I was impressed with British journalist Patrick Strudwick’s report in The Independent, “The ex-gay files: The bizarre world of gay-to-straight conversion.” It was an important addition to the literature and I respect his work.
His reporting is an accurate representation of “ex-gay” therapy and echos the abusive practices I witnessed in my book, “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.” Strudwick began his article with the alarming news of the extent “ex-gay” therapy has spread in the United Kingdom:
According to a report by Professor Michael King of University College London, one in six UK psychiatrists and psychotherapists have sought to reduce or change a patient’s sexual orientation. And with the help of the American conversion therapy movement, practitioners here, along with a clutch of international “conversion” organisations, are becoming co-ordinated and unified. They plan to gain credibility, university backing and government funding. In some cases, the NHS is even paying for the treatment.
The journalist also made the smart connection between these programs and political power:
After the conference I look David up online. As I’m researching his practice and qualifications, I see a reference to Iris Robinson, the scandal-stricken Ulster MP who in 2008 famously compared homosexuality to child abuse. In an interview with the BBC, she mentioned she knew a “lovely psychiatrist” who “tries to help homosexuals to run away from what they are engaged in.”
Strudwick pointed out how they twist language to make it appear like homosexuality is a mental illness:
Like those at the conference, she doesn’t say “gay”; she only uses the term “SSA”.*
The writer highlights how these quacks ignore the inconvenient fact that homosexuality has not been listed as a mental disorder for three decades and mislead clients:
I ask how she (Lynne, the therapist) views homosexuality — as a mental illness, an addiction or an anti-religious phenomenon?
“It’s all of that,” she replies.
Lynne explains that it’s about “reprogramming” and going back into my early developmental stages. “Parts of you have developed but there is a little part of you that has stayed stuck,” she says.
Oh, like being retarded?
“It is a bit like that,” she agrees.
While these counselors like to pretend they are secular, Strudwick found they were really motivated by deep-seated religious motivations.
And then we (he and Lynne) pray. “Oh Father, we give you permission to work in Matthew’s life to bring complete light and healing into every part of his being.”
Finally, the reporter saw that many ex-gay therapists are self-loathing, delusional, barely repressed homosexuals, who are still very gay.
I tell him (David the therapist) that I had tried the standing-in-front-of-the-mirror-naked technique that he recommended, but, like the massage, it had aroused me. “I would be surprised if you didn’t experience sexual feelings,” he says. And with that he starts to “affirm” me.
“I think you’re a brave man,” he says. “I think you’re really strong in terms of being willing to look at your life and who you really are, and you also look as if you look after yourself in terms of your body. How do you feel being affirmed in this way by another man?”
The piece is also packed with a whose-who (Satinover, Bergner, Cohen etc.) of American quacks who are plotting with their UK counterparts to rip off the state by receiving public funds for their psychological voodoo. (No offense to the real voodoo)
Strudwick was so horrified by what he witnessed, that he set up a Facebook group to fight back. I just joined. According to the site:
We believe that the practise by therapists, psychiatrists and religious leaders of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation is damaging, offensive, immoral, unethical and ineffective.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
* Personally, I don’t like the bogus term “SSA”, which stands for “same-sex attraction.” There is no such thing as SSA and it is a manipulative attempt to separate LGBT people from their natural, inborn sexuality.
The term SSA is skillfully employed to make it appear as if fundamentalist bigots are not attacking the person , just their sexual feelings. It is a diabolical method of creating a medical-sounding term to deliver Anita Bryant’s hateful “love the sinner, hate the sin” message. At least Bryant had the courage to say what she believes and not hide behind euphemisms and phony pop psychology.
Personally I have no problem with the term “same sex attraction”, I much prefer it to the idea that a gay is merely a person who has same sex sex and that if a person stops having same sex sex they are no longer gay. I don’t think the term “same sex attraction” can be honestly used to claim one can “love the “sinner” but not the “sin”" – our actions and desires arise out of who we are as people, you cannot hate a person’s actions or desires without hating at least part of who that person is. Hating the “sin” inevitably means hating the “sinner” as well.
I don’t see any problem with the term “same sex attraction” per se. It’ just unnecessary, since “same sex attraction” is simply the definition of homosexuality. The reason why I refuse to use it, however, is the purpose for which THEY use it. They say that we shouldn’t define ourselves in terms of our sexuality — which hardly anyone does anyway — and then think that they can go on to define our natural sexuality out of existence by playing silly games with words and using the definition instead of the term which it defines. (Don’t ask me what the logic is in this, because there patently isn’t any.) “There are no such people as gays, lesbians, homosexuals or whatever; just people who happen to struggle with [sic] or suffer from [sic] same sex attraction.” This is as stupid as “There are no such people as left-handers; just people who have an impulse to use their left hand where most people use their right.” You could go on like this for ever. “There are no such people as tenors and sopranos; just men and women who happen to have a high vocal range.” Add your own.
More seriously, just a thought that has occurred to me recently. I notice from Patrick’ article that one of the therapists whom he went to see suggested that he must have been sexually abused as a child, and was most reluctant to accept his assurance that he hadn’t been, even implying that his denial probably just meant that he’d been abused and forgotten about it. Nothing new there.
From what I’ve heard and read, while most men who were sexually abused as children don’t themselves become abusers as adults, the converse is not true; in other words that a high percentage of men who sexually abuse children were themselves abused as children. One of the motives, apparently, can be the desire to take it out on someone else, a convenient target being children who are as vulnerable as they once were.
I’m glad to be able to say that, like the vast majority of gay men, I was never sexually abused during my childhood or adolescence — or at any other time. It does seem, however, that a very large proportion of those gay men who resort to “ex-gay” programs WERE sexually abused in their youth. In fact, according to Peterson Toscano, “ex-gay” programs particularly attract such men. I notice that this seems to apply also to a great many of the “ex-gays” who run these programs. Could it be that the psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse of “ex-gay” programs is another way for the “ex-gay” leaders to take it out on someone else, in this case on other vulnerable gay men?
This is pure hypothesis, of course, and I don’t know how it can be either confirmed or disproved. However, ignoring the inevitable howls and shrieks of denial from the “ex-gay” leaders — after all, they would, wouldn’t they? — what do others think, especially those who, unlike me, have had personal experience of these programs? Does it have any plausibility in the light of their experience?
William said “It does seem, however, that a very large proportion of those gay men who resort to “ex-gay” programs WERE sexually abused in their youth.”.
Or is it a case of the men in those programs being convinced they must have been sexually abused children when they in fact weren’t? Many years got I had a couple of different counselors repeatedly ask if I had been sexually abused. I responded “No” but after I kept hearing the suggestion at one point I started to doubt myself wondering if maybe I’d just suppressed actual abuse. Further self-examination told me I had no memories whatsoever of any sexual abuse and that it was just a lack of self-confidence and persistant suggestions that lead me to doubt myself. I suspect the same thing happens to many of the gays and lesbians in these “ex-gay” programs particularly given that the people running them treat the “you were sexually abused” idea as a religion.
[...] a post yesterday, I wrote the following: Personally, I don’t like the bogus term “SSA”, which stands for [...]