Wednesday, June 20, 2007
(Weekly Column)Only a day before "ex-gay" leader Alan Chambers admitted that praying away the gay doesn't work, the Southern Baptist Convention was working
to expand its ex-gay ministry program. The once slavery-loving church, hired Texas pastor Bob Stith as its National Strategist for Gender Issues, with the goal of promoting ex-gay programs within the denomination.
A church spokesperson told the
Associated Baptist Press that the grandiose sounding strategist role "has been a culmination of many years of planning and praying." Well, as we are often reminded, God works in mysterious ways. The SBC press release barely cleared the media fax machines when Exodus International's President Alan Chambers told the
Los Angeles Times, that he still, at times, (like when he's awake or dreams) has attractions to men and "by no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete."
This acknowledgment mirrored his infamous quote in my book,
Anything But Straight: "Put me in a bathhouse," said Chambers, "Would I find people attractive or would it stir me? It probably would."
If Exodus doesn't actually turn gay people straight, then what's the point of the organization? How do they justify their million-dollar budget and staff of twelve when the church money might be better spent on helping the poor?
At its root, the "ex-gay" ministries are support groups designed to offer strategies to keep people out of gay establishments or relationships that they desperately want to be in. In the old days, this was simply called being in the closet. But Exodus figured out that misery likes company and that they could profit by creating a communal closet where self-loathing and sexually frustrated homosexuals could whine to each other about their unhappiness.
To rationalize such a racket, Chambers is reduced to chronic dissembling and offering circular logic to justify his job. Last week, for instance, he told the
Orange County Register, "Today, I am a far different person. Not that I don't struggle, but my life has changed. I certainly don't have the desire to be involved in homosexuality. It has no power over me."
In one sentence he says that he has a "struggle." In the next sentence, he contradicts himself when he offers, "I certainly don't have the desire to be involved in homosexuality."
What exactly does that mean? If Chambers is struggling, then he obviously has the desire to be with a man. What else is he struggling over, whether to drink caffeinated or decaf coffee in the morning? And the larger question is, why not just come out and end a worthless struggle that
modern biology increasingly proves is fruitless.
Still, Chambers statement was a step in the right direction. The next step should be for him to summon the courage to consistently deliver this message to fundamentalist audiences. This is particularly difficult because right wing political groups pay his bills and they prefer Exodus be portrayed as a miracle mill. To date, Chambers has been nothing short of a Genie, bowing at the feet of the religious right and panting, "your wish is my command."
Earlier this month, for example, Exodus ran
deceptive radio ads on fundamentalist radio recruiting victims for its annual conference that promised "sudden, radical and complete" transformation. Caught with his pants down (maybe the wrong analogy) Chambers apologized unconvincingly, spinning the debacle by swearing the bogus ads were really intended to implore church leaders to radically change the way they treated homosexuals.
Even more disturbing is Exodus' absurd Sky Angel Network television show "Pure Passion," which is the most amazing display of gay bashing with a smile ever recorded. In the show, Exodus panders to the lowest common denominator,
instilling shame in gay Christians. The hosts repeatedly call homosexuality "perverse" and declare gay people to be "sexually broken."
What is particularly galling is that after Exodus steamrolls a person's self-esteem lower than an ant's underbelly, the organization then shows up with offers of "help." It never occurs to Exodus that they are the problem, not the solution.
Equally disconcerting is a new "compromise" being brokered between misguided gay activists and a few ex-gay therapists. They are inventing therapy guidelines that supposedly "help" a patient align religious values and sexuality - even if this means celibacy.
Exactly how naive and out of touch are these people? To suggest that there is a healthy way to counsel gay people to go from puberty to the grave without sex or the opportunity for loving relationships is wishful thinking, if not cruel quackery, of the worst order.
The truth is, there is only one fool-proof therapy model that offers gay people a legitimate chance at fulfillment and happiness - it is called "coming out." The alternative is to create conflicted minds like that of the Exodus President, who by virtue of his convoluted statements, clearly lives in psychological torture Chambers.
32 Comments:
Client self determination is a basic principle in therapy. It might seem like the more moral thing to encourage someone to come out, but if that's just not where the client is it's not ethical or healthy to force the issue. Unfortunately a lot of people experience real anguish because of conflict between their orientation and their religious beliefs, and while we should be working to create improvement in the way religions treat LGBTs, in the meantime therapists need to meet their clients where they are, and it's not really ethical to try and change someone's religious beliefs as a therapist. It would be about as bad as what Nicolosi does.
Boo
posted by , at
6/20/2007 9:19 AM
Boo, the following is an excerpt for what passed for psychiatric modalities treating homosexuals at Brigham Young University campus. SO MUCH FOR PSYCHIATRY!!!!
Source:
www.lds-mormom.com/legacies.shtml
Ray: It was in my junior year at BYU. It [the class] was sort of like being an apprentice or learning how to treat patients. One of the things that we could do was to do the electro-shock therapy for those who wanted to change their sexuality. At the time of course, I knew that I was gay. I had experiences and everything. I had no desire myself to change my orientation but I thought it was interesting at the time that there were people that did. I was very closeted at the time even though I had a lover. We did the "therapy" as we called it in the basement of the Smith Family Living Center on the BYU campus.
Alot of times BYU security would catch people in compromising positions on campus. Those people would have the choice to either be kicked out of school and have their families notified about what they had done or they could go through this therapy. We had quite a few people who were going through it. There were others in the therapy who felt so much guilt for being the way they were or they had been promised that if they underwent the therapy they would be able to marry and have children and they would be turned. Of course they had to have the desire to change, and if the therapy failed which it always did, it was their fault for the failure since they didn't have enough desire.
Anyway, they would come in usually three times a week. I would be behind a glass one-way mirror, and they would be on the other side of it. They had their choice to look at pornographic magazines or watch porno videos. We would tape electrodes to their groin, thigh, chest and armpits. We had another machine that would monitor their breathing and heart rate. If there was a difference in their heart rate when looking at homosexual pornography, we would turn a dial which would send a current to shock them. If they were a new patient, we would use a very low current. From the reaction that I saw there were muscle spasms which looked very painful.
After that was over, we would switch the pornography over so that it was a man and a woman having sex, and we would play very soothing music in the background to try and get the mind to relate to that. For the people that had been doing the therapy longer we turned the voltage way up so that you could see burn marks on the skin and quite often they would also throw up during the therapy. This is speculation, but most of the students at BYU probably hadn't even seen pornography before [this experience].
After undergoing that kind of pain over a number of months, everyone said that they had completely changed. They kept records for as long as the people were at BYU. After they had graduated, there was no records kept to see what kind of success rate they had. The BYU statistics were wrong because the people were lying. They were desperate to get their degree and get out of the situation. They had been blackmailed into the situation in the first place.
We did have some people who became completely asexual after undergoing the therapy. But no, we never changed anyone from gay to straight.
Perhaps Mr. Alan Chambers and Dr. Nicolosi and their religious friends should undergo similar treatment? See how they like it. Self determiantion, yeah right!
richard schillen
posted by , at
6/20/2007 9:45 AM
Richard- you've missed the point. I'm not defending Nicolosi or any other abusive form of therapy. I'm lesbian, I doubt it's possible to change one's sexual orientation, and personally I don't think it's anything anyone needs to do (except Katee Sackoff... come join our team, Katee...).
However, Throckmorton's guidelines are not about trying to change orientation, and they're created specifically to combat the kind of abuse you cited. My point was that a therapist can't advocate one particular course of action to their client. As a gay person, I'd like us all to be out and proud. As a therapist however, I can't tell my clients how to live their lives. If someone has a conflict between their religion and their sexual orientation, it's not the therapist's place to tell them which way they ought to resolve it. That's a direct breach of our codes of ethics. Advising someone as a friend and counseling them as a therapist are two VERY different things.
My hope is that as society becomes more accepting of us the demand for this sort of thing will just naturally fall away.
Boo
posted by , at
6/20/2007 11:06 AM
Countless people, since the beginning of time, have experienced a crisis when truth and reality intruded upon their mystical beliefs. In the "Middle Ages", monks would whip themselves when they became sexually excited. There were even stories of priests who castrated themselves. It's sad that certain types of people seem so willing to accept the word of others that they are an affront in the eyes of God.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 2:36 PM
Boo,
Thanks for your answer. What you are talking about reminds of Louise Hayes's question to her enormous audiences, comprising of a large numbers of gay people: "Does your religion make you feel horrible and insignificant?"
Crowd hollers yes.
"Does it make you feel guilty and sinful?
Crowd screams yes again.
"Do want to know what do about it?"
Again, yes, they were desperate; they wanted to know.
And then came her simple answer:
"There are numerous religions out there. Find another one! Find one that makes you feel better." She added: you actually don't think that God, as busy as he is dealing with this huge ever expanding universe and whatever else he has on the side, is concerned with what you do with your genitals, do you?" Louise was preaching this message back in 70's and 80's.
There was someone who didn't beat around the bush about the harm of the fundamentals on the gay psyche. She actually believed that conflicted religious gays were more prone to HIV infection than the more self accepting ones. How's that for psychiatric awareness, shades of Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science fame!
Let's face it religions that teach gay people to hate themselves need to be abandoned by gay people. It's like staying in a relationship where one partner clobbers the other every day for his/her own good according to clobberer's idea of good. Only one choice there: one leaves and finds a better, more nurturing relationship. Ditto with religions.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 2:37 PM
Richard, I totally concur with you. My personal opinion about all religion is that it should all be abolished. What good did it ever do other than promote intolerance, hatred and racism throughout its history and continues to this day. The people who use religion against us are frightened, inadequate, insecure sick people with an equally sick addiction.
Robert, NYC.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 3:47 PM
If a person feels a conflict between sexuality and religion, the obvious choice is to leave the religion and find another one or (a better option if you ask me) find your own path to spiritual enlightenment that doesn't require a) tithing, b) a laundry list of superstitions, c) megachurches, or d) all of the above.
Sexuality cannot be changed. Religion can. Sexuality is an integral part of the human animal. It is as much a core part of us as the need to breathe. Religion is a gilded cage humanity chooses to lock itself in to escape from or protect against reality.
Gay people who choose to stay in religions who condemn, hate, and vilify them are the poster children for ritual psychological abuse.
--Johnny in Minneapolis
posted by , at
6/20/2007 3:50 PM
Folks, if you can tune in to Air America tomorrow (AM1600 in New York City), June 21, 2007, at 9 a.m. EST, "The Lionel Show" will be hosting an ex-gay convert. Lionel's show runs from 9 a.m. until noon, not sure approximately what time his guest will be interviewed. Tune in and call Lionel when he announces the phone number.
Robert, NYC.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 5:38 PM
Wayne you're being as dogmatic if not more so than the people you're opposing when you talk about not letting people reconcile their faith with their sexuality and simply be celibate.
Besides, most of them won't even stick with it. They'll realize hey I'm gay, they'll come out to a pride parade, they'll make more gay friends, they'll feel good about it, they'll regret not having sex but it'll be good. Then they'll meet that one special boy who may even be in the same circumstance. And something will go pitter patter, and it'll feel pure and right and.. well maybe I was wrong all those years. And they'll come out and it'll be great.
Exact thing happened with me.
And before you say it'll take too long, it took me about three months after being outed, to realize things were bunk. So don't worry. It's a lot better to encourage liberalized views now, and then in another 20 years they'll have become even more accepting. It's just the way people move. Slowly. Sometimes you have to let people think for themselves and not the way you do.
posted by D, at
6/20/2007 6:22 PM
'Increasingly proves' is a ridiculous expression. Something either is 'proven' or else it isn't. Saying that science has 'increasingly proven' that homosexuality is biologically based is just a back-handed way of admitting that it has not proven this as yet.
And that article Besen linked to is another piece of propaganda - Michael Bailey, quoted saying that it's 'clear' that sexual orientation is inborn, is an unreliable and ideology-driven researcher.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 7:28 PM
It's pretty obvious what *you* believe. And the weight of science DOES support strongly that homosexuality is biologically based--not that we need them to tell us what we all know from the inside out and from a very early age. The Bailey article may have been 'ideologically driven', but the science he uses to support his point is quite valid---unlike the 'it's a choice' quackery from the religious right; the same morons who think humans were on earth at the same time as the dinosaurs. I assume from your 'ideologically driven' posting that you are undoubtedly one of them.
posted by , at
6/20/2007 10:33 PM
Well, I guess if science isn't really necessary, you should tell those scientists to stop wasting their time with their pointless efforts.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 3:35 AM
Hi guys, check out this link http://www.airamerica.com/lionel/, Greg Quindlan from a pro-family organization will discuss how he became straight. 9 a.m. to 12 a.m., tune in now at Air America AM1600.
Robert, NYC.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 9:36 AM
I've heard it all now. Greg Quindlan, an ex-gay, appeared on the Lionel Show this morning on Air America, some of you may have tuned in. Apparently, Quindlan has been living a celibate life for fifteen years and said it is hope to eventually have an heterosexual relationship. Since he has not had sex with either gender all this time, he maintains he's straight. To me it sounds like a Gay asexual man. He also went on to state that the majority of Gay people are unhappy, sexually shallow and unfulfilled. He claims that at age 11 he became Gay when a 13 year old boy molested him, the relationship continued for several years. Quindlan later came out in his twenties at the beginning of the AIDS crisis and after losing over one hundred friends to the disease re-evaluated his life and decided it was time to convert to heterosexuality. Fifteen years is a long time to self-impose sexual abstinence and I think it has more to do with him not being able to accept his real orientation rather than conversion. He was pretty defensive and angry throughout the interview and contradicted himself a few times. What a sad, pitiful man.
Robert, NYC.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 1:18 PM
I've heard of this guy, but didn't recognize the name. He was so unhappy as a gay man that he decided not to have sex for 15 years? no romance? No love?
No wonder he's pissed off. He sounds very unhappy. "When I become straight and have sex with a woman, THEN I'll be happy.!" Doesn't seem to understand the nature of happiness or sex.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 1:42 PM
I've heard of this guy, but didn't recognize the name. He was so unhappy as a gay man that he decided not to have sex for 15 years? no romance? No love?
No wonder he's pissed off. He sounds very unhappy. "When I become straight and have sex with a woman, THEN I'll be happy.!" Doesn't seem to understand the nature of happiness or sex.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 1:42 PM
Responding to Robert, which i forgot to do in my previous post. "I think it has more to do with him not being able to accept his real orientation rather than conversion." What I had meant to say in my previous post was that I don't think it is about accepting his real orientation, and it certainly is not about any conversion. that hasn't happened. He is just unhappy, and he blames his being gay, rather than taking the steps necessary to live a happy life. I didn't see the show, but based on your comment, he STILL isn't a happy person. so his being or not being gay really has nothing to do with it at all.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 1:53 PM
The notion that conversion therapy is "self-determination" is patently absurd on its face.
The "self" does not have the ability to "determine" one's sexual orientation - therefore, it is not applicable. The idea is as dumb as saying people who want to change eye color or skin color have a shot at achieving success through therapy. They don't.
Since the self has no ability to determine sexual orientation - that leaves one stark reality: in all cases, conversion therapy is a fraud. If you are engaged in it, you are an extremist and a con artist.
We should never compromise the mental health of young gay victims to reach a shalllow, dangerous compromise with right wing therapists. The compromise that I suggest is that they admit they are harming people and switch to gay affirming therapy....you know, the terapy that actually works.
Think about it.
posted by Wayne Besen, at
6/21/2007 2:18 PM
Wayne-- I agree with most of what you say most of the time. I also would agree that 99% of the time, "conversion" is a waste of time and energy. It isn't real and it isn't going to happen no matter how much wishin' and hopin' the and prayin' the poor sap does. But I think it is also a mistake to underestimate the human mind. I think conversion is really a possibility for maybe 1 person in a thousand, but for the other 999, it is as likely as flapping your arms to produce flight. It is not the reality of their situation, and (here I really agree with you) no amount of either god (assuming he's even interested in the question and has the inclination to throw himself into the process, which I seriously doubt) or therapy (assuming there is anything to therapize, a really big assumption which probably explains why therapy doesn't work)--------no amount of god or therapy or both is going to change the situation.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 2:34 PM
Ben, thank you and you too, Wayne, as always, you're right on the money. Air America needs people like you to address the ex-gay ministries. I wish you had been on the show this morning. I don't think the host, Lionel, bought any of what Greg Quindlan was saying either.
Robert, NYC.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 2:38 PM
What if a black person walked into a psychologist's office and said, "Being black is against my Mormon values, and I want to change so that I can live more in line with those values." Would it be right for the psychologist to see this as an example of "self-determination" and agree to help the black person "become whiter", or would the truth be that the patient is suffering from self-hate which is exacerbated by those toxic "values"?
I see the ex-gay thing as being no different from the above scenario. Latent, even unconscious homophobia would be at the root of the thinking of any psychologist who believes that what a self-hating gay person wants to do is, in any way, shape or form, a good thing.
posted by , at
6/21/2007 2:55 PM
Although it is true that Spitzer's official proposal, published in 1973, suggested homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder, it went on to propose a "new diagnostic category," called "sexual orientation disturbance," for treating homosexuals "who are bothered by, in conflict with, or wish to change their sexual orientation." In fact, Spitzer has never retracted this tacit approval of ex-gay therapy in any professional publication. (See Robert L. Spitzer, "A Proposal About Homosexuality and the APA Nomenclature: Homosexuality as an Irregular From of Sexual Behavior and Sexual Orientation Disturbance as a Psychiatric Disorder," American Journal of Psychiatry 130:11, November 1973, pp. 1215-1216) Clearly, the current DSM doesn't deny help to anybody who is distressed by their sexual orientation. Despite this, Spitzer is not giving up on his 1973 proposal for the APA to create a new category that approves of sexual orientation change therapy. And he is trying to accomplish this by falsely accusing those who oppose him of wanting to deny help to gay people. For more, see my blog page Ex-gay Sneetches by Dr. Seuss (6/21/07)
posted by Thomas Kraemer, at
6/23/2007 4:46 PM
Alan Chambers is so idiotic, he deserves to just be ignored. What a pawn of the hateful right. I understand we must continue to monitor his propaganda. His stance on everything is so harmful to the young of all orientations.
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