‘Pray away the gay’ therapies quickly losing ground in the United States

The Raw Story– AFP,  July 24, 2013

People gather for the 43rd annual San Francisco Pride Parade on June 30, 

2013, in San Francisco, California (Getty Images/AFP/File, Sarah Rice)

As gay marriage wins wider acceptance across the United States, support for therapy aimed at “converting” homosexuals appears to be losing ground.

Although California’s move to ban the practice for minors looks set to be followed by other states, there are still plenty of psychotherapists offering the controversial service.

Often with links to conservative Christian organizations, they openly advertise treatment regarded as unethical and profoundly damaging by mainstream medical opinion.

Ryan Kendall, now a 30-year-old student at New York’s Columbia University, was on the receiving end of such therapy as an adolescent.

His parents discovered that he was gay by reading his journal when he was a 14-year-old growing up in a conservative community in Colorado Spring, Colorado.

He said that at that age, he already was fully aware of his sexuality and knew he could not change.

But that did not prevent his family from forcing him to see a series of conversion therapists over the course of the next two years.

“They would tell me that less than one percent of the world population was gay or lesbian,” he recalled in an interview with AFP.

“That I would die of AIDS before I was 30. That God disapproved of who I was, that my family disapproved, that society disapproved.”

For Kendall, the treatment ended when he ran away from home at the age of 16 and cut all ties with his family. But the trauma continued.

“I lost everything. My family, my faith, the roof over my head, educational opportunities. For the next nine or 10 years I was suicidally depressed. I was homeless off and on, I began abusing drugs.

“This kind of damage is not something you get over, you develop symptoms of PTSD,” he said, referring to the psychic damage exhibited by some emotionally shattered soldiers after in warfare.

“You live with that for the rest of your life.”

In what was widely seen as a benchmark of changing attitudes, gay rights activists were able last month to celebrate the closure of the oldest and best-known organization dedicated to the cause of gay conversion through therapy and prayer.

Exodus International, established in 1976, had some 150 branches across the United States and Canada. Prior to closing, its leader Alan Chambers issued an apology for the “pain and hurt” the organization’s activities had caused.

Chambers acknowledged last year that 99.99 percent of those who had undergone conversion therapy had not changed their sexual orientation.

Such figures do not convince Dr Tara King, a psychotherapist in Brick, New Jersey, who remains an advocate of a process that she says worked on herself but is expected to soon be outlawed for the under-18s in her state.

“If it is law, I will stop,” the former lesbian said with a smile before going on to explain why she regarded the impending legislation as an attack on religious freedom and unwarranted state interference in how parents bring up their children.

Sitting in her surgery, a huge Bible in front of her, the now celibate 49-year-old recounted how she had undergone nine years of therapy after realizing, at 24, that she could not reconcile her attraction to women with her religious faith.

“It was a lot of work. It was painful,” she said. “It was nine years before I stopped having same sex attraction. It is no different from a person with an alcohol addiction who will have cravings for years.”

Her patients are often youngsters sent to her by their parents, but she denies the process of examining and challenging their feelings is necessarily harmful.

“You are just talking about what the client wants to talk about, challenging their thoughts and offering some solutions. It is really a dialogue, and I’m not sure how a dialogue can be harmful,” she said, adding that “there is no shock treatment” during the therapy.

King admits that she can do little to influence a teenager who does not want to change, but she remains convinced that every homosexual has the potential to become heterosexual because the former option is “not the best plan that God has for them.”

A bill that would prevent licensed therapists from counseling gay and lesbian youths to change their sexual orientation was approved by New Jersey’s Senate last month and is currently awaiting final approval by the state’s governor.

The states of New York and Massachusetts are expected to follow the lead of California.

(Photo: Alexandria)

Related Articles:

‘Gay cure’ no longer reimbursed

Dutch insurers pay for Christian anti-gay therapy

Jeremy Marks: 'I began to think that perhaps we’d got it
really wrong. ' Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt for the
Guardian

Experience: I tried to 'cure' gay people
'Ex-gay' group Exodus International shuts down
California law bans gay teen 'conversion' therapy
'Conversion therapy' for gay patients unethical, says professional body


About the Challenges of Being a Gay Man – Oct 23, 2010 (Saint Germain channelled by Alexandra Mahlimay and Dan Bennack)

“ ... You see, your Soul and Creator are not concerned with any perspective you have that contradicts the reality of your Divinity – whether this be your gender, your sexual preference, your nationality – or your race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or anything else.The only identity that has any fundamental or lasting relevance to your Soul is your Divinity. Any other way you may label or identify yourself is transitory. It changes from one incarnation to the next. ..."

"The Akashic System" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, God, Benevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.)

Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon: Regarding homosexuality or transsexuals. WHY are they the way they are and WHY are they not accepted in mainstream society?

Answer: [From the Kryon Office]

There is often a tremendous amount of information on subjects that are not necessarily part of the on-line magazine Q&A database. Kryon has been channelling for fourteen years, with 9 books covering many, many topics. Homosexuality was one of them from the very beginning. Please see our "Books index page" for subjects contained in the Kryon books: [http://www.kryon.com/direct.html]

An excerpt from Kryon Book 6, page 306

Question from the book: Dear Kryon, I am gay, and an enlightened man. I live in an American society that barely tolerates me, and actually has some laws against my way of life. The church I used to belong to cast me out as being evil and anti-God. I don't feel that I am violating some Human ethic. My love is as true as any heterosexual, and I am a light worker. Tell me what I should know.

Answer from the book: Dear one, less than two generations from now, there will be those who find this book and laugh at the quaintness of this very question. Before I answer, let me ask you and those reading this to examine a phenomenon about Human society and "God."

Thirty years ago, interracial marriage was considered to be wrong by the laws of God. Now your society finds it common. The spiritual objections around it were either dropped or "rewritten" by those divinely inspired and authorized to do so. Therefore, your actual interpretations of the instructions from God changed with your society's tolerance level--an interesting thing, indeed, how the interpretations of God seem to change regularly to match a changing culture!

The truth, of course, is that you find yourself in a situation that is known to create a test for you. Right now, in this time, you have agreed to come into your culture with an attribute that may alienate you from friends and religious followers. You have faced fear of rejection and have had to "swim upstream," so to speak, just as an everyday life occurrence. Your contract, therefore, has been set up well, and you are in the middle of it. Additionally, like so many like you, you have a divine interest in yourselves! You feel part of the spiritual family. What a dichotomy indeed, to be judged as evil by those who are the high spiritual leaders--interpreting God for today's culture.

Now I say this: What is your intent? Is it to walk with love for all those around you and become an enlightened Human Being in this New Age? Is it to forgive those who see you as a spiritual blight on society? Can you have the kind of tolerance for them that they seem not to have for you? Can you overlook the fact that they freely quote their scriptures in order to condemn you, yet they don't seem to have the love tolerance that is the cornerstone of their own message?

If the answer is yes, then there is nothing else you must do. Your INTENT is everything, and your life will be honored with peace over those who would cause unrest, and tolerance for the intolerable. Your sexual attributes are simply chemistry and setups within your DNA. They are given by agreement as gifts for you to experience in this life. Look on them in this fashion, and be comfortable with that fact that you are a perfect spiritual creation under God--loved beyond measure--just like all humans. But then you know that, don't you?