agreed. importantly, married folks are also called to chastity. incidentally, do you know if chastity is, ceteris paribus, any more difficult to attain for same sex attracted individuals compared to heterosexuals? seems to me that generally, the challenge of growing in chastity shouldn’t be very different between these two groups.

Probably almost anyone can be conditioned or coached to function heterosexually or homosexually. The number of men and women who marry and have children, and then later discover they are gay or lesbian is not insignificant.

It’s worth noting that these are assumptions.

We are far from being able to either prove or disprove any such thing.

The only thing “complicating” this debate are that people on both sides are unwilling to separate fact from value judgment.

Humanists believe that there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality, but there’s something dreadfully wrong with anyone who disapproves of any expression of sexual impulse (unless harm is done – and even then, they are inclined to justify and bend rules if the perpetrator is a left winger).

On the other side of the debate, a variety of people – with a variety of motives – hate or fear the changes being made, and resist those changes in a variety of ways (ranging from the mildest passive aggression to Fred Phelps and worse).

This, not any “fact” we actually “know” about what makes our sexuality what it is, is what really controls the debate today.

The whole debate, it seems to me, is both vague and vastly oversimplified. Probably the vast majority of people are to some extent bisexual or even “polymorphous perverse.” If “reparative therapy” claims to take exclusively homosexual (Kinsey 6) individuals and transform them into exclusively heterosexual (Kinsey 0) ones, I’d say it’s bunk. On the other hand, if it takes a Kinsey 4 and coaches him or her to function happily in a monogamous heterosexual marriage, who should be at all surprised? I have a feeling (based on no personal experience) that people who seek reparative therapy have rather strong homosexual urges and want them to at least disappear, and probably be transformed into heterosexual urges. In all likelihood, the chances of any “therapy” achieving that are very slim.
(Does anyone even know what “reparative therapy” is? What are its techniques? Is it behavioral? psychoanalytic? or what? Do any two therapists who claim to offer it follow the same approach?)

Everyone who is unhappy with their sexuality in any way has a perfect right to go to a therapist and attempt to work at their emotions and behaviors to become the persons they want to be. But any therapist who says, “Come to me as a homosexual and I’ll transform you into a heterosexual,” is claiming to do something that, in general, cannot be done.

Probably almost anyone can be conditioned or coached to function heterosexually or homosexually. The number of men and women who marry and have children, and then later discover they are gay or lesbian is not insignificant. Predominately straight people have homosexual experiences, and predominantly gay people have heterosexual experiences. Gay men, particularly in non-Western cultures, get married and have families because they have little choice or because they simply think that’s what men should do and that’s what they want to do. So, as I say, learning to function in a way at odds with one’s basic orientation seems to me very unremarkable. But I don’t think that is reparative therapy, and I would have to say that I really don’t think such a thing as reparative therapy exists.