Former ex-gay Christine Bakke recalls some un-Christian and unprofessional advice from ex-gay “therapists”:
I knew one woman whose therapist gave her assignments to flirt with men.
- An ex-gay guy who went on several dates to try to learn how to be with a woman (without disclosing that he identified as ex-gay), on the recommendation of his therapist.
- A woman who was counseled by the leader of the ex-gay group that women should wear makeup (“need to put some paint on the side of the barn”).
- A man who changed his last name because his ex-gay therapy led him to believe that his parents were to blame for him being gay.
- A woman who insinuated that she had been abused because she felt like her story didn’t “fit” the ex-gay model without some kind of a root cause.
- A young man who said that after he got out of the ex-gay movement and was finished with reparative therapy, that’s when the real repairing began. He had to repair the relationships with his family after buying into the belief that they were distant from him and made him gay.
Ex-gay “therapy” is founded not upon Christian values or the Bible, but upon long-discredited conjecture of a 19th-century secular psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.
Neither good intentions nor vague godtalk can excuse the destruction that is caused to individuals and families when ex-gay activists and “counselors” use fear, blame, and hopelessness to promote so-called “freedom” — freedom from sexuality, freedom from accountability, freedom from honesty within the family unit.
Re “good intentions”, the late Sir Oliver Lodge wrote about an author:
“I suppose he may be credited with good intentions; which I always consider the feeblest kind of praise, because the only people without good intentions are criminals; and I am not so sure about them.”
I’m glad you pointed out that little irony, that ex-gay therapy is based on psychotherapy, not religion – and psychotherapy that is a century old, no less.
Maybe in a hundred more years, the Christian right will start blaming homosexuality on global warming?
I disagree with the belief that homosexuality is approved of in God’s sight. I also DISAGREE with the things the men and women were told to do as ‘therapy’ in efforts to remedy their same-sex attractions. All of these instructions listed above can be healthy when naturally occurring, and needed. Women do not need to wear makeup. Men do not need to date women for ‘homework.’ Changing your last name does not change who you are or where you’ve been. The woman who implied abuse did so to her own disadvantage instead of continuing the search for the root cause of her sexual struggles. The root cause is still there unabated and undiscovered. The young man should have wanted to repair those relationships regardless of weather or not it had anything to do with his sexuality, provided he could do so in a healthy and responsible way. Homosexuality is an idea, just like theft and lying. These ideas are perpetrated by the Devil as things that will gratify. Religion in and of itself is empty, and so is sexual therapy when it is driven only by religious traditions. Only a genuine and true relationship with Christ will heal our desires for sin, whether they be sexual or not. This relationship requires effort and honesty. When we are honest with Christ and ourselves we stop making excuses for our habits of sin and begin to reconcile a life of righteousness. I do not write this to condemn or judge anyone caught in sin. I myself an simply a sinner saved by Grace and Grace alone. Without grace we are all doomed to a life of separation from fulfillment and satisfaction, which is only found in the relationship that grace allows us to have with Christ. And by the way, Freud was nuts, and I personally think that only a select few of his theories were even remotely accurate. To suggest that, when of a sexual nature or topic, Christian therapy is based in the roots of Freud, is absolutely narrow and unfounded.