Do We Need to Label People as “Gay”? | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Contents:

• I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.
• “I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.HOMEGENERAL“I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID. PREV NEXT VIEW LARGER IMAGE “I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.FACEBOOK17TWEET0P0LKEDIN0EMAIL0PRT0SHAR17“I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.
• JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU
• BEG A GAY WOMAN – LABELS AND STEREOTYPG
• DO WE NEED TO LABEL PEOPLE AS “GAY”?

I’VE INTIFIED AS GAY FOR YEARS. NOT ANYMORE.

Bulli teased me for beg gay when I was younger, but when a six-year-old boy lls another six-year-old boy gay, he means “weird” or “gross, ” not “has sex wh men.

Kids are not gay or straight, they’re jt kids. I wasn’t gay or straight. Why, then, do adults who knew me as a child sist that I was gay all along?

I felt prsured to pick a label and stick wh , and for a long time “gay” worked bee I didn’t thk about much. But the last year or two, I’ve started to rethk my relatnship to the label “gay.

“I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.HOMEGENERAL“I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID. PREV NEXT VIEW LARGER IMAGE “I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.FACEBOOK17TWEET0P0LKEDIN0EMAIL0PRT0SHAR17“I DON’T WANT TO BE LABELLED AS GAY” THEY SAID.

I hooked up wh trans and nonbary people and stopped scribg myself as gay, preferrg to e the more clive tchall “queer.

Often when I tell some people that I’m distancg myself om gay, they immediately suggt I intify as bisexual, or pansexual. I need somethg that means “mostly gay but not fully mted and open to other possibili, ” but, alas, such a niche label has yet to be imaged.

When I was six, the boys who teased me labelled me as gay.

JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU

The adults my life labelled me as gay. And for a while after g out, “gay” worked fe.

Kenh Lew, a pneer who challenged the Amerin Psychoanalytic Associatn’s (APsaA) stanc on homosexualy the late 1980s. While rearchg the origs of the signatn of mental illns upon homosexualy, Dr. Most morn acunts of the tersectn of homosexualy and fah, and certaly those retold non-clive nservative Christian church, beg wh an assumptn of homosexualy as a ndn of mental illns “bee has always been that way.

The liftg of the signatn of mental illns om homosexualy, as the story often go, rulted om the “onslght” of gay vars forcg their way to the Amerin Psychologil Associatn (APA) nferenc om 1970 to 1973. The flawed narrative ntu by assertg that, whout the aid of any rearch or science over the next few years, the APA membership was forcefully prsured to reclassify homosexualy om a pathology and mental illns to a normal variatn of human sexualy.

BEG A GAY WOMAN – LABELS AND STEREOTYPG

So, why and how was homosexualy first classified as a mental illns? Lew overheard a lleague speak dismissively about a fellow tor who was a “known homosexual. His doctorate work the field led him to askg, and, more importantly, answerg a simple qutn, “How did homosexualy e to be labelled a mental illns?

After all, they had a dirty ltle secret and were unwillg to speak out publicly agast the half-century long reprehensible anti-gay history of the anizatn. Though the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn had removed the mental illns stigma om homosexualy a before, gay and lbian therapists were still barred om membership the APsaA.

DO WE NEED TO LABEL PEOPLE AS “GAY”?

Lew thored a 300-page book, Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexualy (1988), a history of how the sgle most fluential profsnal group of therapists abed their power to stigmatize the gay muny.

It’s a pellg and often tratg historil acunt of non-scientific and eply flawed “expert” speculatns that led the disurse on homosexualy for almost a half century through the 1970s. Frd thought the “mental illns” ndn of both gays and lbians was due to dispted childhood psychosexual stag.