ExGay.org.uk

Why I’m not convinced by ‘ex-gays’

davidlrattigan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:28:14 +0000

A few weeks ago I did a bit of a Q&A with a Christian friend from my Bible college days. One of the questions he asked was what I made of ex-gays, ie Christians who say they have been turned from homosexuality to heterosexuality. He cited the testimony of a mutual acquaintance who claims to have been healed of homosexuality literally overnight, and is now married with children.

I’d like to post my response here, since it struck me as a good summary should anyone ask me the same question again.

In evaluating ex-gay testimonies, I’d point to three things.

First, my own experience. I was a Pentecostal and I fought “same-sex attraction.” I can testify from my own experience that the capacity to con yourself into thinking you have overcome or are overcoming your basic sexual orientation is huge. I was in denial a long time, knowing deep down that I was still basically attracted to men. There were times when I was so “victorious” in the Christian life that I thought infrequently enough about men that I could convince myself I’d changed or was changing. I tried desperately to exploit the 20 percent of me that was attracted to women (yeah, there’s a hint of bisexuality in me). For periods I could “triumph,” but it never lasted. Nothing fundamentally changed.

Second, other people’s experience. In the whole ex-gay movement, the examples of people who claimed to be “healed” of homosexuality only later to turn back or be caught out are numerous. At least two founding members of Exodus, the world’s biggest ex-gay organization, left the movement and admitted they were still gay. Another of their head honchos got married, but had to leave too when he was photographed chatting up guys in a gay bar. Jeremy Marks, an Anglican who founded Courage, one of the UK’s main ex-gay ministries, did a total turnabout on the issue when he realized after years it just wasn’t working for him or anyone else. I talk to people every day who have survived the ex-gay movement, some of whom have spent thousands on therapy, counseling and ministry over the years.

To this I might add that even the most impressive ex-gay testimonies I have heard turn out to be more complicated once you scratch beneath the surface. A common report is that attractions resurface and temptations still occur when the subject is feeling down, stressed or weak. That suggests to me that they are managing their attractions, but their basic orientation towards males remains unchanged.

Third, the scientific evidence. There basically is no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be made to change through therapy, ministry, prayer etc. There have been two or three deeply flawed studies, but even the best of these (carried out in the US a couple years ago) points to a miniscule success rate. The consensus of psychologists and psychiatrists is that this kind of therapy is useless at best and dangerous at worst.

That’s not to say sexual orientation can never change, of its own accord, say, but can it be made to change? Everything I know to be true says no, it can’t.

So what do I do in the case of [our ex-gay acquaintance]? Assume he’s lying? No. There are many possible explanations. Maybe he grew naturally into heterosexuality? (As I said, sexuality changes, it just can’t be forced to change.) Maybe he was bisexual all along? Maybe he’s kidding himself? (I kidded myself a long time about my success at changing.) All I can really say is that based on my experience, others’ experience and most importantly the scientific research, that God made him straight overnight is the least likely explanation.

I write regularly about the “ex-gay” phenomenon at ExGayWatch.com. My articles are indexed here.

‘Ex-Gays’ Side with Prejudice

davidlrattigan — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:55:57 +0000

Originally published at The Guardian’s Comment is free website on 01/20/10:

‘Ex-gays’ side with prejudice
Like many ‘ex-gays’, Patrick Muirhead sidelines reasoned discussion in favour of an ugly attack on the gay community

David L Rattigan

Writing in the Times earlier this week, Patrick Muirhead describes “the day I decided to stop being gay“. Even allowing for its firmly tongue-in-cheek tone, the problem with his article is that he really seems to believe the half-truths he presents about homosexuality.

He talks of his increasing attraction to women, or more pertinently his attraction to the idea of a wife and children – though in fact, when his decision was made, no woman was even in the picture. It was the sight of a father playing with his child that persuaded this one-time “fully fledged homo” to pursue a traditional, heterosexual family life. This is a spectre that cannot be avoided throughout the article: has the author really changed, or is he just enamoured of the idea of “normality”?

In common with many others who have given up the supposedly hedonistic lifestyle of the modern gay man, Muirhead cannot resist taking a parting shot at homosexuals. It’s a familiar pattern, especially in the US, where the religious, rightwing “ex-gay” movement thrives on myth-making about the dangers of same-sex love. The American Michael Glatze, for example, a former gay youth activist, converted in 2007, but not without launching a vile tirade against gays, announcing that “homosexuality is death,” and merely “lust and pornography wrapped into one”.

Of course, Patrick Muirhead has not – at least so far – made any religious claims, and nor does he hail reparative therapy, prayer or any fix as the reason for his decision. Yet his words, veiled perhaps by their easy-going, ironic tone, have much in common with the less subtle rhetoric of the “ex-gays”.

Like Glatze, Muirhead defines homosexuality only in terms of his own limited experience. He has spent the last 20 years in a particular subculture, perhaps the dominant gay subculture. I don’t doubt he has spent two decades leaping from bed to bed and toilet stall to toilet stall engaging in taboo acts that “you would not want to know”. I don’t doubt that his sexuality was developed mostly behind bike sheds, in dormitories and in episodes of “pubescent fumbling” – but aren’t there as many heterosexuals of whom the same is true? Muirhead recalls his time at the BBC among “flamboyant” gay media people, where homosexuality was “very nearly compulsory”. But straight folk too can recount their experiences of schools, workplaces and peer groups among whom it was just as compulsory to be ragingly and promiscuously heterosexual.

What is it that makes Muirhead think his experiences were so uniquely tied to being gay? For his unfulfilling experience of life as a gay man leads him to all kinds of judgments on other gay people. Muirhead insists on using the word “abnormal” to describe homosexuality. As an intelligent adult with enough knowledge of the English language to be a writer and journalist, he is surely aware that the associations and connotations of that horrid word “abnormal” go far beyond “not in the majority”. If not, shall we apply “abnormal” to adopted children, spectacle-wearers, redheads, the autistic and Hindus? On account of this abnormality, he complains that his gay friends don’t realise the difference between “who we are and our stake in society”. Indeed, he comes dangerously close to suggesting that minorities don’t deserve the same freedoms as the majority. But it is Muirhead who misses the difference. Who or what we are is human, and on that basis our stake in society is the same as everyone else’s, regardless of our sexuality.

The ugliest part of Muirhead’s piece comes with his attack on civil partnerships, which he describes as “theatrical shams”. I felt the sting of this, not because of my own situation, but because of that of a cherished ex-boyfriend, who recently registered his civil union with his new partner. By all accounts the ceremony was an understated occasion, with very little show and only a handful of guests. Of one thing I am sure: it was no theatrical sham. They did it because they loved each other, were committed to each other, and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together with the same basic legal rights that straight couples enjoy.

To justify his personal discomfort, Muirhead turns to an embarrassingly antiquated-but-convenient definition of marriage as “a solemn institution created to provide stability for child-rearing”. Gay partnerships akin to marriage subvert this, he says. Alas, he is mistaken, and the reason is hardly breaking news: heterosexuals subverted this institution long ago, when they decided that personal choice and romantic love were the bedrock of marriage, when divorce became acceptable and serial monogamy became normalised, and when a childless marriage became as valid an option as a childbearing one. Subverting traditional marriage was something straights managed all on their own.

It is telling that one of the few times that Muirhead appears to write without a hint of irony is when he refers to the novel Maurice, by the gay Edwardian EM Forster. It was a message of tolerance, he says almost wistfully, “never a charter for parity”. One can hear the pining for simpler times, when minorities were content just to be left alone.

The really unfortunate thing here is that if Muirhead hadn’t felt compelled to attack gay people and their relationships with such blanket half-truths, his story might have raised some valid questions. There is certainly room for a more fluid view of sexuality than the prevailing narrow perceptions. Muirhead’s amusing recollection of a wedding at which his former boyfriend is being married to a woman in the presence of his ex-boyfriends – one of whom is the vicar – shoots holes through the commonplace assumptions. There’s a debate in there, but Muirhead does nothing to advance it.

There are discussions to be had and critiques to be made of gay culture, but such critiques are rarely made, or at least rarely well received. As long as gay people are constantly put on the defensive, there is little hope that they ever will be received. Sadly, by siding with prejudice, Muirhead does little to make such a discussion possible, and much to hinder it.

Index of David L Rattigan’s articles on ExGayWatch.com

davidlrattigan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:00:50 +0000

These articles from ExGayWatch.com are presented in reverse chronological order, ie beginning with the most recent.

2010:

Anglican Christians Divided over Execution of Gays

British Journalist Declares ‘War on Homosexuality ‘Cures’

Young Man ‘Delivered’ from Same-Sex Attraction

US Anti-Gays Show Their True Colors

The Bizarre World of Gay-to-Straight Conversion

Ex-Gay Study Author Stanton Jones in Wheaton College Controversy

Congress Members Appeal to Obama, Museveni on Uganda Anti-Gay Bill

Human Rights Hearing on Uganda Anti-Gay Bill Today

Ugandan President Softening on Anti-Gay Bill?

Anti-Gay Northern Ireland MP’s Affair with 19-Year-Old

Northern Ireland: Anti-Gay MP Had Affair, Attempted Suicide

2009:

Ex-Gay Mother and Daughter Missing

Church of England Vicar: Ugandans “Might Actually Have a Point”

US Christians Denounce Gay Hate in Uganda

Fallen Megachurch Pastor Haggard Starts Home Church

Christian Right Leader Dobson Quits Radio Program

Ugandan MP Proposes Severe New Anti-Gay Measures

Reparative Therapy Not Supported by Evidence, Says APA

Faulkners Talk to Fox, Deny Son Forced into Ex-Gay Program

Where Is Bryce?

Mainline Denominational Ministries Merge with Exodus

NARTH Author Admits Newly Touted Study Contains ‘No New Science’

Gay Exorcism Pastor: We Are Not Against Homosexuality

Christian Commentator Defends Teenage Gay Exorcism

More Dogma from Dr Nicolosi

London: Nicolosi Peddles Same Old Gay, Ex-Gay Myths

Goldberg’s Embarrassing Radio Appearance on Eve of London Conference

Gays to Protest London Conference

YouTube Kid Exploited for Laughs, Now Exploited by Religious Right

Chambers Is Blind to His Own Prejudice

We’re No Longer American, Says Exodus (April Fools’ satire)

Illinois Anti-Gay Group Protests ‘Hate Group’ Label

UK: One in Six Therapists Has Offered Reparative Therapy

Committed, Celibate Relationships ‘Sinful,’ Says Chambers

Exodus Shows Change Is Possible – in the Wrong Direction

Self-Hating Gay on Tyra: I’ll Be Straight by 30

2008:

Disgraced Evangelical Haggard Still Struggles with Sexuality (20 December 2008)

Netherlands: Government Subsidizes Ex-Gay Ministries (25 November 2008)

New Study Refutes Cameron ‘Gay Lifespan’ Claims (14 November 2008)

UK: Homophobic MP Robinson Named Bigot of the Year (8 November 2008)

Chambers: Vote Against Marriage Equality to Make It Easier for Ex-Gays (27 October 2008)

Former ‘Love in Action’ Head Smid Starts New Ministry (23 October 2008)

Ex-Gays Most Bullied Minority in America, Says PFOX (15 October 2008)

National Coming Out Day: Love the “You” You Hide (11 October 2008)

UK: The Times Investigates the Ex-Gay Movement (9 October 2008)

Falwell Church Member Launches Ex-Gay Website (22 September 2008)

Hardline Political Activist Appointed to Exodus Women’s Ministry (26 August 2008)

Pickup Contradicts Himself to Support Reorientation Therapy (22 August 2008)

Falzarano’s God Kills Lesbians to Teach Them a Lesson (12 August 2008)

UK: Gay Hate Victim, 18, Is Dead (3 August 2008)

Liverpool Boy in Critical Condition Following Homophobic Beating (31 July 2008)

Anglicans Complain of Ex-Gays Being Sidelined at Lambeth (30 July 2008)

‘Doctor Who’ Actor Meets Ex-Gay Preacher (26 July 2008)

PFOX Misrepresents Research to Defame Gays (23 July 2008)

Gays Worse Than Child Abusers, Says Northern Ireland MP (22 July 2008)

Insure.com Stands by Anti-Gay Researcher Cameron (19 July 2008)

Skeptical over Benkof’s Change of Mind (14 July 2008)

Chambers on Gay Gene: “I Know” to “I Don’t Know” in a Few Weeks (8 July 2008)

Rounding up the Reactions to Iris Robinson’s Gay Remarks (16 June 2008)

Jesus Loves You More Than You Will Know, Mrs Robinson (13 June 2008)

Ex-Gay Psychiatrist in Northern Ireland Controversy Is Cohen Disciple (12 June 2008)

N Ireland MP Recommends Therapy to “Become Heterosexual” (6 June 2008)

Toscano Lambeth Appearance Draws Ire from Anglicans (3 June 2008)

Gay Bishop Uninvited from International Gathering, Will Come Anyway (28 May 2008)

Message to Mike Ensley: Being Gay Is Not the Problem (22 May 2008)

Jayson Graves, David Pickup & the Exodus Connection (11 March 2008)

Stanton Makes Excuse for Article Controversy, Citizenlink Still Not off the Hook (20 March 2008)

Citizenlink Quietly Rewrites Debunked Article (17 March 2008)

Frank Schaeffer on Gays, Ex-Gays & the Religious Right (13 March 2008)

Ex-Gay TV Commercial Pulled Following Facebook Campaign (7 March 2008)

Pedophilia, Hedonism & Impending Confusion: Revisiting the Anti-Gay Rhetoric of Michael Brown (29 February 2008)

New Book Reveals Depth of Anglican Mainstream’s Homophobia (14 February 2008)

Bishop Signals Hope for Same-Sex Relationships: A Way Forward for Ex-Gays? (6 February 2008)

LDS President & Prophet Gordon Hinckley Dies at 97 (29 January 2008)

The Fighting Words of Michael Brown (24 January 2008)

2007:

Dissenting Bishop Cites Ex-Gay Ministry As Influence, Denies Ever Being Homosexual (21 December 2007)

Psychiatrists Warn Church of England to Reject Ex-Gay Therapy (22 November 2007)

UK Charismatic Leader: Sexual Abuse Causes “Spirit” of Homosexuality (16 November 2007)

Birds of a Feather? Cameron and the Christian Council of Britain (5 November 2007)

McClurkin Controversy Escalates with Gay Affair Allegations (26 October 2007)

Ultra-Conservative Columnist Claims Chambers Return to “Sodomy” (10 October 2007)

Florida Journalist Investigates the Gays Being “Scared Straight” (2 October 2007)

Gay Bishop Describes Battle to Become Straight (3 August 2007)

Glatze Is LDS Convert – Why the Silence? (5 July 2007)

Former Gay Youth Activist Joins an Ex-Gay Blame Game (3 July 2007)

Tulsa Preacher Changes Mind on Gays, Ex-Gays (27 June 2007)

Canada: Ex-Gays Demand Hearing in Anglican Gay Debate (19 June 2007)

Change of Orientation “Sufficiently Documented,” Says Northern Ireland Church (14 June 2007)

‘Mainstream’ UK Ministries Invite NARTH’s Nicolosi to Speak (10 June 2007)

“We Can Overcome Our Genetics” – Alan Chambers & the Semantic Problem (14 April 2007)

Ex-Gay James Parker & the UK Sexual Orientation Regulations (28 March 2007)

2006:

Archbishop’s U-Turn: Gays Must Change? (6 September 2006)

Jeffrey John: Ex-Gay of Sorts (3 August 2006)

Rhetoric and Reality of the Ex-Gay Movement (16 June 2006)

Who Are the Real Successors of Hitler? (13 June 2006)

Out and Cowed? Ex-Gay in the UK

davidlrattigan — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:31:20 +0000

This article was originally published in Third Way magazine, June 2006

I ONLY had to say three syllables, and yet the simplest words turned out to be the hardest. Mom. I’m. Gay.

They were difficult words because I had grown up evangelical, and survived well into my twenties convinced that I could never be openly gay. By the time I was 12, it was more than apparent to me that the feelings I had for other boys were not shared by my school friends. However, I had learned that “the Bible said homosexuality was wrong”, and made up my mind never to act on my gay feelings. And so began 15 years of hiding from the world, scared that people – especially Christians – would find out my dark secret.

In tears one day, I confessed to my pastor. “These things aren’t set in stone,” he told me, although to a 15-year-old who had already experienced years of sexual attraction to other boys, they were hollow words. I knew it wasn’t a passing phase. After our conversation, the pastor never breathed a word on the subject again.

In the intervening years, I have always wondered, What if? What if I had been like my friend Gary from Bible College, who spent his young life fighting severe depression and made several suicide attempts over his inner struggle with homosexuality? On the other hand, perhaps it was fortunate the pastor swept the issue under the carpet – for what if I had ended up like my friend Daniel, a Pentecostal elder pressured into marriage by a church and pastor who convinced him he could “change”? What if like him I had left a broken wife and children behind when it all fell apart years later?

“God make me straight,” I used to pray nightly. It’s what every dissatisfied gay Christian wants more than anything. I would wake up the next day and sometimes get as far as lunchtime thinking maybe that was the day I’d wake up healed. But always it would end in disillusionment, the same feelings coming back, and I knew I wasn’t changed inside.

I am no longer evangelical, and I am now openly gay. I’ve been fortunate not to have been permanently wounded by some of the extreme ways in which Christians – of which I still count myself one – have treated homosexuals. I’m at peace with my sexuality; and yet I have friends who are dreadfully uneasy with their own. In the marketplace of ministries and groups and therapies and programmes, what are churches offering them?

For more than 30 years, one popular conservative approach has promised hope to struggling Christians and told them: “Actually, God can make you straight”. Meet the ex-gay movement.

IN THE BEGINNING

The ex-gay movement began in the early 1970s in California when a straight pastor, Kent Philpott, formed Love in Action, the first “ex-gay” ministry. John Evans was one of a handful of founding members, a homosexual who had just left a long-term gay relationship in the belief that it was wrong. His story was one of six published in The Third Sex?, Philpott’s book claiming testimonies of gay people who successfully changed their orientation in response to the call of Christ.

Just a few years later, Exodus was formed, a coalition of ex-gay ministries, and now the world’s biggest ex-gay organisation. Exodus promoted and still promotes the idea that God can and will heal the homosexual, citing testimonies of ex-gays who have turned away from homosexuality and embraced heterosexuality. Here’s how Exodus put it most recently:

Christ offers a healing alternative to those with homosexual tendencies. Exodus upholds redemption for the homosexual person as the process whereby sin’s power is broken, and the individual is freed to know and experience true identity as discovered in Christ and His Church. That process entails the freedom to grow into heterosexuality.

Under their ministry, the homosexual receives “a growing capacity to turn away from temptations, a reconciling of one’s identity with Jesus Christ, being transformed into His image. This enables growth towards Godly heterosexuality.”

But here’s the question that should cause everyone to approach the ex-gay philosophy with caution, even those who agree with the basic tenet that homosexual behaviour is wrong: Where is the evidence reparative therapy actually works? Disturbingly, while no reputable study exists affirming the success of ex-gay therapy, the history of the ex-gay movement is littered with stories that deny the rhetoric.

John Evans, a co-founder of Love in Action, denounced the organisation and returned to being openly gay after his best friend committed suicide, despairing of ever changing his orientation. Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee, key organizers of Exodus’s flagship conference in 1976, eventually left their wives to live together as a gay couple. John Paulk, the poster-boy of Exodus’s major advertising campaign in the late 1990s, was caught (and photographed) chatting up men in a Washington gay bar.

And in the UK in 2000, evangelical leader Jeremy Marks admitted that in twenty years of ex-gay ministry, he had yet to see anyone actually change their orientation. Courage, up to that time Britain’s leading ex-gay ministry, announced it was now affirming same-sex relationships.

LOVE IN ACTION

Zach was a 16-year-old high school kid from Memphis, Tennessee. A typical teenager in every way except one – he was gay. Last year he decided to “come out” to his parents, and in doing so, triggered a tide of protests against the ex-gay movement and reparative therapy. Zach’s parents enrolled him in Love in Action’s residential ex-gay programme, Refuge. Here’s what Zach wrote on his blog the day his parents announced he would be attending LIA:

They tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me, and they “raised me wrong.” I’m a big screw up to them, who isn’t on the path God wants me to be on.

Zach described his feelings on entering the programme:

I’m not a suicidal person… really I’m not. I think it’s stupid – really. But… I can’t help it, no I’m not going to commit suicide, all I can think about is killing my mother and myself. It’s so horrible. This is what it’s doing to me… I have this horrible feeling all of the time… I wish this on no person.

What was it Zach was being subjected to that was the cause of so much anguish? David Akinsanya is a British journalist who experienced the same programme first-hand for the BBC documentary Sad to Be Gay, filmed just a few months before Zach’s enrollment.

It was a devastatingly intense experience for David, whose tearful response to the pressures of life at Refuge was shown on TV for all to see. “It takes a lot for me to cry,” he confesses. “But there were bullying tactics. They know it’s going to have a bad effect. They even make you sign something on your way out to make sure you’re not suicidal, ‘cause some people leave there and they attempt suicide.”

At LIA, participants are subject to rigorous discipline and a regime of individual and group therapy, involving an often-distressing level of soul-bearing and self-scrutiny, usually centred around the issues perceived to be at the root of homosexual behaviour – dysfunctional upbringing and damaged relationships.

David admitted he had learned some useful things at LIA, such as that he didn’t need to have sex to feel loved; he had a choice. But he was also disturbed at the misinformation being pumped into the minds of vulnerable participants, some of whom were, like Zach, forced into the programme by distraught parents eager to help their gay child escape the “homosexual lifestyle”. His anger reached a head when he was preached to by a paedophile. “I was livid,” David exclaimed, describing his incredulity that a child molester was being thrown into the pool along with gays and lesbians, as if they were two sides of the same coin.

CROSSING CONTINENTS

Where the ex-gay movement in America is bold and brash, with a big media presence and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns, ministries on this side of the Atlantic tend to exhibit a more low-key approach.

True Freedom Trust is the UK’s leading evangelical ministry to gays and lesbians. “We don’t call ourselves ex-gay,” said Martin Hallett, who co-founded the ministry in the 1970s with the late Canon Roy Barker. “It’s a stupid term. I think the people who tend to use it sometimes have a self-image problem, as if they’re desperate to disassociate themselves from their homosexual feelings.”

Where Love in Action denies there is such a thing as “gay”, and Exodus admits some people are gay but promises “growth into heterosexuality”, TFT appears to do neither. In fact, just last year TFT severed its affiliation with Exodus Global Alliance, disconcerted over the rhetoric coming from North America. The media soundbites promising a change of orientation were beginning to worry them.

“We found it very difficult to identify with what was coming from over there, with what they’re saying publicly,” Hallett told me. “There’s a tendency to set people up for disillusionment. Exodus should have learned from that by now.”

TFT broke off from Exodus when Hallett got fed up having to defend his ministry in light of what was coming across the Atlantic. “It didn’t seem worthwhile continually distancing myself.”

Hallett firmly believes that homosexual behaviour is not an option for the Christian, and yet I am struck by how candid and comfortable he seems with his own sexuality. There’s no pretence as he talks about his own preferences and struggles. There’s no attempt to gloss over his gay orientation. And there’s no hostility as he talks about other Christians he knows who have chosen gay relationships over celibacy.

This is a gentle surprise to me. I suppose part of me thought Hallett would be easy to demonise, but against my expectations, he is unassuming and down-to-earth. If I disagree with the doctrine that gay Christians must opt for celibacy, I can at least appreciate TFT’s unwillingness to offer false hope of a “cure” for homosexuality. After the triumphalistic claims of Exodus and Love in Action, Hallett’s candor was refreshing.

I’m tempted to think TFT wasn’t always this down-to-earth. One article in the organisation’s literature refers to “an important writer and research psychologist Dr Elizabeth Moberly”, whose influential book Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic bolstered the ex-gay movement on both sides of the Atlantic, despite containing no original research or case studies. Nevertheless, Moberly’s theory that an individual’s homosexuality could be traced back to a distant father became the chief prop behind Christian reparative therapy in the 1980s.

Hallett acknowledges this view is “a bit simplistic”. TFT doesn’t seem so much about promoting one particular theory about homosexuality or one particular strategy as about providing a network of support, encouragement and friendship to gay Christians trying to live celibate lives.

Unexpectedly, I find myself encouraged that my college friend Gary has found support through True Freedom Trust. As much as I wish he would have the confidence to pursue a healthy gay relationship rather than strive for celibacy, I can at least be assured that TFT are not promising him miraculous cures, teaching him to pretend he has no feelings, or trying to push him into a potentially disastrous straight marriage.

STRAIGHT PROMISES?

Ironically, one need not venture far from True Freedom Trust’s head office on the Wirral to find a church that does promise gays a straight life. Just across the other side of the Mersey, one church is turning gay people heterosexual, with “several” formerly gay members currently “preparing for marriage”, according to the head of LIFE ministries. While the group is not affiliated with Exodus, they are members of the Evangelical Alliance.

“We don’t promote celibacy, because it doesn’t work,” says Pastor Jeff boldly. “People come through the programme and typically within two to three years they’ve successfully changed and often they’re getting married.”

He elaborates: Simply living with a homosexual orientation and trying to be celibate is not something the church encourages. The church offers a permanent solution – a cure for the orientation itself.

Homosexuality is “inherently disordered”, he tells me, “a disordering of desires”, and there is no reason why a homosexual orientation should be considered fixed. Jeff himself went through a “phase” of homosexuality as a young man, and is now married with a family.

He is at pains to stress that his church is not “a marriage machine”, however. Marriage “might not be for everyone. We deal with people on an individual basis.” Yet he is unapologetic that the total reversal of homosexual orientation is the expected outcome.

The ministry began six years ago after a visit from Ron and Joanne Highley, the founders of New York’s leading ex-gay ministry 25 years ago. Joanne was a lesbian for 10 years until she was delivered at the age of 23. The Highleys were unequivocal that a gay orientation could be totally overcome. “There is complete freedom from homosexuality, from both the desires and the activity.”

Up to 40 people, mostly male church members, are enrolled in the LIFE programme, during which they attend weekly group meetings as well as one-to-one counseling sessions. Participants work through different phases of their psychological development, beginning with parental influence, and going right up to adolescence when “voluntary responses” contribute to the problem with homosexuality.

“We don’t promise miraculous deliverance,” stresses Jeff. Do they promise healing? “We’re pro-active.”

I am skeptical about this. How many of these married couples will still be together in five years time? Ten years time? What will happen to their families and their children? What will happen to those who have been promised heterosexuality when they realise their feelings never really changed?

Elizabeth attended the same church, but was never part of the LIFE ministry. Nevertheless, she remembers the hurt of being treated by fellow Christians as if her lesbianism were an ailment. “People I told treated it like a disease and wanted to pray over me to get rid of the illness.”

“When I found out who I was, it felt like a light had been switched on,” she says. “I was so much happier. It just felt like those people in church would have preferred if I had stayed as the person in intense physical and mental pain rather than being happy and in love. It felt so twisted.”

………………

My foray into the world of gay and ex-gay ministries has been a fascinating exploration, but a tricky course to navigate. In one ear I can hear the Christian community chiding me for my cynicism about the ex-gay movement. In the other ear I can hear the gay community asking why I’ve not been tough enough on conservative Christians.

I imagine a new scene, similar to that one almost a year ago when I finally spilled the terrible secret I had locked inside for years. But this time when I sit down face-to-face with my mother, the words are different: Mom. I’m. Cured.

Would she believe me? Or would a parent see through the pretence?

I’m trying to picture a church that reflects the love of an eternal parent, God the Father. What is He thinking as he looks into the eyes of his gay and lesbian children in the ex-gay movement? Theological debates aside, could Christians together look at the dubious promises of the ex-gay movement and ask, Why the pretence?

………………

Many thanks to Peterson Toscano, David Akinsanya, Ruth Ann Harpur, Jeremy Marks, Martin Hallett, Pastor Jeff, Elizabeth, Gary and Jim.

Ex-Gay Ministries in Europe

davidlrattigan — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:20:12 +0000

Medvandrarna. Swedish-based ministry (English language site available)

Til Helhet. Norwegian ministry (Norwegian language)

Basis. Denmark ministry (Danish language)

Ex-Gay Ministries in the UK

davidlrattigan — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:15:02 +0000

True Freedom Trust. Merseyside-based ex-gay ministry emphasizing celibacy rather than change of orientation.

Living Waters UK. European branch of the US Living Waters ministry, formed by Andy Comiskey.

People Can Change. UK chapter run by James Parker. Incorporates Journey into Manhood.

Parakaleo. A self-described “Christian ministry seeking to uphold Biblical values to the transvestite, transsexual and transgendered person”.

The EnCourage Trust. Catholic ex-gay ministry.

Welcome

davidlrattigan — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:00:39 +0000

Welcome to ExGay.org.uk. This site will be a resource for the investigation and analysis of the so-called Ex-Gay movement in the UK and beyond.