The Thin Straight Line A recurring theme of this column is what we’ve called “the fragility of heterosexuality”: the fear that exposure to same-sex images or ideas is all it takes to turn a straight person gay—and now science has found that this phenomenon is real! In an Australian study (published in Nature’s Scientific Reports), 180 self-reported heterosexual men and women were asked to read one of two articles on sexual orientation before taking a demographic survey with a series of questions about their sexuality. The test group’s essay explained that sexual orientation exists on a continuous spectrum and can change over time, while the control essay specified that there are three discrete categories (homo-, hetero-, and bisexual). And the result: those in the test group were 28% less likely to report that they were exclusively heterosexual and 19% more likely to say that they might give same-sex relations a try. What’s more, those in “the continuous group … reported less certainty about their sexual orientation.” (For the record, those claiming to be exclusively hetero ranged from 66 to 84% in different experimental conditions.) The researchers stressed that reading one article is unlikely to change people’s actual behavior, only their willingness to admit to pre-existing thoughts or fantasies. Still, if reading an essay is all it takes to bring out a whole new segment of budding bisexuals, worries about the risks of exposure to same-sex stimuli may be well-founded.
The Closed Book of Mormon The richest person in Utah, Jeff T. Green, has announced that he’s leaving the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and he issued a blistering letter to LDS president Russell Nelson accusing the church of “actively and currently doing harm in the world.” Noting its past policy of official racism, Green tore into its history of LGBT exclusion and opposition to equal rights. He also announced a gift of $600,000 to LGBT students and organizations at Brigham Young University, which comes in for sharp rebuke. BYU’s Honor Code bans all forms of intimate same-sex behavior, while any display of support for gay rights is barred. Indeed the Code prohibits any form of gay rights advocacy, which Green compared to Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda.” However, a group with the euphemistic name Understanding Sexuality, Gender, and Allyship (USGA) has been meeting under the radar since 2010. Green’s gift—half of which will go to scholarships—will presumably help to legitimize the fledgling organization. It’s not entirely clear what prompted Green to take these actions now, but he was adamant about leaving the church: “After today the only contact I want from the church is a single letter of confirmation to let me know that I am no longer listed as a member.”
Nonpastoral Duties Going from Mormons to Methodists, we witness a spectacle that would be inconceivable in the former realm but possibly okay in the latter. The focus is the pastor of the Methodist Church in Evansville, Indiana, Craig Duke, who surprised everyone by appearing in full drag on HBO’s reality show We’re Here as part of a showgirl extravaganza. Claiming that his only motive was to support his pansexual daughter (who was probably mortified), he must have been anticipating some raised eyebrows when he parted with the words: “When the episode is over, I go right back to my home, my neighborhood, my church, my experiences as Craig where my pronouns, my race, my sexuality, and the way I express my faith is [sic] completely accepted.” But alas, the Methodists voted to relieve Craig of his pastoral duties, giving him an office job at a reduced salary. On a positive note, he’s made a lot of new friends at We’re Here, where “I was surrounded and immersed in a culture that I’ve never been immersed in.” Oh, he’ll be back.
Blame Satan This could be just another in a string of televangelists who railed against Covid vaccination, contracted the virus, and perished in a flurry of prayers and ventilators. But the case of Marcus Lamb, host of the Ministry Now show and a strong advocate of “conversion therapy,” is different in at least one troubling respect. Past victims have typically expressed regrets about their vaxx decision and instructed their followers not to make the same mistake. But Lamb’s son Jonathan and other survivors have refused to acknowledge that he died of Covid at all, coroner’s report be damned, claiming that the cause of death was “a spiritual attack from the enemy.” Indeed Jonathan Lamb often refers to “the enemy” when defending his father through various scandals, by which of course he means the Christian devil or some variant thereof. Now denying evolution is one thing, but this rejection of science even when it has real-world consequences is something new: a return to magical thinking and medieval notions of spells and evil spirits. Can calls for people to be burned at the stake be far behind?
