← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Rudel
Thread ID: 10472 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-10-14
2003-10-14 04:20 | User Profile
Going straight (Filed: 12/10/2003)
New research published last week claims that homosexuals and lesbians who undergo psychiatric therapy can change their sexuality. Charles Laurence in New York meets three of the study's 'converts'
From his earliest memories, Jeff Johnston was one of the girls. Before he was five, he would shun the rough and tumble of boys' play, and stay in the house with his mother and sisters. He looked liked his mum and, relatives would say, acted just like her, too.
At seven, he ran away, terrified, from several encounters" with older boys. At high school, he joined the girl gang as a "peer" rather than a suitor, and realised that he was homosexual while reading pornographic magazines, and finding the men in the pictures far more attractive than the women.
But these days Johnston, 40, is married with three sons: Nathaniel, six, and Aden and Brendon, twins of three. "Gay, I was ashamed and afraid," he says.
"There was a constant conflict between my Christian faith and my feelings, I always wanted a family and children in the normal way, and I was terrified of Aids. Now, I have a wonderful marriage and my children, like those of every dad, are brilliant and beautiful."
Johnston is one of the 200 former homosexuals and lesbians who took part in a study by Dr Robert Spitzer, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, New York. The publication of his findings, in the US journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, has created an uproar.
Dr Spitzer concluded that homosexuals can change their sexuality. His study, first revealed at a conference in 2001 but published only last week, created even more of an impact among psychiatrists and homosexual organisations because, in 1973, he had been instrumental in deleting homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's list of official mental disorders.
That decision - the foundation of the belief that homosexuality is nature, not nurture, and therefore beyond free will and moral choice - is at the heart of the "gay liberation" movement.
But his new study found that 78 per cent of males and 95 per cent of females who voluntarily underwent the "reparative" or psychiatric therapy reported a change in their sexuality.
And of the 143 men and 57 women who participated, 66 per cent of males and 44 per cent of females had achieved what he called "good heterosexual functioning".
This he defined as being in a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship, getting "emotional satisfaction" to a point of seven on a 10-point scale, having heterosexual sex at least once a month, and never, or rarely, fantasising about someone of the same gender during heterosexual sex.
"My conclusion is that the door is open," Dr Spitzer said. "I came to this study as a sceptic - I believed that a homosexual, whether born or made, was a homosexual and that to consider their orientation a matter of choice was wrong. But the fact is that if I found even one person who could change, the door is open, and a change in sexual orientation is possible."
Dr Spitzer has said repeatedly that as an "atheist Jew" his only interest in the issue is scientific truth, adding that an orthodoxy which forbids acknowledgement of the possibility of change is as flawed as that which labels homosexuality an act of will and morally wrong.
But gay rights groups insist that Spitzer is a "cultural conservative" who is supporting "therapies" for changing behaviour which are doing psychological damage to troubled homosexuals.
According to Joan Garry, the executive director of Glaad, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation: "No research nor findings should have any bearing on whether people - gay, lesbian, bisexual or straight - are treated fairly.
Spitzer's conclusions are based on a self-selected sample of people who are so troubled by their sexual orientation that they will go to any lengths to try to 'change' it."
In London, Peter Tatchell, a gay rights campaigner, said: "Everyone I have spoken to who has been through this so-called treatment says it has not only failed to convert them to heterosexuality, but it has caused them immense psychological and emotional harm."
Both the scientists and the campaigners complain that Dr Spitzer's sample of 200 people is bogus because most came from Christian fundamentalist communities and were simply tormented by the social pressure brought to bear against their natural sexual orientation.
Dr Spitzer agrees that the participants were "highly motivated" but that none the less they managed to change to his definition of "good heterosexual functioning". And in their own words, homosexual "converts" describe social pressure as only part of the cause of their misery and faith as only part of the cure.
"Changing was a long process that took many years, and at the heart of it was relationship issues," said Richard Cohen, 50, who became a psychotherapist and now works with troubled homosexuals. "To make behavioural change, you have to go into the past and discover the wounds that created the problem.
"This is what I found for myself: I had a fear of my father, an angry man who frightened me; my mother was overbearing and I was too close to her; I had an older brother who was physically abused - beaten - by my father and who in turn abused me; my uncle saw my needs, and then polluted our relationship with sexual abuse; and I was a sensitive kid who was bullied at school."
Mr Cohen, a married father of three children aged 20, 18 and eight, says the key to change is to fit into gender roles that have nothing to do with sex: "A man must first be able to be a man with men, to find his gender identity. When he does, opposites attract and he will want a woman."
Ashley, 47, was a lesbian committed not only to sex with women but to the "activist" lifestyle in Los Angeles, until she started therapy in her late 20s. Now she is married, with a son of 10, and was among the women studied by Dr Spitzer.
But although she started going to church during her therapy and says that her faith and the church community helped her change her orientation, it was a search for emotional stability that turned her from her lesbian lovers.
"I knew as a teenager that I was a lesbian, and at 18 the magic moment came and I acted on my feelings with a woman 13 years older," she said. "For years I was totally committed to the lifestyle. But I was not happy. Some of my relationships lasted three or four years, and my family was tolerant and I would go home with my lovers. But something was wrong."
Ashley realised in her 20s that her lesbian community seemed unable to offer calm, stability and a sense of security. "Every relationship was so intense," she said. "There was anger and jealousy and I could not bear to be away from my lover for even a few minutes.
There was also violence and a great deal of alcohol abuse. These things - unhappiness, alcoholism - are symptoms of people functioning in a way they are not designed to, and, yes, I think that is morally wrong."
Ashley found herself turning away from women for sex after realising in psychotherapy that, all along, she had been looking for a mother figure.
Her mother had been an emotionally unstable woman who would one minute be an attentive, safeguarding parent, and the next "absent". Her father, meanwhile, was a hard-working provider whom she hardly knew.
"I was looking for my mother in all the wrong women. When I realised that, I slowly started to find men more attractive, or at least I found the guy who is now my husband attractive," she said. "And I simply no longer want to have sex with women."
For Jeff Johnston, the transition to physical attraction to the opposite sex was not as immediate. Even with the woman he fell in love with, Judy, with whom he recently celebrated his 10th wedding anniversary, the chemistry was elusive in the beginning.
"It was terrifying, horrible," he said. "Our dating relationship was really rough. I was in my early 30s, and I was trying to do stuff that guys do when they are 16 or 18.
"But now it's wonderful," he says, describing how the couple found true happiness after their wedding. "We had a two-year honeymoon."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$M1OGKRJNPI1WDQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/10/12/wgay12.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/12/ixworld.html
2003-10-14 11:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Rudel]From his earliest memories, Jeff Johnston was one of the girls. Before he was five, he would shun the rough and tumble of boys' play, and stay in the house with his mother and sisters. He looked liked his mum and, relatives would say, acted just like her, too.
At seven, he ran away, terrified, from several encounters" with older boys. At high school, he joined the girl gang as a "peer" rather than a suitor, and realised that he was homosexual while reading pornographic magazines, and finding the men in the pictures far more attractive than the women.[/QUOTE]
The 247th fact that tells me that homosexuals are not born bent is their prepubescent knowledge of their homsexuality. At this stage of our lives, our views of the males and females is not driven by biology but by the environment.
Take Jeff, for example, maybe it was his personality or some freakish women who insisted that Jeff not be masculinized or pushed out the door to play with the other boys. So, when he was five, he stayed with the women folk who, being crude, probably constantly engaged in both man-bashing and man-lusting in front of the boy. They were teaching Jeff to want to be a woman who lusted after men.
When Jeff was seven, before any biology could kick in, he was already being sexualized with porn.
Every once in a while I hear a story about some fight between a school and a mom over little Johnny wanting to wear a dress to kindergarten. What kind of freak parents allow their little boys not just to wear dresses but to wear them to school? And, we're told that little Johnny was born this way? No need to insist that something is congenital when their are freak parents around defending the nobility of dressing their boy as a girl.
2003-10-14 14:03 | User Profile
I also believe that homosexuality is caused by the environment. It is not in our genes to prefer preferences such as hair color, body build, certain personalities, etc., in our partners, these are shaped by the environment we grow up in. The same is true with homosexuality. If we say that homosexuality is genetic, then we need to also look for the gene that causes people to abuse their spouses and that cause certain people to look for abusive partners. Homosexuality is another type of abusive relationship, imo. We are genetically created heterosexual, for God created male and female organs for reproductive purposes. Promisciuity is another way to abuse one's sexuality, for it promotes irresponsibility and broken homes, neither of which are good for children or the emotional and physcial being of the parents.
A friend of mine was a home health care nurse and she had 11 patients that were homosexuals dying of AIDS. They would tell her more than she wanted to know about their lives and she she said in 11 cases out of 11, there was some type of abuse involved in the patients' childhoods.
2003-10-14 23:14 | User Profile
I don't buy any of this crap. These reformed homos don't actually claim that they are sexually atracted to women, because they aren't. They just went back in the closet, that's all. Fags and dykes have always been around and always will be.
2003-10-14 23:54 | User Profile
I'm undecided about how realistic it is to straighten out a homosexual. I don't think there is a genetic cause to it, but changing anyone in any regard is exceedingly difficult, how much more so would an extreme perversion like homosexuality? It isn't like a shoe fetish, but a corruption of their whole being.
But, if we can get them back in the closet, I'm all for it.
2003-10-15 04:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]I'm undecided about how realistic it is to straighten out a homosexual. I don't think there is a genetic cause to it, but changing anyone in any regard is exceedingly difficult, how much more so would an extreme perversion like homosexuality? It isn't like a shoe fetish, but a corruption of their whole being.
But, if we can get them back in the closet, I'm all for it.[/QUOTE]
I think that homosexuality is akin to alcoholism.
I don't doubt that for both there is (usually) a genetic predisposition. Many alcoholics will tell you that they were "born" with it, and it's prevalence in some genetic groups (American Indians, Irish, Finns, Russians) and absence in others (Southern Italians, Armenians, Jews) indicates a genetic component. But, and here's the rub, nobody is really "born" an alcoholic, because one must be definition first drink, and to excess. I know many recovering alcoholics (many relatives) and they nearly to a man say that their first drinking experience was profoundly different from that of others. It was a monumental event for them, often very negative. But they chose to drink. They became alcoholics by drinking with the wrong genetic equipment. In short, alcoholism is a combination of genes and (at least partially) volitional behaviour.
I've also known a lot of fags (love the sinner, hate the sin, as it were) and it's really very similar: they generally report always having had feelings for the same sex, but they became confirmed homosexuals only by acting on those feelings, usually as teenagers with older men/women. That's actually one of the best kept secrets of the gay-lesbian world - there's generally some experience they had as teenagers with an older person of the same sex. This is hinted at above.
One gets confirmed in these things. Anything pleasureable can become a compulsion, after all. Alcohol, drugs, sex of any kind, but especially homosexual sex. The often bizarre compulsivity associated with homosexuality speaks loudly of its addictive nature.
St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans lumps alcoholism and homsexuality together - they're all just soul-destroying vice, and both can be "treated" in the same way. The exclusive success of 12-step programs aimed at treating alcohol and other addicitons indicate that the "spiritual" approach can work on our homosexual brothers and sisters as well as it can for alcoholics, drug addicts, and compulsive gamblers.
But, the first step to recovery is to recognize that there is a problem - and as long as we have the AMA running around saying that homosexuality is not a disease - despite the fact that fags suffer a debilitating set of diseases and have a life expectancy of about 30 years old - few will be able to recognize their sickness and so seek the help that is available. This is as absurd as saying that alcoholism isn't a disease because people are born with a predisposition to it. Heck, medical science has described many genetic factors in recognized diseases, and there's no objective reason to except homosexuality from the usual standards. Well, other than politics. It's clear that the medical establishment's insistence that homosexuality is somehow normal - despite the many life-destroying problems attendant upon homosexual behaviour - is clearly Lysenkoism at it's most damaging. The fact that guys named Spritzer were behind the original push to "normalize" behaviour always considered diseased by any healthy society speaks loudly to the Tribal motivations behind this anomolous position. (Did Kevin McDonald write that one up?)
There is, by the way, a Catholic organization aimed at helping homosexual Catholics live in accordance with the moral teachings of the Church called "Courage" which you can find here:
[url]http://couragerc.net/[/url]
If you're one of my brothers or sisters in Christ struggling with homosexuality, and you want to lead a normal life, I urge you to check it out.
Walter
2003-10-15 23:25 | User Profile
[I]Here is some ammo for those that implicate environment as being the determinative factor. That or blacks have been endowed with genes receptive to homosexual behaviour at a mind-boggling rate. Of course it could just be a consequence of an innate sex drive perpetually revved up to such an extent that the person cares nothing for what form the outlet assumes. Whatever --[/I] :yucky: !
[SIZE=4]Zim prison sex common despite HIV rate[/SIZE]
Harare
15 October 2003 10:42
Up to 70% of male Zimbabwean prisoners have sex with other males in jails where the HIV prevalence rate is estimated to be 60%, the state-owned Ziana news agency said on Tuesday.
The news agency cited a doctor from a government referral hospital who said many prisoners seeking medical attention have been involved in same-gender sexual acts, which is illegal in the Southern African country.
"Out of all the prisoners that we attend to on a daily basis, about 60% to 70% of them admit to have had sex with other males at one time or the other," Blessing Mukumba was quoted as saying.
Sixty percent of the prisoners admitted to the hospitals are infected with HIV, according to research done by the referral hospitals, Ziana said.
A prison officer said same-gender sex was widespread in the overcrowded jails, but said it was difficult to detect despite regular patrols.
In 1993 a lawmaker and now Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Edna Madzongwe, suggested the provision of condoms for prisoners to curb the spread of HIV, but was rebuffed because such a move would be tantamount to legalising homosexuality in prisons. In January the country's prisons held 24 500 inmates, far exceeding their capacity of 16 000.
The government in July revised the HIV/Aids tally, putting the percentage of Zimbabwean adults infected with the HIV/Aids at 24,9%, down from 33,7% recorded in 2000 by the United Nations.
However, Zimbabwe remains one of the countries worst affected by the pandemic in the world. An average of more than 3 000 Aids-related deaths occur each week in Zimbabwe. - Sapa-AFP
[URL=http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=22039]story[/URL]