“These are my desires / and I will give them up to you this time around and so / I’ll be found with my stake stuck in this ground / marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul . . . But you / you’ve gone too far this time / you have neither reason nor rhyme / with which to take this soul which is so rightfully mine.” -Mumford and Sons, ‘Roll Away Your Stone’
The subject of sexual orientation change efforts has come up in a lot of different contexts since my recent pieces in First Things. From what I can tell, it seems that such efforts can have significant positive effects; at the same time, the ready promotion of orientation change is a dangerous response to the pastoral questions of homosexuality.