The book that finally explains why we're still stuck on this subject! Both a Lambda Literary Award and Independent Publisher Book Award Finalist, Scared Straight is an eye-opening, penetrating analysis of US culture and why fully accepting gay people divides people and institutions. It identifies our culture as fear-based and in denial, and shows how homophobia and discrimination are major ingredients in our way of defining the world. Like software installed in a computer, our system's messages install a straight role that actually has little, if anything, to do with sexual orientation, religion, tradition or the Bible, and everything to do with maintaining limiting definitions of a human being, and a real man and woman. People of all sexual orientations are hurt, torn from their full potential and squeezed into molds that support our institutions. The final chapter prescribes the dual elements for healing this cultural disease.