Something that concerns me about what this article reports is all the kids who come out at twelve and thirteen years of age are embracing an identity based on their feelings.  I don’t know about you, but I know when I was a middle schooler, my feelings were all over the place.  They weren’t a trusted source for my identity.  But that is what these youth are going by – how they feel towards others of the same-sex.  They label and trap themselves in a sexual identity.  Being gay becomes who they are entirely.

The article discusses how the climate has changed over the years, making it “easier” for middle school youth to come out.  Popular culture has most certainly paved the way towards affirmation and acceptance with positive portrayals of gays and lesbians.  But does that make it ok?  I believe it pushes youth to an even greater identity crisis, urging them to accept an identity they may not even fully understand at the age of 11 or 12.  With the glamorizing of bisexuality in the media with pop songs such as Katy Perry’s infamous “I Kissed a Girl”, it has become trendy and even posh for girls to be bisexual.  Many of the students in the article mention a larger population of bisexual girls who seem to become more popular after they’ve divulged their sexual preference.

When there is positive reinforcement by peers, it’s hard not to embrace a label.  Instead of encouraging the expression of their sexuality, we need to be concerned with the motivation of girls who claim to be bisexual.  The media is saying it’s cool and hot.  But it really only musters up more gender confusion.

Another thing that stuck out to me was when the author mentioned fluidity in sexuality.  So many in the secular world agree with the idea that sexuality is a fluid thing.  But how is it so hard to embrace the idea of people moving from a homosexual identity to a post-homosexual identity?  That’s just another “expression” of sexuality being fluid.  But, yet, it is scorned and ridiculed for being absurd.

Why is popular culture the most influential medium on youth today?  It certainly does not have any moral compass.  The message of pop culture is “be who you want to be/you are how you feel/do what you want”.  Where it seems from this article that these middle school youth have found clarity in who they are, I believe it has only brought more confusion.  Middle School could be described in my life by this one word: chaos.  Feelings are swirling around, hormones are going haywire, and we’re desperately looking for an identity.  This is the time in a young person’s life to not jump to any conclusions, and embrace an identity they don’t even quite understand.  We are more than just our feelings.  We are more than just who we are attracted to.

Instead of celebrating the earlier embrace of a gay identity, we need to be cautious and concerned.  Embracing an identity based on feelings as an 11-13 year old child, whose brain is still developing and hormones are raging, is jumping the gun.  Pop culture is steering the trends in our youth today, without a moral compass.  Are we going to allow pop culture to be the only wisdom our youth hear?

LiLo and her friend Samantha

What happened to the cute freckle-faced girl from The Parent Trap?  I don’t know Lindsay Lohan or any of the interpersonal dynamics that shaped her life.  My knowledge of Lindsay is limited to what I’ve learned through the media.  From that perspective, I will offer my point-of-view on LiLo’s chaotic life leading up to her relationship with Samantha Ronson.

Lindsay’s father was in jail for a significant portion of her childhood.  She’s now seeking a protective order against him.  It’s clear that LiLo doesn’t like MiLo.  And, although Michael Lohan now professes faith in Jesus and works with Teen Challenge, being a convicted felon didn’t make him much of a role model, at least not from Lindsay’s viewpoint. Parental role models are crucial in helping us develop into secure adults.  They provide boundaries for us and teach us how to relate to the outside world.  When those role models are insecure with themselves (or absent altogether), it is difficult for them to provide us with the direction we need. 

Dina Lohan, Lindsay’s manager-mom has issues of her own.  On the television show “Living Lohan,” Dina allows her 14-year-old daughter Ali to spend time alone in her room with a 21-year-old man, because they need to talk.  When Lindsay recreated Marilyn Monroe’s last nude photo shoot, Dina said they were “honored” for the opportunity.  She commented on the photos to People magazine, “So I don’t look at them like it’s Playboy; she was being a character. So if you look at it that way, you can look at it as a mother.”  Those are not exactly the actions of a mother who is concerned about the dignity of her daughters, or their sexual purity.

Whether we admit it or not, we all know that LiLo has been in and out of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers several times – three times prior to her twenty-first birthday, to be exact.  She’s been arrested for DUIs and cocaine possession, sent to jail, had numerous car accidents and she’s only twenty-two.

We’ve heard through the entertainment media that Lindsay has had relationships with at least 5 young men.  The last being a skateboarder she met at rehab who, when they broke up, proceeded to sell personal photos of her to British tabloids.  Prior to their break-up, Lindsay’s father described him on Extra as, “… a good kid.”  He elaborated, “I don’t think anyone has the right to judge Riley. They [Lindsay and Riley] keep each other in line. They go to meetings with one another.”  Again, more lack of positive parental influence.

When everything is going wrong in your life, supportive people need to rally to your side.  Ideally, those people should be your parents (or your spouse, if you’re married).  In the absence of parental support, it is easy to lean on anyone who will to be there for you. When that friend is compassionate in the midst of your pain, it is natural to want to spend more and more time with her.  An attachment bordering on dependence can form during emotionally trying times.  We all need understanding and support.  When that seems to be missing from our lives, we hunger for it.  We become motivated to seek out the type of understanding we crave.  When the provider of support, who gives us a sense of security, happens to be a lesbian-identified woman, it isn’t surprising that we could think about becoming sexually involved her.  After all, she makes us feel good.  We’re close to her and we’re stimulated by our emotions.  I know of numerous women who have become involved in lesbian relationships with supportive friends.  Not every woman who has a supportive friend becomes sexually involved with her, but it happens often enough to bear mentioning.

I don’t blame Lindsay for her lesbian sexual involvement, if that is indeed what is happening.  Her publicist was quick to say that Lindsay did not say she is a lesbian.  According to her publicist, LiLo was just playing along with the DJ from Loveline when he questioned her about how long she and Samantha have been together.  In any case, it would be easy to understand how she became involved in that sort of behavior.  For Lindsay, her sexual appeal has been a valuable marketing tool.  When your sexuality is a commodity rather than a gift reserved for your spouse, it loses its worth.  It becomes common, even base.

The sad part is that the lines have been blurred between right and wrong in our society.  Few people understand the true meaning of love and sex.  Sex has become a past-time instead of a life-long commitment.  Young girls are sexualized at younger and younger ages.  Just look at how little girls are “made-up” to look like grown-up women for beauty pageants.  Or how Bratz dolls are pressed into skimpy clothes and painted to look like drag queens impersonating Cher.  How many little girls have you seen walking around with “Juicy” and other inappropriate slogans written on their backsides?

There is a disturbing cultural trend to push children and teens into becoming sex objects.  At the MTV video music awards, British comedian Russell Brand scoffed at the Jonas Brothers for wearing purity rings that represent their commitment to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.  The in-your-face message to teens and young adults is that you are “uncool” if you don’t have sex.  Thank God for 18-year-old American Idol winner Jordin Sparks who gave an impromptu defense of the Jonas Brothers after Brand’s off-color remarks at the VMAs, “I just have one thing to say about promise rings. It’s not bad to wear a promise ring, because not everybody – guy or girl – wants to be a slut.”  A few people in the crowd seemed thankful for her comments.  Brand later reappeared on stage to spew more words of home-spun wisdom, “Promise rings, I’m well up for it. [But] a bit of sex, it never hurt anybody.”  In a world ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, mounting STD rates and serial relationship woes, Brand comes across as offensively ignorant.

Like LiLo, we don’t all have picture perfect lives.  In fact, none of us do.  The best we can do is to spend our time pursuing activities that are worthwhile.  Youth groups offer opportunities to develop solid friendships while learning about God and serving the community.  We can add perspective to our lives by meeting the needs of people less fortunate than us.  Surrounding ourselves with people who want the best for us and are determined to uphold Biblical standards of behavior will allow us to develop into the people God intended us to be, with as little drama as possible.

It makes sense that music is about harmonies and rhythms.  That is what makes music different from poems and novels.  But that is not all music is about.  I remember loving a song about suicide.  It was not a gloomy song.  It had a gentle, ironically chipper melody.  In the weeks leading up to my Christian conversion, I listened to that song every day.  I was not suicidal.  I did not hate my life.  I liked the sound of the song.  But listening to it made me think about what circumstances would lead someone to take his own life.  I wondered what circumstances would lead me to consider taking my own life.  I did not consider actually killing myself, but I thought of how I would commit such an act if I ever decided upon that course of action.  I had a lot of thoughts about suicide. When I became a Christian, that song went in the trash.  There was no good reason for me to continue listening to a song that made me think of useless, violent acts against myself.

But back to Katy Perry and her song about lesbian kisses.  According to the lyrics, she lost her discretion with a drink in her hand.  Her drink made her brave.  She saw a girl that made her curious about what it would be like to kiss a girl, and she decided to find out.  Apparently, she liked it.

It is perplexing to me that she spends the entire song defending her actions with lines like, “Don’t mean I’m in love tonight,” “I kissed a girl just to try it,” “Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent.”  If it is no big deal, why worry about it?  But worry is what Katy does.  She tells everyone who will listen that it does not mean anything that she liked kissing a girl.  It sounds as if she is trying to convince herself that it is “no big deal.”  That is what happens when you do something you know you shouldn’t do.  You try to fight off the guilt by making excuses for yourself.  The guilt, however, does not go away, “It’s not what / Good girls do / Not how they should behave / My head gets so confused / Hard to obey.”

What she does not worry about, as she bemoans her confusion, is what the other girl thought of being kissed by a stranger.  Katy sings, “Just wanna try you on / I’m curious for you / Caught my attention.”  Imagine you are the object of Katy’s curiosity.  Suddenly, an unknown girl approaches from across the room and kisses you.  She then continues her song, “No, I don’t even know your name / it doesn’t matter / You’re my experimental game.”  Katy is worried about herself, but she sure isn’t worried about you.  You are just the pawn in her game.  That sums up the narcissistic, self-centeredness that typifies sexual experimentation.  It’s all about me.  The other person is just an object I am using to satisfy my own curiosity.

The purpose of physical intimacy is not to figure out what feels wrong and right, as Katy seems to think.  It’s not about discovering what works for you.  The purpose of physical intimacy is to bond husband and wife together in a life-long union that will strengthen their marriage and create a stable home-life for the children they may have.  When you use physical intimacy for any purpose other than that, it is bound to lead to undesired effects, such as confusion in your sexuality and emotional turmoil.

Am I saying that kissing a girl made Katy Perry a lesbian or bisexual?  Not necessarily.  The lyrics don’t elaborate on what happened after the drink-induced kiss.  Listening to “I Kissed a Girl” probably will not make you a lesbian or bisexual, either. It could, however, fuel a sexual identity struggle that may or may not already exist. It could make you curious about kissing a girl, and bring you face-to-face with a temptation you wouldn’t have dealt with otherwise.

Our combined experiences and the cultural influence we receive through music, television and movies all can have a collective influence on the direction our lives end up taking.  To think that the music we listen to will not affect us is to discount the power that art has to stimulate our emotions and our minds.  That is what artists strive to accomplish every time they produce a piece of art.

Rather than entertain thoughts about sexual experimentation and planting kisses on unsuspecting strangers, it would serve you better to spend your care-free years hanging out with your friends and just being young.  That way, you won’t have to explain to your fiancé about the years you spent kissing girls and experimenting with your sexuality.

Men, just like women, want to feel special on their wedding night.  They do not want you to give them what lots of other people already have, but what has been reserved especially for them. Then when you’re an adult, you won’t hear songs from your younger years that remind you of the poor decisions you made.  Instead, you will hear familiar songs that remind you of your old friends and how much fun you had together.

Everyone’s body is sexual. Once puberty hits, there are parts of the human body designed to react to stimulation by experiencing pleasure. These body parts–called “erogenous zones”–don’t have a mind of their own. They don’t know who or what is touching them, whether it’s a male or female, or if the situation is right or wrong; they just respond to physical touch the way they are designed to, regardless of circumstance.

If you are exposed to sexual activity in a way God didn’t intend–such as through abuse, or with someone you’re not married to, or someone of the same gender–and your body experiences some degree of pleasure, that does not mean that you are gay, bi or anything else. It does not mean that that sexual experience was right for you. It simply means that your body is working, and that’s all.

Sometimes our emotions can get caught up in these experiences, too, and we have confusing feelings toward people or circumstances when we begin to associate them with sexual pleasure. This is natural because we’re supposed to associate sex with a very special kind of intimacy, the intimacy we have with our life-long spouse. God made us so that our mind and heart would naturally form a special bond to the person with whom we share a sexual connection. This is why God is so adamant that we save sexual activity for marriage, the only kind of relationship where we can safely enjoy that kind of closeness (check out 1st Corinthians 6:15-20).

First, those of us here at Exodus youth are passionate to get the truth out there for all the young people who are struggling with their sexuality but don’t want to be gay. We get emails, phone calls and letters all the time from these desperate teens and young adults–and I’m convinced that for every one of them that contacts us, there are ten who don’t.

Many of them are people of faith, but they haven’t heard what the Bible really says on these issues. Whether they’ve grown up in church all their lives, or only have a peripheral knowledge of Christianity, far too many have imposed upon them a perception of a cold and distant God who holds their unchosen sexual struggle against them, and won’t love them until they find a way to change it.

They are also constantly bombarded with our culture’s message that change isn’t possible, that homosexuality is safe and natural and good–and unavoidable. Homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism are marketed to youth more intensely every year via popular culture and even the educational system. The message is clear: intelligent, trendy and truly “progressive” people embrace homosexuality.

Both of these false and pervasive viewpoints push struggling teens into homosexuality, keeping them blind to what God really has for them. I know exactly what that’s like because it happened to me, and many others of us who are in this ministry. So when we’re developing our resources and programs, we ask ourselves, “What do I wish had been available to me back then?”

As the word gets out that freedom and change are possible through Jesus Christ, we’ll start to see just how many people are hungry for that truth.

Secondly, we’re reaching out to a group in our world who really hasn’t heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’ve already seen how the staunchly traditional church has come up short in offering grace and healing to those who either struggle with these issues or identify as LGBT. But, those who fall in to each of these categories are being targeted by another religious viewpoint, one that is a false gospel.

Pro-gay Christian theology delivers a deceptively pleasing message to those with same-sex attractions, but it’s one that goes against the very nature of Christianity.

You’re probably aware the Bible says that humanity is “fallen” because of our rebellion against God. “Fallen” means we are not in community with Him; we have desires that naturally conflict with His will. As Believers we know that Jesus had to die to remove the punishment we earned by following this sinful nature. Each of us, through believing in Him, is saved and called to a life of change; we are to become more and more like Him and deny the fallen desires we still wrestle with; it’s what the Scriptures call repentance.

Gay-affirming theology teaches the complete reverse. Rather than acknowledging our sinfulness and submitting our lives to God, we’re taught that our natural desires are all good, and that the only way to live an honest life is to follow them wherever they may lead us. Truth be told, it’s a faith devoid of repentance.

I once spoke with a young lady who was protesting outside a Love Won Out event. I tried to explain to her that God’s issue wasn’t so much that she somehow change her attractions, but rather that she change the attitude expressed on her picket sign, which read: “God Made Me Perfect.”

That’s what we constantly hear from those who advocate pro-gay theology: “We’re fine just the way we are.” If you think about it, it’s really an arrogant and anti-Christian theme. Really, if God made you perfect, what do you need Jesus for? He even said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor-sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NLT) He wasn’t saying that there actually are people who don’t need Him, but rather that He had no interest in people who thought they were good enough to impress God by themselves.

But you can see why someone struggling would be drawn to this ideology. Just think if there was a church that actually encouraged you to indulge in your temptations! If you had to choose between that and a church that shamed you and made a Christian life seem impossible, which one would you pick?

We’re called to share a Gospel that is 100% Truth and 100% Grace–they actually go better together!

I’m dreaming of a new generation who won’t ever waste their time or their hearts chasing an illusory lifestyle because the truth will be readily available. I’m envisioning multitudes from the GLBT community being powerfully impacted by the truth of who Jesus Christ is, and becoming part of His Body. And I’m praying for a Church that makes it all happen.

Great Ways to Impact Your World

Allies, Too The Allies, Too campaign was created to mobilize Christian students to stand up against bullying, name-calling and harassment in their schools without having to compromise their faith in God’s Word. Challenge the lie that Christians hate gay-identified people, and stand up for true tolerance–which means we treat each other with kindness and respect even when we disagree. Show them you’re an ally, too.