Do you suffer from same sex attraction?
No. I don't. I enjoy being attracted to persons of the same sex and the opposite sex. It is human nature to be attracted to other people. Nothing wrong with that - unless the attraction becomes inordinate.
Grace and beauty is an attraction - vain rejoicing in it leads to evil. Even then, one may not 'suffer' or 'struggle' with the attraction per se - rather it seems to me, the person is probably suffering/struggling with a temptation to lust. We confuse attraction with lust. The struggle is essentially part of the Christian battle. The 'suffering' may come more from the effort it takes to resist temptation, as well as the opposition caused by the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world, the culture, along with the flesh and the devil militate against the spirit. The world promotes values which attempt to convince us that gay is good, sex outside of marriage is good, and so on. Further emotional suffering may be the result of disappointment over not being allowed to gratify one's desires/lusts.
Therefore, no matter how you choose to identify yourself, don't allow yourself to be defined and confined by your inclinations or acts. As Dorothy Day once said concerning her being declared a saint after death, "I don't want to be dismissed so easily." Neither do I. Don't let yourself be so easily dismissed as gay, SSA, LGBTQ - or whatever the current trend happens to be.
Huh? Fine - use whatever term you want but don't make it sound like some sort of terminal disease or martyrdom.
Art: Doug Blanchard
And don't be Victim Victorious.
I came across a gay blogger who took on a priest. The priest wrote something about gay activists that the gay blogger didn't like. The gay blogger's post was an all too typical lament about how gays are so oppressed in the Church and in the U.S.. Included in the post was the latest complaint on how so many gay-Christians feel 'unwelcome' in church.
Really?
As I've said before: As a culture, it seems to me the homosexual movement mirrors many of the traits often associated with the same-sex-attracted personality. For instance, arrested development - remaining emotionally adolescent, alternating with adult behavior when needed. Complaining about being misunderstood, as Van Den Aardweg notes,
"...an especially common view of self (for the homosexual) is that of the wronged, rejected, 'poor me'. Homosexuals are therefore easily insulted; they 'collect injustice', as psychiatrist Berger has so well put it, and are liable to see themselves as victims. This explains the overt self-dramatization of the militants, who adroitly exploit their neurosis to gain public support. Attached to self-pity, they are inner (or manifest) complainers, often chronic complainers. Self pity and protest are not far apart. A certain inner (or overt) rebelliousness and hostility to others who do them wrong and to 'society' and a determinate cynicism, are typical of many homosexuals." - The Battle For Normality
Don't let yourself be so easily dismissed.
Good points, Terry. Your first statement about being attracted to people of both sexes reminded me of Dietrich von Hildebrand. I'm reading My Battle Against Hitler, taken from the document/memoir he wrote for his second wife, Alice. He speaks often about individuals he finds attractive and intellectually stimulating. In her biography about him, Soul of a Lion, also based on that memoir that he never intended to publish, Alice describes how interested he was in people. He developed intimate friendships with a number of them. But the revisionists cold easily read these things and try to make a case that he was actually a closeted homosexual like they do with the relationship between David and Jonathan and even Jesus and John the Beloved. I look at some of my own letters to female friends and can see where someone could twist expressions of loving friendship into something more than that. Actually some of the trolls on my blog have called me a latent lesbian in the past. That just makes me laugh. But I think it illustrates what you say about same sex attracted folks being emotional adolescents.
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