I admit that my choice of subject for this rant means I will be talking off the top of my head. I have no first-hand or second-hand experience of programs that aim at curing homosexuality. I have not gone through one, nor do I know anyone who has. I only know what I have read. At least I have read some pro as well as con, but I will not pretend that I read with an open mind. So when I read that nearly all psychiatric professionals agree this kind of reconditioning does more harm than good, I ask myself, “What good could it possibly do even if it did no harm at all? Turn a gay man straight? What’s the point?”

I see nothing wrong with same-sex attraction or acting on that attraction. (Here my opinion is based on first-hand experience.) It follows that to subject another human being to emotional battering in order to put a stop to it is worse than unconscionable. Granted, many gay men engage in self-destructive behaviors. Many straight men do, too. If a higher percentage of gay men do – and enrolling in a program to turn straight is an example of self-destructive behavior – I firmly believe we must attribute it to the burden of guilt and self-hatred society imposes on them for no good reason. Gayness is not the problem.

That pretty much says it all. Unless homosexuality is sinful, evil, unnatural and harmful – and I, for one, don’t think it is – “curing” it is at best a waste of time. You can’t cure the healthy. The question remains: Is the “condition” reversible?

Some say that a person’s sexual orientation cannot change. I disagree. Not that people choose their sexual orientation, but it may change; therefore it can. (I speak from personal experience.) But that it can change does not mean it can be changed either by individual willpower or outside intervention. Okay, maybe – just maybe – brainwashing will work sometimes, and for those who consider homosexuality an unnatural evil, curing it is a mission of mercy, and the end justifies the means. No, the goal justifies the means. Whether or not they achieve their end is apparently irrelevant.

Come to think of it, every description of sexual reorientation I have read involves some degree of brainwashing. From what I understand, the brainwashing runs the gamut from a seemingly innocuous “pray the gay away” to verbal and physical abuse. Exorcism, too. In other words, it uses all the methods thought up by the Inquisition short of burning at the stake, an option many members of the Westboro Baptist Church no doubt support despite a Constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. At least they’re honest and don’t pretend to love the sinner.

Seemingly innocuous. Those who advocate praying the gay away probably recognize that human intervention is ineffective, but surely Divine intervention can do anything. I will not argue with people’s religious beliefs provided they do not seek to impose them on others, and a man who comes to them voluntarily hoping for a miracle must to some extent share their beliefs. But there’s a catch. God can do anything; ergo, if prayer doesn’t work, you must be unworthy of His grace. Why? Isn’t it obvious? Because you do not sincerely wish to change and are praying to Him in bad faith. They only pretend to be supportive. The homosexual is always at fault.

And what if someone doesn’t come voluntarily? Then prayer is obviously useless and a more drastic form of brainwashing is in order: insults, humiliation, beatings, isolation. I suspect, however, that nobody undergoes sexual reorientation voluntarily. Even those who choose to go because they’re miserable do so under pressure, be it of family, friends, their church, or the community they live in. Better an unhappy heterosexual than an unhappy homosexual. For the people who run, work in, and sponsor these programs and also for their victims, a happy homo is an oxymoron.

As for the unfortunate teenagers who undergo such reconditioning against their will, whose parents, instead of mercifully throwing them out to survive on the streets, arrange to have them abducted into one of these programs, they will come out even more broken, if not destroyed. We have seen no other result. Brainwashing does not turn out healthy individuals. Not that they haven’t been brainwashed already. Their family has rejected them, their classmates have bullied them, and God has damned them to hell, so what do these programs have to teach them? They already know they’re the lowest of the low.

While I have no experience with programs that attempt to cure gays, lesbians and transgendered people, I do know about other kinds of behavior modification. I have friends and relatives who have gone through therapy, counseling or drug rehabilitation with varying degrees of success, and I have attended group meetings as an observer and support person. Some programs do work for some people. On the whole, I think they’re a good thing. They have a fair chance of success with people who themselves decide they need help; less so when they’re committed by family or court ordered. People who enter a program to change their sexual orientation always do so under duress, as a last resort. Why else would they?

You see, there’s an important difference between addicts and people attracted to members of the same sex. Addicts have a problem; in fact, they usually have a lot of underlying problems of which their addiction is only a symptom. Gays, lesbians, etc., really only have one underlying problem: society doesn’t accept them.

I have seen many rehabilitation programs. They range from genuinely supportive – “I see the good in you even if you don’t” – to the “let’s tear you down so we can build you up again”, which I would call abusive. Someone whose self-esteem is near rock bottom doesn’t need tearing down. The supportive approach seems to work relatively well. As far as I can tell, “heterosexualization” programs always go the abusive route. Those that limit themselves to prayer may not be horrifically abusive, but their supportiveness is tainted by hypocrisy.

I utterly condemn trying to turn people straight. Even a 100% success rate would not justify it. I can think of better wastes of time, money and effort than unnecessary cruelty. No program can honestly claim 100% effectiveness, but they do cite some “positive outcomes”. I’m sure there have been some. Many bisexuals choose to live their whole life as heterosexuals. A bisexual who moves from a gay to a straight lifestyle has hardly undergone a change in orientation. The irony is that the people who run these programs see gay and straight as an either/or proposition. On top of that, as with recovering addicts, their successes admit they’re still tempted but have learned to resist temptation. What kind of change in orientation is that?

Programs for changing a person’s sexual orientation should be shut down and the people who run them prosecuted. Until that happens, kids delivered into their clutches will have no way out. Guilt-ridden adults who commit themselves for reconditioning have other options, like support groups and counseling, if they only realized they suffer from homophobia, not homosexuality. Our society is changing, albeit slowly, and the rabid homophobes are in it for the long haul. A more immediate solution is to learn to be happy with who you are.

 

Wilde Oats is published three times a year, in April, August and December. Click here to be automatically informed of new issues when they are published.

I see nothing wrong with same-sex attraction or acting on that attraction.  Granted, many gay men engage in self-destructive behaviors. Many straight men do, too. If a higher percentage of gay men do – and enrolling in a program to turn straight is an example of self-destructive behavior – I firmly believe we must attribute it to the burden of guilt and self-hatred society imposes on them for no good reason. Gayness is not the problem.