Although the healing of the homosexual man is in many ways an indirect process – flowing out of the broader changes in his spiritual life – almost every homosexual overcomer is going to have to confront all three elements of the problem. He will not recover until behavior, attractions, and identity have all been dealt with and to some extent transformed. Although his natural inclination may be to focus on behavior and attractions – because that is where he feels the most distress – I believe that the richest fruit will be borne in his life if he focuses most strongly (and early on) in the area of identity.
This is true for two reasons. First, identity is more amenable to direct attack than behavior or attractions. I have yet to meet the man who one day said, “Today I am going to start being attracted to women rather than to men,” and, barring the rare bona fide miracle, found that anything really changed. As for behavior, although trying to be obedient will always remain an essential part of the healing process, a change in behavior without a corresponding deep change in identity may be little more than “white knuckle” abstinence. Identity on the other hand, as I will show, can be changed significantly through a program of conscious choices and specific actions.
The second reason the change process can be furthered so significantly by dealing with the identity issue is because a man’s incomplete male identity is what drives and directs homosexual behavior and attractions. This broken or incomplete male identity is the steering mechanism that gives direction to our sexual attractions and the engine that powers our sinful behavior. Let’s look at this in some detail.
With respect to attractions, the essence of sexual attraction seems to be “differences” or “otherness.” Certainly, for the heterosexually oriented man, some sexual attraction may lie in his knowledge that his penis interacting with a woman’s vagina can bring extraordinary pleasure. But we all know that there is so much more to sexual attraction than this. What about a woman’s breasts? Why are they an object of sexual attraction to a man? They are simply organs that are there to nurse a baby; they have no direct sexual function. What about her hips, the roundness and smoothness of her skin? What about even some things that she does that are intentional, such as letting her hair grow long or wearing lipstick? Why should these things stir up sexual attractions in most men. There may be a number of reasons. A woman’s body – her breasts, her roundedness – can stir up a man’s desire to be nurtured; her differences may intrigue his appetite for mystery; her vulnerability might trigger his desire for conquest. All of these make sense, but what most draws men to women sexually is that she is “other.” She possesses things that a man does not have in himself.
Those characteristics that a woman has that a man doesn’t have, that symbolize woman, draw him to her. They express the feminine and they draw his masculine. The masculine part of a man longs for that other. Looking at it spiritually, the man may be longing for completion, for restoration of that part of him that was removed when woman was created. Or perhaps because male and female together can reflect God more ably than man or woman alone – we were both created in God’s image – a man’s longing may be for a completion that more fully reflects his Creator.
I am a man, and I look to find my completion in a woman. But what if the man does not have the inner sense that he is a man? Will he experience the same attractions to a woman? Will she be his “other”? No, and this is critical. If he feels that he is not complete as a man, his first longing will be not for women but for complete manhood; he will be drawn to the masculine in other males. This will be his “other.” This will be his missing rib. This will be his means of attaining completion. It follows, then, that the development of our manhood – finding completion in ourselves – will do great things both to decrease our same-sex attractions and to start drawing us sexually to women.
I said that our incomplete male identity, besides determining the direction of our sexual attractions, is also the engine that drives our homosexual behavior. The enormous power of the homosexual drive is seen in the incredibly foolish, even insane things that many homosexual men will do to make some kind of contact with maleness. What causes an otherwise sensible man to pick up a tough-looking young stranger and take him to his apartment, knowing full well he risks being robbed and beaten or even worse? Why does an intelligent, married business or professional man risk arrest and public humiliation by making sexual contact with another man in a public restroom? Why did I repeatedly go into a gay bar on a main thoroughfare in Baltimore, knowing I could be seen by anyone and have my whole deception uncovered?
We did these things because of the enormity of the craving within us. We were driven to make some kind of contact with anything that represented or symbolized maleness: a hard, tough look, muscles, a man’s penis. These were symbols of manhood – the manhood that we did not have – and we were driven, often obsessively, to gaze on them, touch them, smell them, taste them, become one with them in some way. Our incomplete manhood cried out for this, cried out for its missing elements.
Leanne Payne illustrates this craving for manhood with her cannibalism theory. In The Broken Image [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1996] she describes how cannibals eat only the people they admire, believing that by eating them they can acquire some of their traits. This “consuming” drive for manhood in the homosexual male becomes obvious: A man who feels he lacks complete manhood satisfies his need for it through his homosexual behavior, hoping to acquire some of the other man’s manhood.
The key point to remember, however, is that the craving for another’s manhood is only present in a man who feels he lacks his own manhood. Is that not the case with all covetousness? We crave the things we don’t have or believe we don’t have. So intense is that craving – so powerful the engine that can drive a man to homosexual behavior – that even when such behavior flies in the face of both his fundamental human desire to protect himself and his most basic religious beliefs, he still cannot stop himself.
The identity issue manifests itself in another way. Many of us see the failure to have been affirmed by men (or conversely the feeling that we were rejected) as a key element in the development of our homosexuality. In this regard, the powerful homosexual drive is a desperate plea from the little boy within: “Won’t some man show me that I have some value as a man to a man?” This is not just a craving to ease the pain of low self-esteem. A man may be quite valued by the women in his life, and he may recognize that he has extraordinary gifts in certain areas, but the cry of the little boy is still there. His value must be shown by a man, and the area being valued must express manhood.
As with so many parts of his life, especially areas of deeper need, this need can be sexualized. From that point on, a sexual liaison or simply receiving a signal that another man desires him, even if only as a sex object, somehow temporarily satisfies the craving. This accounts for much of what I call “dry cruising” that the homosexual men do, going where other men may come on to them, even at a time when sexual contact is not desired. Sometimes, on the way home from work, when I knew I could not explain being more than a half-hour late, I would still stop at a gay bar. I was not looking for a contact but only hoping that some man would show me that he wanted me.
This excerpt is taken from chapter 2 of the book Growth Into Manhood by Alan Medinger. To purchase this book from Regeneration Books, click here www.exodusnorthamerica.org/resources
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Copyright © 2000, by Alan Medinger. All rights reserved.
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