I realize you may have a concern that if your boy engages in these behaviors, that he was simply born that way, and that’s the way he is. My friend, whose twenty-something son is gay, tells me he was fully aware his son was gay by the time he was three. But obviously my friend had not read enough of James Dobson, or he would have grasped the most important message that this esteemed psychologist has to offer, on this emotional and factually muddied topic; for if he had, he would surely have taken a more proactive role and prevented the present diabolic outcome, rather than merely loving his son for who he is.
“The most important message I can offer to you [James quoting from Nicolosi] is that there is no such thing as a ‘gay child’ or a ‘gay teen.’ [But] left untreated, studies show these boys have a 75 percent chance of becoming homosexual, or bisexual.”
What is the best evidence for there being no gay child or gay teen? Well, I guess you need to go back and read the arguments above, because there aren’t any better arguments in this part of the chapter.
Now that we’ve gotten clear on some of the main issues, let us get down to business. We’re about to learn key principles that we ought to internalize, assuming we don’t wish to let our kids grow up to be homosexuals. So listen up here (to James quoting Joe)!
“The truth is, Dad is more important than Mom. Mothers make boys. Fathers make men.” It is critical for a boy “to disidentify with his mother and identify with his father,” because, at about a year and a half, “a little boy will not only begin to observe the difference between Mom and Dad, he must now decide, ‘Which one am I going to be?’’’
Generally, before age three, “… the boy decides that he would like to grow up like his father… The first order of business in being a man is, ‘don’t be a woman.’”
Damn. No wonder my father was always telling me not to be a sissy! I’m so glad I listened to him, even though it’s why I still won’t sing, and why I cried my eyes out when he wouldn’t let me play with a tea set. But he had to be tough; I think I was about five by then.
There are a number of other things a father can do to keep his son on course, but I’ll just toss out one more here: “He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.” (My recollection is that Freud saw that as a potential problem, something having to do with envy, but who am I to judge these things?)
Now on this choice thing. Didn’t we say earlier that homosexuality is not typically chosen? Looking back, I see that we did. But now we learn that the choice is made at a very early age, presumably before it is a conscious choice, although James never sheds much light on this rather glaring contradiction. Homosexuality is not a choice near the beginning of this chapter, but it becomes it is a choice near the end, for reasons unexplained. But let us find forgiveness in our Christian hearts, and not be intellectual fascists. Two plus two need not always be four; even Einstein said something like that.
Now we are offered some deep thoughts on that grand fork in the road that confronts developing wanna-be heterosexual men. What we surely don’t want, is that which goes through the corrupted male mind at an early developmental stage—namely, that Dad is “not who I am” or “who I want to be.”
Does Mr. Dobson offer the slightest proof of this? No, but that is not the point. “A boy needs to see his father as confident, self-assured and decisive. He also needs him to be supportive, sensitive and caring.”
And what about Mom? “Mom needs to back off a bit. What I mean is, don’t smother him.”
Thus you smothering Moms need to get a grip; and you non-decisive Dads need to get more decisive, not to mention start acting more confident. Presumably any way you can. Because it is at this decisive stage of early gender identification that young boys decide if they are going to be gay or go straight. According to James and Joe.
“If [a father] wants his son to grow up straight, he has to break the mother-son connection that is proper to infancy but not in the boy’s interest after the age of three… growing up straight isn’t something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires societal support. And it takes time. The crucial years are from one and a half to three years old, but the optimal time is before age twelve.”
But we would be remiss if we did not mention another cause of gender identity disorder, and that is sexual abuse. Did you know that “30 percent of homosexuals say they were exploited sexually as a child, many of them repeatedly?”
I suppose that if we took a survey we might also find that 30 percent of them went to the beach regularly; or had aunts who kissed them at Thanksgiving; or had more boyfriends than girlfriends; or took dance lessons; or had some other experience that many heterosexuals had. But no matter; we are concerned here with the obvious cause and effect of sexual abuse, according to James.
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