Oceanskater’s Blog

As I mentioned, I was in New Orleans recently. The reason I was there was to take part in a protest at the American Psychological Association’s convention.

I and approximately 40-50 others were there to ask the APA to uphold its right to client self-determination in all cases. This is a tenet of the organization, but they don’t seem to allow it to be applied to those who have questions about their struggles with same-sex attraction. I’m not much of a protestor (anymore) and I always try to stay out of politics (I commented more on this recently in my comments in the entry “Stuff”). After I received the invitation to attend, I thought about this quite a bit and Roy & I prayed about it and discussed it. We decided that it would be good for us to be there. As the day approached and I continued praying, I felt more & more strongly about being there. There were several times in my 6+ years of counseling prior to becoming a follower of Christ when I brought up questions and doubts about my sexual orientation to my therapists. My doubts were always silenced. My counselors told me that I was born gay and that I should accept myself as I was. I tried, but ultimately decided I would be happier either being celibate or possibly one day married to a man. I know that my therapists meant well, but I can’t help but wonder how my life would have been different if one of them truly allowed me to voice and explore my questions.

There are some other good blog entries about this here & here.

I also got to see some sites and hang out with some friends while I was there, which was very cool.

As a general rule, I really try to distance myself from politics. I feel that to be involved in most political arenas could cloud Alive in Christ’s mission, which is why I generally steer clear of most things that could be viewed as “political”. But I realized not too long ago that my life will always be “political”, in some sense of the word. Just the fact that I lived as a lesbian for 10 years and now live as a married, heterosexual woman is a political statement I can’t avoid. I don’t know if that makes sense or if I’m voicing it quite clearly, but it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. If I form thoughts that have more clarity than that, I’ll be sure to post them here

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 5:32 pm and is filed under news/survey/politics, ex-gay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.