I LIKE NICE PEOPLE, THEY\u2019RE THE ONES YOU CAN\u2019T STAND: Review of Leanne Payne\u2019s The Broken Image<\/em>.<\/strong> (lightly edited version) A couple people had recommended this book to me. It\u2019s, I guess, a guide to healing lesbionicity, or something. (I read it for work-related reasons. I might act crazy, but I don\u2019t smoke enough crack to read this sort of thing for fun.)<\/p>\n Yeah\u2026 I had a really hard time with this book, even though <\/em>I also gained from it. So.<\/p>\n BLAME CANADA!:<\/strong> OK, the first enormous problem with the book is that it\u2019s really caught up in origin stories. How come you\u2019re so messed up? And\u2026 ha. It\u2019s been fairly humiliating for me to realize that I actually fit one of her profiles, to some extent (and to her credit, she offers several different profiles, doesn\u2019t assume that every Gay Story is the same); and yet I find her whole approach completely awful.<\/p>\n First off, she tends, especially in the sections dealing with women, to divide people into Villains and Victims. (Guess which one I am! \u2026Last to guess wins a pony.) Either you\u2019re a predatory lesbo or you\u2019re a sweet little straight girl turned to the Dark Side by bad childhood experiences. And just\u2026 you know, I got an F in the class \u201cChildren And How To Be One,\u201d okay? But I\u2019m pretty sure I don\u2019t fit her profile for Villain (even though there are a couple things, in the general neighborhood of Teh Gay, for which I do really feel guilty) or Victim (even though Payne talks about separation from one\u2019s mother prior to the formation of solid memories, which, because of surgery to correct serious birth defects, I would guess that I experienced). And it kills me that these are the only terms in which she can see people with same-sex attractions.<\/p>\n JESUS IS MAGIC.<\/strong> Another part of my huge problem with this book is the way that it has this one cool, jargon-laden form of prayer (\u201clistening prayer\u201d) that supposedly never fails. It\u2019s a cure-all. And it\u2019s just weird\u2013you\u2019re supposed to, like, relive your birth trauma. No kidding.<\/p>\n And you know\u2013when you ask me, \u201cHey, if you really had to pick one: Are you a big dyke because girls are pretty, or because you got hospitalized at a young age and had some kind of freaky separation trauma?\u201d\u2013it\u2019s really not that hard for me to answer. I know for a fact that girls are pretty. I\u2019m not sure how I could ever know what the effects of the whole birth-defects\/surgery thing were, if any. I don\u2019t remember it, it was a long time ago, most people get over it; honestly, how would I even know?<\/p>\n And that\u2019s part of what bothers me so much about the focus on \u201cthe origin of the problem.\u201d It\u2019s so much about finding someone or some incident to blame. It makes everything you do wrong yet another instance of Why Teh Gay People Iz Irreparably Damaged. It\u2019s the old, cruel dichotomy of Best Little Boy in the World vs. Tragic Statistic. And it\u2019s impossible to disprove<\/em>, because everyone has some traumatic incident in the past. (And no matter how many heteros have the exact same backstory, apparently it\u2019s only interesting and troubling when the kid turns out gay. Seriously\u2013if all Payne\u2019s different Primrose Paths to Poofery worked, the entire world would be gayer than a picnic basket. Color me a skeptical pink.)<\/p>\n Payne\u2019s whole approach struck me as blame-oriented, and in sharp contrast to the approach of e.g. St Augustine. I think both Payne and Augustine would agree that every sin is the result of a misdirected virtue; but Payne focuses so much on the sinfulness that it\u2019s impossible to tell what she thinks the misdirected virtue is<\/em>. You can\u2019t work backwards to figure out how you should rightly express the virtue if you can\u2019t even identify it.<\/p>\n SOLID GOLD EASY ACTION.<\/strong> And Payne\u2019s whole shtik strikes me as too easy<\/em>. If this chick has figured out how to cure Teh Gay through prayer\u2013hey, whoopee!! No need for embracing the Cross anymore! Why didn\u2019t I think of that? Christ is fluffy!<\/p>\n You know, I doubt it\u2019s that easy.<\/p>\n MERRY CHRISTMAS, C.S. LEWIS\u2013or, Leather Elbows on a Tweed Coat\/Oh, Is That <\/em>the Best You Can Do?<\/strong> To get even more scattershot than this post already is\u2013Payne quotes from Lewis quite a bit. She quotes a big chunk of a letter he wrote to Sheldon Vanauken, in which he said (apropos of homosexuality), \u201cEvery disability is a vocation.\u201d<\/p>\n And\u2026 there\u2019s a lot of fruit to be gained from that. If you buckle down, stop whining, and make yourself say, \u201cOkay, these temptations aren\u2019t what God wants for me; nevertheless here they are; what good can be wrung from them? How can they shape my vocation?\u201d, actually I think you\u2019ll find an enormous amount of spiritual wealth. I think you\u2019ll find that your homosexuality (or any other strong temptation) really can be transformed into a vocation, made sublime. There may well be saints who would not have attained Heaven were it not for their temptations and their spiritual \u201cdisadvantages.\u201d God has given you your struggles for a reason. I really believe that.<\/p>\n