Not so gay

[Be advised: Link to the Web site Our Chart, below, contains obscenities and may include smutty photos.]

The anonymous editrix of Our Chart, an online offshoot of Showtime's "The L Word" (which in turn is a lesbian answer to "Sex and the City," tried to organize a protest to Tuesday's "Modest Proposals" panel. Didn't happen. However,  Our Chart's post about the event did earn a firestorm of responses from its readers, whose ire was further raised by the blog's attempt to link my chastity advocacy with purity balls.

It's always interesting to see how, when proponents of a libertine lifestyle want to avoid discussing the negative psychological and physical effects of nonmarital sex, they run to the same old tired demonizations of the opposition. CHASTITY BELTS! PURITY BALLS! HOUSEWIVES BAKING COOKIES! Etc. It shows their great fear of having their lifestyle called into question.

People of course have free will to engage or not engage in sex of any kind outside marriage, heterosexual or homosexual. However, when chastity opponents caricaturize, demonize, and otherwise malign those who seek reasoned discussion of the potential negative effects of nonmarital sex, it suggests that their purported pleasure principle is built on a house of cards. They can't be that satisfied if they live in such abject fear of criticism.

Here, for the record, is the quote I gave in a Radar online interview that so disturbed Our Chart's editrix and commenters:

"It's a tragedy of our modern age that there is a culture that encourages people to act out on gay inclinations. In my view, far fewer people are really gay, but they will act out that way because of the encouragement of the culture. The myth is that people can't change."

Interesting, Our Chart's editor omits the next two sentences from my quote: "People can change, at least from my own experience. I think it's wrong to tell people that once they are gay they are always gay."

By "my own experience," I am referring to my own experience of changing from an unchaste lifestyle to a chaste one. As the Web site of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) noted in its review of my book, it's an experience familiar to homosexuals as well — but one which gay media outlets like Our Chart refuse to present to its readers without mockery. What are they so afraid of? Methinks the ladies doth protest too much.