Last updated on September 22, 2020
Question
Hi Mr. Hamilton,
I’m really glad to find your web site several days ago. I’m 19 years old Christian male, and I have some problems with homosexuality, pornography, and self-confidence. All this time I’m keeping all of these matters to myself. I have never talked about it to anyone, including my parents. So here is the background.
It all started when I was about 12 years old. At that time I was really curious about other people’s penises and bodies. My family and society don’t talk about sexual matters openly, it is considered taboo. So I decided to search on the Internet about it.
Then it went further to homosexual stories and to videos. I becoming addicted and masturbated to it. I also recognize that at first I’m only attracted to older men. One day, my dad caught me browsing some gay porn. It was really embarrassing. He asked if I did that because of the influence of my friend or because of my own will. I answered because of the influence of my friend because I was really embarrassed. I don’t want to end up having bad consequences because of it, like getting my parents upset, and homosexuality is a bad issue.
When I entered high school, one of my classmates spread the rumor that I’m gay. I don’t know what triggered that, but all of a sudden almost the entire class (mostly the boys) were talking about me behind my back. It affected me deeply. I became uncomfortable with hanging out with other boys (which was no problem before, I can get along well with boys because I don’t behave like a girl) and I lost my confidence. Keeping focus while talking became very hard to do (especially with men). It was hard to make friends when you feel that people look down at you while you’re trying very hard to stay focused.
After that, I came to a stage where I hated myself. I tried to fix myself by going to extremes. I started to search for more hetero porn, but I still can’t resist gay porn. I often picture myself having a wife and starting a family. But then I realized that it is really hard to get an erection from females, but when it comes to males I can get an erection easily. I prayed so that God would make me sexually attracted to females. Then it crossed my mind that homosexuality may be due to bad genes. Am I really born this way? I read some people claim that they are gay since they can remember. If so, then why God does condemn homosexuality? That is another confusion for me.
Then I found your web site, and I am really grateful for that. I have read the questions page and found out that there are some people who have similar problems to mine. But I want to talk to you personally and ask for solutions. So what I want to know are:
- How to turn me from sexually attracted to males becoming sexually attracted to females?
- How to break the cycle of pornography? (I have tried about a month without porn, whether hetero or gay porn, but I can’t resist the urge to get myself some porn again.)
- How to get my self-confidence and focus back?
I really looking forward for your answers and thanks for reading my email.
Answer:
We start with two simple but profound truths:
- Homosexuality has never been proven to be genetic. It is so stated in society, but you will not find such in science. Most studies state there is a possibility of a tendency toward homosexuality that has a genetic cause. “Possibility” because the data did not show a strong result. “Tendency” because there are too many exceptions. Worse, when people attempted to reproduce the studies, they got different results. You cannot take a sample of a person’s DNA and determine if they have homosexual sex or not.
- People are able to change their minds about who they decide to have sex with. Most homosexuals have had heterosexual sex at some point in their lives I’ve known people who were heterosexual who later in life decided to start having homosexual sex. I’ve known people who were homosexuals who later in life decided to start having heterosexual sex. There are even people who don’t care who they have sex with. There is even a label for them: bisexuals. Therefore, what the Bible says remains true, after listing a number of sexual sins, including fornication and homosexuality, Paul said, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:11).
Homosexuality and Christianity are incompatible. Christianity is about choosing to leave a life of sin, but homosexuality is a sin. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6:9-10). This isn’t just against homosexuality. You can’t be a fornicator and a Christian at the same time either.
Your body’s response to its environment is trainable. It is not surprising that you respond to images and thoughts of homosexuality since you have been focusing on this type of sex for years. It doesn’t mean your body won’t respond to a female. In many ways your body’s response to sexual stimulation is mechanical. Manipulating the points of the body that trigger a sexual response will do so, no matter who is doing the manipulating — male, female, or even yourself.
The first order of business is that you have to stop feeding your mind trash. Pornography of any sort is sinful because it is designed to trigger lust for immoral sexual situations. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (I Thessalonians 4:3-5). To see the problem of pornography and why Christians cannot be involved in it, see:
To help break the habit, you need to install an Internet filter program on your phones and computers. These aren’t perfect solutions. They can be bypassed, but the goal is to make you work a bit at getting by the protections and therefore give you a chance to think instead of just impulsively do.
The second step is to break the connection you have in your head that in order to ejaculate you have to look at pornography. This one is more difficult because guys tend to strongly associate masturbation with pornography even though they are two different things. See: How do I break this sin of looking at porn?
The issue of self-confidence is a different problem. Here you have allowed other people to define how you see yourself. Because of what other people say, you allow doubts about who you know you are to creep in. Measuring yourself by other people or their opinions is foolish. “For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (II Corinthians 10:12). People’s opinions are just opinions and don’t hold any weight. It is what God thinks of you that matters. “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3).
Teenage boys are notorious for picking on anyone who seems to be different or weaker in any way. And if that person reacts, they become like sharks circling for a kill. The only way to deal with such taunts is to ignore them. They don’t know your mind. They don’t know who you are or where you are going. So don’t let them define you.
Sexual urges are a fact of life for men, but right now you are not married. So try to put these matters to the side and focus on things that really do matter. Sex is a part of life, but life isn’t about sex.
Question:
Thank you so much for the answers. I am feeling better because finally, I can talk to someone about my burden that I have kept to myself all these years, and your answers are really helpful. I will start working on all of this.
One thing intrigued me, though. The reason why I was searching for more hetero porn was that I thought that perhaps I could trigger myself sexually with this type of porn as I do with gay porn and eventually the homosexual tendencies would all be gone. But I read on your web site and finally know that what I’ve been doing is not the solution.
But what should I do then? Will keeping myself away from any kind of porn eventually make my body be aroused by a female?
Answer:
The problem is that you can’t get good from evil. “And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”? — as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just” (Romans 3:8). Pornography of all sorts causes problems that warps a man’s sexuality.
The problem is that it objectifies sex. Sex becomes something that you do for no other purpose than because you want to ejaculate. The person whom you have sex with in your imagination is unknown to you and does not matter to you. In the end, it removes all love from the action of sex.
Remove the corruption and you’ll begin to have control over your thoughts and desires again. You can focus on getting to know people for who they are. If you keep sex out of the picture, you will eventually become best friends with a woman, fall in love, and marry. Because you are with the woman you love as a person and plan to spend the rest of your life with, you will find that you will have no problems expressing that love in many ways, including through sex with her. Your body will respond because that is then your desire.
You keep looking for your body to control you when it is really a matter of you retaining control over your body. “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (I Corinthians 9:24).
Question:
Thank you very much, sir. God bless you.
After reading the answers section more, I realized that we have some misunderstanding, Mr. Hamilton. Maybe you already knew from my emails that English is not my first language. Therefore, I used the term “homosexuality” to address sexual attraction to the same sex, not knowing that it can be used to address the sexual act between those of the same-sex. I never commit any sexual acts with females or males. I believe that it is allowed only in marriage life. In fact, I’m quite disgusted to see men kissing each other and seeing gay couples. From what I get from the answers page, that you said that it is the sexual act that is condemned and considered a sin, but the attraction is not. Is this the same as your thoughts? But doesn’t the Bible say that what precedes the acts of sin is also a sin? Before committing a sexual act one must have a sexual attraction that causes sexual arousal, in my opinion. So isn’t sexual attraction to the same-sex is also a sin? Moreover, it is against the nature of a male-female sexual relationship.
Answer:
I understood what you meant. The recommendations were to stop you from lusting after homosexuality through the watching of gay pornography. Nothing in what I said accuses you of having sex. It is focused on stopping the feeding of your lust through the watching of pornography.
You seemed to have accepted the false idea that because your penis gets erect when looking at pornography involving homosexuality that you, therefore, were destined to have sex with other males. A part of my discussion was to show you that homosexuality is a choice and not something you are destined to do.
While you state that you find men kissing men disgusting, yet you seek out images of men having sex with men. I’m sure kissing is involved, so somewhere you are not being fully honest with yourself. From your notes you appeared to be on the edge of accepting homosexuality and given that you were feeding your mind with trash, I concluded that it would not be too long before you not only accepted it but acted on it — all the while hating yourself for it. Hence, there is a need to stop the lust before it turned into action.
Let me clarify terms:
Your body had a desire for sex that is built-in. Anything, everything, and nothing in particular can trigger a sexual response in your body. What you determine to be sexy will trigger your body’s response, but sometimes your body will get aroused seemingly on its own. Just because your penis gets erect, it doesn’t mean anything in particular other than your body saying it is ready and wanting sex. Yet, just because your penis is erect, it doesn’t mean you should have sex with whomever or whatever is present.
Lust is when you focus your desire on something that is immoral to do, to the point that you begin to justify doing it in at least some situations. Pornography of all kinds is designed to stimulate lust. It depicts various types of sex outside of marriage. It glorifies impulsive sexual acts where people allow themselves to get carried away by their physical desires. While you have been telling yourself that you would not do these types of things, you have allowed yourself to lust after them and that lust will eventually lead you to do it.
Your body’s arousal is its physical reaction to your desire for sex. Anything that results in ejaculation would satisfy your body’s physical need and desire. Physically, your body doesn’t care how that ejaculation is accomplished. This is where your mind is supposed to come in and control your body’s desires. But what you have been doing with your mind is feeding it trash — images of people engaged in sexual acts outside the marriage of a man and a woman, particularly homosexual acts. You are stimulating immoral lusts in yourself.
Yes, lust is sinful. It is wrong to justify sin even if you are not actually doing the sin. However, being sexually aroused is not a sin. That is merely your body signally that it is ready for sex.
Question:
Thank you, sir. Is it fine to ask you some more question in the future?
Answer:
Of course!