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In a recent study (Gallup 2024) of sexual identity in the US, 30% of female respondents between 18 and 26 self-identified as LGBTQ.  In the Ivy League colleges, the numbers are even higher for both men and women.  At Brown University, a 2023 study showed that 40% of the students identified as such.  How did this come to be?   In fact, how did the idea of being born a different gender or being born gay come to be accepted by huge segments of the population?  How is it that 3 million Americans say they are transgender, and almost one million Americans say they identify as animals (furries)?  And what does the Torah have to say about this?  

Mathias Desmet, author and leading expert on “mass formation,” notes that herd mentality or mass formation psychosis often affects highly intelligent people even more than the general society because of their elevated desire to conform. Herd mentality is the necessary force behind the fashion industry.  Herd mentality is the force that can create panic on Wall Street. It gave us Nazism and Communism.  Desmet notes that loneliness or search for meaning can be contributing factors in analyzing why individuals join the herd.

Herd Mentality does not need any scientific basis to start a wave through society. Facts are often irrelevant. Several recent studies, including a 2019 study of 477,000 people, failed to find a genetic basis for people claiming an innate born gay identity.  Yet much of the Western world is convinced there is an innate gay or transgender identity.  By contrast, there is a clear genetic basis for left-handedness, but not on sexual or gender identity.   Yet without any scientific basis, at least to date, the general population has accepted this as if gay, trans, or furry were the same as skin color.  These ideas are mainstreamed on the internet.  WebMD has a page which teaches acceptance of some two million people who claim to self-identify and have sex as animals, aka “furries.”

Speaking out against the herd means being ostracized and even threatened.  Counselors who speak with clients who want to see if they can live a traditional lifestyle and help them discover and manage underlying causes are attacked by much of the western world for even having those conversations.

Biblical commentators imply that the reason God destroyed the tower of Babel and separated people into languages, hindering the ability to communicate was because of the damage caused by herd mentality.  The nuclear family is the basis of the Abrahamic faiths.  In establishing a Jewish community, the first thing observant Jews build is a ritual bath or mikveh used by married women as part of a monthly spiritual cleansing before reentering relations with their husbands. Marital relations between a man and a woman are foundational.

We need to understand no one is born gay or trans or furry.  Each person who self identifies as such likely has underlying issues which they can choose to address or manage… or not.  Issues such as lust triggers or anxiety are manageable. For example, according to psychologists like Koby Frances Ph.D, many are misled to confuse their immediate powerful and involuntary arousal reactions as signs of being “inherently gay.”  He noted, “It becomes problematic if the person is dysfunctionally preoccupied with them.  People with any kind of lust trigger, still do not lose their human capacity to feel emotionally and sexually interested in real (traditional) partners with whom they connect.”

He also notes that young people especially those with anxiety, can easily latch onto an LGBTQ identity, not because of any inherent trait, and not because of any immutable sexual pattern, “but because of the strong emotional and social rewards that often go along with this identity:  attention, power, belonging, recognition, life-purpose, etc. qualities that all of us need but which some people have trouble getting normally from within their community for any number of reasons.”

Sexual energy is directionless and is shaped by culture.  We know that clearly because of the data we see today showing the huge percentages who self-identify as LGBTQ.  We know this historically from studying Greek society of millennia ago.  We are socialized in a way that generally helps us steer in the direction that God wants but societies like the Greeks or like the western world today — can steer people in all kinds of directions.

Some people point to the animal kingdom noting homosexual behavior among mammals as an explanation for behavior in humans. This is exactly the point.  Sexual energy is inherently directionless.  Animals can develop relationships with those closest to them just as humans can if not for the impact of socialization and religion. As renowned lecturer on relationships, Rabbi Manis Friedman points out, behaving naturally is behaving without rules and can mean having relations with those closest. Yet the Bible gives us rules to steer us away from our unfiltered desires.

The herd mentality without attachment to basic religious principles, is wreaking havoc on the larger world and that havoc is filtering even into the observant religious worlds.  It is trying to convince us of things that are simply untrue and the opposite of what God wants — it is telling young people with issues that they were born gay or trans or furry. In addition, they receive a warm welcome from leaders in the gay, trans, and furry communities and their member families who have been coerced into being supportive.

We have great compassion for those who are struggling.  It takes strength to push back.  The herd is wrong.  They will tell the vulnerable that they cannot change.  There is truth.  They can discover a path back to the life God wants for them — if they want.

Yehezkel Schiff is the President of Jewish Family Forever.

Free image, Pixabay License.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.