An Apology Because I Don’t Trust You

Dr. Robert Spitzer has apologized to the gay community for a ten-year old study which claimed some gays could, through reparative therapy, go straight. He now says the study was flawed because how can one know for sure if the people who claimed to have changed were actually telling the truth. He says this despite earlier believing that certain aspects of the accounts couldn’t simply be dismissed. All fine and well. Except for one thing. If we can’t trust someone who claims they have gone straight, how can we trust someone who says they are gay?

Does he think the people who claimed they had changed were lying, confused, deceived, pressured? Why can’t those same criteria be applied to those who say they are gay? I know, I’ve heard it before, why would anyone claim to be gay and undergo such backlash by family, friends, the church? Why humans put themselves into situations where they are persecuted is multifaceted. But what is clear by a cursory view of human behavior both now and throughout history is that humans often do things for inexplicable reasons that bring them trouble. And they often do things for inexplicable reasons that allow them to remain “safe” and out of trouble, as is claimed of those who were changed through reparative therapy.

To say that those who were changed from gay to straight were wrong—for whatever reason—invites the same query of those who claim they are gay in the first place. For good or ill, this conversation needs to have a level playing field.

Rationalization, Sort Of

A fourteen year old girl is upset because she doesn’t appreciate Seventeen magazine doctoring their photos. “I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that is supposed to be for me.” I won’t go into the potential problems with that statement because I want to focus on the justification of the writer of the article of Seventeen altering photos.

The writer of the article justifies the behavior of the magazine saying, “While we agree that excessive Photoshop work is indeed a problem in the magazine world, Seventeen is hardly the biggest culprit.” The author also goes on to say that the airbrushing they do is minimal. Whatever you think about the pros and cons and the business side of the decision (and it is a business decision), to rationalize a choice by saying it is not as bad as what others do and by saying it’s really minimal, is missing the point entirely. The author should have just spoken the truth by saying that Seventeen feels they have to airbrush in a world where everyone is doing it.

The Conscience in Us All: Part II

In Things Fall Apart, after Okonkwo has been banished from the tribe for seven years after inadvertently killing someone, a friend of Okonkwo’s reflects,

Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they committed? The Earth had decreed that they were an offense to the land and must be destroyed.

The tribe has tradition and rules and beliefs, yet here is a man who questions those beliefs, but he is afraid to not follow through with the killing of his own children out of fear of the consequences for himself and his tribe. His conscience tells him the truth. His culture screams louder. 

My culture screams as well—but not just in tradition. It literally makes noise: radio, TV, ipod, 24 hour news. We are bombarded by the noise which drowns so many other things. What is God trying to say that I just can’t hear? What is God trying to tell you that you just haven’t unplugged long enough to listen to?

The Conscience in Us All

When Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son, realizes that someone has been killed in Things Fall Apart, Achebe describes his reaction this way, “…something seemed to give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened bow. He did not cry. He just hung limp. He had the same kind of feeling not long ago…They were returning home…when they heard the voice of an infant crying in the thick forest.… Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the forest.…a vague chill had descended on him and his head seemed to swell….”

Why would Nwoye possibly have had this reaction? If tribal tradition had stated this for all of Nwoye’s life, and if he had no opportunity to learn anything different, why would he feel this way about these types of deaths. What’s the big deal about the babies being left in the forest to die?

What Achebe describes so well is what all humans possess: conscience. We know right from wrong. Especially at an early age, we experience the fundamental truth that somewhere a morality exists. As we grow older, we can suppress that truth, but Achebe has thrust it in front of us here for all to see. 

But where does this come from? Why would Nwoye feel this way? He feels this way because God created humankind in His image. Paul describes this truth in Romans when he says that even people who do not know God or His laws have a conscience that bears witness to the truth. Nwoye’s conscience was bearing witness to him about the truth that rose above tribal tradition. 

I don’t know if Nwoye will suppress this truth, fight against it, or embrace it. I do know that he does not experience these things in a vacuum. People from all over the world join him in their knowledge of the inhumanity of killing innocents. And we turn our heads and keep walking. 

The humanists would have us think that morality is based upon majority rules, but morality abides in our hearts, placed there by a loving God. We can choose to ignore that if we wish, but that doesn’t make it go away.