Eggs and Bacon for Breakfast; Gay Sex for Lunch

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Well, my nephew didn't exactly say it that way, but neither did he try to clarify how my decision to "become gay" at age 44 could have been explained any differently. This is what he posted on my Facebook wall in answer to a comment by Mickey:

Now Mickey, I will just have to disagree with your reasoning about it not being a choice. Was it a, “oh I woke up and decided to have eggs and bacon today,” choice? No. But I think that you made a choice to follow a certain lifestyle over another.

So, dear nephew, in your mind, at what point exactly did I "make a choice to follow a certain lifestyle over another?" Do you honestly want the facts from a gay person, or do you want to continue to follow your snake-oil salesmen that have been pitching a completely discredited 37-year-old dogma to you all of your life?

First off, if you know something that 325,000 certified and accredited professionals don't know, you should have spoken up sooner before I wasted my time on this blog post. But if you haven't got anything new to add to their science you need to understand that all 325,000 of these people hold graduate and post-graduate degrees in more than 13 professional fields, and beyond that, they work every day using their scientific methods in mental health, pediatrics, and educational professions. I hope your argument is a good one, because you're up against a pretty tough crowd. (Here is the link to what those 325,000 professionals say on this "eggs-and-bacon" theory of yours.)

But back to your idea that Mickey and I made a "lifestyle choice." When exactly does your theory imply that I made this "choice?" Was it back when I entered puberty as an eleven year old? That predictable "awakening" that came right on cue, at the same age that it did for my brother and my cousins and my best friend, and when I realized that I was not attracted to girls like everybody else, I knew. Without a doubt, I knew that I was very, very different.

Can that moment of puberty in a child's life be likened to choosing a bowl of cereal over eggs and bacon? Out of hundreds of gay men that Mickey and I know, I have met two that questioned their sexuality after high school, and both of them admitted to being more "gender fluid" up until that moment in their lives. It wasn't like they "left heterosexuality" to become gay. It was more like they had delayed the decision of exactly what their orientation was. The rest of us all knew at puberty where our heart was. Before we even desired sex, we knew that we yearned for an emotional connection to a person of our own gender, and it is for that reason that 325,000 professionals decided in 1973 that homosexuality was an immutable trait.

Let me help you with your education here. Immutable does not mean it is embedded in our DNA. It simply means that it is unchangeable. Your use of the word "choice" implies that at some point in time I made a conscious decision to act on an impulse, and somebody at some point in your life told you that this impulse was "bad."

Well, if we can but agree on the fact that puberty is what brings on this impulse, and for us gay guys the one-and-only impulse that our body gives us is the impulse to find an emotional connection to somebody of our own gender, then who gets to decide if that is from God or from the Devil? We didn't get a choice as to what impulse our body gave us, and there is no switch that convert this one-and-only impulse to a heterosexual impulse, so that is all we are ever going to know in our lifetime.

Now, without going all Biblical on me, tell me why your church gets to tell these 325,000 professionals that it is okay for you to follow your impulse, but it is NOT okay for Mickey and I to follow our impulse. Remember the word "immutable."

This realization didn't come overnight. These 325,000 professionals struggled with this same "eggs and bacon" choice idea that you are struggling with for decades before they all agreed that it was an immutable trait in 1973, so what exactly makes you think that in 2010, more than 37 years later, that you are right, and they are all wrong?

Is it because all 325,000 of them are "liberals," and all liberals are godless? Maybe you read World Net Daily and have been fed this line that gay activists are amazing media geniuses. There is this theory out there of how 4% of the world population have been able to convince all of Europe and every credible medical and educational organization in America that the "gay agenda" deserves their backing. Damn, we're good! And if you believe that, this wingnut author wants to sell you his book...and for just $18 you get a signed copy.

Maybe we could just attribute that trend to the age of enlightenment, and an ever increasing number of people are choosing to be "enlightened."

Now, back to the "lifestyle choice" question. The whole immutable trait idea is just one possibility. Your cousin offered another suggestion, so maybe this is what you were alluding to when you suggested your "eggs and bacon" choice theory. If your cousin is right, then I'm lying about how I felt when I was going through puberty. This would be something that all gay men instinctively do so that we can save face and cast ourselves in a better light. Your cousin wasn't very delicate when she wrote this on my Facebook wall post the other day:

But really Lester, you should be ashamed of yourself. You who served an honorable mission, was married and sealed in the temple and served in the church for many years after. Then you turned your back on that, pushing your wife of over 20 years away [and] tearing your family apart, which you had every right to do because, as the LDS church teaches, we have free agency. Freedom to choose for ourselves what we wish to believe and how we wish to live our lives. [...] If anything you are being brainwashed by the society you live in now. But that's your right to be brainwashed if you so wish.

So, according to this niece I guess I must have really liked eggs and bacon as a teenager and young adult, but by the age of 44 I was so bored with eggs and bacon that I decided I wanted to try something new. She sure sounds like she knows what she's talking about, which is amazing, because I had already gone through that phase in my life before she was born. I tend to believe that somebody handed her a script at a very young age and she has it memorized by now. I had the same script handed to me as a teenager.

What she posted on my Facebook wall is familiar to every gay man out there because they have been the official talking points of just about every major religion since the 1950's. It is what all five of my siblings and both of my sons believe, because this is what has to be true in order for the Bible to withstand scrutiny fundamentist Christianity survive.

Those 60-year-old talking points have only survived because every church that depends on them is propping up the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH for short). Your church leaders are listening to the 38 remaining professionals in all of the North America that still preach that homosexuality is a choice. Of those 38, only one dared appear in front of a judge as a "professional witness" in Florida's adoption ban lawsuit, and only one agreed to appear in defense of the "Yes on 8" court battle in California. George Rekers, the NARTH "professional" that appeared in Florida's case, was caught coming home from a European vacation with an "escort" that he found on Rentboy.com (link here). The judge in California is considering tossing out the witness that appeared in the "Yes on 8" case because he does not belong to an organization that provides for "peer review" of his so-called professional practice.

So, with 325,000 professionals that support my community, and 38 professionals that support yours...I don't think I need to say it.

Oh, what's that you say? You're reminding me that I forgot about God in this equation? You're right.

You have 38 professionals and God on your side, and God is like the trump card, isn't He? I'm not supposed to be able to argue with you once you play the trump card. I'm just supposed to say, "Oh, well that's different then."

Sorry, but I forgot the rules of the game. Thank you for reminding me.

This is where I'm supposed to concede that you kids are right, and that I am just a man that got bored with his "eggs and bacon" diet and decided to try gay sex for lunch. That's what your 38 professionals and God are telling you. It was (the deeply closeted homophobic) Boyd K. Packer that said, "I have no doubt that the cause of homosexuality, when it is determined, will turn out to be a base form of selfishness."

So if family reunions are the same today as they were 30 years ago when my Uncle Glenn came out (your grandmother's brother), this will be the official version of Lester's story that will be told. It goes like this:

"Some men have a mid-life crisis, and typically they go out and do something stupid like buy a red convertible, but your Uncle Lester instead divorced his wife and left his family to try out the gay lifestyle."

And at this point, if I wanted to get back in the good graces of my family and the Mormon Church, I would simply have to admit that:

1. I made a bad choice.
2. That I should have known better.
3. That it was terribly selfish of me,
4. That my niece is right, I should be ashamed.
   

Maybe I'll do just that.

But wait, it's too late to get refunds on our hotel reservations, so I think God will be fine if we schedule our repentence for after our holidays.

Mickey, right after our gay-cation to Martha's Vineyard and Provincetown we need to get a divorce and go out and buy red convertibles. If we don't procrastinate the day of our repentence too much longer, there might still be hope for us to get into the Mormon heaven, but we will have to wise choices from here on out instead of following those misinformed 325,000 evil and God-less liberals.

Actually, the Mazda RX-8 that you like doesn't come as a convertible, but those scissor doors are a great consolation prize.

I wonder what Eddie Accardi will offer when you explain to him that I am your trade-in for the new sports car?
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