Thoughts on same sex attraction

I have been saddened by the reaction of some of my friends to those with same sex attraction.  I am disappointed by the suspicion and mistaken ideas about them.  There is too much judgement and not enough understanding and tolerance of same sex people.  There is even hostility towards minority genders and, for years, even an official hostile environment to migrants/foreigners.  Perhaps, most Brits are not familiar with the four freedoms of the EU.  Our ignorance has fueled our little Englander approach that insists that we know better than the European nations whom we have fought in wars for so many centuries.

In some Northern Ireland churches, in particular, same sex attraction is seen as promoting sodomy, of fostering immorality and deviant behaviour.  Yet, I now think that Gareth Jones, my housemate and best man at my wedding in 1983 may have been of same sex attraction.  My ignorance of homosexuality and other gender issues - and my misplaced jealousy on one occasion - I now realise, may well have contributed or even caused his suicide four months after my marriage to Linda.

The practice of same sex attraction was an imprisonable offence right up to the 1960s, I believe.  This was outrageous.  As is the ignorance, even today, of the loneliness, the discomfort, even fear of those who know they are a tiny minority in a heterosexual culture that is so dominant and domineering.

It is important that we understand the difficulties and problems that comes from finding you are born with an LGBT orientation.  To understand that the discrimination and dislike, the prejudice and abuse from the heterosexual majority is the biggest and best argument against the very wrong idea that the minority same sex community is in any way enticing or promoting the majority into their own sexual orientation.  Would any heterosexual really want to change gender and so have to endure so much of the wrong, the weird and wonderful attitudes and behaviour from opposite sex people like me?  Homosexuals are not promoting their orientation.  Some, simply encouraging the closet gay to come out.  Is not the most important value that whatever our orientation, we all live in loving, faithful and honest relationships with our partners?

This is why the majority gender community must get up to speed on the LGBT community to correct the false ideas and attitudes the majority have towards them.  Mark Dowd's brilliantly written 2017 book, 'Queer and Catholic' does that.  Never judge a book by its cover, however.  Open and read Mark's memoirs.  Read of the funny events and enjoy the frank and, perhaps, too candid trials, tribulations and even sins of this former Dominican friar and, today, freelance journalist and Radio 4 broadcaster.  Once begun, you will have difficulty putting the book down.

The best social worker I have ever encountered in my 35 years in the profession was the gay, the excellent, the wonderful Martin Wager.  He got more compliments and was more loved over the four or five years I knew him than I ever enjoyed in my career of social work.