An atheist, Ted Cox, spent the past two years going undercover as a gay man undergoing gay-to-straight therapy programs run by Christian groups (as if there were any other kind).
What he found was precisely what you would think: These programs do nothing to “convert” you from gay to straight. They just try to make you suppress your (gay) sexual urges. They make up their own “facts” — you’re not born with it, it’s the result of a traumatic childhood, Jesus can save you from The Gay, etc.
Sena Christian at Alternet recently interview Cox about his experience.
It’s horrifying:
I saw one man distraught that he was damaging his own sons, that they would end up gay because he was not enough of a man. And I wanted to just hug him, and tell him, “It’s OK, it’s alright. So what if your kids turn out gay? And you can’t turn them gay.” I became sad because I saw men reenact traumatic events from their childhood. The paperwork tells you [camp staff members] are not acting as professionals so you have no idea how ethical this is, how safe — psychologically — any of these programs are. I felt sad that their pain was being used to exploit them to make them feel like that was the reason they were gay.
Most of the interview just reveals the problems with these types of awful attempts at fixing something that was never broken in the first place.
But I’ll admit to laughing at Cox’s observation that one of the ways they tried to make you straight was by making you fall in love with the “most perfect man,” Jesus.
I don’t know how any decent Christian could be involved with any church that support these types of programs. To say they’re damaging is an understatement.
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Ted did an interview about this experience with atheist comedian Keith Lowell Jensen, which you can watch here and here.
