North Star Cuddle Groups
June 12, 2021
The revelation by Kyle Ashworth that leaders within North Star Saints (an LDS ex-gay organization) organized and participated in "cuddle parties" should not be surprising in the least to anyone who understands the realities of human sexuality. The need for intimacy, including sex, with a desirable partner is a core and essential human trait. Religion and culture may impose all sorts of boundaries and barriers, but they cannot alter our God-given natures. When people try to live in opposition to this nature two different things may happen. First, the person's wellbeing may disintegrate into depression, anxiety, irritability and desperation with resulting negative and harmful behaviors. And second, the person may devise an accommodation whereby they can take the edge off their distress by engaging in behaviors that approximate the fulfillment of the genuine need. These behaviors may be compulsive and reckless or deliberate and cautious. They will almost always be secretive and will typically create collateral damage for the individual and others close to them.
These responses are unavoidable since very few people have the constitution to healthily live without sexual and emotional intimacy. That is not natural to humans. The consequences of disobeying our innate needs are evident in the sexual scandals among the Catholic priesthood. And this is also what's happening in the North Star and the Journey into Manhood communities. For the record, I engaged in extensive and very intimate "cuddling" at various times during my mixed-orientation marriage. And yes, it took the edge off my distress. And yes, these were emotional affairs. And yes, they created collateral damage from which my marriage never recovered. Most of all, they were blatant though unheeded signals that my authentic sexuality was oriented for something other than a straight marriage.
There is no reason to be shocked by "cuddle parties" in the ex-gay world. Such surprise is the reaction of a naïve mind. I don't say this as criticism—after all, religious leaders have taught us naïve expectations about such things for centuries. But let’s wake up now to what is real. And rather than heaping these male-male cuddlers with outrage, we should instead have compassion on their good-faith, though ill-advised, effort to be both gay and straight at the same time. And rather than chiding them for their lies, we should pray they awaken to their truth and support them in living it honestly rather than under a twilight pretense of "healing." And rather than shaming them away from the bed of another man, we should affirm to them that this is exactly where they belong—after all, bedding a man is a centerpiece of gay life.
Fourteen years ago this summer, my most intimate "cuddle relationship" came to an end. For almost a year, he and I had slept in the same bed three nights per week and spent the bulk of almost every day together. Though I'd been married for 23 years by that time, it was with this man that I was first awakened by romantic love. I discovered what was missing in the relationship with my wife and I tried diligently, though unsuccessfully, to import it from him to her. When fear and circumstance forced us apart, I felt grief and pain unlike anything I've ever known before. In the defenselessness of my anguish, I finally allowed myself to know my transcendent truth: I MUST be with a man.
But circumstance and double-think dissuaded me from heeding that truth for another 11 years. And now I publicly lament the loss of those years. And I lament that I, as a former conversion therapist, abetted the loss of so many years by so many others. My status now—an out, gay man—was inevitable from the time I was a boy. One might console me with "better late than never." True. But I say, better early than late; and better honest than sly.
To those men and women suffering in the half-light of North Star, Brothers Road, and other such organizations, I am obliged to say: it doesn't get any better. It doesn't get easier. The burdens only accumulate. Some of you will say, "But it really works for me and I'm happy!" Beautiful. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the cuddlers and the would-be cuddlers, to the men who can hear their own transcendent truth screaming, "I must be with a man." To the women who know their emotional needs can only be fulfilled with another woman. I am weeping for you because I know your pain. And I am praying that you can come to respect your God-given nature, trusting that He who fitted you with it has a purpose and a plan for you.