"Same-Sex Attraction"

It's not a struggle.

“Struggling with Same-Sex Attraction”

I’ve heard this phrase used, most often online, for a good portion of my adult life.

Not “being gay” or “loving someone of the same sex.” Not even “attracted to men.” It’s almost always “struggling with same-sex attraction.”

And the wording here matters. Because baked into that phrase is the assumption that attraction itself is the problem.

Why is it that nobody talks about straight people “struggling with opposite-sex attraction?” Why aren’t they asking a teenage boy if he’s “battling his desire for girls?” I’ve never seen a support group or global ministry for husbands who are “overcoming their attraction to their wives.”

When it’s heterosexuality, it seems that attraction is treated as an expected part of being human. However, when it’s homosexuality, attraction suddenly becomes a dirty word, a burden to carry, a temptation to resist, a defect to overcome.

But here’s the thing… I have never “struggled” with being attracted to men.

Not once.

I’ve struggled with being bullied.

I’ve struggled with shame.

I’ve struggled with fear.

I’ve struggled with people comparing someone like me to addicts, criminals, and predators.

But the attraction itself? That was never the struggle. It was simply there. My attraction to men is as natural as breathing. It’s as ordinary for me as feeling hunger pains build up in my gut. My attraction to men is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.

I knew I was “different” long before I had words for it. Best I can recall, I was seven. It was long before I understood what sex was. It was well before I knew what homosexuality even meant.

At that early age, I began noticing things about myself that I couldn’t explain. And I shouldn’t even have to say it but I felt this way not because someone recruited me. Not because I was somehow influenced by Hollywood culture. I felt this way because it was part of learning who I was and how my mind and body functioned.

I can also say, with my full chest, that what I was discovering about myself was not because I chose it. It was already there, waiting to be discovered.

So when someone says, “A man struggling with same-sex attraction is no different than a man struggling with anger, at risk of committing murder… or an addict or a pedophile” they’ve already revealed the flaw in their thinking.

Anger is an emotion.

Murder is an action.

Addiction is a disorder.

Abuse is a choice.

Being gay? Well, being gay is none of those things.

The only way a comparison between someone’s sexuality and horrific crimes works is if you’ve already decided that homosexuality belongs in the same category as destructive behaviors. And that’s precisely the assumption being forced into the conversation when someone names a “struggle with same-sex attraction.”

I’m attracted to men. Period. Not as a “struggle” or a temptation. I am attracted to men.

I’m attracted to big burly men with beards and bellies who smell faintly of cigar smoke and scotch.

I’m attracted to men who look like they could split a cord of firewood in an afternoon and then sit on the porch at sunset talking about all of the things in life that scare them.

I’m attracted to men who aren’t afraid to cry.

I’m attracted to men who are willing to be vulnerable and understand how much strength it takes to do so.

I’m attracted to transgender men… because they are men.

I find kind men very attractive.

Tall men.

Short men.

Bearded men.

Clean-shaven men.

Men who can laugh at themselves.

Men who are really good at listening.

Men who are generous with their time, their attention, they resources.

Men who are kind to my boys.

Men who understand that loving me means caring about the people I love as well.

I am attracted to confidence, not arrogance or dominance. The kind of confidence that is noted in someone’s eyes before they even speak a word. The kind that knows its own power and holds no reason, nor desire, to prove it.

I’m attracted to men who wear their heart on their sleeve, carry stories beneath their skin, and are more than willing to share it all with me.

I am deeply attracted to men who have survived something… who have been cracked open by life and responded with tenderness instead of being bitter.

And yes, to be completely honest… I am, at times, attracted to men who are unobtainable. Maybe it’s the chase. Maybe it’s the mystery. Maybe it’s because my heart has used longing as a language that speaks plainly to me.

All of these things I find attractive… and more. None of which is a struggle. None of which has ever harmed anyone.

My attraction to men has never broken a bone.

It has never destroyed a family.

It has never left someone traumatized.

In fact, the worst damage connected to my sexuality comes from people who spent years trying to convince me it was wrong.

The real struggle was never same-sex attraction.

The real struggle was surviving the people who refuse to accept it.

The real struggle was hearing “Christians” treated my existence like a cautionary tale.

The real struggle was being told that if I just prayed harder, believed harder, surrendered harder, God would eventually make me straight… I could be “redeemed” of my homosexuality.

And after decades of hearing that message, I can tell you exactly what changed.

Not my sexuality. My willingness to apologize for it.

Eventually I stopped asking, “Why am I gay?” And I began asking, “Why are so many people threatened by something so ordinary?”

I am not struggling with same-sex attraction.

I am a gay man.

I always have been.

And after years of being told otherwise, I’ve finally learned that there is nothing to struggle against.