Recently, a number of “ex-gay” and anti-gay organizations launched a petition to keep me off FOX News. Not only was this a waste of time, but did nothing but bring TWO free publicity. If the so-called “ex-gays” really want to harm Truth Wins Out and put us out of business they should start a reality TV show highlighting the lives of clients trying to go from gay-to-straight.
Simply showing the idiocy of these “pray away the gay” and shame therapy organizations does far more damage to these creepy programs than I could ever do. These groups are most effective when they promote the idea of sexual reorientation — but don’t show their bizarre and self-loathing methods to the general public. Indeed, a great deal of the work of Truth Wins Out is trying to highlight the insanity. If a group like Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) or the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) starts a reality show — they can make fools of themselves in the public arena, and Truth Wins Out becomes redundant. So, please, “ex-gays” no reality shows or my life’s work becomes expendable.
Case in point is the unintentionally hilarious (as well as horribly tragic) BBC documentary discovered by our friends at Ex-Gay Watch. It shows a group of sad men who reject their natural sexual orientation engaged in a group hug. Clearly, these sexually and emotionally starved individuals are engaged in a form of light foreplay with their extended embraces. However, they are instructed by quacks to call the suspiciously long touching sessions “non-sexual.”
Ex-Gay Watch’s Dave Rattigan makes a good point:
I am an openly and unashamedly gay man — and yet, when I hug a male friend, gay or straight, I don’t need an instructor in my ear reminding me it’s a non-sexual hug. It is, contrary to the mythology of the ex-gay movement, possible to be a healthy, gay-identified man without foisting your sexual attentions on every other man that comes along.
Amen, Dave.
If this clown show ever reached reality television we are so through.
That IS tragic – seeing these men wasting their lives.
I watched this programme at home on Monday night. Towards the end of it, Joseph Nicolosi was briefly interviewed and spewed up his favourite theory that being a gay male is caused by inadequate bonding with one’s father. That is patent nonsense. If it were true, one would expect gay men invariably to seek sexual relationships with significantly older men. Some do, of course – just as some straight women do – but most do not.
The idea that, for example, 25-year-old Paul and 28-year-old Robert are in a gay relationship to try to compensate for failed relationships with their respective fathers is ludicrous. How does Paul regard Robert, who is only 3 years older? As a surrogate father? If so, then does Robert also regard Paul, who is 3 years younger than himself, as a surrogate father? So these two young men regard each other as surrogate fathers, do they? It is inconceivable that such a ridiculous charade could even get off the ground.
Furthermore, if Paul’s and Robert’s relationship represented an attempt on the part of each of them to compensate for supposedly unsatisfactory bonding with his father, why would their relationship be a sexual one? Are we to suppose that, if Paul and Robert had bonded properly with their fathers, those father-son relationships would also have become sexual? The whole pernicious anti-family theory collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. I am mystified that any thinking person can even begin to take it seriously.
This is so sad Wayne. I’ve never seen anything like this. Look at the mans anxiety and emotional pain. Surely, surely he would be better off at a week-end retreat for how to be happy and gay. The world is changing but not fast enough. I pity this man. And probably he is trying to fight the shame his parents are laying on him. Can it be 2020 today so all this obvious heartache can stop.
I couldn’t make it past the group hug at the beginning. It’s sickening and sad the way that religious dogma has taught these men to try to contort their homosexuality – a part of each of them that should bring them closer to other people – into something that is tearing each of them apart inside.
I’ve known a lot of heterosexual males and I’ve never seen or heard one tell his buddies he “needs a hug.” That’s not typical heterosexual male bonding behavior, guys. It’s also interesting for me that they say being gay results from an inadequate relationship with one’s father. Well, my relationship with my dad was not that great, but I knew he loved me. My brother had the same relationship and he’s straight. Millions of heterosexual men had “inadequate” relationships with their dad (or no dad) and they are not gay.
My relationship with my Dad is great. These quacks are clueless.
So they have to say this is non sexual? It sounds like they are rationalizing their long hugs – disowning any possible sexual implications in the same way they are rationalizing their “deliverance” from homosexuality.
He’s just makin’ sure that nobody gets the wrong idea!!!!!
My relationship with my father wasn’t great growing up. He was the first person besides my then girlfriend that I came out to when I was 20. He was nonplussed but not rejecting and in fact, that was the start of what was to become a remarkably good relationship. I took a risk by revealing my true self and things became exponentially better. My über-hetero younger brother had a stormier relationship with dad than I did and it sure didn’t make him queer. Clearly the weak, distant, difficult relationship with father batshit is after the fact rationalization. Of course most gay sons have a difficult time with their fathers. Their dads look at their often shy, often sports avoiding, often bookish, often fastidious, often emotional sons (take any combination of the above or add your own stereotype) and can’t relate to them. They don’t know what to do with them or for them! How many fathers got any kind of instruction or teaching or training on raising their kids? Especially back in the 50′ and 60′s! They’ve got this gender-atypical son, different from their friends’s sons and are clueless in how to begin to relate to him. Fortunately my dad was quick enough to realize that what I needed from him was support and caring. And he came through. He actively took an interest in my life and began to consistently remind me that I was important and loved. He is now 90, and I get to be there for him. As does my husband of 12 years.
The real tragedy of the ex-gay schtick is the years, years and years of delay in getting on with one’s life and finding what I believe all but the most sociopathic people really want: love and acceptance with a chance to love and accept. The guy in the video must be in his 50′s and is doing the personal work he should have been wrestling with in his late teens and early twenties, even accounting for the delay gay men have due to societal constraints on our being who we are compared to heteroboyz. What can you say about this man but sad?
If a person falls for bigotry wrapped in a white lab coat or a religious robe, let him or her do so.
LGBT grown ups who fall this foolery can unravel the deception over time, then become an insider critic.
I’m just glad that California law now prevents this vicious quackery to target teens. Such cruelty can kill LGBT kids.
I watched this documentary with my other half, who is not so much into the gay rights movement as I am. One of his fave movies is “But I’m A Cheerleader”, and I think up to this point he just thought it was exaggerated satire, a funny movie around a funny idea. He was shocked to find that the ex-gay camp in that movie was tame compared to the reality of the situation. As he got angrier and angrier, all I could say was “I did tell you.”
My heart goes out to the people subjected to this dangerous nonsense.