LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: CAL THOMAS IGNORES `EX-GAY' REALITY

To the Editor,

It's not possible to change someone's sexual orientation, as Cal Thomas suggested in a recent column, but it's possible to make them miserable over it.

The ex-gay movement promoted by people like Cal Thomas preys on the spiritually and emotionally wounded. Using the tenets of born-again fundamentalism, they try to convince dissatisfied homosexuals -- usually young gay men just coming out who feel guilty, panicked and stressed by family pressure and society's intolerance that they can change by suppressing their feelings.

Countless people have been misled by ex-gay ministries into believing that sexual orientation can be changed, only to find, even years later, that they had found only temporary happiness in the delusion that they had changed. These "ex-gays" no longer call themselves gay but continue to have same-sex erotic feelings and dreams.

Add to that the pain of many spouses of these individuals who thought they had married a heterosexual.

Anyone can suppress one's feelings and live a lie, for a time, but it doesn't work in the long run. Besides, living a lie doesn't seem like much of a Christian ethic.

Cal Thomas considers homosexuality a perversion. It is not perversion when a gay person acts according to his nature. The perversion occurs when people force homosexuals to be heterosexual. The truth is that gays have been and continue to be forced into the unnatural lifestyle of pretending to be heterosexual.

WILLIAM C. STOSINE

Iowa City, Iowa