'Ex-Gays' Seek a Say in Schools

From the LA Times courtesy of AlterNet:

Unable to stop it, they have turned to a new strategy: demanding equal time for their view in public schools and on college campuses.

Conservative Christians and Jews have teamed up with men and women who call themselves "ex-gay" to lobby — and even sue — for the right to tell teenagers that they can "heal" themselves of unwanted same-sex attractions.

They argue that schools have an obligation to balance gay-pride themes with the message that gay and lesbian students can go straight through "reparative therapy." In this view, homosexuality is not a fixed or inborn trait but a symptom of emotional distress — a disorder that can be cured.

And

Even the most ardent champions of ex-gay therapy acknowledge that it's not always possible to banish unwanted attractions. Nicolosi says only one-third of his patients are ever "cured" — and even then, "that doesn't mean they never have a homosexual thought or feeling again."

Embarrassing lapses have plagued the ex-gay movement: In the 1970s, two of the men who founded Exodus fell in love and left their wives to live together. In the 1980s, the founder of Homosexuals Anonymous was caught having sex with men who sought his help going straight. In 2000, a leading ex-gay speaker with Focus on the Family was photographed leaving a gay bar.

When Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, interviewed 200 people who had sought to change their sexual orientation, he concluded that many of them had succeeded and were happier for it. But many of his subjects for the 2001 study had been referred by — or worked for — ex-gay groups, and Spitzer relied entirely on their self-reporting of thoughts and desires. He now says that some of his subjects may have been deceiving themselves or lying to him.

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You know, I'm not particularly sure myself that homosexuality is some sort of inborn or genetic trait, like blue eyes or dark skin. To the best of my knowledge, the "evidence" for such a concept is pretty weak, and it strikes me that most of the research in this direction is driven by a need to prove to religious homophobes that homosexual behavior is not chosen, and therefore not a sin. On the other hand, I don't really know why there needs to be biological evidence that being gay is not a "lifestyle choice," or why intolerant religious people even need to be persuaded of that. Even in the 21st century, sex is still very mysterious. I think it's safe to say that no one, gay, straight, or bisexual, is able to explain why they like what they like. No one is able to say that what turns them on was freely chosen at some earlier point in their lives. Why do I like super-short hair on women? I have no idea. What is it about belly buttons that gets me wild? You got me. Why are some people into feet, or S and M? You get the idea. It's pretty obvious to me that gay people never chose what turns them on, just as nobody ever chooses what turns them on. Maybe there is some sort of genetic or biological component that makes people tend toward gayness, despite the lack of evidence, but it doesn't really matter. Gay people are gay, and that's that.

Consequently, this whole "ex-gay" therapy nonsense is very troubling. These people assert that they know all about what makes people gay, but, of course, they can't possibly know that because nobody knows that. It strikes me that claiming an ability to "cure" gay people is like claiming an ability to "cure" people who love the Beatles or fried chicken or James Bond movies. In other words, this whole thing is about suppression. That is, there is no such thing as curing a gay person of homosexual desire; the best they can do is help people to stop thinking about it. But then, that's the kind of thing that, demonstrably, leads to depression, anxiety, suicide, all sorts of pathology. Suppression of natural, healthy sexual desire, suppression of identity, because that's what we're ultimately talking about here, is a horrible thing.

And these motherfuckers are insisting on spreading their dangerous bullshit in the public schools, which are already the most homophobic environments in the country. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they've been pushing for creationism for years. Creationism in science class is pretty awful, but the effects are more long-term and diffused: preaching bullshit about sexuality has an immediate negative payoff--teens are already confused and overly emotional; gay kids even more so. Ex-gay "philosophy" is already a bad idea. Putting it in the schools would be an atrocity.

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