| April 2004
Going straight source: The Guardian newspaper (UK), 3 April 2004
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Revered
by the religious right and bolstered by a supposedly scientific theory, a
new wave of therapist-gurus claim they can 'cure' homosexuality. Their
success rate is hotly contested. Decca Aitkenhead joins a rally of
would-be converts in Nashville.
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The Love Won Out conference is taking place
in a Baptist church beside a busy freeway. It is a modern building of
chocolate brown brick, closer in style and scale to a convention centre
than a place of worship. A thousand people have gathered inside. Some are
here because of the devastating incompatibility of their religious faith
and their sexual feelings. Others are here because - as one seminar title
puts it - "Someone I Love Is Gay". People have come from as far
as New York and California, and what everyone wants to hear is Love Won
Out's magical promise: that homosexuality can be cured. They are told that homosexuality is not a sexual identity, but a developmental disorder. It has a name - same-sex attraction disorder, or SSAD - and a cure - reparative therapy. Throughout the day, a series of men and women introduce themselves on stage as "ex-gays" and tell of their personal journey out of homosexuality into heterosexual happiness, a transition they attribute to psychological insight and biological truth. There are five Love Won Out conferences every year in the US and, although they are church-based, their message is expressed not in scripture but in the language of science. If you want to be saved, find a therapist.
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A thousand people at the Love Won Out conference, held annually. Its promise: homosexuality can be cured. | ||
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"There
is no such thing as a homosexual," the chief speaker, a clinical
psychologist called Dr Joseph Nicolosi, assures his audience.
"Everyone is heterosexual. Some of you may have a homosexual problem.
But you are still a heterosexual. 'Homosexual' is simply a description of
a psychological disorder, prompted by an inner sense of emptiness.
This," he reminds them, "by the way, is non-religious,
non-political information. This is scientific information."
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Everyone is heterosexual. Homosexuality is a psychological disorder. This is "non-religious, scientific information." | ||
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Homosexuality has not been classified as a
mental illness in America for more than 30 years. It was removed from the
national register of mental illnesses, the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in 1973, following pressure from gay
activists. Nearly 20 years later, Nicolosi founded an organisation for
psychiatrists and psychologists who still rejected that 1973 decision, and
believed homosexuals could and should be cured. As president of the
National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (Narth),
Nicolosi devised a programme of reparative therapy - sometimes known as
conversion or reorientation therapy - and built up an international
network of therapists who provide this treatment. It is not an insignificant network. Narth's membership includes a former president of the American Mental Health Counsellors' Association and university clinical professors of psychiatry Charles Socarides, Dean Byrd and Benjamin Kaufman. Along with Drs Jeffrey Satinover, Richard Fitzgibbons and Irving Bieber, all have published or contributed to books about reparative therapy, and claim that at least a third of all clients can be completely cured of their homosexuality.
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NARTH, founded by Joseph Nicolosi, promotes reparative therapy | ||
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Their views didn't enjoy a great deal of
credibility in the 1990s. Sexual reorientation had traditionally been an
evangelical idea found in ex-gay ministries, who preached that
homosexuality could be prayed away. Most mental health organisations took
the view that reparative therapy was no more clinically effective, still
less appropriate, than a prayer. It is not available in the UK, though some therapists elsewhere in Europe provide it. Since 1998, any client in the US seeking reparative therapy has been obliged by the American Psychiatric Association to sign a consent form acknowledging its position: that sexual reorientation is impossible and that attempting it may cause psychological harm. The only treatment the APA would condone was gay affirmative therapy, designed to reconcile clients with their sexuality.
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Ex-gay ministries preached that
homosexuality could be prayed away.
APA dissociates itself from reparative therapy. It is not available in the UK. |
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Then something happened that Nicolosi and
his associates could not in their wildest dreams have hoped for. To the
gay activists involved in the 1973 campaign it was unimaginable, but to
the families of boys such as Drew Sermon, it is news to be clung to like a
life raft. The very psychiatrist who led the removal of homosexuality from
the DSM in 1973 announced, in 2000, that he was going to investigate the
success rate of reparative therapy. Dr Robert Spitzer, by then a senior
professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, wanted to know whether it
was possible for homosexuals to change. Could therapy turn gays straight?
Late last year, Spitzer's study was published. And his answer was: yes. Spitzer found 274 men and women who
claimed to have changed their orientation from gay to straight, thanks to
therapy, and he interviewed them. In 74 of these subjects, the only change
Spitzer could identify was their decision to call themselves straight, or
to stop having sex, and these he rejected from the study. He found that
all of the remainder - 143 men and 57 women - had changed to some degree. Two-thirds of the men and almost half the women had reached what Spitzer called "good heterosexual functioning": a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year, providing enough emotional satisfaction to rate at least seven on a 10-point scale. Most enjoyed satisfying heterosexual sex at least once a month, and never or rarely thought of someone of the same sex during intercourse. Asked about unwanted homosexual feelings, 89% of the men and 95% of the women said they were bothered "not at all" or "only slightly". Spitzer's questions explored fantasies during masturbation and sex, yearnings for romantic or emotional involvement, and a range of other indicators of sexual orientation. "And on most of those variables," he reported, "most of the subjects made very dramatic changes which lasted many, many years." |
Robert Spitzer announced in 2000 that out of his study of 274 men and women who claimed to have changed their orientation, 74 merely made the decision to call themselves straight, or to stop having sex. But 200 had achieved "good heterosexual functioning" | ||
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Who were these people? One participant
agreed to speak to me if we used a pseudonym. Ben Newman was a married man
from Virginia who came to reparative therapy seven years ago, after his
wife had discovered yet another gay affair. "I was living a double
life," Newman said. "Happy husband and father, church-goer and
successful professional on the outside, rabid homosexual sex addict on the
inside. Suicide was becoming an increasingly appealing option. But I
really resented the suggestion that the only politically correct solution
for me was to abandon my wife and children, and throw myself into the gay
life. That wasn't what I wanted. "Most psychiatrists will say, your
sexual attitude is immutable - it's a fact - so adjust your beliefs to
suit it. But I was saying, it just doesn't feel right. Being gay doesn't
feel like me at my core. It's not a fact I feel comfortable with. I wanted
to change my sexual attitude instead." He says he now has a happy
marriage, although, like many ex-gays, his opposite-sex attraction has so
far been confined to his wife.
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Two participants of reparative therapy, who
claimed success, said that even before reparative therapy, the gay life
"wasn't what I wanted", and being born gay "wasn't
true."
"I just knew it in my gut." |
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How had it happened? Reparative therapy is
based on a theory of a child's early rejection by the same-sex parent. It
applies equally to lesbians, but the literature tends to focus on men and
states that homosexuality begins when a young boy experiences his father
as cold or hostile. To protect himself from the pain of rejection, he
develops "defensive detachment" - he rejects his father in
retaliation. But, in doing so, the boy rejects masculinity, and this leads
to a gender identity disorder. The little boy, having spurned masculinity,
finds he cannot be a real boy. "Defensive detachment emotionally
isolates him from other males," Nicolosi has written, "and from
his own masculinity. Females are familiar. Males are mysterious." The
boy feels excluded from male bonding activities, identifies with his
mother rather than his father, and inevitably - because opposites attract
- becomes sexually attracted to men. But what he is really searching for
in gay sex is his own forsaken masculinity. As Cohen describes it: "The desire
is connected to the hurt. When you get to the bottom of the wound and heal
it, the desire leaves you. To deal with my sexual desires for men, I had
to heal with my father. I jumped into his lap. I said, 'Dad, I need to
grieve in your arms now. Just let me cry.' I told him, 'I was not looking
for sex with all those men for all those years. I was looking for you in
their arms.' I healed the wound. So now there's no need for those same-sex
attractions to be in my body or my soul any more." His clients are encouraged to form healthy friendships with straight men, take vigorous physical exercise and use manly vocabulary such as "dude". Classic Freudian preoccupations with a client's mother and his supposed fear of women are largely dispensed with in this work. If the client can sort out his relationship with men, his feelings for women are assumed to take care of themselves.
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Nicolosi's theory is that homosexuality in
men comes from cold or hostile fathers.
The parental rejection theory applies equally to lesbians but the literature focuses on men. If a client can sort out his relationships with men, feelings for women are assumed to follow automatically. |
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And
why do they want to be straight? From Nicolosi's account of "the gay
lifestyle", they would have to be mad not to. On every indicator of
personal contentment, the doctor informs his audience, homosexuals score
badly. "Gays smoke more than straight men. They have more depression,
more group sex, more failed relationships. Gay couplings are
characteristically brief and very volatile, with much fighting, arguing,
making up again, and continual disappointments. We owe it to young people
to tell them that, if they go in that direction, these are the things they
will encounter. More drug abuse. More unhappiness. And we aren't even
talking about Aids. How much is all this about society's homophobia? Yes,
a little bit. But nothing like as much as it is about the pathology of
homosexuality."
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Nicolosi says "the gay lifetysle" is full of negatives, and that these negatives spring from the pathology of homosexuality, not from society's homophobia. | ||
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Later that morning, I find Drew Sermon alone
in the foyer. He cuts a slight figure and his young face - fine-boned, a
faint blush of acne - is thoughtful. "I've learned a lot of stuff I
wasn't expecting," he says. "Dr Nicolosi - when he was speaking
about the cause factors, the mother and father thing? I found that was
very true of my life. This feels way more informative than I expected. You
see, I know what the Bible says. I wanted to hear some other facts." And does Drew think he is hearing facts?
The question seems to startle him.
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Participants at the Love Won Out conference think they're hearing facts. | ||
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The one fact Drew hasn't heard today is that
ex-gays are accused of peddling a pack of lies. An anti-ex-gay movement
has been mobilising across America since the mid-1990s and activists often
picket events such as Love Won Out. The scenes have sometimes been ugly -
a placard at one boasted, "My God fucked your God up the ass."
Today, protesters in Nashville have chosen to hold a "counter
seminar" downtown instead and have invited the movement's leading
spokesman, Wayne Besen, gay activist and author of Anything But Straight:
Unmasking The Scandals And Lies Behind The Ex-Gay Myth. Besen's book begins with an incident the
author was barely able to believe when it happened. Newsweek magazine ran
a cover story in 1998 about John and Anne Paulk, formerly gay but
blissfully married. The Paulks were the poster boy and girl of a national
ad campaign splashing across the American media that summer, funded by
Christian ex-gay ministries. One night two years later, Besen received a
call from a friend in a Washington DC gay bar. Guess who was there,
chatting him up? John Paulk. Besen raced there, photographed Paulk, and
has been persecuting the ex-gay movement ever since. He ticks off the
victories on his fingers: of the four male stars of the 1998 ad campaign
thus far, he says, Paulk has been caught, another outed himself and a
third was discovered last summer taking part in a men-only orgy. Anything But Straight catalogues an astonishingly long list of ex-gays who became ex-ex-gays. There are counsellors caught giving nude massages to the men they are meant to be curing, and founders of ministries who fall in love and run off with each other. The stories are tragicomic, and in each the same cycle repeats: a honeymoon period of euphoria - I'm cured! - followed by the discovery that nothing has changed.
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Wayne Besen's book, Anything but
straight documents an astonishingly long list of ex-gays who
became ex-ex-gays.
"I've met a few people who've changed their behaviour - but no their orientation. The founder of every single ex-gay ministry has failed. All of them have failed." |
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But the author does not find any of it
funny. The book's prosecution case builds angrily, until so much damning
evidence has amassed that no serious scientific organisation could, you
would think, conceivably stand up for the ex-gay movement. Why would Narth
defend anything with so flawed a record? "Because," claims Besen, "the whole secular, scientific thing is a front. Dr Nicolosi is a fundamentalist Catholic, a religious fanatic disguising himself as a secular therapist. The vast majority of these therapists come from a religious background." Narth, he says, uses cod psychology to justify Christian homophobia. "Exodus International, the biggest ex-gay ministry in the world, promotes Nicolosi as a therapist to go to. He is the religious right! Narth is the religious right." In other words, sexual reorientation is nothing more than a fantasy born of Christian wishful thinking.
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For NARTH, the whole secular, scientific
thing is a front.
Sexual reorientation is nothing more than a fantasy born of Christian wishful thinking. |
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But if that is the case, how do we account
for Dr Robert Spitzer? A heterosexual atheist humanist, Spitzer undertook
his study on nothing more than a hunch. At the outset, he thought it
highly unlikely that anyone could change their sexual orientation. Yet he
came to the conclusion that homosexuality was a treatable condition. When
he announced that, for certain "highly motivated" homosexuals,
change "was possible", the US media went berserk. "Can gays
go straight? Yes - if they really want to!" exclaimed headlines. The
ex-gay movement was jubilant. Gay activists were stunned. But as details
of the study emerged, their incredulity turned to anger. It had taken Spitzer more than 18 months to find just 200 or so people willing to describe themselves as successfully converted. He found his interviewees by advertising through ex-gay organisations. Almost half were recruited through ex-gay ministries, and nearly a quarter by Narth. Religion was "extremely" or "very" important to 93% of them. One in five was a mental health professional (Cohen, for example, is a high-profile reparative therapist) or director of an ex-gay ministry, and more than three-quarters had previously lobbied for sexual reorientation. These are people who get paid to say that therapy works.
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Spitzer's sample was obtained by advertising
through ex-gay organisations, and nearly a quarter recruited through
NARTH. 93% of his sample felt religion to be "extremely" or
"very" important.
More than three-quarters had lobbied for sexual reorientation. These are people who get paid to say that therapy works. |
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For
many critics, this alone was enough to discredit the exercise. An article
in the APA's Psychiatric News likened it to testing a drug on people
recruited by the pharmaceutical company. But in addition, many of the
participants appeared to have been not so much altered from gay to
straight, as bisexual all along. Ten per cent of the men had never had gay
sex before therapy, whereas half had already slept with a woman. Only a
third of the women and half the men said that before therapy they were
"extremely" bothered by homosexual feelings. How gay were they?
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Was Spitzer's sample originally homosexual in the first place? Many appeared to be bisexual all along. | ||
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As with most statistics, everything depends
on how they are read. The percentage who were "extremely
bothered" by homosexual feelings after undergoing therapy fell to
zero. You could say zero was a sensational turnaround; or you might say
they weren't so gay in the first place. Two New York psychologists carried
out another study of reparative therapy at the same time as Spitzer, and
reached the opposite conclusion. "We interviewed 182 people who tried
very hard to change," Dr Ariel Shidlo told Newsweek. "The stakes
were really high for them. Some really thought that if they didn't change,
they would literally find themselves in hell... And they still
failed." "Spitzer?" Besen says. "I just don't understand the man. I told him, if there is one thing we know about these people, it is that when they say they've changed, they haven't." He shrugs, as though worn out with disbelief. "C'mon. He had John Paulk in his study, for chrissakes."
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Ariel Shidlo's study came to the opposite
conclusion as Spitzer's.
Spitzer's study even had John Paulk in it! |
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Spitzer sounds fairly worn out as well.
"If I were in my 30s," he says drily, "this is not
something I would advise somebody to do. It would not advance their
career." He has been condemned as a bigot, and claimed as a
cheerleader by the religious right. Wary of misrepresentation, he tries to
clarify once again the purpose of his study, and what he believes it
proved. It was very straightforward, he sighs. The received scientific
wisdom was that sexual orientation never changed. He found people who said
theirs had. He asked them questions designed to test their credibility,
and found that for a significant number it had changed to a significant
degree. "Yes, I think change is probably
extremely rare, otherwise it would not have taken so long to find the
participants. And, yes, the change I found was seldom from one extreme to
the other. But nevertheless, there was change. And that seems to me to be
a worthwhile discovery, isn't it?" No one has ever tested the efficacy of
gay affirmative therapy, Spitzer points out. If clients told a researcher
that it had worked for them, would we disbelieve them? No. When a
homosexual says he was emotionally damaged by reparative therapy, gay
activists do not doubt his word. "So," Spitzer asks, patiently
and deliberately, "why assume he is lying when he says it
helped?" Spitzer's argument is simple, but quite
sophisticated and persuasive. Even the most limited change would disprove
the assumption that change was never possible - and that would indeed be
interesting. But there is a crucial flaw in all ex-gay representations,
and unwittingly Spitzer exposes it in his final comment. "Some people
have suggested I ought to do a follow-up study." The idea would be to
see if anyone had fallen off the wagon. "But if you were doing an
evaluation of the treatment of cocaine addiction, say, and someone had a
relapse, you wouldn't say that the treatment was of no value, would
you?" You would not. But there is a crucial
distinction here, one that undermines the analogy Nicolosi and others
frequently like to draw between ex-gays and addicts. A recovering
alcoholic will always be an alcoholic; successful treatment can only
sustain his willpower. But to suggest an ex-gay can "relapse"
implies that sexual reorientation is only ever a triumph of willpower,
never a conversion of authentic desire.
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Spitzer concedes that "change is
probably extremely rare."
He uses even the most limited change as an argument for success. He refuses to do a follow-up study. Looks like the "change" reported is little more than willpower, not an authentic re-orientation of desire. |
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Ultimately, everything must come down to
what we mean by sexual reorientation. But when I ask Nicolosi to define
success, he seems surprisingly unconcerned, as though this were a rarefied
detail. "Good question," he says airily. "Would you
consider success," he muses, "a man who, OK, acted out four
times a week at the beginning of therapy and now acts out once a month?
Somewhat. Not great. OK, not great. Not no change, but not great." Not great at all. And where is his
interest in women? Nicolosi sighs. "You see, sexual
reorientation, half of it is to get rid of same-sex attraction. The other
half is hopefully opposite-sex attraction. Most clients just can't imagine
being attracted to women. A lot of them say, I just want to stop being
attracted to guys. And, hey, that is a workable treatment." But isn't attraction to women supposed to
follow on automatically? "I believe that, yes. We are sexual
beings. If you shut off one door, you've got to open up another door,
right? The trouble is, often my clients don't believe that." Nicolosi
is beginning to sound glib. It transpires that by the time many clients
complete therapy, attraction to women is still only the therapist's
prediction, not the client's reality. And apparently it doesn't even need
to come true.
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Spitzer equates a "diminishment of
problematic behaviour" with "cure".
Clients don't become attracted to the opposite sex. They don't have to become attracted to the opposite sex to be classified as successfully converted to heterosexual.. |
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We seem to have travelled a long way from
the radical claims being made so confidently on stage at Love Won Out. And
we are about to depart even farther. "Let's say," Nicolosi
suddenly suggests, "you work with a man for six months. Let's say he
acts out once a week in the beginning, but when he acts out he tortures
himself, beats himself up, thinks he's a pervert. After six months in
therapy, he understands why he acts out. He's still acting out once a
week, but it's more like a hollow ritual. He's not as upset with himself,
he's more hopeful of change in the future. Now, his behaviour is still the
same. Would you consider that a success?" Would you? "Yes," Nicolosi replies,
"I would consider that a success." Even the most successful
ex-gay, he adds casually, is always going to have to keep an eye on
himself, to make sure he "doesn't fall". But surely that is the opposite of inner
change? It sounds closer to a definition of willpower.
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Even an ex-gay who has a homosexual fling once a week is considered a success, so long as he can maintain appearances with wife and kids. | ||
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Is it OK? "Ex-gay" is a wholly
unambiguous expression. The message at Love Won Out is unequivocal: you
can be cured. The discrepancy between these promises and what reparative
therapy's own chief architect has just conceded seems startling - and for
the APA it is not OK at all. The APA warns that reparative therapy can be
deeply harmful, because a client who is fed false promises may experience
his own failure to change as a shameful personal indictment. Guilt,
depression and suicide can be the disastrous consequences of unsuccessful
therapy. "Those who have integrated their sexual orientation into a
positive sense of themselves," it maintains, "function at a
healthier psychological level than those who have not." In a peculiar way, the debate has muddled liberal and conservative vocabulary, until everyone's role is reversed. Besen was far and away the most straight-acting man I met in Nashville, though some of the ex-lesbians at Love Won Out would give him a run for his money in the butch department. Gay activist groups such as the Human Rights Campaign want to see reparative therapy banned, but the ex-gay movement appeals to homosexuals' right to freedom of choice.
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The ex-gay movement promises
"cure", but it is nothing more than playing tricks with
definitions.
APA warns that reparative therapy can be deeply harmful. |
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"People have a right to choose to live
as a homosexual, or to come out straight," argues Cohen. "It's a
matter of choice; they should have the chance. I'm not anti-anything. I'm
pro-possibility, pro-choice." And ex-gays have appropriated the old
gay activists' perennial plea on behalf of young homosexuals everywhere,
for "the truth". Mike Haley, Love Won Out's ex-gay leader,
echoes it nicely. He flashes a neon toothpaste smile and jokes that he'd
rather work at Starbucks. "It would be so much easier than this
work!" Then he looks grave. "But you have children basing their
life decisions on erroneous information. I just want the 16-year-old that
I once was to be given accurate information. If you are telling a child
that he is born gay, what other choice does he have but to be a
homosexual?" At Love Won Out, youngsters are listening
intently for information. Drew Sermon has made some friends and they eat
lunch together, a nervy circle of shy smiles. Daniel Nash, from near
Cincinnati, is 22 but looks about 15. How would it feel for him to believe
he could change, then discover he couldn't? He bites his lip and speaks
quietly. "It would probably be devastating to me. And to everyone
who's helping me. Right now, I don't want to think about that. I just want
to hope I can carry on and live a heterosexual life." Travis Wininger, 22, listens closely and
nods. "I find I'm really hopeful. I'm a psychology student, and Dr
Nicolosi presented a psychological model that was really helpful for me. I
saw how my life fitted that model. Right now. I've just entered a
heterosexual relationship." He gives a twitchy smile. "It's
scary! I feel self-conscious about whether I'll be good at it." Does he try to avoid looking at things
like men's fitness magazines? "Uh-huh." He drops his gaze.
"I say to myself, just remove the temptation ." Drew half-smiles
to himself.
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They ex-gay movement claims they are not anti-gay, only pro-choice. | ||
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As the day wears on, a chill of imminent
catastrophe seems to leaden Love Won Out's air. Later, Drew introduces me
to his father. Randy is a big, bearded, military man in jeans and boots,
but although his body is so different from the youngsters' edgy frames, it
seems choked by the same weight of frightened grief. At first Randy is
reluctant to talk, then doesn't stop. "When Drew told us, I was
devastated. I wanted to deny it - but I was hearing it come out of his
mouth. He said, 'If I could turn the feelings off, I'd like to. But I
don't know how.' So we decided we needed to come here to find out answers,
to figure out what to do." Does Randy believe his son will change?
He looks ashen, and for a moment broken. "It's possible he
won't," he whispers. "But I pray every day." Then, louder:
"You see, Drew knows it's wrong! He wants to change it! He said he'd
turn it off if he could." Randy tails off and gazes at the floor.
"That's what's so strange about the whole situation. He knows if he
continues in this lifestyle, he is going to hell. For him to make that
choice ? It's mind-boggling. It's blown me away." I spot the whole family later that night
in a hotel foyer. They are getting ready to go out and hear some country
music, before tomorrow's long drive home. Drew comes across and says
hello. "I'm so glad I made my mom happy, coming here. Well, I'd do
just anything to make my mom feel better. I thought, why not come, if it
makes her happy?" Has the day affected how he feels? 
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"if he continues in this lifestyle, he is going to hell." | ||
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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