Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Friday, November 30, 2007

(Weekly Column)

A central tenet to "ex-gay" theory is that a male turns gay because of a poor relationship with his father. Under this baseless hypothesis, a sensitive boy perceives paternal disapproval, and as a defensive measure, the child rejects his dad and all things masculine that remind him of the broken relationship. The mother supposedly reinforces the downward spiral by becoming the child's fierce protector. The circle is complete when the spurned boy rebuffs sports and male peers in school and instead chooses female friends and leisure activities such as playing house.

Of course, this quackery ignores that many gay men had terrific relationships with their fathers and have close heterosexual male friends. There are also countless men who had horrendous relationships with their dads and they turned out straight. Another curveball to this absurd psychobabble is that that gay men, such as former professional baseball player Billy Bean, can hit a 100 mph fastball with a sliver of timber. I have yet to see any sports-promoting ex-gay therapists duplicate such athletic prowess.

It is also worth mentioning that no respected mental health association supports such ideas and the overwhelming majority of people who subscribe to these beliefs are devoutly religious, even as they disingenuously claim their "scientific" theories are secular.

If a guy wants to become heterosexual, according to ex-gay literature, he must reclaim his masculinity by playing sports and hanging out with heterosexual friends, while they partake in "manly" activities. For years, ex-gay organizations have included lipstick seminars for lesbians and touch football games for men. However, they routinely butchered the butching process, producing surprisingly effete leaders such as Alan Chambers and Sy Rogers. Or, they featured clownish figures, such as Focus on the Family's Melissa Fryrear, who nearly tumbled off a stage in Orlando, while boasting how she mastered the art of walking in high heels.

Realizing their forte was white-knuckling prayer, not bare-knuckled machismo - several ex-gay organizations began outsourcing to a paramilitary, pseudo-psychological outfit, The ManKind Project. Ex-gay programs, particularly Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH), have aggressively promoted The ManKind Project's New Warrior Training Adventure.

This cult-like national program is a $650 weekend boot camp where participants - mostly straight - are greeted by large, intimidating men dressed in dark clothing and faces painted black. During their stay, the men are forced to take cold showers, survive on about four hours sleep, and subsist on very little food. In follow-up meetings, the activities include shaving another man's face, kidnapping a member of another camp group and changing clothes with other men. The idea is to help them get in-touch with their feelings and uncover and heal deep wounds that are barriers to successful lives.

The alternative publication, The Houston Press, uncovered a letter Michael Scinto wrote to the Madison County Texas sheriff's office, just prior to committing suicide allegedly as a result of the boot camp. The Scinto family has filed a lawsuit against The ManKind Project, while the deceased man's letter to the sheriff claims the New Warrior program practiced bizarre rituals that include:

Blindfolded walking tours in the nude

People blowing sage smoke in his face while 50 or so naked men danced around candles

Men sitting in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called “The Cock”

Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer

In the Houston Press article, the wife of one of the men who attended discussed why her husband eventually rejected the group.

"So, everyone was sitting Indian-style in a big circle in the lodge when the man leading the group said, 'if you wish, you may reach over and grab your brother's dick. If your brother doesn't want your hand there, he can remove it.' Well, my husband told me he just froze. And, from that point on, he just wanted out." The ManKind Project called the allegations false and "vindictive."

The bigger issue, however, is that these are unlicensed men practicing what appears to be a form of therapy. There is the potential to do great damage, particularly to repressed and vulnerable gay men who feel their homosexuality is a shameful sickness that can be cured through male bonding and risky outdoor activities.

Ex-gay activist Chad Thompson is a prime example of the absurd measures some individuals will go through to feel "man enough." He once wrote of working at a summer wilderness camp in Colorado to "affirm his masculinity." This apparently included climbing a mountaintop in "a massive lightening storm."

Hopefully, these men will eventually realize that self-acceptance is the only way they can come down from the stormy mountain and out of the woods. Openly acknowledging their homosexuality is by far the most masculine thing they could do - and much less queer than attending oddball boot camps.

18 Comments:

I read a detailed report on this organization. The really weird stuff, like the guy being seated in a circle and potentially having his dick touched, apparently doesn't happen every single time, and there are people who found it really beneficial and are quick to defend it.

A lot of the time it just seems like guys yelling at you trying to toughen you up, then making you divulge all your innermost secrets and demons. A friend of mine had a similar experience at a boarding school for troubled youths he was sent to after getting arrested. They made him tell all his secrets and verbally abused him and made him do stuff like dig holes in the desert and then fill them up again. It was all supposed to build character.

I don't doubt the people who have experienced really unusual things though, the entire problem as you say Wayne, is that these guys are essentially practicing therapy without a license or any sort of training. Having no standards or practices, it's understandable that some people would have really bizarre and traumatizing experiences, even if others found it beneficial.

Their in-your-face masculinity might work for some people, but yell and scream and break down the wrong guy and you can permanently damage him (think that soldier who went crazy in Full Metal Jacket). They should be shut down, or at the least made subject to the same rules and regulations that trained therapists have to follow.

(By the way, that boarding school my friend had gone to got shut down because they weren't licensed professionals and they were abusing their "students").

Oh and finally, I still don't understand what the hell this Warrior Adventure B.S. has to do with curing gays. Nothing about them suggests that they agree in any way with the ex-gay movement.

At the least it's yet another example of right wingers endorsing "treatments" they know absolutely nothing about, just because they assume it has something to do with their idiotic beliefs. It's downright dangerous.

Sorry for the long post, but like I said, I read a very long and detailed article on this group.
posted by Anonymous, at 11/30/2007 12:34 AM

oh Sy Rogers! LOL... oh man oh man... any stories about him sneaking off with men? I listened to his speech he gives (this one given to calvary c. south beach) and after going to his website and looking at his ex-gay ministry photos I rolled with laughter and then felt horrible for him.

Dude is a queen, and goes around trumpeting that ex-gay propaganda!

How do we CURE these ex-gayers? Someone's gotta do it. Watching them prostrate about and embarrassing themselves is painful, although comical, but in all seriousness - they cause so many sweet GLBT people such HORRIBLE pain with their ignorant self-hating shenanigans!

Thanks for a great article Wayne, if you see my lost love about town babbling on about this ex-gay crap - will you tell him WE'LL be praying for HIM (not the other way around). You rock... keep fighting the good fight - you are a real bonifide HERO to me.
d
posted by Unknown, at 11/30/2007 3:26 AM

Hey you stupid asshole. Your article is all wrong, nothing sexual occurs at mankind weekends. No one touches any one else's cock - EVER.

Plus, you're just a huge douche.
posted by Anonymous, at 11/30/2007 4:07 AM

I first discovered I was gay when I was 7 years old. Nobody molested me, nobody touched me innappropriately and my parents were the most loving any child could ask for. Neither of my parents were dominant, far from it.

These socalled ex-gays just refuse to understand that sexual orientation is innate, not chosen. No amount of prayer can dispel it. The day these ministries can prove we can reverse our orientation will be the day they can prove that straights can do the same. So far, they've not done it.
posted by Robert NYC, at 11/30/2007 8:50 AM

Wayne, looks like you'll be bringing the "cock" passing kooks out of the woodwork with this article! LOL

Do you have a clip of Fryrear falling off the stage in her high heels? I need a good laugh!
posted by S., at 11/30/2007 12:29 PM

D. Albright, you are right in that Wayne took the wrong angle on this issue. Instead of attacking the Mankind Project, he should have pointed out that it has nothing per se to do with ex-gay therapy, and therefore it's really weird that ex-gays would reccommend it.

But as I also said, I did do some research on your group. True, many people like you claim to have benefited from the organization, but there are others who report having had horrible experiences (Wayne didn't make up any of the allegations of abuse, like the guy who was told his dick might be touched by another dude, that was actually reported).

The fact is that your group is essentially practicing therapy without training or license. So while you may have met some great people and had a wonderful experience, the lack of regulations and oversight, such as that which mainstream mental health practitioners are subjected to, means others might find themselves in an unhealthy group run by sketchy facilitators abusing their power. And when that happens, who gets held accountable, and by whom? Where is the oversight? Does your group have a universal policy instructing facilitators on how to deal with homosexual clients? If not, then it's all too possible that a facilitator will impose his own beliefs and prejudices onto his clients, or at the very least neglect or misunderstand the special issues gay men have to deal with, that straight men don't. And what happens when someone with very deep emotional problems ends up in a group facilitated by people who have not been trained to deal with it? Well that seems to already have happened, with disastrous results.

I believe you when you say it is a positive thing for you, but I also believe the people who claim to have been humiliated, damaged or sexually abused. At the very least your group should try to hire licensed therapists or have one on hand at all times, in case things get out of hand.

But yeah Wayne, you've been a bit reactionary with your last few columns. You've confused two mostly unrelated things in this latest commentary. But then I understand this is your personal blog and may represent your passionate reactions to daily news, and not necessarily your long-term attitudes.
posted by Anonymous, at 11/30/2007 10:00 PM

Ryger:

Clearly, you are confusing me with another columnist. My previous column was on not having e-mail in Montreal. Wow! I guess that's extreme. Hold me back. Look out, what craziness is next?

The one before that was on how ENDA would not hurt business. Again, a really radical notion and extreme.

Please...

On the topic of New Warriors. Yes, people have had good experiences with this group. No doubt. But, the incontrovertible fact is that New Warriors are crucial to ex-gay programs. They are also the inspiration and breeding grounds for new ex-gay programs. Check out the NARTH link and how it inspired Ben Newman to start his "Journey into Manhood" weekends.

http://www.narth.com/docs/weekends.html

ManKind needs to make it clear that they do not support such groups. They also should not take a dime from people who are going to the program to help them go from gay to straight. To continue to do so is exploitation.
posted by Wayne Besen, at 12/01/2007 2:18 AM

No sorry Wayne, those recent ones were good, and I especially admire your support for ENDA. I got sort of hung up on the one where you blatantly trashed that dumb Jim Phelan guy who was bugging you (all of us). You didn't so much challenge his assertions, rather you tried to make him look stupid by quoting remarks he made when he was pissed off. Well that would work on anybody, I know despite all my graduate level education, etc., that I've written all sorts of dumb shit on the internet when I was in a bad mood, things I don't even believe, and almost everyone has who uses the internet. It also looked like you wrote that one hastily because it contained typos.

So sorry, I should have been more specific about that. I love almost everything you do and I look up to you, so maybe that's why it stands out when I read something that seems below your normal level.

And sorry, but I still don't see how New Warriors is "crucial" to ex-gay programs, or how it's even related at all. So this one NARTH guy was in New Warriors. Big deal, that's just part of the problem of them not having the same screening processes as mainstream health organizations. They're not regulated, so there's always the possibility that wackos will enter their ranks undetected.

But as far as affirming homosexuals, the front page of the Mankind website openly states they affirm diversity among men from all walks of life, and specifically includes "sexual orientation" under that.

Mankind seems to be based on Joseph Campbell's theories on the hero's journey in mythology, and initiation rites among tribal cultures. I didn't find anything that shows their theories or practices are connected in any way to the same discredited, century-old psychoanalysis theories that NARTH bases its "research" on.

So I still think you misrepresented them as being connected to the ex-gay movement, when it looks to me that the problem really is just their lack of training and oversight, which apparently allowed a NARTH nutball to infiltrate their group.

The problem I see isn't that gays are going to them to become straight - it's that if that should actually happen, they won't have licensed professionals with the right training to deal with that type of person. Just like they aren't equipped to handle more fragile personalities or people with mental disorders, I don't see how they can safely work with a wannabe ex-gay type.

So let's say an ex-gay joins them, and tells them that he really feels Jesus changed them or whatever. We know that's probably a lie or at least a delusion, but what are the other Mankind members supposed to do or say? They don't know everything you do about the ex-gay movement and its history, and there might not even be any healthy, out gay men there to challenge the ex-gay's b.s. The group is supposed to be about developing trust in your fellow men. It's easy to imagine the men there WANT to trust each other, and if an ex-gay shows up claiming that Jesus is curing him, the others would feel very pressured to respect that man's emotions and believe what he's saying.

You can see the problem really isn't that Mankind has anything to do with ex-gay, but that they simply aren't equipped to deal with people as psychologically fucked up and manipulative as ex-gays.

I don't expect them to make a statement about ex-gay therapy either way, because they obviously lack the education and training necessary to understand it and many other complex psychological issues, let alone take a firm stance on them.

If anything, rather than implicating Mankind Project and thus pissing off openly gay members like D. Albright, you should be warning them of the challenges and dangers that their NARTH endorsement and the possible infiltration of ex-gays could bring to them. They need education and training on queer issues, not to be expected to take a stance on ex-gay therapy.
posted by Anonymous, at 12/01/2007 5:19 PM

rygar,

'I didn't find anything that shows their theories or practices are connected in any way to the same discredited, century-old psychoanalysis theories that NARTH bases its "research" on.'

That's inaccurate in two different ways. Firstly, the theories in question aren't 'discredited', in that it is difficult to find enough evidence to either confirm or refute them (people who claim that they have been totally refuted generally seem to have nothing more than a vague idea of what the theories were anyway).

Secondly, NARTH bases itself not so much on Freud's original theories as work done by later psychoanalysts in the 1940s and 1950s. That makes them maybe sixty or fifty years old, not a hundred.
posted by Anonymous, at 12/01/2007 9:02 PM

These silly people need to get a new schtick. Really. This is stupid.
R E S P E C T. Maybe if i watch a group of men taking dumps i won't be interested in sex with them either. Well duh. What a narrow assault on ones intelligence. This rescue camp is really quite childish.
posted by Anonymous, at 12/01/2007 11:02 PM

I would challenge any of those NARTH/ex-gay phonies to spend some time in the BC wilderness with me, a gay man, and we'll see what it takes to be a man. A few words comes to mind...honesty, bravery and pride. Not shame, dishonest hackery religion or laughable theories about seeing your father's penis in the shower as spouted by that wretched phoney James Dobson.
posted by Anonymous, at 12/02/2007 12:10 AM

I went through a New Warrior weekend in 1995 because I was told it would help with some "dysfunctional" type problems I was having in relationships. All in all, I must say that it did help with that, although the true nature of the weekend was kept secret.

As other readers have pointed out, there were other men there from the start with deep problems who were verbally intimidated into staying, even though they wanted to leave. No one was evaluated before the weekend and there were no professional therapists available during the experience. After the weekend you were pretty much on your own for about two weeks, which was weird, considering the purpose was to break your emotional protections down -- you sort of didn't know what to feel or think.

My seizure medication was confiscated at the start and wasn't given back to me until I started having symptoms the next day and complained. And, during the "nude" part, one guy refused to strip down so all these "leaders" worked on him for what seemed like forever to convince him to strip. It turned out he had like a 1" penis and I know he was really traumatized by the experience from talking to him afterwards.

From what I gather, I point of this "weekend" experience was to provide a ritualized initiation into manhood for those who feel alienated or intimidated by other men. It's to make you less fearful and passive aggressive and more willing to take responsibility for your life. I'm glad I went but I wouldn't do it again. And, yes, I am gay, and, no, it was never an issue.
posted by Anonymous, at 12/02/2007 5:34 PM

The local gay pagan group The Brotherhood of The Phoenix meets here in Chicago at the local Mankind Project HQ. I wonder if they know that the MK folks are involved in the ex-gay movement??
posted by Anonymous, at 12/02/2007 9:40 PM