The homophobic, homosexual pastor — American Psyche

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/mar/17/weekend7.weekend

I chose this article because of its interesting connection to the short story I picked for the presentation, My Amendment.
The article talks about a pastor who founded a very anti-homosexuality church when really he was having homosexual relations himself. Because ashamed of his "true nature", the pastor moved towns and found counseling to change his sexual orientation and is now as heterosexual as can be. Saunders mocks this by saying he tried this sexual orientation counseling which ended up turning him gay the first time round, then extremely heterosexual (as in the paroxysm of the macho man) and finally turned him into an nonsexual being. And because of this, he was going to found a church anti-homosexuality AND anti-heterosexuality.
I think Saunders critiques two things here. First the aberration of having such prejudices. He takes it a step further when talking of founding his church, meaning : "you wouldn't be against heterosexuality, right ?! Then why are you anti-homosexuality ?". Prejudice is bad and people should simply stop with it, especially if it is for something as personal as the choice of your partner's gender.
Then, I also think that Saunders critiques this fear of being different that is very present in America. People have an image in their head of what they should be and do anything and everything to attain it. In the process, they'll even renounce who they really are, just to be accepted by society, or at least the majority of society. If being gay is seen as bad, people will never fully live their sexuality and be frustrated all their lives ! And, Saunders also mocks the "sexual orientation counseling sessions", as sexual orientation change is an unpredictable science. It discredits the process completely, again asking people why would they ever want to change, especially when the results can be very unpredictable !?