Religious Intolerance
The counselor in question is not some mere therapist called upon to help a person deal emotional problems. This counselor has a specific purpose: to convince the girl that homosexual feelings are wrong, perhaps even evil. The phrase “their home soil has seen to this visit” indicates that the counselor is not chosen by an individual, but is chosen to represent a collective concern. The reference to the Baptist religious is a key indicator this girl comes from a deeply conservative background which views lesbianism as contravening God’s will.
The Nature of Sexuality
Another theme touched upon is the nature of sexuality. If God was involved in the creation of human beings, did He give us sexuality as means of reproduction and pleasure or just for the sole purpose of reproduction? Those Baptist mothers view the girl in the waiting room as wasting sexuality on pleasure receiving at the hands of another girl because such forbidden love precludes the possibility of pregnancy. Underlying the religious intolerance against homosexuality is the inescapable reality that such love cannot create new life and therefore at some level it goes against God’s very intention for creating sexuality.
An Existential Dilemma
The girl is reading “an existential paperback” that offers no help in dealing with her own sense of guilt at having a lesbian relationship. This indicates that the girl is actually facing an existential dilemma at being forced to meet the counselor. This girl is not a rebel who can be expected to reject conditioning efforts by the counselor to reinforce the Baptist community’s intolerance for homosexuality. That she is already suffering guilt indicates she has already bought into that intolerance, but was overcome by powerful and uncontrollable emotional urges and physical desire. The waiting room is thus an existential purgatory of sorts from which the expiation of her “sins” through counseling may leave her facing a life of repressed unhappiness every bit as much as it may leave her facing a life unrepressed guilt.
