
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 15, 1991                   TAG: 9102150655
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BEING HOMOSEXUAL IS CORRECTABLE

IT GRIEVES me that when gay and lesbian issues are presented in the Roanoke Times & World-News, they are most often from a pro-homosexual viewpoint and are given major exposure. The only published response is a few letters to the editor, usually long after the main articles have made their major impact.

Why not do a follow-up article with equal exposure, letting readers know there are many reputable psychologists and psychiatrists who see homosexuality as a sexual-identity disorder that is far from hopeless to correct?

Sam Garrison's statement that teen-agers don't "get the benefit of knowing that this superb teacher, banker, doctor, or police officer is gay" is very misleading. That talented, intelligent and likeable people practice the gay lifestyle does not mean that lifestyle should be accepted as normal.

Even Garrison acknowledged that there are "unusually high suicide and substance-abuse rates found among homosexuals." He, of course, blames this on society's negative attitudes toward gay behavior.

His answer is to have a counseling center for gay and lesbian adolescents where they can lend "emotional support" to one another. Why not send them to a counseling center where they can get the help they really need to become what they were meant to be?

The answer to homosexuality is not to "bash" the people caught up in it. But neither is the answer to tell them they were born gay or lesbian and cannot change. There is almost 100 years of evidence to the contrary. ALBIN P. CRUTCHFIELD JR. ROANOKE

by CNB