Conservative Christian blogger Warren Throckmorton has unearthed specific incidents in which Joseph Nicolosi, founder of the ex-gay therapy think-tank NARTH, promoted the use of gay pornography and to a lesser extent heterosexual pornography to (unsuccessfully) cure patients of same-sex orientation.
1. Exodus rejected an application by Nicolosi to present the following workshop in 2010:
Gay Pornography as a Therapeutic Tool
Reparative Therapists have recently developed a therapeutic technique utilizing gay pornographic images to expose deeper emotional needs beneath mere sexual arousal. While many clients have been told that their homosexuality is a defense against emotional needs, this technique offers “experiential knowing” resulting from personal experience. The result is a diminishment of pornographic appeal and movement toward resolving deeper conflicts.
For men and leaders.
2. Nicolosi presented the following, instead.
Nicolosi offers the novel theory that gay porn may reduce same-sex attraction. Riiiiiiight.
Wow! Looking at attractive images of the gender you are attracted to makes you less gay?
LOL that was our old joke at the exgay group. Force us to watch ’70s gay porn and we’d all turn straight.
were this, uh…’theory’ (I think he just enjoyed watching it himself and needed an excuse) true, I think that by 22 I would have been as straight as the 4 lane between Dallas and Ft. Worth.
what sad deluded lot these ex gay ‘profesionals’ are.
Maybe it’s just me, but it appears to me that little Joey was looking for an excuse to see a little man-on-man action without appearing to be, you know, THAT way.
I think you’re right Ben. For a guy who supposedly helps people be not gay he’s very effeminate. Nicolosi trips my gaydar bigtime.
You know, I once decided to get over my chocolate addiction by surrounding myself with all the chocolate I craved. After a week, I ended up gaining about five pounds (that I’ll admit to), very broke (chocolate is expensive), and more in love with the cocoa than I ever was. I even found new brands of chocolate I’d never tried before. (Have you ever had Homemade Brand Chocolate Ice Cream? It’s the bomb!) Best cure I ever “attempted.” I should do that again…this weekend…ummm, chocolate….
Tracey–LOL!
“Too much of a good thing is wonderful”–Mae West.
Oh brother. Not to be insulting but did people actually BUY this line of crap??
EMDR is used for treatment of trauma amongst other things. i.e. the technique as applied to some pre-constructed memory, an isolated neural network.
If sexual attraction was only some memory of, for example, inappropiate childhood behaviour, or some traumatic loss of affection, then this might be a thing people consider. For homosexuality, if you consider it to be a non-normative developmental condition, then you are bound to end of at this dark corner of fringe psychology.
However, sexual attraction is fundamental and innate and for men in particular, it by-passes cognition and goes straight to centres of arousal.
What Nicolosi is actually doing is creating new neural connections between arousal in secondary sex organs and higher levels of cognition and memory formation.
He is literally ‘making the gay stronger’.
It’s interesting only to a nimrod like you. I’ve been going back and forth over my favorite porn for years and the only thing that gets lost is my load. Never once has it lost its impact or caused me to lean even the slightest toward an alien (for me) sexuality.
I like the way he chuckles while he speaks, like why haven’t we all figured this out. Easy – it’s nonsense.
It amazes me that these people keep coming up with more and more preposterous ideas about how to ‘cure’ something that isn’t a disease.