Has anyone heard about sexual conversion, sounds like another offensive ex-gay, money making anti-gay rip off?

Question

these Christian based ham psychological counselling ministries are run by totally unqualified people and can be dangerous and damaging to those vulnerable people who get caught up in it.
There is absolutely no evidence that any persons sexual orientation can be changed and there is no reason to assume that it is even remotely desirable to attempt to do so is there?

Answer 1

First, these organizations who try to change homosexuals to heterosexuals, are not just Christian based.They are multi faith! They are not only wrong in their attempts to change ones sexual orientation, but can actually cause such anguish and confusion in a homosexual person's mind that he or she ends up committing (or at least considering) suicide.
Even many of those who run these scams, admit that they themselves went through the procedure, and although they still feel attraction to the same sex, they now know they must reject such thoughts as evil - etc etc etc.
Such organizations should be abolished as homophobic and dangerous, and the religious zealots who normally run them should be ashamed of themselves. These misguided bigots would find better use of their efforts and time by attending a theology program that teaches God's love of all his children, not just those that they pick and choose..

Answer 2

As much as we queers may find it hard to believe, a few (and I mean few) of the people who go to ex-gay programs and conversion therapy actually do find success in avoiding homosexual relationships and encounters afterward.
Is it worth it?
Well, there are some long term successes (otherwise the ex-gay movement wouldn't have lasted quite this long), but these are minimal (there are far more tales of it not working , than of longterm successes) and a significant number of people feel they were more emotionally or psychologically harmed by the process than helped. (Hence the existence of an EX-Ex-Gay Movement!)
My analysis? Guys who say they're ex-gay now, and able to enjoy relationships with women, are probably in one or both of these categories:
1. They had the potential to be bisexual in the first place.
2. They live in an environment where the social 'cost' of being gay is SO STEEP, that it seems worth it to put themselves through this process, even though it fails most people.

...IMHO....


P.S. There's a famous Christian Sociologist who interviewed hundreds of gay men. Every time one of them claimed to have been successfully made ex-gay, he posed the question "When you fantasize sexually, do you fantasize about men or women?" They all answered that they fantasized about men, sexually. So, while BEHAVIOURS might have been 'successfully' changed, their core attractions don't appear to have been changed. Food for thought.

Answer 3

Scientology, other 'churches' claim they can 'convert' a gay to being straight. Ridiculous! All it means is that the "converts' live a life in denial and unhappiness. Most go back eventually to who they are. You cannot fight genetic make up. That would be like my converting to be Black...my skin is NOT going to change, regardless of what psycho trick is played with my head. Good luck

Answer 4

You are correct, what I do cannot be undone by mortal man (with the exception of gender reassignment as I consider this a correction since the soul was born into the wrong body) any who attempt to do so is to offend me mightly. I will deal with these people as they pass into my realm and they will understand the folly of their ways. You are my withness. God love's gays!

Answer 5

There are a lot of these converts sneaking around in the dark looking for their "natural" partners.

People are who they are.....that's like trying to convert a cat into being a dog.

That's not "natural".

Answer 6

It's just another form of snake-oil sold by the Charlatans.

Answer 7

As psychoanalysis developed in the 19th century, medicine began classifying a whole range of behaviors that were socially unacceptable. These behaviors were moved from the realm of sin to the realm of illness. So drunkenness became alcoholism, possession became insanity and sodomy became homosexuality. Homosexuality was labeled a mental illness for no other reason then people were uncomfortable with this natural human difference.
The move towards labeling gay people sick was greatly exacerbated during World War II when the Nazis persecuted psychoanalysis. The Nazi’s forced the center of psychoanalysis to move from Freud’s more liberal Vienna to London and eventually to New York City, which was firmly established as the epicenter for the discipline by the early 1950’s. As a result, psychoanalysis no longer reflected the tolerant worldview of Vienna, but the conservative values of 1950’s Leave it to Beaver America.
Heavily influenced by the conservative Cold War era, psychoanalysis slowly became the defender of the political and cultural status quo. This led to a plethora of bizarre “scientific” theories about homosexuality that were almost never challenged because gays were explicitly barred from practicing psychoanalysis.
Adding to the perception that homosexuals were sick were studies that used unrepresentative samples of gay people. Because there were very few out homosexuals, most studies relied on gays who were committed to psychiatric institutions or were being treated for numerous psychological disorders.
For example, Dr. Irving Bieber’s 1962 study, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals is often used by today’s anti-gay “reparative therapists”. What these therapists won’t tell you is that in Bieber’s study sample of 106 homosexuals used to represent ALL gay people, 28 of 106 were schizophrenic, 31 were neurotic and 42 had character disorders.
By the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the morally vacant and unscientific labeling of gays as mentally ill was being challenged by doctors such as Evelyn Hooker, who proved that homosexuals were psychologically no different than heterosexuals. By 1973, a landslide of modern research that relied on science, not stereotypes, vanquished the backward theories of those who said gay people were sick. Presented with this new evidence, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality as an illness from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Suddenly, gay people were no longer considered mentally ill.
Much like the humiliated fundamentalists after the Scopes Monkey trial in the 1920’s, proponents of labeling gays sick, like Drs.’ Bieber and Charles Socarides, retreated in shame. Embattled and increasingly marginalized, they withdrew further and further from mainstream psychiatry. But in their exile they found new allies that had both political and moral stakes in keeping their disgraced work alive.
In the early 90’s an unholy alliance forged between embittered psychiatrists, the religious right, self-loathing gays and culturally conservative politicians. This new politically motivated coalition eventually morphed into what is now known as the “reparative therapy” movement, led by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and his group, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). What NARTH does is repackage the outdated and disproved theories of the past and present them as new “research.”
While NARTH tries to present itself as reputable, its work is rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America. The more people learn about the bizarre techniques of NARTH, the more the group is relegated to the fringes of the psychiatric community.

http://www.anythingbutstraight.com/learn/reptherhist.html


********LOL - two thumbs down? It's just history! LOL

Answer 8

They tried that garbage when I was in the service to several people who were gay, completely destroyed them, they were so unhappy. Keep those people away from me. :)