Pride Week Guest Post from Jessica Verdi: Why the Impulse to “Fix?”

Let’s start with some terribly sad, yet painfully obvious and inarguable facts:

The world is filled with people who have negative feelings about LGBTQ people. The term “homophobia” indicates some sort of “fear,” while other words such as “hate” or “disgust” are used just as frequently. Many of these haters even go so far as to donate time, money, and political influence to keep LGBTQ people from being granted access to basic human and civil rights. Others set out to use physical violence.

It sucks. It’s wrong. It’s way too common.

Sourcebooks Fire, April 2014.

But here’s my question, something I think most people (regardless of what “side” they’re on) don’t spend much time thinking about:

What IS it? Like, on the basest of levels, where does the desperation to change and/or punish queer people come from? What, exactly, is it that the haters, well…HATE so much? Why do they feel threatened? Why do they feel the need to fight against equality? Why is the default gay = bad?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. And one that seems to have no answer. Which drives me even more insane—how can something that has no answer, something that’s not even a REAL THING, have such an impact on the way people behave and think—and in turn, the way our society runs?

My newest book, THE SUMMER I WASN’T ME, is about seventeen-year-old Lexi—she’s known she is gay for a while, and, on the inside, has always felt content with it. It’s the OTHER stuff, the outside stuff, that’s hard. “The part I hated was the hiding,” she says. “The pretending to be someone I wasn’t; the steady, tormenting harassment that came in the form of Bible scripture and church sermons; the constant fear that if people found out, they would hate me, ridicule me, possibly even hurt me. That stuff sucked.”

And when Lexi’s mother, a woman trapped in a debilitating depression after the death of her husband, discovers Lexi’s in love with a girl, she shuts Lexi out completely. Desperate to regain her mother’s love and keep what’s left of her family together, Lexi agrees to spend the summer at a camp that claims to turn gay people straight. This book involved a ton of research, and every single “reparative therapy technique” you see Lexi and her friends being subjected to is something that happens in real life. Because, yup, these camps do actually exist. They’re called conversion camps, or ex-gay camps, or reparative therapy programs.

And let’s be clear: Not only is it impossible to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender self-identification, these programs are emotionally (and often physically and sexually) abusive.

But regardless of the moral wrongness and illegality of these places, they’re a huge business. The desperation to “fix” gay people is rampant. And even many gay people (most often those who are devout in certain religions or those who have been threatened with disowning by their families) want to “fix” themselves.

So I’ll ask the question again: WHAT IS THIS IMPULSE? Deep down at its core, what’s behind it? The existence of LGBTQ people doesn’t pose a threat to heterosexual people’s lives or cause a detriment to society in any way, shape, or form. So, what then?

Some Christians will claim it says homosexuality is a sin in the Bible. But to my understanding, A) Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, B) the passages about homosexuality are both scarce and open to wide interpretation, and C) these same Christians don’t follow most of the other “teachings” of the Bible near as rigidly—or at all. (You know, the ones about not cutting your hair or not eating animals or keeping new mothers out of church [??] or not working on Sundays or the various incest- and slavery-related ones…)

So what is it? Why do so many people harbor such hatred? Why does Fox News make zillions of dollars spouting this stuff? Why are there still parents disowning their gay children, and LGBTQ-related hate crimes happening every day, and THIRTY-THREE states where same sex marriage is not yet legal?

If anyone can give me a solid, rational, eloquent reason (and no, “it’s a sin” or “it’s not God’s will” or “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” don’t count), I’ll give you a dollar.

Because I just don’t understand it. Why do people care so much? Love is love, relationships are relationships, sex is sex. Case closed. Why aren’t we spending our time and effort and money on fixing our global warming issue, or combatting young girls being sold into sex slavery in third world countries, or ANYTHING ELSE worth actually caring about?

Whenever I’m asked how I self-identify, I find it a tricky question to answer. I’m happily married to a man, but I hate the term “straight,” because the word implies some sort of “correctness.” When it comes to this stuff, there is no right and there is no wrong. And I hope we’ll continue to discuss these terms and ideas, and that someday that impulse to “fix” will go away because we’ll all finally understand that there’s nothing broken in the first place.

Happy Pride Month, everyone!

Jessica Verdi.

Jessica Verdi lives in Brooklyn, NY, and received her MFA in Writing for Children from The New School. She is the author of the contemporary young adult novels THE SUMMER I WASN’T ME, MY LIFE AFTER NOW, and the upcoming WHAT YOU LEFT BEHIND. Jess is continually reminded of how lucky she is to get to write and publish stories about things she thinks are important. By day, Jess is a Senior Editor at Crimson Romance, Adams/F+W’s romance eBook imprint. She is represented by Kate McKean of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. Some of her favorite things include seltzer, Tabasco sauce, TV, vegetarian soup, flip-flops, and her dog. Follow her on Twitter @jessverdi.