In what way are we not a product of our childhood? Obviously, I resemble my parents and would have even if I had been adopted at birth by a Mongolian couple and raised on a galloping pony. But I was in fact raised by my parents, and older folks now long gone who knew my parents well would have seen them in me. Not just their looks but their mannerisms, attitudes, and notions.
Likewise I am a man of the time and place where they raised me. I speak English for example. I like sweet tea and salt-cured bacon. I am instinctively Conservative and will be quickly identified as Southern by any native-born American. Via everyone with whom I came into contact and all of my experiences in the time and place in which I grew up I became who I became, for better or for worse. When I was but a wee bairn I was gifted strengths that have borne me and weaknesses to be borne.
Who amongst you can say that you were not profoundly influenced by the time and place into which you were born and by the people that raised you? That you were not poured into a mould as a babe and still retain much of its original shape? We all were, and to state thus is to state the obvious. No scholars or studies are needed to prove that we are the product of our early years. Or that we set up and change less as we age. As we say you cant teach an old dog new tricks.
Few can say that they were gifted no qualities or strengths by their guardians, or by the time and place of their childhood. Likewise few over thirty who can now look back with some clarity will not have some regrets as to how they came up, or not be aware of some baggage that was laid upon them or downloaded into the pliable mind of childhood.
Are there any aspects of our character that we will exempt from the influences of childhood? Every parent bears witness that their babies were born with little personalities ready-made but will we say that there is any aspect of our character that is wholly a matter of genetic inheritance, untouched by post-conception experience?
Methinks not. Now to my point.
I posit that there is an ocean of anecdotal evidence suggesting that the development of same-sex attraction is a direct result of child abuse, neglect, or premature sexualisation. If this unoriginal thought is wholly false, it can be safely ignored.
But if it is true, should we not reconsider our acceptance of homosexuality and its legitimisation?
M.C. Atkins
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Look Away... 