Video: My Five Years In Reparative Therapy Were ‘Based On Stereotypes’ And ‘It Doesn’t Work’
20About the Author
Wayne Besen is the Founding Executive Director of Truth Wins Out and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003). In 2010, Besen was awarded the “Visionary Award” at the Out Music Awards for organizing the American Prayer Hour, an event which shined a spotlight on the role American evangelicals played in the introduction of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
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Thank goodness you are ok. It is obvious you are a really great person. Hopefully one day “reparative therapy” will be a thing of the past.
congratulations on your recovery from anti-gay mythology.
You’re just as gay as you ever were, but happy and healthy, and the therapist is five years of your money richer, and still a con artist.
Thanks for coming forward as an inspiration of hope for other young people who are being forced by their parents to go to ex-gay “therapy” You gave them very good advice. I have always thought that it is not sexual minorities who have to “change” it is we straight people who have to do the changing. We have to change and accept the fact that some people are gay and that there is nothing wrong with that.
Mathew gets it exactly right: “reparative therapy” can’t actually change a person from gay to straight, so instead it tries to make a person *look* straight through forced conformity to outdated gender stereotypes. My experience in the Bachmann clinic focused on the same thing. It’s a total crock, and I applaud this young man for staying true to himself and speaking out against the “ex-gay” myth to provide hope and encouragement to others.
Many congratulations on getting through this experience of pseudo-therapy in one piece and on defeating attempts to browbeat you into adopting a false identity. This video needs to be seen by as many people as possible.
[...] Originally posted on Truth Wins Out, the clip features frank commentary from New York City resident Mathew Shurka, who says he was subjected to reparative therapy in California for five years, starting at age 16 after coming out to his father. [...]
It is unfortunate that most of the discourse heard over the topic of homosexuality has more to do with “political correctness” and hardly anything to do with science.
I am undergoing reparative/sexual orientation change therapy with a California licensed therapist located in Beverly Hills California and am adding my personal experience to the current politically motivated and unscientific debate within the State of California on this issue to make reparative/sexual orientation change therapy “unethical” or increase restrictions on the same.
I am a male and my first male “boyfriend”, 22 years ago, was a gay identified man. Fortunately, at that time, I knew that identifying as a gay man was a false construct I was creating for myself and being affirmed by the gay affirming society that we live in, and I subsequently broke off the relationship with him. After many positive and self-affirming years of reparative/sexual orientation change therapy I have come to the whole-hearted truth about myself: that my seeking “romantic” and sexual relationships with other men was a repetitive compulsion to get my family of origin and emotionally absent “father” to love me. As is common with most gay-identified and sexually addicted men, I grew up with severe emotional neglect from my father and mother. Not only was my father “never there” emotionally or physically; my mother made me into her “surrogate husband” and proceeded to have an emotionally incestuous relationship with me.
As a consequence of this dysfunctional triad, I proceeded to have no interest in the opposite sex because my mother had made sure that I never detached from her and that I never formed a healthy attachment to my father or any other man. I was in a hostile dependency with my mother, where I needed her for survival but I couldn’t stand her at the same time. During this period and later, my mother shamed me into never asserting myself as a boy or man.
As a result of this emotionally incestuous relationship with my mother, I grew to overly identify with women, had major gender identity issues, hence my feminized mannerisms, but also held no interest in developing intimate attachments or sexual relations with the opposite sex. I had “had enough with women” via my narcissistic/abusive mother.
In my journey in, and then out of homosexuality, I saw a number of gay affirming therapists, attended numerous gay affirmative 12-step programs and support groups, I participated in several “gay pride” parades, and lived very much in a gay affirmative world in West Hollywood, California. I read a wide variety of gay-affirmative literature and even attempted living the gay lifestyle. I was told over and over again was that I was born gay and I should just accept myself for “who I am”. I was also told by several gay affirming therapists that I had “internalized homophobia”. That is, that I hated myself for being gay.
NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!
Essentially, as much as I tried to make the “gay identity” work for me it never did.
My sexual relations with other men had their foundations built on a total lack of affection, attention and affirmation from my father and a repetitive compulsion to repeat my childhood sexual abuse.
I was looking for love in all the wrong places.
I am grateful every day for my sexual orientation change therapy that has saved my life and me from a false identity and a life that would have never worked for me.
It appears that the proposed lawl in the California Legislature on reperative therapy by will mean that now the California State Legislature is discriminating against me seeking my own identity and instead being forced to adapt to what the California Legislature feel is valuable and important to a group of gay affirming people and their own political agenda.
Whatever happened to patient autonomy? I have a right to determine my own identity and who I chose to sleep with and have intimate romantic relationships with.
In my opinion, the State of California is being negligent and completely unscientific in the introduction of such a bill to make reparative/sexual orientation change therapy a restricted form of treatment.
If the State Legislature of California decides to take such a path, it will most likely suffer the consequences of purporting to be a human rights and tolerant affirming organization and instead be labeled as politically motivated with a gay affirming agenda; which cares more about being politically correct than being scientifically valid.
Without reparative/sexual orientation change therapy I would not have discovered that my childhood sexual molestation at the hands of another man, significantly distorted my worldview and my relationships with other men.
Reparative/sexual orientation change therapy is healing me. It has made me a more self-loving, and helped me receive and give love to others, and has helped me feel much better about myself and who I really am.
I’m so grateful that I did not listen to the gay affirming and politically motivated society and instead, listened to real science and my own inner truth. That is, I am not gay nor was I ever born gay.
It seems that many gay affirming and “politically correct” politicians in the California State Legislature want to ensure that the option of reparative/sexual orientation change therapy, which has helped me tremendously, must cease and not be available to me or anyone else.
This is an intolerant position, which does not reflect the “diversity affirming” rhetoric within the same sex attraction community. As a minority I have experienced significant discrimination in my lifetime. This discrimination is a doubley damaging to me and will adversely affect my autonomy as a patient.
Reparative/sexual orientation change therapy has been a very positive and healing experience in my life and it is morally ethical to keep it that way.
Yours Truthfully,
Chris W.
Show us your temescence exams Chris. Until you do that, we’re going to assume that you are a paid liar just like every other “ex-gay” spokesman.
Chris, I’m afraid you really don’t know what science is.
Chris, what a load of nonsense. It’s obvious you’ve swallowed the RRRW indoctrination hook, line and sinker.
Chris, you unwittingly made the case against reparative therapy for us. Thank you.
Chris your detailed comment shows how profoundly the “therapy” has messed up your mind. Far from appearing healed, you seem to be very angry and in a great deal of turmoil over your real and imagined past.
Chris, I cannot argue that your growing up situation wasn’t profoundly disturbing. It is fine by me that you have spent your life trying to change yourself. I personally wouldn’t waste the energy, but that is your business.
Buddy, the issue here is forcing MINORS to undergo scientifically unproven and mentally damaging reparative therapy. If you as an adult want to pour the big bucks down that ole rathole, go ahead. People pour money into all kinds of crazy schemes, hobbies, & habits all the time, and who is to stop them? Just leave the kids alone. Snag ‘em after their 21, OK? That’s what this law is all about. Kids being forced by crazy religious parents to undergo a disproven “therapy” that is psychically destructive.
Chris, you didn’t tell us what religious group you are involved in. Inquiring minds want to know.
Mathew–Oh how I hear you. Congratulations on your new found freedom.
Back in the fifties, I went through reparative therapy at a major Minnesota clinic I will not name. Three days a week for seven years, I drove 15 miles from my small town teaching job to the clinic for my sessions. No insurance. I paid it myself.
The idea was that I had to find the reason I “chose” to be gay, talk about it and the gay would go away. Yah right. The good shrink tried everything and nothing clicked. His last effort was to suggest I had made the “choice” while still in my mother’s womb. That’s when I realized he was the confused one. Then he pronounced me “cured,” told me to date girls to get over my fear and said goodbye.
Shortly after, with the help of a psychiatrist in private practice, I could accept myself as a gay man.
So, Chris, are the questions.
Are you heterosexual now? Do you have relations and relationships with women? Are there any times you look at a man or men and say “yummy”, before you shut it down?
And will you swear it’s true on your sacred promise to Jesus, assuming you are Christian? Otherrwise, by whatever you hold most holy?
Or will you be like every other person I’ve asked these questions of, hemming and hawing before ultimately failing to answer?
[...] Originally posted on Truth Wins Out, the clip features frank commentary from New York City resident Mathew Shurka, who says he was subjected to reparative therapy in California for five years, starting at age 16 after coming out to his father. [...]
Chris:
Reparative therapy has not been a positive or healing experience in your life. It has profoundly screwed you up psychologically and emotionally. Your testimony and tortured “logic” is evidence of why such mentally abusive trash should be banned for minors.
What you have presented as science is nothing but pseudoscience. You are not gay because of your relationship with your parents. It is so tragic that you have been duped into blaming people for your natural sexual orientation.
Furthermore, I’ll pay for physical tests, such as the No Lie MRI, to prove that you are lying to us. You are still a homosexual — thus have wasted a lot of time and money, as well as endured unnecessary anguish and pain while your quack therapist lined his pockets with your hard earned money,
“…debate within the State of California on this issue to make reparative/sexual orientation change therapy ‘unethical’…”
Oh, honey, it’s *already* unethical. Which is *why* we’re trying to restrict it. You can’t make something unethical. That doesn’t make sense.
Incidentally, I read through your long comment. I notice that you used a whole lot of words, but didn’t actually say anything.
Are you straight now? You didn’t even make the claim.
To the person who posted a comment under the name Chris W. First off, thank you for copy-and-pasting your heartfelt testimony here. I am truly touched by your NARTH textbook life experiences. While both of my parents were loving, emotionally supportive and available, maintained strong parent/child boundaries and I was never abused or neglected, I too have attraction for the same sex. Because you blame your parents for your sexual orientation, I will follow suit. Your father never gave me the attention or affection I so longed for. Every relationship I enter is a proxy for the love your father never gave me. It IS all his fault.
…oh yeah, your mom made me gay, too.
I guess I have my answer. By my count, the exgays who are still gay are winning, 43-0.
Honey, you’re pathetic. Get help. Real help.