Reparative Therapy

An archive project for Stephanie Foote's GWS325 class (Lesbian/Queer Media Cultures) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spring 2014.

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A recent British documentary called "Undercover Doctor: Cure Me I'm Gay" featured a gay doctor attempting reparative therapy methods. These methods included aversion therapy, various modern techniques used in Christian camps and some new therapy including "right brain therapy". 

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Dr. Joseph Nicolosi - advocate and supporter of reparative therapy (2014)

http://josephnicolosi.com/ 

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Reparative Therapy of Homosexuals

In 1973, homosexuality wasn’t considered a disorder due to the actions of Robert Spitzer

The three “Big Heads” in psychology (Adler, Jung, and Freud) all believed that homosexuality was a disorder, but Robert Spitzer wrote the new definition in the DSM claiming that homosexuality was not a disorder

Conversion Therapy: psychotherapy aimed at eliminating homosexual desires and is used by people who do not think homosexuality is one variation within human sexual orientation, but rather, still believe homosexuality is a mental disorder.

Pray the gay away: an attempt to use religious intervention to change the way the person thinks. Generally, they think they can free a person from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.

No scientific resources or evidence to say homosexuality is a disorder or can be “cured”

NARTH: National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality

Aversion Therapy: attempts to modify behaviors--uses physical pain in association with images.  Torture, not therapy=one viewpoint

Unsuccessful method

“When you see an image that seems sinful, push the button that will shock you”

use of physical stimuli in attempt to modify the homosexual’s feelings

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Family counseling on the issue of being born gay and what to do to protect the Christian family from homosexuality.

2014- Focus on the Family

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‘I Am Sorry’— Alan Chambers’s Apology and the End of Exodus International

by James Kirchick Jun 24, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

We should all thank God that Exodus shut its doors. The Christian ‘reparative’ therapy group ruined the lives of untold numbers of gay people. James Kirchick should know: he witnessed it.

“Have you ever had experiences in the homosexual lifestyle?” I asked the 19-year-old man sitting across from me.

Michael (not his real name), was tall and slender; his windswept, dirty blond hair done up in a Flock of Seagulls–style do. His fey appearance and mannerisms might have made such a question superfluous under normal circumstances. But I was speaking with him at an annual retreat of Exodus International, which until last week had been the oldest and largest “ex-gay” Christian ministry in the United States, purporting to help its adherents achieve “freedom” from homosexuality (thus my use of the evangelical argot to describe a state of nature—sexual orientation—as a freely chosen “lifestyle”).  

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve definitely been around the homosexual lifestyle.”

He had lost count of how many men he had slept with, I was half expecting him to say, before one day hearing the Good Word and deciding that a life of homosexual promiscuity was not what Jesus Christ had intended for him. Or, perhaps he had developed a liking for pornography, which, according to one pamphlet I saw displayed at the conference, led its victims into a “Chamber of Death.” Either way, I was anticipating a response a bit more elaborate than the answer he ultimately gave.

"I worked in retail,” he replied.

Retail. This was Michael’s “experience” in homosexuality. Not surreptitiously stalking the men’s rooms at the mall, the erstwhile pastime of many an “ex-gay” Christian and family-values politician, but working at the mall itself. “I got to a point in my own life where it was a choice between my desires and what the Lord desired for me,” he said. And so he sought out Exodus on his own. Unlike many of the 700 people (the vast majority of whom were young men) gathered at the Ridgecrest Christian Conference Center in Asheville, North Carolina, that week, Michael’s parents had not forced him to go.

Mercifully, there comes a point when even the most committed of ideologues admit defeat.

My heart sank not only because this poor boy was telling me that his familiarity with homosexuality wasn’t stealing surreptitious kisses with a boyfriend but working at a clothing store with flamboyant gay colleagues, and that he thought this constituted sufficient “experience” of homosexuality to know that he wanted nothing to do with it. What really saddened (and angered) me was that he found himself in a situation in which living a painfully obvious lie that would cause him and whatever poor girl he ended up marrying enormous heartbreak seemed like the most desirable option available.

I thought about Michael earlier this week when I read a statement by Alan Chambers, the leader of Exodus International, the content of which was summed by the title, I am Sorry. In it, Chambers, who was first a client of Exodus before becoming its president in 2001, apologized to “the people who have been hurt by Exodus International.” Likening his behavior as president of the organization to a “four-car pileup” he caused in 1993, Chambers pleaded:

Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine.

Chambers then went one step further, doing what many of his most fervent critics, particularly “ex-gay survivors,” had long called on him to do, and announced that Exodus would shut down.

Though Exodus’s decision to get out of the so-called reparative therapy business came as a shock to many, the signals were apparent at least a year ago. In January of 2012, Chambers publically admitted that “99.9%” of the people he had met who had endured such programs experienced no meaningful transformation in their sexual orientation, and he apologized for Exodus’s erstwhile slogan of “Change Is Possible.” The organization had blared this message widely in full-page newspaper advertisements, luring thousands of people who wished to reconcile “unwanted same-sex attractions” with their deeply held faith. However benign groups such as Exodus might have thought their intentions were, the massive damage they inflicted is incalculable, readily apparent in the lives ruined, families broken, and individuals destroyed by a message that denied their humanity as gay people.

Chambers has much for which to apologize. When I interviewed him five years ago in North Carolina, his mantra was “The opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality. It’s holiness.” His certainty was unclouded by doubt, or at least public doubt; his righteousness bereft of humility. Indeed, he took to his cause with missionary zeal. When I asked him what he thought of the small group of people who had gathered outside the conference center to demonstrate against Exodus, he replied, “Jesus had protesters, so why should we experience anything less?”

At one breakout session I attended (where a literally limp-wristed man squeezed my arm tenderly as I entered the room), a self-described “Christian psychotherapist” explained, “God only created heterosexuals. We have to be careful about letting our words and language be hijacked by the enemy,” the “enemy” apparently being the gay-rights movement. “Homosexual is an adjective, not a noun,” he said, describing a set of behaviors rather than a person’s innermost identity and desires. To think otherwise is to fall into the trap of secular, fallen America, “this Burger King nation where you can have it your way.”

Acknowledging even then that he was aware of“only a few people who say their attractions have changed exclusively,” Chambers freely admitted his own continuing struggles with same-sex attraction and that being married to a woman was “not my diploma for healing.” At the same time, however, he preposterously asserted, “I don’t think Ted Haggard says anything about the ex-gay movement,” Haggard being the former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals who was exposed that year for hiring a male prostitute. Haggard’s indiscretion, he said, was just “an indication that pastors are human.”

Indeed, they are. But what Chambers and other proponents of the ex-gay myth got wrong was failing to see Haggard’s behavior as a result of the culture of denial and inhuman sexual repression that they cultivated. It was this same collective failure to recognize the naturalness—the humanness—of homosexuality that ultimately brought about the demise of Exodus. Mercifully, there comes a point when even the most committed of ideologues admit defeat. The accumulated evidence of the failure to “convert” gays became impossible to ignore.

When I interviewed him in 2008, Chambers boasted that he expected to have 10,000 Exodus member ministries within the following two years. Instead, as the country rapidly became more accepting of homosexuality, his organization folded in on itself. Ironically, Exodus was founded some four decades ago in response to what many Evangelicals saw as the fire-and-brimstone approach of most religious institutions, condemning homosexuality without any regard for those faithful Christians who felt attraction for members of the same sex. “I would like nothing more than for the Exodus to go out of business because the Church is doing its job,” Chambers told me. He got his wish, but it was due to his own latter-day perceptiveness and conscientiousness—however belated it was in evincing itself—and not because organized religion became any more enlightened on the issue. 

I never found out what happened to Michael. I like to think that he came around to realizing there is nothing “unholy” in being gay, and that he was able to find some way to maintain the faith he so clearly loved while also being true to himself. I despair, however, that he still struggles in an evangelical subculture consistently telling him his very nature is immoral.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

James Kirchick is a foreign correspondent based in Berlin. He is a columnist for the New York Daily News, Ha’aretz, and Tablet, and a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at [email protected].

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Exodus International was operational for 37 years, It closed down after leader, Alan Chambers, realized the damage his organization was doing to the LGBT community. He made a formal apology on OWN (Oprah).

(6/23/2013)

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Documentary: Our America - "God and the Gays" with Lisa Ling

Discusses the creation of the "Ex-Gay" Ministry, Exodus International.  Founder, Michael Bussee, renounces his efforts in preaching and encouraging reparative therapy.  

Original air date: June 20, 2013

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Article discussing John Paulk's apology to "parents, families, and their loved ones [who] were negatively impacted by the notion of reparative therapy and the message of change."

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South African Teens Die After Alleged Abuse At Reported Gay 'Conversion' Camp

April 30, 2013

Raymond Buys died two weeks after being put on life support two months into a three-month "training course" provided by Alex de Koker's Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. The 15-year-old Buys had brain damage and a broken arm and bruises at the time, and had emerged severely malnourished, dehydrated and covered in cigarette burns, according to the report.

Read more at HuffPost Gay Voices

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Butterfield issued her own response to the demonstrators, writing at The Gospel Coalition that "homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia." She also critiqued "three unbiblical points of view Christian communities harbor when they address the issue of Christianity and homosexuality"—the "Freudian position," the "revisionist heresy," and the "reparative therapy heresy." Regarding the last, she writes: "This position contends a primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God's gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ's body and still struggle with sexual temptation. This heresy is a modern version of the prosperity gospel. Name it. Claim it. Pray the gay away."

(2013)

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html

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http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/january-february/my-train-wreck-conversion.html

A Wheaton College professor recounts her conversion from lesbian to straight, leading to an outcry from the student body.

2013

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Dr. Robert Spitzer Retracts 'Ex-Gay' Study and Apologizes to LGBT Community (2012)

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Voices of Change, an organization sponsored by PATH (Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality), is a testimonial website providing cases of successful sexual orientation change efforts.

(2012)

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Hidden Camera Finds Reparative Therapy at Bachmann’s Clinics

By Lucas Grindley

July 9, 2011

New evidence has surfaced that Marcus Bachmann’s Christian counseling clinics are actually in the business of reparative therapy for gay people - a claim that he had denied.

His wife Michele Bachmann, a top Republican candidate for president, had clearly endorsed reparative therapy over the years by giving the welcome blessing at a Love Won Out conference in 2004 and by endorsing a book written by a woman who claims to be a reformed lesbian. But Marcus Bachmann had been coy about whether his team of approximately 20 therapists offer their help in turning gay people straight.

After giving a presentation called “The Truth About the Homosexual Agenda” to a group of Minnesota pastors in 2005, Marcus Bachmann told a local newspaper that, “if someone is interested in talking to us about their homosexuality, we are open to talking about that. But if someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that.” And that’s all anyone’s known about what happens to gay people at his clinics until now.

Truth Wins Out was formed in part to combat the myth that gays can be converted to straight, and it sent a hidden camera into Marcus Bachmann’s office with a man posing as a patient. On the tape, counselor Timothy Wiertzema reportedly assures that “It’s possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure.” He claims, “It’s happened! It really has happened to people.”

The undercover activist - John Becker - attended five sessions at the clinic. The plan of action by his therapist: “I really am going to recommend that we start working on how you can develop your attraction towards women.”

With these tapes, it will be hard for Marcus Bachmann to avoid accusations he performs reparative therapy, which is considered dangerous by The American Psychological Association, The American Medical Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, and The American Psychiatric Association. What might also complicate the situation for Marcus Bachmann is his company’s acceptance of state funding.

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Doctor Mungadze is the creator of "The Right Brain" reparative therapy, the therapy shown in the documentary "Undercover Doctor: Cure Me I'm Gay". Mungadze claims that if the 'patient' colours in a picture of their brain he can diagnosis their homosexuality and cure it by changing and analysing the colours. He is not a real doctor and claims that various glands are in the brain which actually exist in other points around the body. He also is colourblind. 

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John Cameron

Identified with the Mormon church

“Volunteered to be part of a study of ‘electric aversion therapy’  in 1976 at Brigham Young University at 24 years of age

Now 59 years old and head of the acting program at University of Iowa

Openly gay

Wrote a play '14' about his experience

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What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp

Ted Cox, a journalist, goes undercover at a Christian Gay to Straight Conversion camp. He found that the expensive (~$900) 48-hour religious conversion camp used controversial methods to convert its campers. The methods included 3 main 'healing touch' tactics, a re-traumatization of pubertal jr. high gym class and reenactments of personal times of vulnerability. 

(4/22/2010)