Gays Wanting To Be Straight

First, a brief background on what I have to say. It was Friday night last week and my roommates and I were having dinner together ( It was a coincidence that we all met at the right time and place). Clinton was sharing his irritation because a colleague of ours, let's name him X, was insisting he's straight when everyone knew he was gay. X was gay when he was in college and it was only now that he's here in Manila that he's trying to fool everybody by insisting he's not gay, said Clinton.

Apparently, Clinton was pissed off at X's insistence and I, unfortunately, was the sounding board for this frustration. Not that I disliked the role though (in fact, I relished it) but it got me into thinking about homosexuality which has always been a tenuous issue in my side of the world.

First, I have to say that my view on homosexuality has radically changed since I was in first year college. Being with gay classmates and gay friends (Unavoidable actually. I'm part of the Humanities Division of ADDU so gayness abounds everywhere I go) has taught me tolerance and acceptance. As a Christian, I am called to preach the doctrine of Love, being the central message of Christ's ministry, and love cannot and will never be confined to fit gender or any of our societal conventions. That's what I've learned and that is how I have come to understand and accept that homosexuality, another manifestation of love, need not be perverse, unnatural or downright immoral ( of course, there are still certain parameters to be followed just like in any other human relationship but I won't go into that right now).

Now, going back, I say that gays have come a long way since. A lot of gays encourage their fellow gays and gays-in-hiding to come out of the closet, to shake off self-delusion and accept who they really are.

But what if it is the other way around? What if a gay insists or wants to be straight? I'm asking this question because I think it reflects what I've heard from Clinton and his situation with our colleague, X.

Clinton insists, and he's right in saying this, that a person's sexual orientation is difficult, or even almost impossible to change. A gay will always be gay, ika nga. Hence, any talk of a gay trying to be straight then is out of the question and any attempt at this should be frowned upon. But why is that so?

For me, this is unfair and downright hypocritical. We encourage a gay person to be true to his nature but when he wants to be straight, we don't support him because he's not being honest to himself. That's trash. What if that person really wants to be straight, not because of any kind of peer or familial pressure, but because he really wants to? Shouldn't we support him all the more instead?

Kung ako lang, as long as the person is happy with what he's doing and as long as he's not lying to himself about what he wants, I back him up. And I believe X needs all the help he can get. Trying to be straight is a lifetime task: it doesn't happen in a snap. And it doesn't help that X has to be surrounded with people who refuse to believe, who refuse to accept, who refuse to support X's decision to be straight.

Let's give X the benefit of the doubt, shall we? And let's make him feel that he can count on us to be there to support him.