Homosexuality: a freedom too far.

These two books written by U.S. psychiatrists are well worth reading and could not have come at a better possible time as they reflect as much what is happening in Canada as in the U.S. The homosexual revolution began in Canada in 1969 when Pierre Trudeau engineered decriminalization of sodomy as part of his personal-versus-public-morality philosophy. Over the years, spurred by the decisions of Canada's politicized courts, the provinces added the vague term "sexual orientation" to their human rights acts.

Just this spring, homosexuals achieved one of their most prized goals when our Catholic Prime Minister and Justice Minister achieved the long-promised inclusion of sexual orientation in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Hardly a month goes by now that a story doesn't arise demonstrating the significant influence homosexuals have gained in government, education, and the medical profession. This summer for example, the Harris government of Ontario appointed former MPP Keith Norton, a self-declared homosexual, to head the powerful Ontario Human Rights Commission. Yet the government knew that Mr. Norton had stated in the Ottawa Citizen (July 14) that although he is uncomfortable with their tactics, he has "developed a respect" for the activists involved with the radical homosexual group Act-Up. Act-Up has been described by William A. Donohue, president of the U.S. Catholic League for Religious Rights, as "a gay terrorist organization" whose members broke "into Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1989, interrupting Mass and spitting the Host on the floor."

From disorder to lifestyle

Although U.S. homosexuals do not enjoy the same level of official government support as their Canadian counterparts, they have been quite successful in moulding society to suit their agenda. Jeffrey Satinover, a former fellow in psychiatry at Yale, and Charles Socarides, a prolific writer on psychiatric issues, both tell how the American Psychiatric Association, bowing to pressure from homosexuals, transformed homosexuality from a disorder to a lifestyle choice. According to Socarides, influential critics like Thomas Szasz and R.D. Laing fostered the notion in the 1960s and 1970s that no one is really mentally ill. Reality to Szasz and Laing is just a matter of personal choice.

Soon civil libertarians, including the American Civil Liberties Union, brought such ideas into the realm of sexual disorders and began to "challenge every aspect of the legal status of the mentally ill." Dr. Satinover's description of how homosexuals enacted a "cure" for themselves reads like an account of how radical feminists seized control of the Beijing Women's conference. When the American Psychiatric Association met in 1973 to formally consider the issue of homosexuality, the outcome "had already been arranged behind closed doors." Limiting conference time debate, relying on confusion and a low-response vote, the homosexuals achieved the removal of their affliction from the official list of psychiatric disorders. Only five years later, a survey of U.S. psychiatrists found that 31 per cent of them no longer viewed homosexuality as a pathology.

On an even more sinister note, Satinover details how homosexuals tried to brand as a "violation of professional conduct," the actions of any psychiatrists who would dare to try to help a homosexual patient overcome his pathology. The homosexuals and their supporters only backed off from forcing their new agenda item on the medical profession when psychiatrists who help homosexuals threatened to sue the APA and reopen the 1973 decision.

Pansexualism

Both Satinover and Socarides deal with the issue of pansexualism, or the sexual philosophy that there are no absolutes of right or wrong in sexual matters, with intelligence and insight.

Satinover states that the vast majority of homosexuals "would not dream" of preying on children, but he warns against "the general lifting of sexual restraint" which has resulted in a "substantial, influential, and growing segment of the homosexual community that neither hides nor condemns paedophilia."

Socarides agrees, stating "If they (homosexuals) hold that same-sex sex--of any kind--is legitimate, then they really have to endorse the repeal of laws that prevent men from loving boys." He warns that "indoctrination in pansexualism has been going on for some time in medical schools, universities and colleges, high schools, and elementary schools across the nation."

Satinover also warns of indoctrination through the schools, stating that "the normalization of homosexuality has been followed by a move to normalize all forms of sexuality, paedophilia explicitly included, and to lower the age of consent laws so as to make it legal as well." Canadians should be particularly aware of these warnings. An amendment to define sexual orientation in the Canadian Human Rights Act as only including acts between consenting adults, was soundly defeated in Parliament this spring. The danger that homosexual seduction presents is appalling. Socarides cites a 1990 study of homosexual men that showed that 37 per cent of the subject group were seduced into same-sex at an early age.

Genetic origins?

Homosexuals prefer to view their sexual proclivity as something they are born with. According to Satinover, "most of the gay activists in the United States do not want to find any freedom and choice involved in their way of life, and they are fiercely determined to prove that there is no way out of it either."

But the gay gene theory is demolished by Satinover $$ Illegible Word $$ Socarides. The famous Simon Levay article published in $$ Illegible Word $$ magazine shows the sort of nonsense that pro-homosexual journalists seize on to show that homosexuality is innate. Levay studied the brains in autopsy of heterosexuals and alleged homosexuals and noted a localized cluster of cells in the brains of the "homosexual" men that were twice as large by volume as that of the "heterosexual" men. The "discovery" got widespread attention despite the fact that it proved absolutely nothing. One study cited by Satinover described how the brains of blind people have shown an enlarged area that controls the fingers used in reading Braille-but no one has yet used this study to claim that blindness is innate.

God is absent

What I found of most disturbing about these books, is how completely the authors miss the role of God in his creation, and therefore accept a deterministic view of mankind. For them, homosexuals remains the victim of nature. Socarides sees homosexuality as an obviously unhealthy choice, but seems to believe like Freud that human being must have sex or there is something seriously wrong with them; "enlightened people" want true sexual freedom and must have it "without frowns from religion." Satinover has trouble with St. Paul's condemnation of "unnatural practices" like sodomy, because he fails to understand that mortality is perfectly natural: he sees it an unnatural set of impossible ideals which God has presented to man to save him from himself.

Therefore, although these two books provide a wealth of information on homosexuality and how its acceptance is destroying society, a better book is still to be written. Sanity will not be restored until the primacy of God is recognized, together with the central fact that sexuality must never be separated from love and from its procreative purpose.