Homosexual Suicide and False Hopes

Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick

The NZ Herald is running a pro and con series on homosexual "marriage".  One piece by a minor public celebrity includes this attempt at prophecy:

When we start telling our kids and our grandkids that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered is okay, they will stop killing themselves. They will feel like contributing members of society.

The suppressed premises in this bald assertion are as follows: the cause of high suicide rates amongst homosexuals is society's heretofore disapproval of homosexuality.  Society does not like homosexuality, therefore homosexuals are depressed; if a homosexual commits suicide the cause is society's disapproval of homosexuality. 

To someone with no memory this may sound a substantial argument, but anyone who is not comatose knows that homosexuality has been trumpeted and promoted and wowed over for decades in the public sphere.  It has been promoted in schools.  It has been celebrated in women's magazines.  It has been defended in law.  Homosexuality has become a much vaunted and celebrated human right.  It would seem that the suppressed premises are wrong.
 

It is reasonable to assert that every suicide is due to some kind of dissatisfaction with one's life--whether over its prospects or dissatisfaction with oneself or hatred and loathing of others.  Years ago it may have been arguable that high suicide rates amongst homosexuals were due in some measure to society's disapproval.    For the past thirty years this contention no longer has credibility.  For the past thirty years, the official line in government schools, popular media, and in the public square has been to tell "our kids and our grandkids that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered is okay."  Yet still the high suicide rate continues.  The cause of dissatisfaction with life and self that leads to homosexual suicide needs to be sought elsewhere. 

One cause that is now officially verboten to consider is that homosexuality itself is a cause of depression and dissatisfaction with life.  This is officially now beyond the pale because secular humanism has declared (and progressively institutionalised into law) the belief that homosexuality is part of  personal identity--who one is--and therefore cannot be a cause of depression and dissatisfaction, by definition. 

But the consistent testimony of Scripture--and, therefore, of the Creator Himself--is that homosexuality is a moral perversion, a corruption, a violation of the law of God.  To makes one's identity equivalent to an ethical perversion will naturally lead many (with more sensitive consciences) into discouragement and depression.  If one genuinely believed that one was a compulsive liar and that try as one might one could never escape the compulsion to lie, deceive, and dissemble it is highly likely that depression and self-loathing and disgust would all be in the mix. 

Now we are  aware of course that the vast majority of people in our community reject the testimony of Scripture and the law of the God of Scripture.  But their rejection does not command reality.  It is does not make it so.  God alone makes it so.  The world conforms to His reality, not ours.  Our false realities and our spurious world-views exist only for the ultimate exaltation of His glory throughout the cosmos.  So we hold little hope that the codification of homosexual "marriage" will do anything to reduce the suicide rate amongst homosexuals. 

It is likely, if anything, to increase it.  Hopes deferred or dashed make the heart sick.