I've written about the scene and views expressed outside last Saturday's Love Won Out conference in Maryland, and thanks to the folks at Ex-Gay Watch here is a report from inside the conference itself.
The writer, Eve Tushnet, adds further observations on her blog. According to Ex-Gay Watch, Tushnet is a conservative Roman Catholic who is not considered a friend of GLBT equality issues. Despite that viewpoint, she is quite sceptical about many of the claims made in the conference.
It doesn't take much objective thought to understand that there is not therapy in existence that will turn a homosexual straight. The most they can generally accomplish is teach someone how not to act on their same-sex attractions, not how to quit having them.
In his outstanding book "Anything But Straight," Wayne Besen chronicles what happens to some of these folks after they leave ex-gay therapy. They often wind up back in gay bars, which seems like a lot to go through for nothing. The most frequent result according to Ex-Gay Watch, Besen, and others is continued or even intensified self-loathing and self-destructive behavior of people who have it drilled into their heads that they are filthy sinners if they act in the way God made them (they don't tell them that last part though, it might hurt business).
I'll be interviewing Wayne Besen in the near future about his book and his new organization, Truth Wins Out.
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The main skew I almost always hear in the testimonies of ex-gay people is equating being a homosexual with all the negative stuff associated with the so-called lifestyle. They talk about their 100s of partners, all the drugs, and generally destructive lifestyle they had, and now they're all cleaned up and living for the Lord. Well, there are just as many, if not more hetero people with their 100s of opposite sex partners, and all their clubbing, drugs, and all the rest in equally destructive lifestyles. Yet that type of activity isn't equated with being a heterosexual. So why is the same activity with a gay person always equated with being a homosexual?!!
ReplyDeleteIt's like bisexuals are all supposedly sluts, nymphos, and are usually in threesomes. I'm bisexual, but I am happy in my monogamous marriage, and have never had relations with another. Your sexual orientation doesn't make you moral or amoral, but how you live your life.
If the ex-gay ministries do anything positive at all, they take someone who is in a sexually-addictive or self-destructive lifestyle, and they show them they don't have to live like that.
This is what I believe based on my many observations, interviews with people and studies of stats: If those going through the programs are able to live happily as heteros afterwards, they were either hetero or bi to start with, but were initially confused. If they still are attracted to same-sex afterwards, then they're still just as gay as they were before, period.
When I was gay, I was loyal to my girlfriends, my life was pretty mellow. My straight sister had many more lovers than I have ever had - point being now that I am not gay doesn't mean that my life is better or worse for being so. I have to go to a shrink for all of my family issues and work stress just like everyone else. My better life is found in myself whether gay or straight.
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