Beck 6beginning to notice my attraction for other males around seventh grade. I will never forget what an eighth grade CCD teacher told me the following year. He told the class, plain and simple, that “all gays are going to hell.” If I were told this now, I would not take it to heart as much as I did when I was thirteen years old. In my young eyes, the man teaching that class taught us everything we need to know about church and a lot about life. Although I will never forget that he said that, I was able to put that aside in time, and I came to terms with my homosexuality. However, I can see where not everyone would be able to do the same. Perhaps there was someone else in that class that also felt homosexual urges. That impressionable young person may never come to terms with their sexuality. Religion, therefore, plays a large role in a person’s coming to terms with their sexuality.The reason I keep mentioning adolescence is because of an observation made by the American Psychological Association. They also share my beliefs made in my thesis statement:Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether or not to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed. Puberty is probably what causes the emerging of these sexual feelings; as our bodies change, humans start to have sexual thoughts. Also, the American Beck 7Psychological Association agrees that a person does not choose his or her sexuality, but chooses whether or not to act on it. Society also has the misconception that an overbearing mother is to blame for her son’s homosexuality.As boy reaches out to boy, the remonstrates of society and psychiatry induce a mother to bow her head in shame and heartache, pleading mea culpa. She invested too heavily in her son’s...
