FAMILY DYNAMICS

For too long the Christian church has condemned homosexuality as being solely the product of a fallen, perverse, and secular world when the reality is that we as Christians have contributed to the causation of homosexuality via our own individual sin and brokenness. Many of us have merely reacted negatively to the occurrence of homosexuality and retaliated in anger toward the gay community, when we should have asked: “Why are our children struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction?” “Have we as their parents contributed to their struggle?” and “What can we do to help them?” Although hotly debated, ignored by secular media, and dismissed in recent years by the American Psychological Association, research has consistently shown that one of the primary contributing factors which can lead to unwanted same-sex attraction in some children is emotional wounding between the child and same-sex parent. It is becoming more understood in the Christian Church that “the homosexual orientation—same-sex attractions or feelings—is not a sin itself, but a symptom that comes from emotional wounding as a child.” Dr. Elizabeth Moberly, research psychologist and author of Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, explains that the homosexual drive is a “reparative drive” which seeks to fulfill legitimate same-sex needs for love, security, and identity—needs that are normally met through attachment to the parent of the same sex. For a boy, his father is the most important figure in his life, and for a girl, it is her mother. The wounding does not have to be intentional, necessarily. Absence and emotional detachment can be as wounding as overt physical, sexual, or verbal abuse for some children. Also, siblings respond differently to their parent’s behavior, personalities, and interests, and what may negatively affect one child has little effect on another. Although every person’s situation is different, there are many causative factors of homosexuality which are similar in men and women with same-sex attraction.

 The following are some of the primary preconditioning factors for male homosexuality:

• hurtful experience with father (cold, distant, disinterested, critical or rejecting) —father’s lack of acceptance of his son as a young male
• mother’s rejection of father’s masculinity and over-involvement in rearing son
• boy’s sympathizing and care-taking of his mother
• sexual violation or experimentation, incest or molestation
• exposure to pornography, media influences
• personality temperament, negative body image
• peer labeling, harassment or alienation
• fear of—or inability to relate to—the opposite sex.

The following are some of the primary preconditioning factors for female homosexuality:

• hurtful experience with father and/or mother (mom fails to fulfill her role as nurturer; dad fails to protect by being passive and/ or unavailable)
• an unhealthy family environment (any dysfunction causing the child to perceive the world as unsafe and threatening)
• sexual abuse, incest, rape
• neglect, abandonment, rejection
• unmet needs for love, acceptance, gender identification and validation
• absence of nurturing, lack of protection, verbal abuse
• personality temperament (insecure, alone, empty, energetic/hyperactive, creative, bright, intuitive, keenly aware of surroundings, self-protective).

It is helpful to note that these factors do not always lead to same-sex attraction; they can lead to other problems. However, what is important to see is that these factors are present in the majority of those who experience same-sex attraction.

If you are a parent with a child who has same-sex attraction, it may be very hard for you to read this. However, the healthiest response is to humble yourself and take an honest look at yourself, your family, and your past family history with open eyes and an open heart. Not everything in this article applies to you, and yet some things will directly apply to your situation. Ask God to help you discern so that you will not take on unnecessary guilt or, conversely, respond in fear and denial. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, in his book A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality writes: The vast majority of parents [of children with same-sex attraction] are well-intentioned and loving and want the best for their children…. [However], we all make mistakes as parents…second, our personality limitations may have had little in the way of ill effects on one child in the family and yet, to our shock and dismay, they can prove seriously detrimental to our next child. Third, how we relate to our children typically reflects the type of relationship we had with our own parents. What is often seen (not always but often) in the families of men and women who struggle with same-sex attraction is the “classic triadic relationship” between the mother, father, and child (boy or girl). In this situation, the mother often has a poor or limited relationship with her husband, so she shifts her emotional needs to her son. The father is usually non-expressive and detached and often critical as well. So in the triadic family pattern we have the detached father, the over involved mother, and the temperamentally sensitive, emotionally attuned boy who fills in for the father where the father falls short.

This theory is often maligned by gay activists and is discredited in the main-stream media; however, the actual research has never been disproved by alternative studies. Although, in some reported cases mothers have been found to be less involved and emotionally disengaged rather than overly involved in their son’s life, the negative father influence seems to be overwhelmingly consistent in the majority of research.

This “triadic relationship” can happen between a mother and daughter. Women with same-sex attraction, in many cases, have had mothers who (often unwittingly) relied on their daughters to meet their emotional needs, when it should have been the other way around. In many cases, a mother who does this may have a strained relationship with her husband, may be divorced and may be a single mother, or may be a woman who has not dealt with her own childhood wounds. In each case, a child is put in the position to care for the parent and in so doing forfeits his or her childhood in many ways.

In addition to her relationship with her mother, a girl’s relationship with her father is critical in her emotional and sexual development. She will measure men and, most importantly, God, in light of her father, unfair as this may seem. Her relationship to him is also one of the most important relationships in her life, and if a father is not there for her because of divorce, working long hours, emotional detachment, or if he is too present through verbal, physical, or sexual abuse of any kind, then she will in turn, emotionally detach from him. For many women, the result of a strained relationship with her father are deep feelings of rejection and undesirability, the inability to trust, respond and relate to men, and feelings of anger and resentment not only toward her father but, unfortunately, toward men in general.

Being a parent is not easy, and there is no perfect parent outside our heavenly Father. We can only try to do our best, ask for forgiveness, and learn from our mistakes. That is all God requires of us. The reality is that many parents of children who struggle with same-sex attraction carry deep wounds from their own childhood. Their relationship with their own mothers and fathers has often been strained and very painful. To place on top of that a failed marriage, rejection, infidelity, or physical and verbal abuse from a spouse can be devastating.

In these cases, all a parent may have left is his or her children. It is no wonder a mother or father may go to them for love, affection and emotional support. However, children are not to carry their parents’ psychological burdens for them. It is abusive to put a child, adolescent, or teenager in the position of acting as surrogate spouse, counselor, or best friend. It is destructive to the child’s gender identity and emotional well-being. It forces the child to forfeit a large part of his or her childhood, and in many cases it leads to future unwanted same-sex attraction.

Emotional wounding can come in any form and in any degree, but when it comes, the result for the child is consistent: the child will defensively detach (emotionally) from his or her parent. A son will defensively detach from his father and a daughter will defensively detach from her mother. (Sometimes children will defensively detach from both parents.) What this defensive detachment does is leave an emotional void (or longing) in the child’s soul for that parent—for the love and respect of the father and the nurture and approval of the mother.

When puberty hits and hormones become entwined with emotion, this emotional void may become sexualized. A boy’s need for emotional connection and intimacy with the father is left unmet (in varying degrees) and so his hunger for male affirmation becomes sexualized in an attraction to other boys. A girl’s need for emotional connection and intimacy with her mother is left unmet (in varying degrees) and so her hunger for female nurture and affirmation becomes sexualized in her attraction to other girls. (The attraction to those of the opposite sex comes in varying degrees from exclusive attraction to bisexuality.) Another contributing family dynamic which can lead to the development of same-sex attraction is in marital disunity between a child’s father and mother. It is estimated that Christians get divorced at the same rate (if not higher rates) than non-Christians. Domestic abuse, substance abuse, addictions of all kinds, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse are found in our Christian homes and in our churches. Why are we surprised, then, when we see Christian children, including children of conservative clergy and elders, struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction?

Christians need to find ways to prevent homosexuality from besetting their children, and the best way to do this is to insure that they, as husband and wife, have an honest, healthy and Christ- centered marriage. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, in his book A Parent’s Guide to Preventing homosexuality, reports: “Rather often, couples who come to a therapist looking for help with their child are experiencing disharmony in their marital relationship.” Another prominent researcher, Irving Bieber, also observed that some boys “become victims of their parent’s unhappy marital relationship…. In a scenario in which Mom and Dad are battling, one way Dad can get even with Mom is by emotionally abandoning their son.”

Children of divorce and children who grow up in homes where Mom and Dad are at odds, find themselves caught in the emotional pain of their feuding parents. For example, Chastity Bono, a famous lesbian and daughter of celebrities Sony and Cher, reveals the tension she felt growing up with her divorced parents in her autobiography Family Outing: In a way, I think I was the son my father never had…. When my father encouraged my tomboyishness, my mother would get annoyed. I think in some ways they acted out their frustrations with each other through me; my father would aggravate my mother by encouraging my boyish behavior, and my mother became more and more uncomfortable with me because she saw me mimicking my father.

We see the destructive results of parental sin in lives of the families of God in the Bible. Abraham and Sarah’s use of Hagar as a surrogate mother led to sibling rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac and the eventual banishment of Ishmael from his own family, particularly from his father, Abraham. Isaac and Rebecca distrusted each other and favored one son over the other, which led to deception and the banishing of Jacob from the family in order to keep Esau from killing him. Jacob’s favoring of Joseph at the expense of his other sons, led to them almost killing Joseph while further estranging them from their father. King David’s adultery led to God’s pronouncement: “Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you.” Indeed, because of David’s sexual sins, his multiple wives, and his inability to fully love and discipline his sons, calamity fell upon David through their subsequent sexual sins and rebellion.

In the New Testament, Ephesians 5 and 6 teaches that a husband and wife are to yield to and trust one another out of reverence for Christ, wives trusting their husbands and husbands loving their wives unto death, as Christ loved the church. Children are called to obey their parents, and yet even Paul saw it fitting to add this command: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.” Exasperate means “to make angry or resentful, to embitter.” Paul understood the dynamics of family—dynamics between husband and wife and parent and child—and how important healthy familial relationships are in creating healthy children.