In my previous examples, the other person in the conversation was someone who experiences same-sex attraction.  But most of our unconvinced friends will be heterosexual, and most of the difficulties of conversation with them about the topic arises either from the fact that so many are either leading sexually disordered lives themselves, or confusedly trying to defend friends and relatives who do.  They may be reluctant to concede that any form of sexuality could be problematic, just because then they would be forced to face up to what is wrong with the other things they think they have to shield.

One way the discomfort of heterosexuals about their own behavior manifests itself is misplaced fear of not being compassionate enough.  They may exercise so little restraint in their own sexual lives that they consider it cruel to expect any restraint at all from anyone else.  Perhaps it is sufficient to point out that though compassion is good, there is a difference between true compassion, which is a persevering commitment to the true good of others, and false compassion, which is a lazy disposition to approve of whatever they want.

Another way heterosexual discomfort manifests itself is a misplaced desire not to discriminate.  For example, people may say changing the laws of marriage “wouldn’t hurt anyone,” so why not make them “the same for everyone”?  I answer this question with a question.  Why are there marriage laws in the first place?  After all, the law doesn’t take an interest in love in general; it ignores my relationship with my fishing buddy.  But marriage is unique.  It is the only institution that can give a child a fighting chance of being raised by a mom and a dad.  To demand that the law regard two men or two women as married is to proclaim that henceforth family law should be based not on the well-being of children, but on the sexual convenience of grown-ups.  Still think it wouldn’t hurt anyone?

Tomorrow:  Part 7.  This seven-part series is adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press.

Monday is student letter day.  I have cherished this letter for more than a decade, and I think of the writer often.  The version you see here is slightly shortened.

Her letter:

I am not a Christian, but I am writing to tell you that you are right, and I was wrong.

I am twenty years old, and since age thirteen I have been "lesbian-identified."  What this means is that while I was never actually involved with a woman, I was fluent in the language of gay culture:  I had gay friends, attended gay pride parades in San Francisco, and had a hidden but extensive library containing everything from the “classic” gay novels to lesbian "erotica" (read: pornography).

In the summer of 1999 two very important things happened.  The first was that I lost my virginity to a man with the support and encouragement of my Christian mother, who thought it would "cure" me.  (I kept my hands over my face the entire time, and I didn't feel particularly healthy afterward.)  The second was that I became seriously ill.  It turns out that these two events were not connected, though at first I feared they might be.

Afterward, I was bedridden for a year, and during that time I discovered your [online] writing.  An emotional battle began that has lasted almost two years, and I am finally throwing in the towel.  Why?  Let me share with you three random events from my life:

1.  I received a phone call from my friend X.  (She used to have a recognizably female name, Z, but she had it legally changed because she wanted something that was gender nonspecific.)  She called to tell me that her girlfriend has decided to have her breasts surgically removed.

2.  I visited the web site of a lesbian magazine and found an article on how to use needles as an aid to sexual pleasure.  The author recommends having benzalkonium chloride towelettes on hand to wipe up the blood.

3.  A straight female friend emailed me from college asking for advice.  Here is an excerpt:  “I have suddenly become sexually brazen, and it scares me a little.  I think that it's about time, though, that I started enjoying myself and stop giving myself guilt/head trips about it in the process.  But what really irks me is that the people I meet end up being either in the army, navy, players, spending just the weekend, on a road trip, or leaving the state in a matter of weeks.  I can't help but feel that some or a lot of this is a little empty.”

When women want to cut off their female organs, when hurting each other with needles is considered a turn-on, and when promiscuous girls feel guilty about feeling guilty (as though they just aren't liberated enough), something has gone terribly, terribly awry.  I have been a faithful reader of yours — I even own one of your books — and I've been hopping mad at you more times than I can count.  The funny thing is, I keep coming back to your writing.  Keep telling [the truth], and I'll keep listening.  I may even end up a Christian someday.

Tomorrow:  Nature, For and Against, Part 6

“He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must -- he cannot help himself -- become a little man, that is, a dwarf.  He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.”

Quotation from:  George MacDonald.  Tomorrow:  Metanoia.  The series on "Nature, For and Against" resumes on Tuesday.

Honesty about sex is difficult to achieve when the discussion takes place in a group.  People are too eager to score debating points and afraid to lose face.  My counterpart in a debate about same-sex attraction spoke about the hatred that he said had killed Matthew Shepherd.  I replied, “Surely you know I don’t hate you.  I love you.  I want to spend eternity with you in heaven.”  After the debate was over and the camera was off, he thanked me, saying that he could tell I did love him.  I was glad.  But he didn’t concede that on camera.

Perhaps the hardest part of conversation is giving a gentle and truthful answer to challenges that emerge from pain and anger.

A male friend who experiences same-sex attraction might say, “You reject me because I'm different from you.”  But he is not different; he is a man, like me, who suffers temptations, like me, even if somewhat different temptations than mine.  I affirm his manhood.  If I think he is able to hear me, I might mildly ask whether it is possible that he is the one who rejects the challenge of the Other – of the complementary sex.

He might say, “You are demeaning my dignity.”  I insist on his dignity.  Every person is an image of God.  But we are working from two different understandings of what upholding his dignity requires.  Though I want to lift it up, I think he is harming it.

He might say, “You don’t respect my love for my partner.”  I honor all love and friendship.  The issue is not whether two people of the same sex can be loving friends; the issue is whether sexual intercourse improves every kind of love.  Unthinkingly, we often speak as though it does; but would it improve the love of a teacher and student, a father and daughter, a brother and sister?  Of course not; it introduces an alien and distorting motive into such relationships.  In the same way, it introduces an alien and distorting motive into the friendship of two men or two women.

He may say that “Gay is just as natural for some people as straight is for others.”  But the meaning of natural inclination is not what I happen to desire.  It is what I am made to desire.  Each sex is made for its polar counterpart.

He may say “I was born this way.”  Certain behavioral predispositions really are latent from birth.  For example, it is well-established that some people suffer the misfortune of a genetic predisposition to the abuse of alcohol.   But this doesn’t make drunkenness naturally good for them; it merely means they will have to work harder than other people to resist the temptation.  Good friends will encourage them to do so.

This seven-part series on “Nature, For and Against,” adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press, resumes on Tuesday.  Tomorrow:  On Refusing Childhood.

Acts have consequences, and some of these consequences are natural.  To put it differently, whatever we do has results, and some of them result from what we are.

Because of our physical nature, if we cut ourselves, we bleed.  Because of our social nature, if we betray our friends, we lose them.  Because of our intellectual nature, if we try to keep ourselves from thinking straight about some things, we will have difficulty thinking straight about a lot of other things too.  We reap what we sow.

This insight applies to our sexual nature as well.  For example, it isn't just physical consequences like bodily disease that make the hedonism of what is called the gay lifestyle like the merriment of a danse macabre.  A hundred notes of sorrow tell the tale.  For example, conscious of sterility in all its senses, desperate to find a way to make empty sex seem meaningful, some young male homosexuals deliberately seek out men with deadly infections as partners; this is called "bug chasing."

Unless one is a physician or counselor whose business it is to heal the sundry hurts of flesh or spirit, it is not usually helpful to say too much about such dreadful things, because the shock and horror of them is so great that in order to defend themselves against it, listeners tend to shoot the messenger.  Suffice it to say that the literature of the movements of disordered sexuality talks about them more frankly than I can here.

Despite public denial, people know quite a bit about the natural consequences of their acts, even if not the full range of them.  Consider the strangeness of the expression “safe sex,” an inadvertent confession of dangers from which one seeks protection.

Tomorrow:  Part 5.  This seven-part series is adapted from my chapter in a book to be published by Ignatius Press.