America’s New McCarthyism
99
featured the smiling face of a boyish young man and a strangely contrived
narrative that included the following:
I am Randy Thomas and I’m sure my story will prompt a few
questions. Good, because the answers are worth the effort.
Like a lot of homosexual men, I grew up with an absentee
father. He left me desperate for die physical touch only a
father can give. I also never heard nor knew his affirmation of
me as a m an.. . . I felt vulnerable and rejected, but still I was
drawn to their attraction with me. I soon found that all the
male attention I’d ached for so long came packaged with a gay
identity. So that’s wliat I became, even though I was still
conflicted about ^\^lo I really was . . . I began living gay on the
outside, but was hurt and broken inside.. . .
Today I am an ex-gay. No, w ait. . . I don’t define myself
anymore with a sexual identity. I’m ju s t. . . Randy. Because I
know that my homosexuality wasn’t really a sex issue . . . but
a heart issue. And wiiat once was broken as a child has now
been made whole to the point I have hope one day for a wife,
and children of my own___(italics mine)
The entire narrative was a mosaic of more myths and stereotypes than
can be dealt with here. Suffice to say “Randy” began with the myth that “a lot”
of gay men are the product of divorce—^which would seem to place the blame
for homosexuality on heterosexuals who violate the “sanctity” of marriage—and
that gay people are “broken inside”—^which calls up the mental illness myth—
coupled with what seems to be a strangely incestuous inversion of the recruiting
molester stereotype: “He left me desperate for the physical touch only a father
can give.” Perhaps these were meant to complement the puerile to