Why shouldn’t they be allowed to shape their own identity or pick their own therapists?

Indeed Joe, give them the right to shape their own identity. But if they are picking a therapist who they are about to place their trust in, would it not be good for them to investigate how accurate the claims of that therapist are?

If others have found that certain groups/therapists have been misleading or inaccurate in the supposed results of their treatment, you can hopefully understand why their former clients might want to warn prospective clients.

The UK does have groups who will support those seeking celibacy, or seeking to reduce/repress their same sex attractions, which may be a chosen option for those with religious or family reasons not to come out. However, some of those speakers at conferences (such as Nicolosi) go much further in their claims of change – claims that many of us have discovered to be bogus and detrimental. And some of us have found that the years of repression and self-enforced asexuality have not been to the benefit of our mental or spiritual health either.

… if an activist group disrupted your therapy session or the conference you were happy to attend

I agree that protesting outside a conference may not achieve the desired result – I suppose it very much depends on how the protestors are perceived. They may see themselves as offering a voice of caution to attendees, in love. The organisers may simply frame them (as you do) as an “activist group” and reinforce the whole ‘battle between good and evil’ routine – setting the protesters out as only trying to tempt attendees into some debauched ‘lifestyle’.
In the end, time will tell who has been bearing false witness. I think I know who. I just hope the false witnesses are found out before more people get hurt.

If 1+1 = 2, we can’t have people going around teaching that 1+1 = 3 and say that it is ok because we’re free human beings.

Yes we can because you are also free to say those people are deluded.

The issue is how you would have felt/reacted if an activist group disrupted your therapy session or the conference you were happy to attend when you were in the ex-gay movement.

Some of the friends I was referring to earlier are pursuing an “ex-gay” identity. They are not SSA but celibate (unfortunately all of the labels in this subculture mean different things to different people). They want to get rid of the attractions – or at least be functionally heterosexual. They know people like me who are merely ‘single’ or culturally ex-gay and they know people who are affirming gay.

Some want to get married. Some are already married with children and don’t want to get divorced because gay/SSA thoughts are some part of “who they are”. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to shape their own identity or pick their own therapists?

One of the biggest crimes of ex-gay conversion therapy, is their reinforcement of the fact that the most natural and primal aspects of being human, those of relationship, love, and sex are wrong. They teach us to feel guilty for who we love. They call being in love “emotional dependency”, and cause us to unknowingly hate ourselves and our desires, and that does not go away overnight.

The thousands of dollars we’ve spent on conferences, books, travel, etc, and the thousands of dollars we’ll spend trying to undo the harm.

Ex-gay conversion is not only a scam, but it is a crime against humanity, and like the journalist, I am standing against its existence.

A more accurate term would be EX-SEXUAL. Gay people who aren’t having sex are still gay, they just aren’t sexually active.

The ex-sexual can’t necessarily even say they are no longer attracted to SEX, they simply choose not to HAVE IT.

Celibacy would be the same for a gay OR straight person, as would be the understanding of what that is.

This is why ASEXUAL people, those not attracted to sex at all, would be interesting participants in this issue as would be bisexuals.

All of whom are outsiders, but who would add a dimension of experience and truth vital to comparative information.

What about asexuals and pressure to conform? What about the expectations for marriage and family? Is there gender attraction variance among them?

Do organizations like Exodus proliferate to ‘cure’ asexuals uncomfortable with THEIR orientation so that they engage in relationships that make them guilty and shamed for NOT wanting to have sex?

What about the indictment against NOT procreating? Are asexual told they are an evolutionary dead end and subject to ridicule because they ‘don’t naturally or don’t want to procreate’?

And most important, who MONITORS the quality of sex between gay and straight couples who have engaged in these programs?

Are they required to report to someone what kind of sex, how often and what it did for them?

I mean think about it, take perhaps a former lesbian who is inexperienced with a man, and a straight man whose only former partners, if any have been hetero women.

Would he be qualified to satisfy his ex lesbian wife, would she him? Would she be honest about if she IS or would HE be if she wasn’t? Would she know, do either of them have to talk about it to a third party?

What is the game face that these people have to put on to ‘prove’ they are having the most satisfying experience, with the ONLY thing that their church culture and closest associates care about?

And why is it their business? Because their church community is so HEAVILY invested that gay people do all of this to the satisfaction of their ex gay industry? And that the public goal has been reached?

As I understand it, Dr. Warren Throckmorton is in NO relationship at this time. I know of gay people who have chosen celibacy, but it’s a plateau, a neutral zone that doesn’t test attraction one way or the other.

So it IS deceptive to heteros that THIS is being ex gay.
Opposite sex relationships between ONE hetero partner or BOTH who have renounced previous gay lives requires a narrow range of experience.
Just as virgins have no examples to draw on and compare, the same might be true of the aforementioned.

I’m just wondering about what qualifies as satisfactory for the purposes of the ex gay industry and how would they know unless they ARE asking invasive questions.
If there is a DADT veil of privacy that the ex gay industry doesn’t breach, there is also a wall of misinformation they can put between ex gays and the uninformed public.

I remember having a conversation with Chad Thompson and something red flagged: at the time, he was 27 years old and had never dated a woman or been in a relationship.

He was ‘waiting for the right woman to come along’.
I remember thinking that rather sounded like a teenager and that the most likely woman would be either virginal and inexperienced, or an experienced woman convinced she could imprint him for HIS lack of it.

So I find the very nature of the ex gay industry, or many heteros who are convinced it’s their duty to change gay people to be PREDATORY, unrealistic and arrogant.

But the terms on which sexuality is supposed to satisfy religious beliefs (not the individual) for making babies, having spouses and the contingency of equal rights and civil status, self serving in the most arrogant, self serving and dispassionate way EVER.

That it is such a simple answer to this question brings into discussion what this is really about– and it is not faith, morals, or god’s will. It is about how much the very existence of gay people offends, frightens, and entices some straight people, and some wanna-be-straight but ain’t people.

but it is about psycohlogy, and self destructive behaviour. Wanna stop being an alcoholic? Stop drinking. Very simple solution. Alcoholics can’t change until something else becomes more important than the next drnk.

Lest anyone be confused, I am not comparing being gay to being an alcoholic. Plenty of people have no problem with being gay, just like plenty of people have no problem being straigth, and both bring similar rewards and benefits in life. But plenty of people do have problems being healthily straight. As do some gay people.

The latter are natural marks of the ex-gay con men and women. What I have seen in every ex-gay person I have ever read about is either explicit self hatred or implied self-hatred through continuously self-destructive behavior,, neither of which knows a sexual orientation

Journalists, any kinds of neutral observers are not really privy to the real nuts and bolts of what these therapists do, or the environments that are created.
We usually hear from survivors or people going undercover.

NEVER is the ex gay industry open to scrutiny or their success stories investigated for their veracity.

Religious institutions, or those operating under umbrella organizations, rarely get such scrutiny, otherwise they cry that it’s a restriction on their religious freedom.

Religious belief is not psychiatric counseling, and if one could look at mental delusions, a great deal of it is based on some form of religious context. Even those who are schizophrenic or have some other debilitating disorder, know all the pertinent religious references.

Which, it can be argued, committed Christians wouldn’t try to say they can cure disorders like schizophrenia or BPD or OCD with a lot of prayer. They would be doing something risky and irresponsible.
Even when reminding someone anti gay of that, the tendency is to blow off that fact, and also the fact that the reason why doctors were OBLIGATED to do further research and strike homosexuality from the DSM and the difference between homosexuality and the aforementioned is SELF RELIANCE.

I’ve asked to of all the OTHER human behaviors listed in the DSM has that prompted them to use it for the purposes of marriage discrimination?

Homosexuality is the ONE thing that people are OBSESSING over and I have t wonder if that’s a paraphilia unto itself.

A person would be hard pressed to be both extremely well informed about the ex-gay movement and at the same time going to see Nicolosi for anything other than entertainment purposes. These well informed people would know that neither Nicolosi nor anyone else has demonstated any success in changing anyone’s sexual orientation from gay to straight.

If they were trying to pursue celibacy, that would be a different situation. But again, how Nicolosi and his ilk would be at all useful or necessary in pursuing celibacy is beyond me as well.

The conferences, support groups and therapy sessions they freely choose to attend are ‘safe places’ for them to discuss their feelings about faith and some form of SSA identity.

If this Facebook group were planning to befriend and really get to know the community they intend to “rescue”, that would be OK. But that wouldn’t be as much fun as a just ‘war’ on ‘evil therapists’ would it?

There were some simple and straightforward answers, that said for those gay people to love themselves and BE loved by a more welcoming and supportive environment.
Excellent advice.

As you all know, the conditioning to hate being gay or have that support begins early.
Youngsters are not allowed to associate with other gay kids or straight allies.
Note the vehemence in which GSA clubs were banned or objected to. And during a time when gay children are at their most vulnerable and in need of coming out.
Look at the character assassination of Kevin Jennings and the inception of GLSEN.

As I have pointed out, there are perfectly normal people who are conditioned to hate their natural attributes, women and certain ethnic groups are especially insecure in this and it results in the SAME psychological damage and desperation that makes them endure whatever financial and physical pain and hardship to conform.

The BEST approach to this is exactly what was mentioned in the comment thread that followed: healthy affirmation of what is God given and ways to channel that attribute into something positive and strong.

I know blacks conflicted about their ethnic features, especially their hair. I know Asians who prefer to have ’round eyes’ and curvy girls that want to be skinny.
And we have seen the wreckage in public as to what can result.
Think Michael Jackson and the disappearance of his nose. Think of the models, and actresses who have died from anorexia. Think of those people who became addicted to plastic surgery. People who were otherwise attractive and healthy and normal…not so deformed that the surgery was even necessary, but they underwent procedures anyway.

And think about the sorts of plastic surgeons and entertainment agents and so on, who indulge the insecurity and have profited greatly from it.

Blacks who grew up during Jim Crow, and Jews under the fist of the Soviet Union have similar psychological damage.
This is a calculation to keep each respective group weak, diasporic and self hating and dependent.

Were the interventions and influence of the Nicolosi’s and Chambers and so on purely pastoral, it would still be dangerous.
But they engage in political action to maintain constant tacit war on gay people, with the complicity of people who are ignorant of what they are doing and how they are doing it.
Much of the general public believes gay people can change and their socio/political equality is contingent on changing.
That is indescribably dangerous. Would anyone consider this for Jews, curvy women or people with epicanthic folds in the eyes.

The bottom line being, one MIGHT change their natural attributes with invasive, painful and expensive methods, but they SHOULDN’T HAVE TO, nor BE EXPECTED TO nor IS IT NECESSARY.

to be acceptable to society and given equal protection and equal rights.

Some of these interventions have had horrible results. No less so with ex gay conversion.
Unqualified people are messing with something they shouldn’t be and when THEY fail, just as no doctor can force unnecessary or invasive and intense procedures on someone who doesn’t need it, they also can’t exploit the same person because they are insecure about themselves.

Ethics would prevent it.

I was rattled by that boy, on stage during that religious exorcism. Reminded me all over again of that other boy in CT on the floor of his church rolling around and convulsing.

Why such a BIG SHOW and putting these boys on performing for the crowd?
Why should such a deeply person PRIVATE part of who one is, that is sexual orientation, be a part of a extremely public display?

These boys might as well have been put in public stocks and been shouted at.
Truly barbaric and smacking of primitive human sacrifice for the prurient interests of these churches.

I’m not impressed, I’m PISSED!
Especially because KIDS are submitted to this crap!

And this is one war on the travesty that is ex gay conversion is one I’d happily like to see on our turf, and sign up for post haste.