time he chooses to abstain, he weakens the grip the behavior has on him, and he weakens the attraction itself.
So what do you say to the person who says, "I didn't choose to be this way"? If you really care about him, you won’t duck the subject, or encourage him to continue in the destructive lifestyle. Although the related diseases are different, homosexuality is just as deadly as obesity—even apart from AIDS. I'd respond by saying, "Actually, it might be the result of a lot of little choices you made, and if you check into it, you might gain some interesting insights. But whether you chose the attraction or not, you can always choose whether to act on those feelings. And if you choose to resist, you can eventually control, and even defeat those feelings." More and more people are breaking the chain of same-sex attraction every day.
Brian Fitzpatrick is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
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