If the agenda of homosexual political campaigners was merely for freedom and rights, there would have been no debate on reorientation in the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday. Lesley Pilkington would not have been targeted by a homosexual reporter so he could get her struck off for “reparative therapy.”
I don’t know how well these therapies work. Can human efforts help, or will only a miracle of God’s grace change lives, hearts, and desires in this way? There will never be freedom from sin without God. We can decide which desires to encourage, what thoughts to pursue, so perhaps human efforts can have some effect. No matter how smart the experts try to sound, we have limited understanding of the mental and emotional makeup of people in a fallen world.
But whether therapy works or not, if Peter Tatchell and friends cared about freedom and rights, they would loudly support the freedom of people who want it to try to get help to change. Not so. Want to anger a Muslim? Help someone apostacise from Islam. Want to anger a homosexual activist? Try to help someone apostacise from homosexuality.
They claim to oppose reorientation because it doesn’t cure anyone, but only suppresses the symptoms. AIDS therapy doesn’t cure anyone and only suppresses symptoms, but there’s no debate. If some people want this therapy and think it helps (even a little bit) with changing their life to be more what they want it to be, why would anyone oppose people who provide it to them? Pretty simple, really.
The agenda is not freedom, but validation, convincing everyone (especially themselves) that there is nothing wrong with what they do. If someone were changed it would destroy a pillar of that agenda, for once change is possible, there is a choice — to continue as you are, or to seek to be changed. If there is choice, there is moral responsibility, and their claim to validation is that they have no choice, no moral responsibility — thus, their actions MUST be accepted (and validated) without question.
The validation agenda needs homosexuality to be a terminal condition. It has to be as unchangeable as skin colour, as immutable as genetic makeup, as inexorable as old age, carrying on relentlessly until death.
Christians believe in miracles. God changes people. We offer hope. The agenda offers despair, no hope of change. If the agenda collapses, they can’t try to use society’s validation to silence that tiny voice inside, telling them there is a God, telling them He’s not pleased. That can’t be faced. The agenda must be buttressed — so there can be no hope for change for the homosexual. The agenda is built on fear, fear of not being accepted, because of the inner knowledge that their actions are unacceptable to God.
The debate tells little about the effectiveness of the therapy, because the participants all have their own agendas. But the fact that homosexual “rights” activists chose to take part in opposition to the right of homosexuals to receive this treatment (if they want it) tells much about their agenda. The rights agenda isn’t about freedom and rights at all, and the despair of those who want out is a sacrifice offered on the altar of the validation agenda. They must not be offered any hope!
But there is still God, and even if they drive reparative therapies out of existence, He is still in the life-changing, heart-changing, desire-changing business. I don’t know if those therapies work or not, but He does. The real hope is not in a therapy, but in the Lord. If you know someone who is in despair, who wants to be changed, who has been given no hope by those who supposedly support his rights, tell him. For any who will hear God’s call, there really is hope, for His Word says this:
Revelation 22:17
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
(Please note the comment policy.)
Mind Renewers 
“There will never be freedom from sin without God. We can decide which desires to encourage, what thoughts to pursue, so perhaps human efforts can have some effect.”
–
That effect can, in and of itself, only be immediate– i.e. temporal– amounting, in the bigger picture, to no more than choosing on which side of the broad road to destruction one shall proceed.
–
Another poignant post, Brother Jon. Thank you.
You are right, Brother Al. Can human effort / therapies cause someone to be free from homosexual desires and sins? Perhaps — I really don’t know. But without God, the recovered homosexual (if there is such a thing without God) will still be a sinner, still lost, just going down another part of the broad road….
Good post Jon. Therapy cannot change a sinner because the root of the homosexual choice is sin, a sin purposely chosen by the sinner because of their forbidden lust and desire for it. You simply cannot cure a sinner in therapy! Accountability for sinful choices is as popular as a festered boil.
Sin is a bondage and we are all slaves to it. How can a slave free his/herself from that bondage? How can mortal men offer any type of therapy or counseling that would free someone of what they love and are enslaved to? This is why the ‘success rate’ of mans’ attempt to cure is zilch, zero, nada. Instead, man re-labels sin as an ‘orientation’, or a ‘disease’, or ‘alternative lifestyle’. It seems now the homosexual agenda is using ‘civil rights’ as their backdrop to force their sinful perversion on society and demand acceptance and the right to marry, to raise children, to utterly destroy God’s ordination of family; although I have witnessed countless ‘families’ that are dysfuntional and they are not headed by homosexuals. There are men and women living together outside the covenant of marriage, bringing children into the world, raising them with no morals and values, no biblical teachings whatsoever. The problem with both hetero and homosexual relationships is the same…Christ isn’t there and isn’t honored as the Head.
We MUST get back to calling sin what it is. Homosexuality is NOT an ‘orientation’, it is not a civil right, it is not an alternative lifestyle, nor or homosexuals victims by genetic defect or fault. Homosexuality is a sin, an abomination. It is birthed out of forbidden lust, a desire and longing for what God has stated is not permissable. It is sin because Almighty God has said so, because His word states it is. God has ordained marriage and family to be of a man and a woman, who pro-create. This is impossible for homosexuals to do. This is not a civil rights issue at all; unlike black people who were discriminated against because of something they could not help. Homosexuals freely choose to delve into sexual perversion…by CHOICE. They exchange the natural way, the way that was instilled at birth, for what is unnatural. Let us call it what it is….S – I – N
Thanks, Lyn. I appreciated this: “Sin is a bondage and we are all slaves to it.”
I wish more Christians would accept this truth. The homosexual says, “I can’t change, I’ve tried,” and too many Christians say, “Yes, you can.” But it is bondage, and the only way to be really free is by God’s grace. Perhaps people can move from one kind of sin bondage to another sin bondage, but many can’t, and those who do will still be in sin.
Romans 1 tells us that the path to this sin begins with not honouring God and being unthankful. Once a person starts down that path, it will lead them to many bad places, and ultimately to destruction, unless God saves them.