"Ex-Gays": The Big Threat to the LGBT Movement

Contents:

• MY SO-CALLED EX-GAY LIFE
• WHY ARE HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISTS SO AAID OF “EX-GAYS”?
• EX-GAY
• DEFINITIONS FOR EX-GAYEX-GAY
• EX-GAY MEANG
• DEFINITIONS FOR EX-GAY MOVEMENTEX-GAY MOVE·MENT

MY SO-CALLED EX-GAY LIFE

My mom is a problem solver, and the next day she hand me a stack of papers she had prted out om the Inter about reorientatn, or "ex-gay, " therapy. Joseph Nilosi, a clil psychologist California who was then print of the Natnal Associatn for Rearch and Therapy of Homosexualy (NARTH), the untry's largt anizatn for practners of ex-gay therapy.

WHY ARE HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISTS SO AAID OF “EX-GAYS”?

Nilosi's rner office had emerald-green rpet and mahogany bookshelv led wh tl like Homosexualy: A Freedom Too Far and Homosexualy and the Polics of Tth. " Although I might never feel a spark of excement when I saw a woman walkg down the street, as I progrsed therapy, my homosexual attractns would dimish.

Until I had spoken wh Nilosi, I had rigned myself to the ia that, sirable or not, my life would have to acmodate the fact that I was gay.

EX-GAY

The other men-four or five altogether-were their forti and fifti and talked about their years the "gay liftyle, " which had yield only unhapps. They were tired of the club scene, the dg e, the promiscuy; their relatnships didn't last; they plaed that gay culture was youth-obssed.

DEFINITIONS FOR EX-GAYEX-GAY

I left the office wh a py of Nilosi's most recent book, Healg Homosexualy, and a worksheet that tegorized different emotns unr the brics of "te self" and "false self.

Another sheet illtrated the "triadic relatnship" that led to homosexualy: a passive, distant father, an overvolved mother, and a sensive child. The woman, Anne Plk, said that moltatn durg adolcence led her to homosexualy, but that she had been healed through the power of J Christ.

My mother might not have so easily found rmatn about ex-gay therapy had the Christian right not planted this stake the culture ad appeared 23 years after the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn (APA) classified homosexualy as a mental illns.

EX-GAY MEANG

A small group of therapists ntued to practice talk therapy that enuraged patients to see homosexualy as a velopmental disorr, but they remaed on the ge until the Christian right took up their e. Instead of fire-and-brimstone nunciatns om the pulp, the ex-gay movement allowed the Christian right to uch s nmnatn of homosexualy a way that seemed passnate. Foc on the Fay lled s new ex-gay mistry Love Won Out and talked about healg and rg for ex-gay movement turned the rhetoric of gay rights agast self: Shouldn't ex-gays be able to pursue therapy and live the liv they want whout facg discrimatn?

DEFINITIONS FOR EX-GAY MOVEMENTEX-GAY MOVE·MENT

Together wh the late Charl Soris, a psychiatrist who led the opposn to classifyg homosexualy as a mental illns, Nilosi formed NARTH 1992 as a "scientific anizatn that offers hope to those who stggle wh unwanted homosexualy.

Nilosi remas NARTH's most visible are no reliable statistics for how many patients have received ex-gay treatment or how many therapists practice , but the late 1990s and early 2000s, ex-gay therapy enjoyed a legimacy hadn't sce the APA removed homosexualy om s diagnostic manual. Whether or not the Christian right's alliance wh the ex-gay movement had nstuted a D-Day the culture wars, had succsfully challenged the prevailg ia that the bt choice for gay people was to accept themselv. I read one of Nilosi's books, Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexualy, that he tri to posn himself as a supportive father figure, typifyg the sort of relatnship that he believ his patients never had wh their own father.

When I left for Yale, my mother sent me off wh a warng: Were she to disver that I had "entered the gay liftyle, " my parents would no longer pay for my tn. Based on 200 terviews wh ex-gay patients-the largt sample amassed-the study did not make any claims about the succs rate of ex-gay therapy.