When I me out as gay, my dad thought I was posssed by a mon and forced me to nversn therapy. Years later, I'm now a happy gay man.

Contents:

• GAY NVERSN THERAPY: 'I THOUGHT BEG STRAIGHT WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY'
• I TRIED TO NVERT MYSELF OM GAY TO STRAIGHT. IT DON’T WORK
• DC BILL AGAST GAY NVERSN THERAPY BE LAW
• ‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’
• CONVERSN THERAPY: SHE TRIED TO MAKE ME 'PRAY AWAY THE GAY'
• LANDMARK JONAH ‘GAY CONVERSN’ THERAPY CASE GO TO JURY
• GOV. CHRISTIE SET TO SIGN BAN ON GAY-TO-STRAIGHT NVERSN THERAPY
• MICHELE BACHMANN'S HBAND: MY CLIC DO GAY-TO-STRAIGHT THERAPY, BUT 'S NOT OUR AGENDA
• GAY 'NVERSN THERAPY': MAN GIVEN ELECTRIC SHOCKS MANDS APOLOGY
• THE 8 CHIGO CUBS WOULD TURN A STRAIGHT GUY GAY
• WHEN I ME OUT AS GAY, MY DAD THOUGHT I WAS POSSSED BY A MON AND FORCED ME TO NVERSN THERAPY. YEARS LATER, I'M NOW A HAPPY GAY MAN.

GAY NVERSN THERAPY: 'I THOUGHT BEG STRAIGHT WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY'

While many liberal reform Jewish people accept homosexualy nowadays, some Orthodox Jews still oppose on the grounds that is said to be forbidn by relig teachgs. That was all I wanted back 's relign ma her feel sperate to lead a 'normal' lifeDpe the advanc on LGBTQ+ issu we’ve seen the UK and elsewhere the past five s, gay nversn therapy - a psdoscientific practice that attempts to change sexual orientatn, or rce feelgs of sexual attractn to others of the same sex - is still rried out many untri. I told him that I wished I uld jt be straight and my life be ls one of our nversatns, he said there was a way for me to fd ‘happs’ - that someone he knew Israel offered gay nversn therapy.

My dad, wracked wh guilt over how badly the therapy seemed to have affected me, was the first one to tell me to stop and experiment wh the gay world.

Havg their support gave me the strength to move forward wh my 's supportive parents host pri themed Shabbat dnersThe days, my parents host gay pri Shabbat dners, help other parents of queer kids, and are currently tryg to fd me a partner by askg everyone they know - rabbis clud - if they happen to know of any nice lbians. I uldn’t take my ey off thor Holn Sheppard tried to ‘pray the gay away’ and now knows the trma associated wh the Holn Sheppard It was a hell of a disvery: I was attracted to other sixteen, this terrified me.

I TRIED TO NVERT MYSELF OM GAY TO STRAIGHT. IT DON’T WORK

This was regular, sual and normal: every lson I’d ever imbibed about homosexualy was that was I’d grown up watchg a fundamentalist Christian show, The Donut Club, which preached, a creepy kids’ song, how “life whout God’s love is like a donut, ’e there’s a hole the middle of your heart”. If anythg, the self-nial only ma me even hornier for experience is borne out, over and over, the stori of anyone who has been through gay nversn therapy.

DC BILL AGAST GAY NVERSN THERAPY BE LAW

Conley is married, too, and the people who facilated his nversn therapy have sce admted they are gay, and severed their ti to the ex-gay movement. The law perms the imposn of f and other penalti on licensed therapists and other mental health practners who attempt to change the sexual orientatn of people unr the age of 18 om gay-to-straight. In 2013 the 9th Circu Court of Appeals upheld California’s ban on gay cure therapi and December last year the 3rd Circu upheld a siar law New Jersey.

‘I AM GAY – BUT I WASN’T BORN THIS WAY’

You so obvly nnot be gay, was her implitn, bee this is good was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop s unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular unrstandg of orientatn was that was somethg you were born wh, somethg you uldn’t change.

I me out at a nservative Christian llege the US and was a gay relatnship for around two years wh a basketball player who end up marryg a woman.

CONVERSN THERAPY: SHE TRIED TO MAKE ME 'PRAY AWAY THE GAY'

But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this people may fd their sir changg directn - and n't jt be explaed as experimentatn (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In 1977, jt over 10% of Amerins thought gayns was somethg you were born wh, acrdg to Gallup.

Throughout the same perd, the number of Amerins who believe homosexualy is “due to someone’s upbrgg/environment” fell om jt unr 60% to ias reached cril mass pop culture, first wh Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later wh Macklemore’s Same Love, the chos of which has a gay person sgg “I n’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to. ” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign clared unequivolly that “Beg gay is not a choice, ” and to claim that is “giv unwarranted crence to roundly disproven practic such as nversn or reparative therapy. ”People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backwardAs Jane Ward not Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, what’s tertg about many of the claims is how transparent their speakers are wh their polil motivatns.

LANDMARK JONAH ‘GAY CONVERSN’ THERAPY CASE GO TO JURY

“Such statements, ” she wr, “fe blogil acunts wh an obligatory and nearly ercive force, suggtg that anyone who scrib homosexual sire as a choice or social nstctn is playg to the hands of the enemy. ” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often st as homophobic, and their thkg is nsired backward – even if they are themselv, for example, Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The Cy fame.

”Gay rights do not have to hge on a geic explanatn for sexualy (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)For Aravosis, and many gay activists like him, the public will only accept and affirm gay people if they thk they were born gay. Patrick Grzanka, Assistant Profsor of Psychology at Universy of Tennsee, for stance, has shown that some people who believe that homosexualy is nate still hold negative views of gays. In fact, the homophobic and non-homophobic rponnts he studied shared siar levels of belief a Born This Way Samantha Allen not at The Daily Beast, the growg public support for gays and lbians has grown out of proportn wh the rise the number of people who believe homosexualy is fixed at birth; would be unlikely that this small change opn uld expla the spike support for gay marriage, for stance.

GOV. CHRISTIE SET TO SIGN BAN ON GAY-TO-STRAIGHT NVERSN THERAPY

“It don’t seem to matter as much whether or not people believe that gay people are born that way as do that they simply know someone who is currently gay, ” Allen spe of the studi, those who ph agast Born This Way narrativ have been heavily cricised by gay activists. Siarly, Ward has received her own hatemail for phg agast the lg LGB narrativ, wh some gays tellg her she’s “worse than Ann Coulter, ” the ntroversial US thor of books like If Democrats Had Any Bras, They’d Be Republins. And when I published my say on choosg to be gay, an irate Amerin lbian activist wrote me that had “jt been nfirmed” to her that my wrg was “directly rponsible for four gay aths Rsia.

MICHELE BACHMANN'S HBAND: MY CLIC DO GAY-TO-STRAIGHT THERAPY, BUT 'S NOT OUR AGENDA

There is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejectedLet’s first be clear that whatever the origs of our sexual orientatn, there is a unanimo opn that gay “nversn therapy” should be rejected. The efforts are potentially harmful, acrdg to the APA, “bee they prent the view that the sexual orientatn of lbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illns of disorr, and they often ame the abily to change one’s sexual orientatn as a personal and moral failure.

The APA, for example, while notg that most people experience ltle to no choice over their orientatns, says this of homosexualy’s origs:“Although much rearch has examed the possible geic, hormonal, velopmental, social and cultural fluenc on sexual orientatn, no fdgs have emerged that perm scientists to nclu that sexual orientatn is termed by any particular factor or factors.

”Siarly, the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn wr a 2013 statement that while the of heterosexualy and homosexualy are currently unknown, they are likely “multifactorial cludg blogil and behavral roots which may vary between different dividuals and may even vary over time. ” Acrdg to LeVay’s rearch, a specific part of the bra, the third terstial nucls of the anterr hypothalam (INAH-3), is smaller homosexual men than is heterosexual as they might, scientists have stggled to inty any particular gen that nsistently predict the directns of our love and sire (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)Read moreYou n spot the problem wh this study a e away: were the gay bras LeVay studied born that way, or did they bee that way? Another landmark paper on the origs of homosexualy was published 1993 by a geicist named Dean Hamer, who was terted to learn whether homosexualy uld be hered.

GAY 'NVERSN THERAPY': MAN GIVEN ELECTRIC SHOCKS MANDS APOLOGY

Begng om his observatn that there are more gay relativ on a mother’s si than a father’s, Hamer turned his attentn to the X chromosome (which is passed on by the mother).

Bis the dividual criqu leveled agast each new study announcg some gay gene disvery, there are major methodologil cricisms to make about the entire enterprise general, as Grzanka pots out: “If we look at the raveno pursu, particularly among Amerin scientists, to fd a gay gene, what we see is that the ncln has already been arrived at.

THE 8 CHIGO CUBS WOULD TURN A STRAIGHT GUY GAY

”The other problem wh Born This Way science is summed up nicely by Simon Copland: “Scientists are askg whether homosexualy is natural when we n’t even agree exactly what homosexualy is.

” Our sir may exprs themselv many different ways that do not all nform to existg notns of ‘gay’, ‘straight’ or ‘bisexual’ is one of the bt takeaways of Ward’s Not Gay, a peratg analysis of sex between straight whe men. ”Gay or not, our sir are oriented and re-oriented throughout our liv (Cred: Ignac Lehmann)In fact, the straight-intified men Ward studied for her book sometim found themselv suatns that sparked the sire for homosexual sex: aterni, ployments, public rtrooms, etc. Ward thks this qutn is the next ontier of queer I first said I chose to be gay, a queer Amerin journalist challenged me to name the time and date of my choice.

WHEN I ME OUT AS GAY, MY DAD THOUGHT I WAS POSSSED BY A MON AND FORCED ME TO NVERSN THERAPY. YEARS LATER, I'M NOW A HAPPY GAY MAN.

I’m claimg that at some pot durg llege, my sexual and romantic sir beme reoriented toward menThkg back to my llege romanc wh women and men, I n beg to unrstand how my own experienc might have helped me to ‘cultivate’ my sire for homosexualy.

I want to be very clear: I’m not claimg I simply began to ‘grow to’ my homosexualy, or that as I beme more fortable wh beg gay, I allowed myself the eedom to exprs what had always been latent wh me. “Limg our unrstandg of any plex human experience is always gog to be worse than allowg to be plited, ” he gay rights activists pared sexualy to relign - a ccial part of our life that we should be ee to practise however we like (Cred: Ignac Lehamann)So what are we to do wh the Born This Way rhetoric?