Regeneration Newsletter, Spring 2000

BEYOND GAY, by David Morrison, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing , 287 pages,
$15.00. Reviewed by Alan Medinger

Around the world, ministry to people with same sex attraction has been largely a Protestant phenomenon. Beyond the organization, Courage, and several books, resources directed especially to Catholics have been scarce. This situation improves significantly with the publication of Beyond
Gay. This book will be a valued resource for Catholics dealing with same sex attraction and for those ministering to them. Also, it has quite a lot to offer the rest of us.

David Morrison is a professional writer, and judging by this book, an excellent one. He grew up with same sex attractions and pursued an active, even militant, gay life for a number of years. He was born to non-practicing Southern Baptist parents, raised in Washington, DC, was sent to Baptist
Sunday School for several years, but reached adulthood with no real faith. He shares his simple but profound conversion in 1993, and tells how as a new Christian, he was first nurtured in a Northern
Virginia Episcopal church that had a strongly evangelical rector. He eventually became Roman Catholic, and his book is written from an unequivocal Catholic perspective.

It is his Catholic perception on sexuality and homosexuality that interested me the most. Although I do not embrace it totally, I am very drawn to Catholic theology on sexuality. It hangs together so well.

Teachings on marital sexuality, homosexuality, masturbation, birth control, even abortion all flow out of a few fundamental truths about God's plan and purpose for us. I believe that all of us do well to
examine it.

This is a Catholic book that could help others also in the ways that the author relates confession and the Eucharist to a person's desire to lead a chaste life.

One fascinating thing about David Morrison's own story is that he did not set out to change. Soon after conversion he knew that he must seek to lead a chaste life, but changing was not his goal. It appears that it was on God's agenda, however, even to the point of awakening heterosexual desires in him.

The author has a special gift for gently, but powerfully, addressing those whose agenda it is to encourage society and the church to embrace homosexuality, at times turning the arguments of gay advocates on their heads.

For me, a most intriguing part of Beyond Gay was the author's decision to avoid using the word "homosexual" even as an adjective in describing a person. We have opposed the use of the word as a noun that defines someone, but David Morrison goes a step further.

Apparently, to him, even the phrase "homosexual person" tends to distort reality. As I thought about it, the adjective does almost do what the noun does; it brings with it a whole cluster of images that describe a person beyond the direction of his or her sexual attractions. In this regard, a "person with same sex attraction" is more accurate. The phrase becomes somewhat cumbersome when used several times in a short paragraph, but it started sounding more and more natural as I read on. I have been trying to let the term work into my thinking, and I believe it is doing its work of sharpening my
focus on what we really are dealing with in this ministry. You may have noticed that I used it at the beginning of this review. If it catches on, it could be one of many helps and blessing that Beyond Gay will bring to the church and our ministries.