February 2001 Cover
Further Reading
Helping the wayward go straight
Programmed efforts to transform gay men and lesbians into heterosexuals are at least as old as the moment...
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Creating the very compulsions they claim to cure
Why does anyone go through an "ex-gay" program?
Most are there, no doubt, in efforts to shed shameful homosexual desires and attain the status and perks accorded to those living a straight lifestyle. For many, this quest for normality is inspired by
religious directives and prohibitions. For others, angst-ridden parental pressure fuels the drive to turn straight.
But whenever wannabe-ex gays gather by their minister's (or psychotherapist's) healing river, there is always the threat of a sexual riptide. Put dozens of horny, sexually frustrated guys in touch with each
other and some are bound to find concrete cock more appealing than abstract rectitude.
Instead of distancing program participants from "the gay threat," ex-gay programs actually put many in sizzling proximity to others feeling the same conflicting urges wherein sex often trumps inhibition.
Could access to sex ironically account for part of ex-gay programs' appeal? Gode Davis talks with guys who've found little comfort-- but a lot of sex-- within the ex-gay scene.
Since 1985, Brian, now 28, has been a boy, then a man, beset by self-hate and personal conflict. "I didn't want to be gay," he says. "Being gay was somehow a negation of all my dreams." Brought up conservatively
Christian in a Southern Baptist home outside of Barstow, California, Brian's "changing" was viciously encouraged-- sometimes with the buckle end of a belt. "After I told my Dad that I might be gay, he would beat me. He did it,
he always said, because he loved me and just wanted me to be normal. A part of me still agrees with him, about what he did and why. Despite how he treated me, I wanted to please him in the worst way."
For Brian, that motivation took him to all the usual ex-gay places. "I tried them all-- Love in Action, Worthy Creations, Living Waters, Cross Currents, even Homosexuals Anonymous," he says.
Nothing worked. Then something else changed. Brian began to realize that the ex-gay scene could be a venue for sexual opportunity. "It became remarkably easy," he says, "Think of it. All these guys feeling very vulnerable, full
of self-loathing, and the only antidote for all that pain was, well, I hate to say it, sex." Since about 1994, Brian claims to have had intimate contact with an estimated 500 male partners aged between 14 and 78. "I picked a lot
of them up while cruising the ex-gay scene," he admits.
A new cruising venue?
The "ex-gay scene" consists of an intricate web of religion-sponsored ministries dedicated to leading gays (and sometimes lesbians) away from the homosexual lifestyle. Brian, who admits to serious
if intermittent addiction problems with "hard drugs including crystal and ecstasy" and to several bouts with sexually transmitted diseases over the years, has also tried "reparative therapy" with practitioners associated
with NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) in an effort to change his sexual orientation. NARTH, according to its website, is a "non-profit, educational organization dedicated to the
research, therapy, and prevention of homosexuality." (Its website can be found at www.narth.com)
Brian alleges that after nearly three years (1997-1999) of reparative therapy in counseling with NARTH Executive Director and Secretary Treasurer Joseph Nicolosi at that practitioner's Encino,
California-based clinic, he became extremely depressed and attempted suicide. "Nicolosi basically said that after what I had done in the ex-gay groups, picking up people to have sex with and everything, and actually coming to the groups
with a premeditated purpose in mind, that I was worse than most homosexuals, that I was an utterly depraved and unlovable human being-- even a predator. One day after I last left his office, I became despondent and drank
a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide." Although the poison formed emboli in Brian's bloodstream with one embolism causing a clot in his left lung, Brian was hospitalized in time and eventually recovered. He relocated
to Boston in August 2000. When interviewed for The
Guide last October, he claimed to have "sworn off all drugs and most sex with men" and was attending occasional meetings of "Courage"-- an ex-gay ministry for
Roman Catholics that promotes an ascetic lifestyle along the structured guidelines of an addiction-fighting twelve-step program. "It's like a fresh start for me," Brian says.
A rose by any other name...
Ex-gay ministries of all doctrinal stripes seem to have incorporated tenets of twelve-step anti-addiction models into their programs, much like those long offered by groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
Passé pop psychology theories postulating the supposed reasons for homosexuality (i.e. distant fathers, dominant mothers, and traumatic incidents capped by sexual abuse heading the Freudian and neo-Freudian list) is coupled
with dogma and then meshed with addiction models to create programs wherein old-time religious buzzwords are overwritten with modern psycho-jargon.
Most contemporary ex-gay programs have toned down scare tactics and claims of being "cure" factories touted as recently as the late 1990s. The religious right's political push to dramatically "change" gays
into straights by calling on the grace of God has been largely discredited.
According to the few empirical studies that have been performed, so-called "gays" ostensibly converted into straights are likely to be bisexuals or repressed heterosexuals who'd only occasionally or
sporadically engaged in homosexual acts previous to any "therapeutic" conversion intervention. Probably fewer than two percent of self-identified homosexuals are able to adopt exclusively straight behaviors for any extended
period. Noting that some program graduates are capable of marrying women, having strongly bonded relationships with people of the opposite sex, and fathering children does not demonstrate a change in fundamental desire
or sexual orientation, of course; throughout time and across cultures, men with strong homosexual urges (and behaviors) have managed to fulfill the sexual and social obligations expected of "husbands" and "fathers."
New "pragmatic" tactics
Leaders in the "changing" movement have thus lightened up a bit in touting conversion statistics and have privately conceded that orientation is extremely difficult to permanently alter. A new and
increasingly pervasive tactic being used by contemporary ex-gay organizations and ministries, however, is to be pragmatic while being simultaneously disingenuous.
"These young men are often very confused and self-destructive," says Father John F. Harvey, 83, the founding director of the Courage movement, "All we do is simply discourage these people from acting
out self-destructive behaviors, and homosexuality-- often promiscuous and indiscriminate while allied with drug use and depression-- happens to be one of those behaviors." Thus the seeds of orientation denial are sown as
a means to an end-- the end being a happier and more stable lifestyle. Soon, sometimes very soon, an insidious promise is subtly cultivated-- that heterosexual normality, however remote it may seem at first-- is a condition
that can be achieved if a person prays devoutly and enough. At first promised simple deliverance from gayness, program participants are told they can cultivate full-fledged heterosexuality, a dangling carrot that can assume
the proportions of a holy grail.
Coming out of the church
After almost two years of immersion in a Los Angeles area ex-gay ministry, a second young Californian discovered a new coming-to-terms with his own homosexuality-- and an unshakable conviction
that "Living Waters," the program that he participated in, was full of young men-- all wannabe straights-- surreptitiously having sex with each other. Such self-righteous hypocrisy caused him to eventually leave the movement.
Samuel Ben-Avi, 23, began attending meetings of "Living Waters: Pursuing Sexual and Relational Wholeness in Christ" (a non-denominational Christian "in-depth healing/teaching/discipleship
series" sponsored by Desert Stream Ministries based in Anaheim Hills, California) in 1995, when he was barely 18. The name "Living Waters" has a Christian Biblical basis emphasizing the "living stream of the Holy Spirit."
Andrew Comiskey, an associate pastor with the Anaheim Vineyard Fellowship (who claims to be a gay-turned-straight and is now married to his wife Annette and has fathered four children) founded the series during the late 1980s.
He drew his titular inspiration from John 4:13 wherein Jesus speaks to an adulterous woman of Samaria: "The water I give you will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Samuel started out enthused and full of religious conviction. He describes what meetings were like in the small auditorium in a non-denominational Christian church basement-- set up with chairs, couches and
a podium: "The average group would normally have in it around 40 to 50 people. These would also divide up into smaller groups that you would get into-- with 5 or 6 people where you would do a lot of personal talk.
Lectures would go on in the larger groups; there would be a time of prayer when counselors would actually come and pray over you." And there would be music. "It's kind of funny because the music was contemporary
Christian music, mostly very emotional stuff having to do with God being a father, or people going through hard times in their lives." Think of the kind of stuff that a decent acoustic player can pick cleanly using three or four
basic chords.
Lesson plan jargon
One segment of the Living Waters curriculum was called "understanding sexual and relational brokenness." Chapters under this sub-heading include "welcoming Him (Christ) into our brokenness," "triggers
of gender insecurity," "broken boundaries, invaded heart," and "narcissism and relational idolatry." Such jargon comforted Samuel at first-- along with self-purging and confessional "personal talk" in the small groups-- but then
a real sense of disillusionment ensued. Even with expected barriers against "it" that you'd expect would be imposed in a Christian ex-gay indoctrination environment, it-- the dreaded 'S' word-- was apparently impossible
to prevent.
The barriers seemed stringent enough. "Inside the group they really try to limit contact between individual people," Samuel says, "You're not supposed to talk with each other outside of the groups. When
you leave, you go to the car, on your way in, you go to the building. You don't talk with each other, you don't exchange phone numbers, you're not supposed to have any kind of even friendship relationships with other people
that are involved."
Extracurricular activities
Yet the walls came tumbling down-- even for Samuel. "I knew of quite many people that were involved in the group who had affairs with other people. I myself had affairs with people in the group. Full
sexual affairs."
In many cases, impulsive pairings seem to result from the combination of religious judgment and shame over being gay having morphed into some kind of psychic aphrodisiac. Samuel is straightforward
about it. "It's kind of alluring with these people inside the group," he says, "Because you're going through a very emotional time, and you tend to want to cling to each other. You naturally want to comfort each other, and that
just leads to sexual things happening sooner or later."
"The groups make people sexually compulsive," says Samuel, "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy almost. You start abstaining from relationships, you break off, start masturbating, and suddenly you become
very sexual, more compulsive. That's what happened to a lot of people that I knew in the group. They couldn't stand the pressure of not being able to be intimate with somebody-- not having a sexual release in general, and
would get very, very compulsive. It is all caused by the group."
Samuel was profoundly disturbed when people who'd just had homosexual sexual liaisons returned to the "ex-gay" group. "A lot of guilt would come in. Some people would just really break up over it.
They wouldn't say that they had been involved with other people in the group. They would say that they'd had a 'sexual fall' with another same-sex person, but they wouldn't say who it was, and there would just be some people
who would flat out lie about it, and they would really pretend that they were getting over their sexual issues. Everybody was very secretive if they were involved with somebody else."
The thrill and agony of hypocrisy
In such a tainted environment, tensions soon became apparent-- especially when sexual secrets and the cone of silence came to envelop some Living Waters leaders.
"I found out over time that some of the leaders were involved sexually with other people," Samuel says, "In fact, one of the leaders of one of the small groups went up to a friend of mine when he was in
the group and said, 'I know you, I think I had sex with you in Palm Springs.' The group leader happened to be wrong-- it was a case of mistaken identity."
But the group leader had apparently picked up somebody at a gay bar in Palm Springs who looked like Samuel's friend-- while he'd simultaneously been preaching homosexual abstinence and the joys
of "spiritual completeness" inherent in heterosexuality to his hopeful flock. This hypocrisy-- and the ministry's attempt to explain all homosexual desire as the byproduct of some sort of parental abuse-- proved too much
for Samuel to stomach. "My parents used to spank me occasionally, but they never abused me," Samuel insists, "and these people were hypocrites." In 1997, at the age of 20, Samuel became an ex-ex-gay.
But Brian found the cloak of hypocrisy inherent in Living Waters and other ex-gay scenes more to his liking. "At first, I felt extremely guilty about what I was doing," Brian says, "but then, I saw the way
that these organizations operated, and how they exploited some of the people who didn't want to be gay. I may have been rationalizing myself by doing what I did, but in the end, it didn't seem to matter."
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