The Standard of Liberty Voice
For God,Religion,Family,Freedom
A publication of The Standard of Liberty Foundation
www.standardofliberty.org
April 15, 2006, #18

The Proud Volunteer – optional homosexuals and the gay recruitment movement

We all have an opportunity to experience a much-needed dose of reality in the form of Troy Williams, a homosexual (he calls himself queer) who spoke at a Soulforce Equality Ride rally in Provo’s Kiwanis Park April 10, 2006. 1 Steve was there and videoed the gathering in its entirety. Troy was the first and by far the most confident and zealous of several speakers who came up to the stage and spoke in the microphone to an audience of over 100. He was introduced as the producer at KRCL of a new local radio show called “Now Queer This.” He spoke up loud and clear (there’s only one line I couldn’t make out) and what follows is a written transcript I made from Steve’s camcorder. Troy appeared to be an all-American, regular kind of guy in his twenties with a shock of blond curly hair, wearing jeans and a BYU parody-type t-shirt under a loose-fitting, faded denim jacket. He seemed at ease in front of people and spoke with a lot of energy and movement, throwing his arms clear out to the sides. These are his exact words (I have added a few emphases and crowd reactions in accordance with his delivery):

“Oh my God, I feel like I’m a latter-day Samuel the Lamanite up on the wall! Don’t throw any arrows at me okay? It’s so cool to be here with you today. I’m a former BYU student, I’m a returned missionary and I’m an out-loud, active queer man. But I have to confess I only attended BYU for one semester after my mission because it was very evident to me very quickly that I didn’t fit in there and the least of those reasons was because of my latent queerness. And when I kinda look around I don’t think it’s a bad thing not fitting in, I think it’s a pretty damn good thing not fitting in. I’m somebody who chose to be queer. I don’t believe I was born this way. I chose it. And if I was reincarnated tomorrow I would choose it again. (Applause) Being queer is something that I totally want to be. I love it. I don’t believe that being queer is a genetic accident. I don’t believe it’s something I need to apologize for. And I don’t need to make excuses about it. And I don’t believe it is a sin. And I don’t believe that it’s something I need to work to overcome. It’s not a trial, it’s not a burden. Being queer is a blessing, it is a privilege and it is a gift from God. I want to get this message out to everybody. Queer is good and queer does good for the world. We have so much to teach people about love and compassion. My queer friends are artists, we are musicians, we are actors, we are filmmakers, we are yoga instructors. We are everywhere. We are a powerful creative life force and we will not deny and we will not squelch that. And I think that being queer and the people who are queer around me have an unparalleled understanding of humanity. I think there’s a big problem that we get into when we start enforcing a victim narrative. We are not victims. Yes, BYU, and yes, the LDS Church may oppress us. They may excommunicate us. They may try to legislate away our freedom. They may work to deny us our civil liberties. But we are not victims. The Church is a victim of its own fear and its own myopic vision. They cannot see the beauty and the power of those people who they cast from the fold. They can’t remember that they were once a despised minority that were driven, persecuted and killed and we need to remind them of that. The LDS Church sees us as deviants, sinners, and perverts and I believe that those are some of our best qualities! (Laughter and applause). Don’t buy into their story. Don’t buy into their narrative. You are a powerful, passionate people and you are a conduit for revelation, for spirituality and for life. So own that and be that, all right?

Okay, my last closing comments, this is very important, I need all the cameras to do a zoom-in, this is the dramatic moment,’kay? (Laughter.) I have a proclamation to give to the world. (Derisive laughter.) As a young Mormon boy growing up and some, many, of you have experienced this I’m sure as well, we were all taught that at one time in the future the prophet would once again command his people to live plural marriage. Now we’ve all been taught this, it’s part of Mormon folk theology, it’s Church doctrine, right? So I want you all to know that when that time comes you latter-day saints when the prophet calls you once again to take multiple wives we in the gay community will stand in solidarity with you to repeal Amendment 3! We will stand in common cause with the Mormons so that you can practice and live your faith according to the dictates of your hearts. We and then we too can marry according to the dictates of our own desires and passions! We will stand with the latter-day saints when that day comes, right? Right? God bless you all, Queers, Mormons, you are the queerest people out there! (Laughter) I want you to embrace that. . . (now shouting) You have a legacy of plural marriage! You were cast out, you were despised! Join with us! Join in solidarity with the queers! Be one with us and we will be one with you! Thank you.”

Phew! There’s quite a lot going on in those few words. Make of them what you will while I offer some of my thoughts.

I suppose to the organized, careful, and patient gay movement (including among LDS Church members) Troy is what you’d call a loose cannon. In saying clearly and emphatically that he chose to be queer, Troy just shot one of their primary talking points – that homosexuality is not chosen – to smithereens. Officially, the movement will not concede the idea of voluntary homosexuality, at least not yet, because it would erode public support and destroy the movement’s political power. If homosexuality is merely a choice, change is certainly possible and “sexual orientation” becomes arbitrary rather than inborn, an experimental or behavioral choice rather than something akin to eye color. With that confessed, public acceptance of homosexuality becomes a moral issue. Moral issues are often subject to societal and cultural discrimination, such as illegal drug dealers and child molesters being arrested and punished. All civilized people believe that bad behaviors, especially willful ones, should be discriminated against. The gay movement pushes the idea of immutable sexual orientation, dishonestly equating it with race, so they can draw public scrutiny away from their bad behaviors. (Please note that the Soulforce group’s icons are Martin Luther King and Ghandi. 2) Troy dramatically blew their cover, and yet was roundly applauded throughout his speech by his fellow activists. (I’d say either they are complicit in the ruse and hope nobody’s paying attention or they themselves are caught up in a cause they haven’t logically thought through.)

Going by what he himself says, Troy seems to represent what top expert Dr. Charles Socarides in his 1995 book Homosexuality, A Freedom Too Far, calls an “optional homosexual,” one who chooses the lifestyle because he likes it, as opposed to an “obligatory homosexual,” one caught up in an unconscious inner compulsion due to trauma and anxiety who is, in other words, pathologically ill. Unfortunately, our culture today is not making any distinction between types of homosexuals. The results are lamentable: Through the prestige media we are told over and over there is only one kind – the obligatory homosexual. The idea of optional homosexuality is discounted (evidently except among homosexuals). We are told the sick person is not sick and so the sincere sufferer (one who experiences unwanted homosexual tendencies) is ignored and exploited. Perhaps worst of all, the young, impressionable, and vulnerable are seduced into thinking they are obligatory homosexuals, and recruited. In addition, anywhere along the line these categories may become combined in several different ways. The volunteer may actually have been seduced, the sufferer may turn activist, the seduced may become a sufferer, etc. The good news, quashed in the prestige media, is that obligatory homosexuality is curable and optional homosexuality is, well, optional, and any combination of these have been and can be successfully reoriented to healthy heterosexuality. But alas, ex-gays are now dismissed, intimidated into silence, and demonized because they just don’t fit into the sexual revolution’s agenda and modern notions of so-called tolerance and diversity.

According to Robert Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996) what we have is a rising generation of bored, indulged, radical individualists who have been enticed by unchallenged, inexhaustible sexual propaganda and pornography. A striking model exists in today’s anything-goes “cuddle puddle” of New York City’s Stuyvesant High School 3 where the kids through their excessive and outrageous sexual behaviors are saying, “I’m open-minded, I’m free, I can do whatever I want with my sexual feelings,” while their parents and school administrators look the other way. Those professing to be religious or hoping to influence the Church, such as Troy, add yet another twist, “God loves me just the way I am.” Interestingly, all these statements are true. We are given the gift of agency and God’s love is unconditional. Tragically, Troy has neglected the entire other half of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the part about commandments that exist for our benefit and an Atonement which offers us a chance to overcome the carnal man and receive spiritual opportunities and blessings of eternal significance. Love without truth, faith without works, charity without knowledge, forgiveness without repentance – all have no real or lasting value.

I suggest that voluntary sexual deviants such as Troy and the cuddle puddle, along with their supporters, now outnumber what we think of as private, obligatory homosexuals (although as I mentioned it’s becoming more and more difficult to define who is who). This is all part of the plan of the radical gay movement – to bring ambiguity to the two natural sexes, to bury the truth at the expense of human beings, and to make unlimited sexual thoughts and acts fashionable. They are in the process of succeeding. Evidently, more and more sexual revolutionaries are now secure enough in their position in American media, politics, education, and religion to feel they do not have to play the “born that way, nobody would choose to be homosexual in a homophobic society” game anymore. To them the only sin is sexual repression, the only immorality is intolerance.

Unlike all the other speakers at the rally in Provo, Troy goes way past proclaiming his own “alternate sexual orientation” and demanding an end to “discrimination.” He represents the most current views of the sexual revolution, the blossom of the seeds planted during the 1960s. His new radio show, “Now Queer This,” has graduated him to agitator/ propagandist. As is bound to happen, the volunteer homosexual has turned recruiter.

Indeed, the word “gay” has expanded rapidly to include not just homosexuality but any and every type of aberrant sexual behavior. 4 In that sense even rampant heterosexual promiscuity is part of the gay movement. Notice that Troy, in his last, passionate words, misrepresents, stretches, and encourages the historical Mormon practice of polygamy (abandoned in 1890), hoping to further his cause.

Postscript 3/2020: Actually he has a point here. It has recently come to our attention that the LDS church has never technically abandoned the practice of polygamy as doctrinal--as the only way to the highest heaven. It remains in D&C 132 and LDS men, including the current prophet, have themselves been sealed or married to more than one woman even today, after previous wife or wives are dead. Obviously they believe poygamy, though currently illegal on earth (but not for long), goes on in heaven. Recent essays published by the church itself expose (if you are honest) the dark hidden truths of this practice in the early church, and countless documentation exists revealing that it was much different than we members have been led to believe all our lives. For instance, Joseph Smith being caught in affairs before the "revelation," deceiving his only legal wife, secretly marrying sisters, mothers and daughters, marrying as young as 14-year-olds, and marrying other men's wives, and most certainly consumating however many of these "spiritual marriages," estimated at around 40 in the space of 3 years. Is it any wonder that Troy would use these ugly, incredible, formerly hidden facts to further his cause?

Troy’s philosophies and behaviors are harmful to himself, his sexual partner(s), and to society but I thank him for his honesty. In admitting publicly that many homosexuals are not victims but have chosen this lifestyle voluntarily, he has given us one quick breath of fresh air and a tiny reflection of truth in a whole new world of smoke and mirrors. Now we must arm ourselves with this refreshing truth. If we don’t, Troy, with his charismatic personality, youthful rebelliousness, clever rhetoric, and energetic activism, may be the type of homosexual most dangerous to vulnerable, relatively sheltered young people and an unaware, worn-down, conditioned society. The sexual revolution with all its inconsistencies is a highly emotional, richly funded, arrogantly politicized cause. They know what they’re doing. Gay Uncle Sam wants YOU.

-Stephen & Janice Graham

1. http://www.equalityride.org
2. Ibid.
3. Albert Mohler, “The Heterosexual, Pansensual, Bi-Curious Teenager – The Fast Lane in the American High School,” Feb. 15, 2006. http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2006-02-15
4. The acronym GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) or something similar is currently used by activist groups. Our research shows that sado masochism, child-adult sex and man-boy love (pedophilia), etc. are also now being advocated. See our Get Informed page.

Note 11/5/07: Thinking about this article, I began to wonder if those who proudly call themselves "volunteer homosexuals" may actually have clinical issues they do not want to face, that perhaps Troy is not an optional homosexual, but suffered some terrible damage to his psychological health and is actually a obligatory homosexual, meaning the first feelings he experienced stemmed from something he didn't choose. And maybe he doesn't like the idea that he was victimized, so he embraces homosexuality as an identity he sought out for himself. Therefore, the idea of getting help to change his orientation is not a desireably option for him. Just a thought.

It's true that homosexuality is an issue for individuals for many different reasons. Aside from what he proclaims, I do not know the roots and causes of Troy's choices. However, I believe that for some people rebelliousness can be the sole motivation. A college student told me a high school friend of hers "came out" to his parents just to make them mad. These days, adopting homosexuality may be the latest form of teenage rebelliousness, but once into it, it becomes difficult to get out. The individual feels he must continually prove he is still "gay" and he then becomes addicted to the quick high of random homosexual sex.

There have been human beings throughout history who chose to rebel against the established order. When this happens, society has to focus on the damage this can cause, not on the individual person's psyche. Can you imagine the free world forcing Stalin or Hitler or Saddam Hussein to see a psychiatrist?



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