"If the Torah is So Adamant, Then that Must Mean Something Huge" Series: Toeva
INTRODUCTION AND CLARIFICATION
- This series is NOT about anyone being inherently bad (except for maybe some of the people mentioned in Part II).
- I do NOT see any basis for believing that people attracted to their own gender are innately bad, anymore than any of us suffering from any other forbidden inclination we might have.
- This is only about how indulging in a clear and major Torah prohibition that is totally forbidden for every human being across the board can warp a person and why it is so bad that legalizing davka this is one of the transgressions that creates a decree of destruction for that society.
What's So Bad about Adam and Steve?
"God made Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve!"
– a sign at a 1977 pro-family rally in Houston, Texas.
Well, let’s start off by clarifying the contrasting opinions:
(By the way, the 10% claim was never true; surveys taken in Canada, USA, and Australia show same-gender attraction to be under 3.5%.)
I’d just like to show how every Liberal justification of same-gender intimacy is wrong.
And in Part II, I’m going to describe the very sick, evil agenda behind all the “toeva rights” hype.
Part III will briefly discuss healing.
And here it goes:
Actually, you probably weren’t.
Maximum, you may have been born with a latent tendency toward toeva. But something triggered you to pursue physical relationships within your own gender.
Okay, first of all, I’m going to slant this article.
Male toeva will receive more attention than female toeva.
This is partly because the Torah considers male toeva much more severe, partly because most of the attention is focused on male toeva, both in the news circuit and the entertainment industry (more on why in Part II), and partly because there is more information available about men.
If you talk to toeva men, read their autobiographical literature, and peruse their statistics, you will see that a great many of them have been seriously abused as children or teenagers.
Studies report between 55.1% to 75% have been abused.
Of course, people like to point out how “that can’t be true because not all boys who were abused in that way grow up to be attracted to their own gender.”
In particular, men who are firmly attracted to women find the idea of being “tipped” into toeva particularly mind-boggling.
The thing is, we all have innate tendencies toward different attributes – including good ones. Different experiences in life can “tip” us in the direction of that latent tendency.
Without that “tipping” experience, that tendency will never find expression.
(In contrast, a positive example of this is a person who opens up a chessed organization after facing a severe deprivation. Without coming face to face with that deprivation, he or she would not have established an organization to deal with that very need.)
Furthermore, different people react to abuse in different ways.
In girls, for example, such abuse can ignite the inclination for indiscriminate relationships in one girl while inducing frigidity in another.
Physical abuse can either habituate the victim to become violent himself or it can inspire visceral repugnance against all violence to the point of total passivity.
And so on.
When I was in college, a young man whose parents had divorced when he was a child confided that he felt confused about his orientation. He felt attracted to both genders.
In the course of our discussion, he recalled an sxually abusive incident perpetuated against him by a pre-teen neighbor in the hallway in front of his apartment before he could unlock the door to let himself in. (He was one of the “latch-key kids” of the Eighties.)
Without realizing it, he himself made the correlation between that traumatic incident and his present orientation-confusion.
So we discussed how maybe his attraction toward men wasn’t his natural inclination as the surrounding society kept insisting, and that maybe he should just focus on girls, and not have anything to do with boys.
Fortunately, Hashem had already led me to becoming frum, enabling me to realize what the moral choice was in this situation (which I wouldn't have before).
I also expressed my strong feeling that part of his confusion was because society kept telling him that his attractions were normal, even though he clearly wasn’t comfortable being attracted to men.
Without the “Anything Goes!” attitude around him, he might have just come to the right conclusion and feelings on his own.
I gently expressed my conviction that his innate attraction was probably toward girls and that he should just focus on that. His relief and happiness toward the end of the conversation were obvious.
Another college friend, a leading activist for toeva rights, admitted that he felt he might have been abused as a child, but that he couldn’t really remember.
He also said that most of the guys he knew who were into toeva had been sxually abused as children – but he immediately denied any bearing that should have on a person’s “right” to a same-gender orientation.
As I got to know him, I realized he had no father in his life and had nothing good to say about his father, though he usually didn't talk about his father at all, which I didn't know at the time can also impact a boy's future orientation.
But much later, I came to realize that a boy’s relationship with his father powerfully impacts a boy’s orientation, as described on the Jonah website.
And in an incredible article on aish.com called The Straight Path, "David" describes his need as a young child for physical contact with men, which stemmed from what he lacked in the relationship with his father.
This sheds light on the phenomenon many describe when they claim to have felt "different" from a very young age — a claim used to "prove" that same-gender attraction is innate, but a deeper look shows that their feelings had more to do with their relationship from their father and their personal needs in that relationship.
Yes, please note how he felt "different" even at a very young age, expressed by the way he threw himself at the muscular young man to the point that his behavior made everyone else very uncomfortable.
Also, notice his relationships with older men in that phase and his hindsight into that.
A father who shows his son a lot of genuine affection, including physical affection, can have a powerful positive impact on his son’s orientation.
Again, it seems no coincidence that so many men attracted to other men have poor (or not as close as they crave) relationships with their fathers, as mentioned here.
In fact, I once knew a very sweet man who was the son of a strict Christian pastor. His father was a stern, distant man who believed in “spare the wooden paddle and spoil the child.”
Before settling into a quiet, liberal, toeva life, this young man had joined the priesthood. After all, he wasn’t attracted to women, toeva was forbidden, and he was a sincere, idealistic type, so... (“You wouldn’t believe what goes on there!” he said. “Let’s just say that a lot of those guys have the same issues I did.”)
Later, he realized that the priesthood wasn't for him, so he joined a radical right-wing militia in the South. (“You wouldn’t believe what these people are planning!”)
It's clear from the above examples that he was looking for a masculine connection that was not necessarily physical, although he eventually came to expressing this desire for connection in a physical toeva way.
In another case I learned of, the father instinctively didn’t bond with one of his sons, while the mother instinctively felt a great deal of affection for that same child.
As the child grew, the father admitted that he even felt a bit repelled by this son.
Other family members noticed and appealed to the father to invest more in the relationship, even quoting Rav Dessler about how giving creates love, but the father just didn’t feel like it.
Then the little boy started seeking out male physical affection.
For example, he would slip his hand into his uncle’s hand, pretending it had happened by accident. At cheder, he would stand next to his rebbi until the rebbi finally realized the boy was waiting for a hug. And so on.
(Fortunately, Hashem led the boy to seek out affection from safe men who held his hand or hugged him in a purely fatherly way, but the mother felt it was only a matter of time before he might encounter a corrupt man in his search for physical affection.)
After finally convincing the father that the son was innocently heading down a dangerous road, the father started hugging him and holding him in his lap.
At first, the father was uncomfortable and stiff about it, but Rav Dessler was right, and eventually it became more natural and feelings of genuine warmth and affection developed within the father.
Not long after, the boy completely stopped seeking out physical affection from other men.
(It’s important to emphasize that the boy sought out hugs and touch from other men – and not boys and not females – despite the fact that he had always received plenty of physical and emotional affection from his mother; yet he still craved affection from a man.)
Note: Had the father not upped his game with regard to his son, the mother could have engaged in copious prayer to Hashem to remedy the situation. We can't control other people's behavior, but we can turn to Hashem for help.
And while I can’t prove it, I can’t help thinking that the rising number of toeva among males has been increasing along with the rise of single mothers (meaning mothers who were never married and in most cases, do not have their children’s father(s) consistently involved in the children’s lives).
Again, not all toeva men lack a relationship with their father and not all boys who yearn for paternal connection will end up attracted to men.
But the correlation is impossible to ignore.
Far behind, there is the old psychology theory that a domineering mother and a passive father can produce this orientation in a boy.
Basically, women seem too “scary” to get close to.
Based on the research, this is rarely the reason, nonetheless, I’ve still seen this dynamic.
And a final point is this: Men have an innate tendency toward (how shall I put this?) idealizing physical aspects of a person or idealizing objects they associate with these physical aspects.
This same tendency rarely occurs in women.
Straight men express this through attraction toward certain physical aspects of a woman (or objects associated with) and in emotionally healthy men, this idealization is relatively normal and harmless, and varies from man to man.
A man married to a woman who doesn't fulfill his particular idealization is still perfectly capable of intimacy with her.
In less emotionally healthy men, this idealization warps into objectification and even obsession.
Despite the claims of modern-day propaganda, men attracted to their own gender usually seem perfectly capable of a relationship with a woman, and may have even had many female partners and long-term relationships with women.
But they hold a strong preference for their own gender, which further indicates that their same-gender-attraction is not some innate black-and-white issue, but normal male idealization that has become warped.
With females, things get a lot simpler because many women are so open about this.
In high school, a girl was telling me about how tenth grade had been a huge experience in self-discovery.
She explained that the group she hung out with comprised a lot of people attracted to their own gender.
“So I thought I was that way, too,” she whispered. “And I started going out with girls. But then I met this guy...”
And she realized she wasn’t like her friends after all. And she was really happy to discover that at the end of the day, she was attracted to guys, not girls.
Another woman, who had been badly betrayed by significant men in her life, decided that it was “Ladies Only” from now on.
Eventually, she couldn’t deny her attraction to men, so she ultimately ended up going in the right direction.
And I remember the girl who stood up in the middle of class in college to speak emotionally in favor of her right to be romantically involved with her own gender and the pain of discrimination against people “like her.”
Suddenly, she blurted out a particularly horrific and unnatural violation she suffered while on a date with a guy.
It happened before she “came out,” but she insisted “that has NOTHING to do with the way I feel now!”
I didn’t believe it and as I looked around, I saw the same disbelief on everyone else’s faces, but none of us were callous enough to challenge her.
With people in the know, the following situation is so common that it has even become a bit of a joke:
The sister/cousin/aunt who always had a girlfriend hits her thirties, realizes that her biological clock is ticking away, and suddenly ups and marries a man and has a kid.
Born this way, eh?
I've heard women say things like, “It was so popular and acceptable at my college that if I hadn’t come to this BT sem, I would’ve tried it out!” Or, “Now that I’m frum and married, I really wish I hadn’t had all those experiences with women.”
If you listen to actual people (rather than Hollywood propaganda), it becomes blatantly clear that there's a lot of toeva that is a choice, rather than an innate, irrepressible attraction.
Finally, some people theorize that we all have the ability to be attracted to either gender and our job is just to make sure it’s the halachically appropriate one.
(This reminds me of the theory of epigenetics, which basically says that you can activate or deactivate different genes with your thoughts and behaviors.)
Anyway, I could go on and on with self-contradicting anecdotes and stuff toeva people chronicle about themselves, but this is enough for now.
No, that’s not what it means.
First of all, it is entirely possible that when Hashem decided that a person must go through the admittedly arduous nisayon of being attracted to one’s own gender, He caused the person to, indeed, be born "this way" for that is this person’s Divinely decreed lifetime challenge.
(We all have at least one.)
Secondly, if a boy, for example, is not getting what he needed from his father (as described above), then he certainly can feel "different" from the time he was very young.
There are different kinds of therapists and organizations offering reparative/conversion therapy for people attracted to their own gender.
There are different methods of reparative/conversion therapy and each person needs to find the method that works best for him or her.
No, it doesn't always work, but it has worked for many people, further crushing the notion that the attraction to one's own gender is "inborn" or "genetic" or that there is no way to change.
Organizations that support toeva and the mainstream media hate the idea of reparative/conversion therapy because it defeats their aims (see Part II).
Individuals caught up in same-gender attraction often also feel a visceral opposition to reparative/conversion therapy because they are caught up in their obsession, so to speak.
(It's sort of like taking the needle out of the hand of a drug addict who is about to shoot up. You will make him or her very angry.)
In general, men on a very low level get REALLY angry if you interfere in their sxual desires (regardless of what those desires may be), sort of like with animals.
Normal, decent men do not, but boorish men do and that seems to be the source of the above rage.
So these groups and individuals either suppress the information or they launch a full-force attack against anyone promoting therapy.
One of their claims is that the general success rate isn't high, and that some people seem to undergo further damage as a result of reparative therapy.
However, like everything else, the success rate depends on the type of method used and on the ratzon of the client.
For example, Alcoholics Anonymous actually has a low success rate (it only helps between 10%-40% of alcoholics who try it, depending on which study you read), but that doesn't stop people from trying it out or recommending it to others.
The alcoholics not helped by AA do not cancel out the ones who are helped by AA. Not surprisingly, the alcoholics most helped by AA were those with the strongest desire to stop drinking — again, ratzon.
Interestingly, the same people who will automatically recommend AA to alcoholics despite its low rate of success oppose reparative/conversion therapy on the claim that its low rate of success means that it doesn't really work or can even be harmful.
It's hard to judge the success of reparative/conversion therapy, partly because its success depends on the factors mentioned above. How motivated was the client in the first place? And what were his underlying motivations?
Another reason for the lack of majority success could derive from how much of reparative/conversion therapy is backed by Christians. And while many people are helped, a big part of their therapy is belief in and prayer directed at a long-dead man.
Needless to say, such a belief is not conducive to good mental and spiritual health. On the flip side, treating people from a purely psychological angle (i.e. an atheistic viewpoint) also cannot facilitate full healing, especially since so many of the originators of psychological theories were very messed-up themselves.
Furthermore, some methods are just ineffective or even abusive, such as those that involve hormone injections, surgery, tawdry images of the opposite gender, or electric shock.
In addition, opposers to conversion therapy point out that most studies which reveal improvement include a large percentage of men who weren't exclusively involved with men, but with women, too. However, this argument is a bit disingenuous because nearly all men who prefer men can be and have been with women.
(In other words, it's very rare to find a man who is solely into other men, to the point that he has never been with a woman and if given the opportunity, cannot physically carry out the act with a woman. Very, very rare.)
So the questions seem to be:
If you don't have the right combination of factors, the chance of failure will be pretty high.
Therefore, while the general success rate isn't high, some individual therapists or organizations claim a very high success rate, like Dr. Josef Nicolosi, who claims a 60% success rate and emphasizes that "Uncompromising honesty with oneself is a necessary requirement to treatment success."
A 1970 study by L. Hatterer involving 143 clients showed that 49 clients were considered as having made a complete adjustment, with 18 clients labeled as "partially recovered."
But as noted, personal motivation made a huge difference.
Of the clients who demonstrated no motivation to change, only 4.6% clients did change (which is actually pretty good considering that they wanted to remain within a toeva lifestyle).
But among those who were highly motivated to change, 24% reported a "straight" orientation after counseling.
A 1979 study by C. Socarides reported that 20 of 45 (44%) men in therapy for same-gender attraction from 1966-1977 achieved what they considered to be a change to a "straight" orientation.
In a 1994 survey by H. Macintosh, 285 psychoanalysts who analyzed 1,215 psychoanalytic clients attracted to their own gender (824 male; 391 female) show that 23% of their clients changed to a "straight" orientation.
In addition, the analysts claimed that 84% of their clients reported significant benefits from analysis.
Finally, a 1980 study by L. Birk, using a combination of behavioral group and individual counseling with 14 men, claimed a 100% success rate for men exclusively attracted to other men with the intent to change. Of those 14 clients, 10 of the 14 were satisfactorily married to women at follow-up.
Even more interesting, Birk was particular to include in this group only men who had been intimate exclusively with other men, and never women. (How did he find them? Way to go, Birk!)
In comparison, Birk treated another group of 15 men who expressed no interest in changing their orientation. Yet 4 out 15 still reported a shift to a "straight" orientation.
For further details about the above studies, references, and much more information about the results of different therapies and methods, see here.
It seems that the opposition to reparation therapy isn't because it can't work, but because it can. And that defeats the agenda of its opposers.
Would it be that it were always only behind your closed door...ahem.
Lots of things happen behind closed doors and in bedrooms that are very much the business of society and the law: drug use, child abuse, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, bomb-making, computer hacking, murder, suicide, and so on.
Privacy is no justification.
Well, except for spreading an incurable 100% fatal disease, of course...
In L.A., for example, 1 out of every 10 males involved with other males is HIV-positive (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 2001).
Both men and women involved in physical relationships with their own gender show a much higher incidence of drug use, alcoholism, violence, diseases (both fatal and not), mental health issues, and crimes against children as described with documented sources here and here and here - and that's just for a start.
And except for confusing – and even pressuring – people with normal attractions and encouraging them into same-gender relationships that they later regret (as described above and throughout the rest of this post).
But there’s more.
A frum boy attracted to other boys ended up going off the derech and sinking into a life of drugs, night clubs, and guys.
His father had died when he was very young. At one point, he confided in a family member and the family member’s friend, both of whom were also off the derech.
They did the “right” thing according to secular Liberal society and accompanied the boy to movies and gatherings that discussed toeva rights, where everyone did everything they could to convince the boy that his feelings and actions were normal.
The boy was pressured to tell his mother, a frum lady from a particularly traditional background who had no background or resources for dealing with such a situation.
No one encouraging the boy to “come out” seemed to consider the importance of providing the mother with proper support or preparation - if not for her sake, then at least for the boy's well-being.
No one told the boy he had other options.
No one tried to find organizations that help these young men from a frum perspective.
No one cared that they were sentencing the boy to a life of random and rampant indulgence with no marriage and no children.
Believing the promises that telling his mother would bring him feelings of validation and liberation, he finally told her. He asked her if she still loved him and she replied that of course she did.
But she was shocked and understandably had no idea how to deal with such a situation.
So she turned to the person she always leaned on in difficult times since her husband's death: her older brother.
Her older brother was traditional (so he thought toeva was disgusting), but not actually religious (so he didn’t think to ask a rav, search out a frum organization or a frum therapist who deals with this issue). He took the boy aside and berated him for his orientation and for revealing it to his mother.
Mortified, the boy ran off and then overdosed. After overdosing, he tried to reverse the process, but it was too late.
At fourteen, he was dead.
A year later, his family member also committed suicide.
(While I wasn’t told the reason for the second suicide, it’s not hard to draw a correlation; he may have easily felt responsible for the younger boy’s death.)
Okay, so this might be more of a case of Death by Self-Serving Liberals, but the fact is that the toeva supporters at these gatherings thought it was most important for people to be open about their orientation.
The family member and the friend didn’t come up with this idea alone.
The concept of “coming out of the closet” was pushed without any regard for the boy’s vulnerability or personal situation. I can’t see that any of the people involved in pressuring the boy (except for maybe the family member) cared about the boy personally; it seems they only cared about their agenda.
If these people are so supportive and the lifestyle so natural and so great, then why did this boy feel that suicide was his only option?
They obviously did not care about the effect pushing their agenda would have on a young, vulnerable, and sensitive boy.
This is unconscionable.
- Torah-observant people say that even if you are born with an attraction to the same gender, you cannot act on it because the Torah completely forbids this, especially for men. And this prohibition applies to both Jews and non-Jews.
- Liberals say that people can’t help how they feel ("Just like 10% of all people are innately left-handed, 10% are innately attracted to their own gender!") and that same-gender relationships don’t really hurt anyone anyway, and that everyone has a right to "love" and also to marry ("marriage" implies "to one person for the rest of your life") your one, true "love."
(By the way, the 10% claim was never true; surveys taken in Canada, USA, and Australia show same-gender attraction to be under 3.5%.)
I’d just like to show how every Liberal justification of same-gender intimacy is wrong.
And in Part II, I’m going to describe the very sick, evil agenda behind all the “toeva rights” hype.
Part III will briefly discuss healing.
And here it goes:
- “I Was Born This Way!”
Actually, you probably weren’t.
Maximum, you may have been born with a latent tendency toward toeva. But something triggered you to pursue physical relationships within your own gender.
Okay, first of all, I’m going to slant this article.
Male toeva will receive more attention than female toeva.
This is partly because the Torah considers male toeva much more severe, partly because most of the attention is focused on male toeva, both in the news circuit and the entertainment industry (more on why in Part II), and partly because there is more information available about men.
- The Gentlemen’s Side
If you talk to toeva men, read their autobiographical literature, and peruse their statistics, you will see that a great many of them have been seriously abused as children or teenagers.
Studies report between 55.1% to 75% have been abused.
Of course, people like to point out how “that can’t be true because not all boys who were abused in that way grow up to be attracted to their own gender.”
In particular, men who are firmly attracted to women find the idea of being “tipped” into toeva particularly mind-boggling.
The thing is, we all have innate tendencies toward different attributes – including good ones. Different experiences in life can “tip” us in the direction of that latent tendency.
Without that “tipping” experience, that tendency will never find expression.
(In contrast, a positive example of this is a person who opens up a chessed organization after facing a severe deprivation. Without coming face to face with that deprivation, he or she would not have established an organization to deal with that very need.)
Furthermore, different people react to abuse in different ways.
In girls, for example, such abuse can ignite the inclination for indiscriminate relationships in one girl while inducing frigidity in another.
Physical abuse can either habituate the victim to become violent himself or it can inspire visceral repugnance against all violence to the point of total passivity.
And so on.
- Personal Stories
When I was in college, a young man whose parents had divorced when he was a child confided that he felt confused about his orientation. He felt attracted to both genders.
In the course of our discussion, he recalled an sxually abusive incident perpetuated against him by a pre-teen neighbor in the hallway in front of his apartment before he could unlock the door to let himself in. (He was one of the “latch-key kids” of the Eighties.)
Without realizing it, he himself made the correlation between that traumatic incident and his present orientation-confusion.
So we discussed how maybe his attraction toward men wasn’t his natural inclination as the surrounding society kept insisting, and that maybe he should just focus on girls, and not have anything to do with boys.
Fortunately, Hashem had already led me to becoming frum, enabling me to realize what the moral choice was in this situation (which I wouldn't have before).
I also expressed my strong feeling that part of his confusion was because society kept telling him that his attractions were normal, even though he clearly wasn’t comfortable being attracted to men.
Without the “Anything Goes!” attitude around him, he might have just come to the right conclusion and feelings on his own.
I gently expressed my conviction that his innate attraction was probably toward girls and that he should just focus on that. His relief and happiness toward the end of the conversation were obvious.
Another college friend, a leading activist for toeva rights, admitted that he felt he might have been abused as a child, but that he couldn’t really remember.
He also said that most of the guys he knew who were into toeva had been sxually abused as children – but he immediately denied any bearing that should have on a person’s “right” to a same-gender orientation.
As I got to know him, I realized he had no father in his life and had nothing good to say about his father, though he usually didn't talk about his father at all, which I didn't know at the time can also impact a boy's future orientation.
But much later, I came to realize that a boy’s relationship with his father powerfully impacts a boy’s orientation, as described on the Jonah website.
And in an incredible article on aish.com called The Straight Path, "David" describes his need as a young child for physical contact with men, which stemmed from what he lacked in the relationship with his father.
This sheds light on the phenomenon many describe when they claim to have felt "different" from a very young age — a claim used to "prove" that same-gender attraction is innate, but a deeper look shows that their feelings had more to do with their relationship from their father and their personal needs in that relationship.
Yes, please note how he felt "different" even at a very young age, expressed by the way he threw himself at the muscular young man to the point that his behavior made everyone else very uncomfortable.
Also, notice his relationships with older men in that phase and his hindsight into that.
A father who shows his son a lot of genuine affection, including physical affection, can have a powerful positive impact on his son’s orientation.
Again, it seems no coincidence that so many men attracted to other men have poor (or not as close as they crave) relationships with their fathers, as mentioned here.
- The Quest for Male Affection
In fact, I once knew a very sweet man who was the son of a strict Christian pastor. His father was a stern, distant man who believed in “spare the wooden paddle and spoil the child.”
Before settling into a quiet, liberal, toeva life, this young man had joined the priesthood. After all, he wasn’t attracted to women, toeva was forbidden, and he was a sincere, idealistic type, so... (“You wouldn’t believe what goes on there!” he said. “Let’s just say that a lot of those guys have the same issues I did.”)
Later, he realized that the priesthood wasn't for him, so he joined a radical right-wing militia in the South. (“You wouldn’t believe what these people are planning!”)
It's clear from the above examples that he was looking for a masculine connection that was not necessarily physical, although he eventually came to expressing this desire for connection in a physical toeva way.
- Nipping Toeva Attraction in the Bud
In another case I learned of, the father instinctively didn’t bond with one of his sons, while the mother instinctively felt a great deal of affection for that same child.
As the child grew, the father admitted that he even felt a bit repelled by this son.
Other family members noticed and appealed to the father to invest more in the relationship, even quoting Rav Dessler about how giving creates love, but the father just didn’t feel like it.
Then the little boy started seeking out male physical affection.
For example, he would slip his hand into his uncle’s hand, pretending it had happened by accident. At cheder, he would stand next to his rebbi until the rebbi finally realized the boy was waiting for a hug. And so on.
(Fortunately, Hashem led the boy to seek out affection from safe men who held his hand or hugged him in a purely fatherly way, but the mother felt it was only a matter of time before he might encounter a corrupt man in his search for physical affection.)
After finally convincing the father that the son was innocently heading down a dangerous road, the father started hugging him and holding him in his lap.
At first, the father was uncomfortable and stiff about it, but Rav Dessler was right, and eventually it became more natural and feelings of genuine warmth and affection developed within the father.
Not long after, the boy completely stopped seeking out physical affection from other men.
(It’s important to emphasize that the boy sought out hugs and touch from other men – and not boys and not females – despite the fact that he had always received plenty of physical and emotional affection from his mother; yet he still craved affection from a man.)
Note: Had the father not upped his game with regard to his son, the mother could have engaged in copious prayer to Hashem to remedy the situation. We can't control other people's behavior, but we can turn to Hashem for help.
And while I can’t prove it, I can’t help thinking that the rising number of toeva among males has been increasing along with the rise of single mothers (meaning mothers who were never married and in most cases, do not have their children’s father(s) consistently involved in the children’s lives).
Again, not all toeva men lack a relationship with their father and not all boys who yearn for paternal connection will end up attracted to men.
But the correlation is impossible to ignore.
Far behind, there is the old psychology theory that a domineering mother and a passive father can produce this orientation in a boy.
Basically, women seem too “scary” to get close to.
Based on the research, this is rarely the reason, nonetheless, I’ve still seen this dynamic.
- Just Another Form of Objectification
And a final point is this: Men have an innate tendency toward (how shall I put this?) idealizing physical aspects of a person or idealizing objects they associate with these physical aspects.
This same tendency rarely occurs in women.
Straight men express this through attraction toward certain physical aspects of a woman (or objects associated with) and in emotionally healthy men, this idealization is relatively normal and harmless, and varies from man to man.
A man married to a woman who doesn't fulfill his particular idealization is still perfectly capable of intimacy with her.
In less emotionally healthy men, this idealization warps into objectification and even obsession.
Despite the claims of modern-day propaganda, men attracted to their own gender usually seem perfectly capable of a relationship with a woman, and may have even had many female partners and long-term relationships with women.
But they hold a strong preference for their own gender, which further indicates that their same-gender-attraction is not some innate black-and-white issue, but normal male idealization that has become warped.
- The Ladies’ Side
With females, things get a lot simpler because many women are so open about this.
In high school, a girl was telling me about how tenth grade had been a huge experience in self-discovery.
She explained that the group she hung out with comprised a lot of people attracted to their own gender.
“So I thought I was that way, too,” she whispered. “And I started going out with girls. But then I met this guy...”
And she realized she wasn’t like her friends after all. And she was really happy to discover that at the end of the day, she was attracted to guys, not girls.
Another woman, who had been badly betrayed by significant men in her life, decided that it was “Ladies Only” from now on.
Eventually, she couldn’t deny her attraction to men, so she ultimately ended up going in the right direction.
And I remember the girl who stood up in the middle of class in college to speak emotionally in favor of her right to be romantically involved with her own gender and the pain of discrimination against people “like her.”
Suddenly, she blurted out a particularly horrific and unnatural violation she suffered while on a date with a guy.
It happened before she “came out,” but she insisted “that has NOTHING to do with the way I feel now!”
I didn’t believe it and as I looked around, I saw the same disbelief on everyone else’s faces, but none of us were callous enough to challenge her.
With people in the know, the following situation is so common that it has even become a bit of a joke:
The sister/cousin/aunt who always had a girlfriend hits her thirties, realizes that her biological clock is ticking away, and suddenly ups and marries a man and has a kid.
Born this way, eh?
I've heard women say things like, “It was so popular and acceptable at my college that if I hadn’t come to this BT sem, I would’ve tried it out!” Or, “Now that I’m frum and married, I really wish I hadn’t had all those experiences with women.”
If you listen to actual people (rather than Hollywood propaganda), it becomes blatantly clear that there's a lot of toeva that is a choice, rather than an innate, irrepressible attraction.
Finally, some people theorize that we all have the ability to be attracted to either gender and our job is just to make sure it’s the halachically appropriate one.
(This reminds me of the theory of epigenetics, which basically says that you can activate or deactivate different genes with your thoughts and behaviors.)
Anyway, I could go on and on with self-contradicting anecdotes and stuff toeva people chronicle about themselves, but this is enough for now.
- “But I’VE Felt ‘Different’ Ever Since I was Very Young. That Means It IS Inborn – and Therefore, Natural – and Therefore, Permissible!”
No, that’s not what it means.
First of all, it is entirely possible that when Hashem decided that a person must go through the admittedly arduous nisayon of being attracted to one’s own gender, He caused the person to, indeed, be born "this way" for that is this person’s Divinely decreed lifetime challenge.
(We all have at least one.)
Secondly, if a boy, for example, is not getting what he needed from his father (as described above), then he certainly can feel "different" from the time he was very young.
- Reparative/Conversion Therapy
There are different kinds of therapists and organizations offering reparative/conversion therapy for people attracted to their own gender.
There are different methods of reparative/conversion therapy and each person needs to find the method that works best for him or her.
No, it doesn't always work, but it has worked for many people, further crushing the notion that the attraction to one's own gender is "inborn" or "genetic" or that there is no way to change.
Organizations that support toeva and the mainstream media hate the idea of reparative/conversion therapy because it defeats their aims (see Part II).
Individuals caught up in same-gender attraction often also feel a visceral opposition to reparative/conversion therapy because they are caught up in their obsession, so to speak.
(It's sort of like taking the needle out of the hand of a drug addict who is about to shoot up. You will make him or her very angry.)
In general, men on a very low level get REALLY angry if you interfere in their sxual desires (regardless of what those desires may be), sort of like with animals.
Normal, decent men do not, but boorish men do and that seems to be the source of the above rage.
So these groups and individuals either suppress the information or they launch a full-force attack against anyone promoting therapy.
One of their claims is that the general success rate isn't high, and that some people seem to undergo further damage as a result of reparative therapy.
However, like everything else, the success rate depends on the type of method used and on the ratzon of the client.
For example, Alcoholics Anonymous actually has a low success rate (it only helps between 10%-40% of alcoholics who try it, depending on which study you read), but that doesn't stop people from trying it out or recommending it to others.
The alcoholics not helped by AA do not cancel out the ones who are helped by AA. Not surprisingly, the alcoholics most helped by AA were those with the strongest desire to stop drinking — again, ratzon.
Interestingly, the same people who will automatically recommend AA to alcoholics despite its low rate of success oppose reparative/conversion therapy on the claim that its low rate of success means that it doesn't really work or can even be harmful.
It's hard to judge the success of reparative/conversion therapy, partly because its success depends on the factors mentioned above. How motivated was the client in the first place? And what were his underlying motivations?
Another reason for the lack of majority success could derive from how much of reparative/conversion therapy is backed by Christians. And while many people are helped, a big part of their therapy is belief in and prayer directed at a long-dead man.
Needless to say, such a belief is not conducive to good mental and spiritual health. On the flip side, treating people from a purely psychological angle (i.e. an atheistic viewpoint) also cannot facilitate full healing, especially since so many of the originators of psychological theories were very messed-up themselves.
Furthermore, some methods are just ineffective or even abusive, such as those that involve hormone injections, surgery, tawdry images of the opposite gender, or electric shock.
In addition, opposers to conversion therapy point out that most studies which reveal improvement include a large percentage of men who weren't exclusively involved with men, but with women, too. However, this argument is a bit disingenuous because nearly all men who prefer men can be and have been with women.
(In other words, it's very rare to find a man who is solely into other men, to the point that he has never been with a woman and if given the opportunity, cannot physically carry out the act with a woman. Very, very rare.)
So the questions seem to be:
- How much does the client want to change?
- How is his (or her) orientation defined?
- And what kind of methods are used in therapy?
- What is the attitude of the therapist?
If you don't have the right combination of factors, the chance of failure will be pretty high.
Therefore, while the general success rate isn't high, some individual therapists or organizations claim a very high success rate, like Dr. Josef Nicolosi, who claims a 60% success rate and emphasizes that "Uncompromising honesty with oneself is a necessary requirement to treatment success."
- The Actual Numbers Contradict the Propaganda
A 1970 study by L. Hatterer involving 143 clients showed that 49 clients were considered as having made a complete adjustment, with 18 clients labeled as "partially recovered."
But as noted, personal motivation made a huge difference.
Of the clients who demonstrated no motivation to change, only 4.6% clients did change (which is actually pretty good considering that they wanted to remain within a toeva lifestyle).
But among those who were highly motivated to change, 24% reported a "straight" orientation after counseling.
A 1979 study by C. Socarides reported that 20 of 45 (44%) men in therapy for same-gender attraction from 1966-1977 achieved what they considered to be a change to a "straight" orientation.
In a 1994 survey by H. Macintosh, 285 psychoanalysts who analyzed 1,215 psychoanalytic clients attracted to their own gender (824 male; 391 female) show that 23% of their clients changed to a "straight" orientation.
In addition, the analysts claimed that 84% of their clients reported significant benefits from analysis.
Finally, a 1980 study by L. Birk, using a combination of behavioral group and individual counseling with 14 men, claimed a 100% success rate for men exclusively attracted to other men with the intent to change. Of those 14 clients, 10 of the 14 were satisfactorily married to women at follow-up.
Even more interesting, Birk was particular to include in this group only men who had been intimate exclusively with other men, and never women. (How did he find them? Way to go, Birk!)
In comparison, Birk treated another group of 15 men who expressed no interest in changing their orientation. Yet 4 out 15 still reported a shift to a "straight" orientation.
For further details about the above studies, references, and much more information about the results of different therapies and methods, see here.
It seems that the opposition to reparation therapy isn't because it can't work, but because it can. And that defeats the agenda of its opposers.
- "What Happens behind My Closed Door is MY Business!"
Would it be that it were always only behind your closed door...ahem.
Lots of things happen behind closed doors and in bedrooms that are very much the business of society and the law: drug use, child abuse, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, bomb-making, computer hacking, murder, suicide, and so on.
Privacy is no justification.
- "We’re Not Hurting Anyone!"
Well, except for spreading an incurable 100% fatal disease, of course...
In L.A., for example, 1 out of every 10 males involved with other males is HIV-positive (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 2001).
Both men and women involved in physical relationships with their own gender show a much higher incidence of drug use, alcoholism, violence, diseases (both fatal and not), mental health issues, and crimes against children as described with documented sources here and here and here - and that's just for a start.
And except for confusing – and even pressuring – people with normal attractions and encouraging them into same-gender relationships that they later regret (as described above and throughout the rest of this post).
But there’s more.
- Suicide
A frum boy attracted to other boys ended up going off the derech and sinking into a life of drugs, night clubs, and guys.
His father had died when he was very young. At one point, he confided in a family member and the family member’s friend, both of whom were also off the derech.
They did the “right” thing according to secular Liberal society and accompanied the boy to movies and gatherings that discussed toeva rights, where everyone did everything they could to convince the boy that his feelings and actions were normal.
The boy was pressured to tell his mother, a frum lady from a particularly traditional background who had no background or resources for dealing with such a situation.
No one encouraging the boy to “come out” seemed to consider the importance of providing the mother with proper support or preparation - if not for her sake, then at least for the boy's well-being.
No one told the boy he had other options.
No one tried to find organizations that help these young men from a frum perspective.
No one cared that they were sentencing the boy to a life of random and rampant indulgence with no marriage and no children.
Believing the promises that telling his mother would bring him feelings of validation and liberation, he finally told her. He asked her if she still loved him and she replied that of course she did.
But she was shocked and understandably had no idea how to deal with such a situation.
So she turned to the person she always leaned on in difficult times since her husband's death: her older brother.
Her older brother was traditional (so he thought toeva was disgusting), but not actually religious (so he didn’t think to ask a rav, search out a frum organization or a frum therapist who deals with this issue). He took the boy aside and berated him for his orientation and for revealing it to his mother.
Mortified, the boy ran off and then overdosed. After overdosing, he tried to reverse the process, but it was too late.
At fourteen, he was dead.
A year later, his family member also committed suicide.
(While I wasn’t told the reason for the second suicide, it’s not hard to draw a correlation; he may have easily felt responsible for the younger boy’s death.)
Okay, so this might be more of a case of Death by Self-Serving Liberals, but the fact is that the toeva supporters at these gatherings thought it was most important for people to be open about their orientation.
The family member and the friend didn’t come up with this idea alone.
The concept of “coming out of the closet” was pushed without any regard for the boy’s vulnerability or personal situation. I can’t see that any of the people involved in pressuring the boy (except for maybe the family member) cared about the boy personally; it seems they only cared about their agenda.
If these people are so supportive and the lifestyle so natural and so great, then why did this boy feel that suicide was his only option?
They obviously did not care about the effect pushing their agenda would have on a young, vulnerable, and sensitive boy.
This is unconscionable.
Unrestrained Activity
Furthermore, the permissive activity of toeva men is unbelievable.
In a 1997 study, a Paul Van de Ven survey revealed that toeva men average 100-500 partners over a lifetime, with 10%-15% averaging 1000 partners.
Non-monogamous straight men and women rarely reach the sheer numbers that your average toeva man does.
And that toeva activist I mentioned earlier? He said that he’d had over 70 partners by the time he was nineteen. “At least fifty of them were in this amazing weekend we had with our organization in southern Florida,” he grinned. “I sure hope my face doesn’t show in the pictures! Yeah, someone was filming the whole time. But I don’t care...”
(That was in 1991, long before selfies, pocket-sized digital cameras, and camera-inclusive cell phones were the norm, by the way.)
The male flight attendant allegedly traced to having initially spread AIDS throughout the Western world was said to have had over 2000 partners by the time he died.
In a class survey taken in the college I attended, the students who claimed to have had 50+ partners were all toeva males – not straight males and not females of either orientation.
If you listen to almost any toeva male speak about his relationships, you’ll see that this is true.
Despite the claims that this is attraction is totally normal and should just be considered an alternative lifestyle, there is obviously something very wrong with a person who is so unbridled.
They need healing, not approbation.
Furthermore, just like how guys without Torah principles can be very interested in seducing girls, toeva guys are the same with other guys.
In fact, I was told how a group of teenage boys involved in toeva from frum families would befriend a boy, then show him certain movies. Once that door was opened, they then insisted he try out what was in the movie. The boy got sucked in. And that’s how they built their group.
Historically, toeva males focused on seducing pre-teen and teenage boys (like that period in Greek history, in which much older Greek men preyed on boys in their early teens or pre-teens), and this still holds true in many cases today.
In a 1997 study, a Paul Van de Ven survey revealed that toeva men average 100-500 partners over a lifetime, with 10%-15% averaging 1000 partners.
Non-monogamous straight men and women rarely reach the sheer numbers that your average toeva man does.
And that toeva activist I mentioned earlier? He said that he’d had over 70 partners by the time he was nineteen. “At least fifty of them were in this amazing weekend we had with our organization in southern Florida,” he grinned. “I sure hope my face doesn’t show in the pictures! Yeah, someone was filming the whole time. But I don’t care...”
(That was in 1991, long before selfies, pocket-sized digital cameras, and camera-inclusive cell phones were the norm, by the way.)
The male flight attendant allegedly traced to having initially spread AIDS throughout the Western world was said to have had over 2000 partners by the time he died.
In a class survey taken in the college I attended, the students who claimed to have had 50+ partners were all toeva males – not straight males and not females of either orientation.
If you listen to almost any toeva male speak about his relationships, you’ll see that this is true.
Despite the claims that this is attraction is totally normal and should just be considered an alternative lifestyle, there is obviously something very wrong with a person who is so unbridled.
They need healing, not approbation.
Furthermore, just like how guys without Torah principles can be very interested in seducing girls, toeva guys are the same with other guys.
In fact, I was told how a group of teenage boys involved in toeva from frum families would befriend a boy, then show him certain movies. Once that door was opened, they then insisted he try out what was in the movie. The boy got sucked in. And that’s how they built their group.
Historically, toeva males focused on seducing pre-teen and teenage boys (like that period in Greek history, in which much older Greek men preyed on boys in their early teens or pre-teens), and this still holds true in many cases today.
Influencing the Orientation of Their Own Children
Furthermore, there is evidence that same-gender couples are much more likely to produce children who identify with toeva.
Obviously, genetics cannot play a very big part in this, although there are medical ways for a woman to have a child that is genetically hers without an actual partner.
But with toeva couples insisting that they can be excellent adoptive or foster parents, it pays to look at the statistics regarding the effect their toeva has on the children they raise.
Walter Schumm, a professor of family studies at Kansas State University has been conducting the most exhaustive study to date on the impact of toeva couples on their children (found at the Research Gate website).
Interestingly, he was only trying to find out the truth and was not biased either way.
During a 2008 Florida trial trying to ban toeva parents from adopting, he even stated that people attracted to their own gender “can be good parents.”
Please note that he restricted his study to people in their twenties and older – people you assume have figured out their orientation and aren’t confused by experimentation and searching for identity, as is common today among teenagers.
58% of children raised by two female parents identified themselves as being attracted to their own gender.
33% of children raised by two male parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.
5-10% children raised by two straight parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.
Noting the large discrepancy between children raised by two women as opposed to children raised by two men, Schumm explained that because most such men have at some point been in a relationship with a woman, they were more understanding as to why their sons would date women.
In contrast, two women raising a girl would encourage her to “try out women” if they saw their daughter distressed over a relationship with a man. Schumm explains that the material he studied shows that some such women “have a hatred of men that’s intense.”
(More statistics are available here.)
This does not even begin to touch on the very real spiritual damage caused by toeva actions, including on the individual and on the society.
Jewish sources expound on the profound damage and severe judgment these actions (and especially the legalization of these actions) have on society and on the world.
Also, just to emphasize the counterclaim: This study shows a blatant influence on same-gender attraction, in that children raised by straight parents have very little chance of ending up attracted to their own gender while children raised by two women have an extremely high (over half!) likelihood of ending up attracted to their own gender.
The above also flies in the face of the false claim propagated by the pro-toeva crowd ("Just like 10% of people are left-handed, so 10% of people are attracted to their own gender!") and the more realistic statistics culled from surveys (less that 3.5% of people are attracted to their own gender).
58% and even 33% are so much higher than the real percentage (less than 3.5%) and even much higher than the false claim of 10%.
This evidences a very real social influence on gender attraction.
Well, actually, that’s not true. But what is marriage?
Marriage is defined as a lifelong monogamous commitment between a man and a woman.
Not between a man and a man.
Not between a woman and a woman.
Furthermore, statistics show that a lifelong commitment between two men is a joke.
When Conservatives discuss this issue, they focus on the fact that by definition, marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Liberals don’t buy this and believe the definition should be redefined.
But either way, long-term commitment and monogamy among men in relationships with their own gender barely exist.
In a 2003/2004 online census involving 7862 toeva men, only 15% described their current relationship as lasting 12 years or longer, with only 5% making it to twenty years. The largest chunk (31%) stay together for only 1-3 years – but usually not monogamously.
95% can’t even stay together for twenty years.
And if you yourself have been married twenty years or longer, you know that it’s not so hard to make it to your twentieth anniversary.
But how many report that they maintain fidelity in their current relationship?
4.5%
In contrast, men married to women report a fidelity rate of 75.5%.
And married women report a fidelity rate of 85.5%.
Okay, so the above means that we are supposed to campaign for same-gender marriage as if it’s the Second Civil Rights Movement on behalf of a people of whom 95% cannot remain together for twenty years (let alone “till death do we part”) and 95.5% cannot remain faithful to one partner for even one year?
So what exactly are pro-toeva marriage people campaigning for?
Now let’s compare domestic violence statistics:
The numbers speak for themselves.
So in light of the above, why is there such a huge push to legitimatize toeva marriage specifically?
And why do you sometimes hear toeva men talking about looking for “love” when most people would say that the rampant infidelity and the short timespan inherent in toeva relationships cannot possibly indicate real love and commitment?
Well, interestingly, many of the main proponents for toeva marriage are females.
Many actresses and other female celebrities speak out in strong support of these unions.
Female authors are more likely to include toeva characters – especially male characters, for some reason – and to portray them in a way that women stereotypically find appealing (as loving, supportive, gentle, committed partners).
In fact, I recently (at the time of this writing) noticed a newly published male toeva romance – written by a woman.
The book Sefer HaZohar – Chok L’Yisrael im Peirush Hasulam, notes that the Nachash (the Snake of Gan Eden) seduced Chava by portraying itself as feminine. I still don’t understand from the text how this was expressed, but I can’t deny the truth of the idea.
Since time immemorial, the façade of female traits has been used to entrap women.
Even today in places like India, for example, those seeking to exploit innocent young girls send a middle-aged woman to remote villages, promising the parents that the daughters will be employed as house cleaners and maids in wealthy homes, and maintain their virtue and honor.
Then the woman hands them over to the behind-the-scenes exploiter who forces the girls to work immorally until they show symptoms of AIDS and are sent home to die.
And since time immemorial, when men have wanted to seduce women, they present themselves as having a stereotypically feminine attitude toward the relationship, talking about love, love, love, and being together forever, and other virtues that appeal to the female personality.
And so with the current toeva movement, they use proclamations of love and marriage as a way to seduce women into supporting the movement.
While many people know that adult male Greek elites went through a 3-century phase in which they took for themselves very young male “proteges,” many aren’t aware that there is a present-day culture in which toeva has been not only the norm, but the ideal. And that is the Sambia tribe in Papua New Guinea.
I can’t even give a vague description of the tribal customs and norms because they are so repulsive. But they are definitely deviant even according to the most Liberal, open-minded members of Western society.
By any standards, the traditional Sambian customs and rituals are extremely abusive and sick.
Furthermore, males who show a strong preference for females are made fun of by fellow tribesmen.
The Sambians are also extremely violent, which they express through being at constant war with neighboring hamlets, utilizing their toeva rituals to maintain this aggression, believing that these abhorrent rituals make them fierce warriors.
Needless to say, it is extremely disturbing to realize that Greek elites and the Sambians had no compunctions about compelling young boys into acts that the boys would find degrading, repulsive, and painful (at least initially).
Women are considered dirty and dangerous by the Sambians, despite the necessity of eventually needing a woman for procreation and child-rearing.
In Greek society, too, women were considered by these toeva-loving elites as being inferior to men and were treated accordingly. So it seems that toeva people do not need to be discriminated against in order to behave in a manner that degrades and discriminates against other human beings.
As shown above, the expression of same-gender attraction usually results from profound psychological damage, but let’s never lose sight of the fact that healing is always possible, no matter how low one has sunk.
Despite everything shown in this post, Hashem is still infinitely bigger than all that.
Obviously, genetics cannot play a very big part in this, although there are medical ways for a woman to have a child that is genetically hers without an actual partner.
But with toeva couples insisting that they can be excellent adoptive or foster parents, it pays to look at the statistics regarding the effect their toeva has on the children they raise.
Walter Schumm, a professor of family studies at Kansas State University has been conducting the most exhaustive study to date on the impact of toeva couples on their children (found at the Research Gate website).
Interestingly, he was only trying to find out the truth and was not biased either way.
During a 2008 Florida trial trying to ban toeva parents from adopting, he even stated that people attracted to their own gender “can be good parents.”
Please note that he restricted his study to people in their twenties and older – people you assume have figured out their orientation and aren’t confused by experimentation and searching for identity, as is common today among teenagers.
58% of children raised by two female parents identified themselves as being attracted to their own gender.
33% of children raised by two male parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.
5-10% children raised by two straight parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.
Noting the large discrepancy between children raised by two women as opposed to children raised by two men, Schumm explained that because most such men have at some point been in a relationship with a woman, they were more understanding as to why their sons would date women.
In contrast, two women raising a girl would encourage her to “try out women” if they saw their daughter distressed over a relationship with a man. Schumm explains that the material he studied shows that some such women “have a hatred of men that’s intense.”
(More statistics are available here.)
This does not even begin to touch on the very real spiritual damage caused by toeva actions, including on the individual and on the society.
Jewish sources expound on the profound damage and severe judgment these actions (and especially the legalization of these actions) have on society and on the world.
Also, just to emphasize the counterclaim: This study shows a blatant influence on same-gender attraction, in that children raised by straight parents have very little chance of ending up attracted to their own gender while children raised by two women have an extremely high (over half!) likelihood of ending up attracted to their own gender.
The above also flies in the face of the false claim propagated by the pro-toeva crowd ("Just like 10% of people are left-handed, so 10% of people are attracted to their own gender!") and the more realistic statistics culled from surveys (less that 3.5% of people are attracted to their own gender).
58% and even 33% are so much higher than the real percentage (less than 3.5%) and even much higher than the false claim of 10%.
This evidences a very real social influence on gender attraction.
- "We Have a Right to Get Married!"
Well, actually, that’s not true. But what is marriage?
Marriage is defined as a lifelong monogamous commitment between a man and a woman.
Not between a man and a man.
Not between a woman and a woman.
Furthermore, statistics show that a lifelong commitment between two men is a joke.
When Conservatives discuss this issue, they focus on the fact that by definition, marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Liberals don’t buy this and believe the definition should be redefined.
But either way, long-term commitment and monogamy among men in relationships with their own gender barely exist.
In a 2003/2004 online census involving 7862 toeva men, only 15% described their current relationship as lasting 12 years or longer, with only 5% making it to twenty years. The largest chunk (31%) stay together for only 1-3 years – but usually not monogamously.
95% can’t even stay together for twenty years.
And if you yourself have been married twenty years or longer, you know that it’s not so hard to make it to your twentieth anniversary.
But how many report that they maintain fidelity in their current relationship?
4.5%
In contrast, men married to women report a fidelity rate of 75.5%.
And married women report a fidelity rate of 85.5%.
Okay, so the above means that we are supposed to campaign for same-gender marriage as if it’s the Second Civil Rights Movement on behalf of a people of whom 95% cannot remain together for twenty years (let alone “till death do we part”) and 95.5% cannot remain faithful to one partner for even one year?
So what exactly are pro-toeva marriage people campaigning for?
Now let’s compare domestic violence statistics:
- 0.05% of married men report physical violence in their marriage
- 0.26% of married women report physical violence
- 11.4% of women with women report physical violence
- 15.4% of men with men report physical violence
The numbers speak for themselves.
- Sweet-Talking the Gullible Ladies
So in light of the above, why is there such a huge push to legitimatize toeva marriage specifically?
And why do you sometimes hear toeva men talking about looking for “love” when most people would say that the rampant infidelity and the short timespan inherent in toeva relationships cannot possibly indicate real love and commitment?
Well, interestingly, many of the main proponents for toeva marriage are females.
Many actresses and other female celebrities speak out in strong support of these unions.
Female authors are more likely to include toeva characters – especially male characters, for some reason – and to portray them in a way that women stereotypically find appealing (as loving, supportive, gentle, committed partners).
In fact, I recently (at the time of this writing) noticed a newly published male toeva romance – written by a woman.
The book Sefer HaZohar – Chok L’Yisrael im Peirush Hasulam, notes that the Nachash (the Snake of Gan Eden) seduced Chava by portraying itself as feminine. I still don’t understand from the text how this was expressed, but I can’t deny the truth of the idea.
Since time immemorial, the façade of female traits has been used to entrap women.
Even today in places like India, for example, those seeking to exploit innocent young girls send a middle-aged woman to remote villages, promising the parents that the daughters will be employed as house cleaners and maids in wealthy homes, and maintain their virtue and honor.
Then the woman hands them over to the behind-the-scenes exploiter who forces the girls to work immorally until they show symptoms of AIDS and are sent home to die.
And since time immemorial, when men have wanted to seduce women, they present themselves as having a stereotypically feminine attitude toward the relationship, talking about love, love, love, and being together forever, and other virtues that appeal to the female personality.
And so with the current toeva movement, they use proclamations of love and marriage as a way to seduce women into supporting the movement.
- "They Only Behave Deviantly because Society TREATS Them like Deviants!"
While many people know that adult male Greek elites went through a 3-century phase in which they took for themselves very young male “proteges,” many aren’t aware that there is a present-day culture in which toeva has been not only the norm, but the ideal. And that is the Sambia tribe in Papua New Guinea.
I can’t even give a vague description of the tribal customs and norms because they are so repulsive. But they are definitely deviant even according to the most Liberal, open-minded members of Western society.
By any standards, the traditional Sambian customs and rituals are extremely abusive and sick.
Furthermore, males who show a strong preference for females are made fun of by fellow tribesmen.
The Sambians are also extremely violent, which they express through being at constant war with neighboring hamlets, utilizing their toeva rituals to maintain this aggression, believing that these abhorrent rituals make them fierce warriors.
Needless to say, it is extremely disturbing to realize that Greek elites and the Sambians had no compunctions about compelling young boys into acts that the boys would find degrading, repulsive, and painful (at least initially).
Women are considered dirty and dangerous by the Sambians, despite the necessity of eventually needing a woman for procreation and child-rearing.
In Greek society, too, women were considered by these toeva-loving elites as being inferior to men and were treated accordingly. So it seems that toeva people do not need to be discriminated against in order to behave in a manner that degrades and discriminates against other human beings.
As shown above, the expression of same-gender attraction usually results from profound psychological damage, but let’s never lose sight of the fact that healing is always possible, no matter how low one has sunk.
Despite everything shown in this post, Hashem is still infinitely bigger than all that.
A Couple of "Objective" Sources
Finally, for the sake of objectivity, I want to direct you to a couple general studies from respected sources, like this study from Harvard and this study from The National Center of Biotechnology Information.
Notice how they reveal telling statistics (like how men attracted to males, who represent less than 3% of the population, commit between 9-40% of the most reprehensible crimes against children), then they insist that this doesn't mean that such men are more likely to commit these crimes.
(It is true that many males attracted to other males would never dream of hurting a child, but that doesn't refute the higher incidence of the ones who do.)
It seems that these "objective" academics must toe the line of the Liberal agenda even as they present the cold, hard numbers that clearly contradict their politically correct declarations.
Part II: What's Behind the Big Push for Adam and Steve?
Notice how they reveal telling statistics (like how men attracted to males, who represent less than 3% of the population, commit between 9-40% of the most reprehensible crimes against children), then they insist that this doesn't mean that such men are more likely to commit these crimes.
(It is true that many males attracted to other males would never dream of hurting a child, but that doesn't refute the higher incidence of the ones who do.)
It seems that these "objective" academics must toe the line of the Liberal agenda even as they present the cold, hard numbers that clearly contradict their politically correct declarations.
Part II: What's Behind the Big Push for Adam and Steve?
RSS Feed