Worldly Chatter

“What would you do if your child were gay?” That’s what Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd asked some high school students in New Hampshire. I remember I asked my father that very same question years ago when I was just starting high school. I threw him for a loop when I asked that and he didn’t have much of an answer for me other than that he was adamant none of his children were gay. While it was not the answer I was looking for I was pleasantly surprised that when I did come out he was as open as any parent could be. Did that get him to thinking? I never asked but I do know that when he did find out he was prepared to ask questions and genuinely understand me and really get to know his daughter. I was a lucky woman as there are parents who are finding a different means to handle their child’s gayness. It is called conversion therapy, sexual reorientation therapy or reparative therapy; a means to turn the homosexual into an ex-gay as these individuals like to call themselves once they go through the treatment.
The treatment starts when people as young as fifteen are brought to a facility, much like a dormitory, and informed of the rules at hand. They have no say as to what they can watch, listen to and what they can wear. Men must shave daily and women twice weekly. No Abercrombie and Fitch or Calvin Klein. Bach or Beethoven is out of the question and any other form of media is dictated by them. Curfews are set in place, a log of every fantasy and thought goes to their therapist. Men get taught how to play football and other manly sports while the ladies get taught to put on makeup.
You see, the ex-gay movement believes that homosexuality is a set of behaviors causing the lifestyle choice rather than an orientation and a non-choice. They feel that the reasons for this are due to poor parenting, an inability to develop ‘healthy’ relationships with the same gender as friends and childhood traumas such as sexual abuse. These factors cause the behavior and therefore reparative therapy will be able to undo the damage and turn the person straight. Reparative therapies involve religious conditioning or therapy and prayer, also used is psychotherapy, aversion therapy and behavioral conditioning. One story that has circulated is where are residential treatment center used sedation, isolation, physical restraints and ‘hold therapy’ in which one girl was held down while the staff screamed at her until she confessed she was hurting her family by being a lesbian. How much of this is still being used one cannot say because the facility where parents send their children or individuals send themselves is closed to outsiders and videotaping is forbidden. The only source people have about the conditions of the place or techniques used are the people who come out of it and some of them are so traumatized to talk about it.
There are other means that people involved with the movement use. CD’s and DVD’s to condition their thoughts into believing they are falling for the opposite sex and their tendencies for the same sex are leaving their person. In Mark Simkin’s report on the subject he interviews Richard Cohen a reorientation therapist who feels it is unnatural and shows a few techniques he uses in his private office. One such practice shown was when he had a patient vent out his frustrations from childhood with a racket on a bed. The patient was screaming the agony Richard feels was bottled up. The racket is to get the aggression out so he can find peace with the trauma and to make himself a more powerful man; writing out childhood memories and therapy is used to bring out the faulty parenting and trauma which he believes is the cause of gayness.
Richard Cohen is one of about a hundred facilities and therapists practicing reorientation or conversion therapy across America where it is gaining in momentum. Critics of the practice see it as a dangerous fraud and that consequences are huge when it comes to the individual coming out of therapy. American Psychiatric Association and others feel that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and that it is impossible to change a person’s orientation. Critics also see it as a sham and a money maker as prices for one month in a treatment center can go as high as seven thousand dollars as well as all the books CD’s and other materials promoting the movement. There is no scientific backing for the success of the treatment and the centers themselves claim a rough number of 30% in success stories. Most treatment centers come from a religious background and reject what science as found when it comes to gays being born this way and continue to assert that it is behavioral and sinful.
Can all this really transform a human from gay to straight? Most don’t believe so and I tend to agree. Not only because I find nothing wrong with being a homosexual but also because with the methods used are detrimental to the individual who is only trying to find peace with who they are; it is brainwashing and in some cases cruel and inhumane. With what we do know about conversion therapy and what they do it reminds me a lot of boot camp and means to break them down and make them one entity and not individuals. What I also cannot understand is this is the very same religion that also preaches love, acceptance and a non-judgmental mentality towards its fellow man so how do they justify all this?

gay conversion, ex-gays, Richard Cohen, Mark Simkin, homosexuality