Once upon a time, homosexuals were denied Holy Communion. They were routinely rounded up by the police, marched through the streets, even executed. And believe it or not, there are countries which still criminalise same-sex relationships and exact the death penalty.
It all sounds incredibly primitive and cruel. But it’s been just over 40 years since the Psychological Association of America – the ‘land of the free’ – removed homosexuality from its list of clinical disorders. While in the UK a 2015 Stonewall study of medical professionals found that one in 10 believed that lesbian, gay and bisexual people could be ‘cured’ of their respective orientations.
However liberal we pretend to be and however fashionable gay rights may seem nowadays, the sad truth is that there is still astonishing prejudice and misinformation surrounding gay relationships. The 12th edition of State Sponsored Homophobia report by ILGA (the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association) claims that there is no country in the world where LGBT people are completely safe from discrimination, stigmatisation and violence.
Before children are even aware of their sexuality, they have somehow ‘learned’ that homosexuality is ‘bad’. Among boys, being called a faggot is easily the most pejorative of all insults. And later, when some of those boys become aware of homosexual feelings, there’s usually trouble. Because at that point a boy must either confront and ‘come out’ or deny and despair. Catch 22s everywhere you look. A life of stigma or secrecy? Harassment or conformity? Humiliation or self-loathing? Public disownment or private desolation?
Of course, it is terrifying that in 2019 there are still societies which consider homosexuality a neurosis that a little electroconvulsive therapy, testicular removal or solitary confinement won’t put right. And yet, even someone like me – who sees injustices, great and small, everywhere – has trouble engaging with something that is not my everyday experience. In fact, ‘gay conversion therapy’ was so far off my radar that I hadn’t given it any thought (or even entertained the concept) until Malta became the first country in Europe to ban the barbaric practice in 2016.
Having said that, I was told the story the other day of a very sweet Polish boy who came some 40 years ago to Malta to be ‘cured’ and later committed suicide in Warsaw. The very idea of trying to ‘cure’ someone of his or her sexuality is of course brutal in the extreme. But unless you are directly confronted by the notion, it is often all too easy to miss the implications. So I needed them to be spelled out explicitly. And that happened a couple of weeks ago when I finally got round to watching Milk – the 2008 biopic based on the life of Harvey Milk. I then watched the even more disturbing Boy Erased.
Cinema (like much great literature) holds the mirror, as ‘twere, up to nature. Fictions and fables help us understand the basic truths about ourselves and our humanity. They fill in the gaps of our own experience and teach us, vicariously, lessons and basic principles where real life has failed. Much in the same way that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is about tolerance, and addressed to an audience that couldn’t grasp the notion that African-Americans might enjoy equal rights, films like Milk and Boy Erased champion narratives that are not only about human equality but also about living an honest life and being the person you really are. And that’s not just for your own happiness and sanity. It’s for the benefit of others too.
Gay men and women and their ‘straight’ family members need to know that homosexuality is not a life of public shame or clinical perversion but one of love and acceptance. In a world where men are created equal and in God’s image, there can be no place for something as destructive and manipulative as gay conversion therapy.
The film, like others, jolted me out of my unawareness (or shall I call it complacency?) and plunged me into a world of verbal abuse and ossified bigotry. It also stirred the uneasy feeling that homophobia could always mutate into actual violence and even death. Studies show that there is a higher risk of suicidal behaviour among lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) young people. Gay conversion therapy is effectively the erasure of an identity. The methods used – brutal, abusive and evil – create physical and emotional upset where none existed before. And it is shocking that such abuse is legal in many parts of Europe and America, even in 2019. All the more should we congratulate ourselves on being the first country in Europe to ban this terrible practice. The UK has since followed suit.
I was very glad to read a statement issued by the Malta Chamber of Psychologists only a few days ago, in the aftermath of ‘ex-gay’ Matthew Grech’s ‘coming outburst’. The statement rightly underscored the harmful and noxious effects of a pseudoscience that promotes homophobia and intolerance and can lead to real psychological harm. I am not entirely sure where the Church in Malta stands in all of this; but if it hasn’t taken a direct stand, it should. This is abuse in its most cruel form and should be something from which the Church disassociates itself unequivocally.
Parents too must be made more aware, because a so-called ‘cure’ may give false hope where none exists or is needed. Which is why the Church has a duty toward these families – to remind them that God does not make mistakes and that the God who created us in a certain way meant us to be that way. A practice which incites self-loathing and encourages people to feel suicidal cannot be right. It is also illegal. Anybody promoting it can’t claim freedom of expression as an excuse. Such a person could in fact be an accomplice to murder.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece