Gays Can Go Straight | Natnal Review

Contents:

• THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT
• IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?
• SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS
• CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?
• 10 THGS I LEARNED AS A GAY PRISONER BEHD BARS

THE FACT NO ONE LIK TO ADM: MANY GAY MEN ULD JT HAVE EASILY BEEN STRAIGHT

Wh theater doors bolted shut for the next…foreeable future, we’re thrilled to see some Broadway talent pop up the pilot episo of Boy•Friends, a new edy based off the My Gay Boyiend web-seri. The show centers around two llege roommat, one gay and one straight, and their “journey through llege and to adulthood to bee the homo-hetero power uple of the ag.

When I was young, I was told the whole world was divid to heterosexual men and heterosexual women, bar a small number of unfortunate ‘homosexuals’ of both genrs and possibly an even smaller number a third tegory, ‘bisexuals’, who ‘swung both ways’; pl, fally, a ty band of wretched creatur who were physilly not que one thg or the other.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO SYSTEMATILLY TURN GAY PEOPLE STRAIGHT?

Ksey diststed btal tegorisatn but, wishg to unt, nstcted what me close to a slidg sle ntag seven gradatns between exclive heterosexualy and exclive homosexualy. He found that almost half his male terviewe had reacted sexually to both genrs; more than a third had had a homosexual enunter; and more than one ten reported roughly equally strong sexual rpons to both men and women. All all, I’ve probably slept wh as many straight men as self–intifyg gay or bisexual on: I doubt most were lyg, and some s have reason to know they weren’t.

SOME GAYS CAN GO STRAIGHT, STUDY SAYS

In what pass for the gay ‘muny’, there’s somethg of a taboo about admtg, even to ourselv, that que a few of (not me) uld, wh a ltle axg and self-disciple, be ‘straight’. There exist strong reasons for this taboo among gays: first, ‘we n’t help ’ was absolutely central to our early pch for equaly, and we need to believe .

"If [a patient] n accept his bodily homoerotic experience while stayg nnected to the therapist, " he wrote The Paradox of Self-Acceptance, "the sexual feelg soon transforms to somethg else: the regnn of eper, pa-generated emotnal needs which have nothg to do wh sexualy.

CAN SCTN MAKE STRAIGHT MEN GAY?

Both APAs have led that the therapi are unscientific and possibly harmful — not to mentn unnecsary, sce homosexualy was officially -classified as an illns 1973, and therefore n't be "cured. The few that did have "high-qualy" evince "show that endurg change to an dividual's sexual orientatn is unmon, " and that treatments tend to change sexual orientatn may e harm, cludg prsn and mental Dark AgHomosexualy was officially labeled a mental illns the U.

Another method was satiatn therapy, which a subject was told to masturbate over and over while verbally scribg his homosexual fantasi, until they disappeared — or, at least, "therapi" were generally effective — the person remaed attracted to the same sex — or over-effective — the person was trmatized and lost all sexual aroal entirely. They "were ed whout people thkg about whether they were humane, " Glassgold all treatments were so gome: Lnel Ovey, a Columbia Universy psychoanalyst and thor of Homosexualy and Psdohomosexualy, created a behavral method the 1960s. Ovey studied a clilly disturbed group of patients and summarized their unnsc mds as follows: "I am a failure = I am not a man = I am strated = I am a woman = I am a homosexual.

" His view mirrored the belief of many clicians at the time: that homosexualy was based on a phobia of the oppose non-aversive treatments followg this theory foced on buildg "tnal skills" like datg techniqu, assertivens trag, and affectn achg to crease teractns wh women.

10 THGS I LEARNED AS A GAY PRISONER BEHD BARS

Cognive therapists, meanwhile, ma a few attempts to change homosexuals' thought patterns by reamg sir — redirectg thoughts away om homosexual activy — or through hypnosis.