My community involvement began in 1989 with my opposition to Family Life Education (FLE). Among the reasons I opposed FLE were that it promoted the acceptance of homosexuality and said that gays cannot change. For 25 years I have made public statements that homosexuality was a choice and that it could be “prayed away.” I was very wrong.

Feelings are generally not a choice, as is recognized by my church’s website, mormonandgay.org. For my past statements, I apologize to the LGBTQ community.

I wish my social conservative friends would be more understanding that probably most gay and transgender persons did not choose to have the feelings they have. Often these feelings begin at a very young age.

A family member should be able to acknowledge same-sex attraction or gender preference without fear of rejection, loss of employment or opportunity. When we social conservatives ask gays to live celibate or ask transgender persons to use bathrooms for their biological gender, we should understand that we are asking a lot. We have not walked in their shoes.

I do not believe that most gay and transgender persons want to undermine Christian values; they want to be able to act on powerful feelings they did not ask to have. I do believe though that some who are promoting LGBTQ rights do oppose Christian values and advocate an androgynous society. For example a lawyer for Gavin Grimm, whose bathroom case is before the Supreme Court, is the Secular Society Women’s Rights Legal Fellow at the ACLU.

Eroding the standards of modesty between male and female makes society more dangerous for women. What may now seem to be a casual act for a man may be regarded as rape by a woman. The casualness we have introduced over recent decades I think is responsible for the well-publicized statistic that 20 percent of college coeds are sexually assaulted.

While I therefore believe bathroom use should be based on biological gender, I understand that this imposes a great hardship on transgender persons. I would hope that other social conservatives would understand this too.

Arthur Purves

Vienna