ALL THIS USELESS BEAUTY: One of the reasons the family-dynamics origin stories (and the gender-dysfunction/salvation-through-pantyhose ones) don’t really work for me is that they reduce what I experienced as an existential alienation into a psychological one. First off, I didn’t feel “different from all the other girls”; I felt different from all the other humans. (I suspect boys’ reactions are more likely to be gender-linked, though.) More importantly, in some respects my sexual orientation turned out to be the key that unlocked the world for me–the thing that made things make sense. I’ll try to explain by posting what I had initially intended to be the last section of the NRO piece (but it was already way too long). I think this can serve as one possible Christian alternative to the ex-gay worldview. I would never claim this is the only possible alternative. But it responds to my sense that my experiences weren’t just pointless, something to be overcome and forgotten as quickly as possible. So here it is (with links to earlier posts where I expand on some of this stuff):

If I had grown up heterosexual, I don’t know if I would be Catholic today. There are two reasons for this: beauty, and alienation.

I was fascinated by Catholicism in part because it explained my intuition that the beauty of the world was not random but meaningful; that the little beauties of the world pointed beyond themselves to some great underlying loveliness. I had a few touchstone images of this beauty. Perhaps the one I still recall most vividly is the image of a woman’s face–a young woman on whom I had a schoolgirl crush–a pale, distracted, inquisitive face in a darkened room. I strive, now, to see all people as I saw her then: as an image of God.

The alienation was even more central to my conversion. Throughout my childhood I had a strong sense that something had gone wrong–that I was not only different but broken. I connected this feeling to my sexual orientation, and developed intense shame. This despite being raised in an extraordinarily gay-positive household–I could be misremembering, but I’m not sure I even encountered stigma against homosexuality until I was in junior high.

The doctrine of original sin offered a startling and hopeful possibility: Suddenly the thing that made me different, my sexual orientation, was not the focus; my alienation was a distilled version of what every person experiences after the Fall. My orientation was a source of insight, not solely a burden or a political cause.

I don’t think this is a universal story, applicable to everyone with same-sex attractions. But I do think it’s more joyful, and more realistic, than the standard ex-gay narrative. It’s also less politically useful–which is all to the good.