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To begin to help you understand, though, I want to talk about some of the false doctrines or false ways that we think about homosexuality in our culture. I want to start by talking about my pen. If I let go of this pen, what will happen? It will fall. Why? Gravity. People say gravity; the pen falls because of gravity. The fact of the matter is, we don't why the pen falls; all we know is that things that are unsupported fall. Gravity is one of the four fundamental physical forces of the universe that explain everything else, but nothing explains them. We just know that everything that is unsupported falls, and we call that fact gravity. We label the fact that things fall gravity. Now I like that; one of the most, one of the things that influences our life the most is gravity. It influences me every single day of my life, and we don't why it happens. I think that's wonderful, wonderful. We tend to think the world's pretty explained; we label it and call it gravity, and then we do an interesting thing: we talk about it as though we have explained it. So why does the pen fall? Well, because of gravity. Well, how do you know there's gravity? Well, because things fall. What makes them fall? Well, gravity.

Do you see it just goes in a circle? It doesn't really add any information; we do that all the time in our society, in our culture: talk about things, label them, and then describe them as having acted as a result of the label. We do it a lot in the social sciences; take, for example, the concept of self-esteem. Self-esteem began as a description of what people were doing. People who said or thought good things about themselves had high self-esteem. People who said or thought bad things about themselves had low self-esteem. But what began as a description of what people were doing--saying or thinking good or bad things about themselves--came to be talked about as though it was the reason they were doing it. Why does that guy say such bad things about himself? Well, it's because he's got low self-esteem. How do you know he has low self-esteem? Well, because he says such bad things about himself. Why does he do that? Low self-esteem.

You and I grew up in a culture that taught us through its language that we have something inside of us called our self-esteem that can make us do things. We don't have a lot of agency or a lot of choice in the matter; it makes us do things. Why are you so down on yourself? It's my self-esteem. We have government programs to increase self-esteem, and it is simply a manifestation of language.

Now the same thing is true when it comes to talking about homosexuality. Why is that man sexually attracted to other men? It's because he's homosexual. How do you know he's homosexual? Because he's sexually attracted to other men. What makes him do that? Homosexuality. We have created a condition, a trait, a disease, an orientation called homosexuality and given it power to make people do things.

The implications of this are pretty important. Because of that, you've probably heard people say something like this: “You know, when I found out I was gay…” The implications of that simply phrase, “when I found out I was gay,” are astounding. It means, before I had any homosexual thoughts, any homosexual feelings, or any homosexual behaviors, I was already gay. And when those things began to occur in my life, they were simply manifestations of an underlying condition that had already been there.

Can you begin to see why this is dangerous language for someone who is intensely introspective and perfectionistic and sensitive? Let me give you an example. I had a client once, many years ago, one of the first men I worked with dealing with this issue, who had no homosexual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors until he was in his early twenties--that's unusual. Almost always, it occurs earlier than that, but you can learn a lot from unusual cases.

He began to have these feelings when he attended a fireside that was sponsored by Evergreen--Evergreen is a great organization that supports LDS men who are struggling to overcome these issues. He went to this fireside to support a friend who was dealing with this issue, and while he was sitting there, many men got up and gave testimonials: descriptions of their lives, what had happened to them, of what it had been like. And this client stood there, or sat there at the fireside, and he thought, “Boy, you know, that sounds a lot like me. I wonder if I might be gay.” Well, he had to know. I mean, it's bad enough to be gay, but you don't want to be gay and not know it. If you're gay, that's information you want to have.

So he went out and started to have sexual fantasies about other men and found out that they could be very arousing for him, and now he knew the truth: he knew he was gay, too. He never stopped and thought for a second, “I just taught myself to do something. I just acquired another response. I just trained myself to respond in a certain way.” That idea never crossed his mind because it was not available to him in the culture in which he lived. The only available explanation was, “I just found out who I am, what I am.” This becomes critically important. This teeny piece of false doctrine, I believe, has influenced many, many hundreds--probably thousands--of young Latter-Day Saint men in their thinking about what they're experiencing in adolescence. We'll talk more about that in just a minute.

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