If it ain't broke ...

At last, the cure for homosexuality is here!
At least, that's what therapist Richard Cohen is claiming.
Supposedly, Cohen is an ex-gay who has been living on the straight and narrow – complete with wife and kids – for 20 years. He's got a Web site called the International Healing Foundation, where he sells materials that promise to help anyone get rid of their 'unwanted Same Sex Attraction (SSA).'
Got that, everyone? Just buy his products and you can be cured.
What's most baffling to me is this mentality that homosexuality is a disease. I've never understood how that can even be possible. Think about schizophrenia, agoraphobia or anorexia – all of them are debilitating in some way. Liking the same sex is not debilitating in and of itself.
Oh, did I mention that he's not actually a licensed therapist and has been kicked out of numerous psychiatric associations?
The worst part, however, is that people are taking him seriously. In an interview with Rachel Maddow, she pointed out that Uganda is using his material as justification to execute gays. When she read out parts of his book that upheld Uganda's view, he didn't know what she was talking about, and eventually admitted that the things she was reading – such as race being a factor in turning someone gay – were false.
He literally didn't know what was in his own book.
Rather than helping gays become accepted in society, Cohen is using his status as an 'ex-gay' to promote the idea that being gay is wrong, bad and should be fixed. In the interview, he told Maddow that he supports gays who want to continue living a homosexual lifestyle, but everything he sells on his Web site promotes the opposite view.
We've all learned about the prejudice of the past, when blacks were treated as less than human and people thought that allowing interracial marriage would cause the destruction of society. Today, it's unthinkable for most people to treat a black person that way. You're considered – rightly so – to be a bad person if you do, because being black is something that can't be chosen and has no bearing on personality.
Yet when these same arguments are used to justify the equal treatment of gays, people don't want to listen. Gradually society is coming to terms with the idea that there's nothing wrong with being gay, but people like Cohen are setting us back at every turn. Not only that, they are providing other societies, like Uganda, with justification for their anti-gay views.
Being gay is a personal thing. Gay people are not dangerous to others, and allowing them to marry and adopt will not cause society to degenerate. A person's gayness has absolutely no effect on anyone but that person and his or her partner.
There will always be people who persist in holding prejudiced views, but we can at least work toward a majority consensus. Years from now, our children and grandchildren will hopefully be saying that we were ridiculous for ever trying to stop gays from marrying, just as we now think that banning interracial marriage was an absurd idea.

E-mail: jennifer.lombardo@ubspectrum.com