There is a path to healing the emotional wounds and injuries people have suffered in their lives, especially in childhood, that contribute to the development of homoerotic attraction (among other maladaptive responses to emotional wounding), which is an essentially dysfunctional reparative strategy, seeking a way to meet the unfulfilled pre-adult, non-sexual emotional needs of the wounded and hurting inner child.

Homoeroticism is clearly a dysfunctional expression of natural human sexuality. That is obvious to anyone that can look with open eyes and an open mind at the consequences of homoerotic behaviour and the so-called ‘gay lifestyle’, which are characterised by a wide range of negative consequences, manifest not only in the lives of gay-identified people in what are described as ‘homophobic’ societies but equally in the lives of such people living in so called ‘gay friendly’ societies. These consequences include higher than normal rates of mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse, interpersonal and domestic violence, suicide, social dysfunction and isolation, depression, promiscuity, physical illness, including rampant sexually transmitted diseases, difficulty in sustaining stable long term emotional connections with others, etc. About the only ‘life style’ problem that is less common among gay-identified men, when compared to the general population, is obesity.

People experiencing homoerotic feelings and acting out those feelings, in order to attain a healthier and more mature experience of their adult sexuality, need emotional support and encouragement to identify the emotional needs underlying their feelings and behaviour. It’s not just enough to say, ‘don’t do that; it’s bad!’ Healing is accomplished when Christians actively love and emotionally nurture each other, tending to each others emotional wounds and brokenness, of what ever sort and however manifested, whether it be same sex attraction, depression, substance abuse, uncontrolled anger, over-eating, emotional isolation, destructive shame or guilt, interpersonal conflict, irritability or what ever passions people are experiencing. ‘The Church is not a country club for saints; it is a hospital for sinners’, as the saying goes.

Jesus said of himself that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The moral teaching of the Church must be our guide. There are no excuses nor multiple, alternate moral standards for one or another class or group of people. We are all held to the same standard of life and conduct because it is salvific. But simply to expect people to be able to turn from hurtful and destructive passions and reorder their lives according to Christian principles without providing for the healing of the spiritual and emotional wounds and traumas they have experienced and which have lead them to compensitory dysfunctional behaviour is unrealistic and doomed to failure. We Christians must recognise that all the life of the Church, the ascetic tradition, the spiritual practices, the liturgical worship and the dogmatic and moral truths we are called upon to believe and live by, are the therapeutic method to the restoration of our eternal spiritual life of growth in perfection and communion with God, to which all mankind is called.

One of the hymns from the first week of the Great Fast contains the line, ‘O pure Theotokos, heal the wounds of my soul, the passions of my heart and the delusions of my mind.’ It is a concise yet very profound statement that offers us all much to ponder.