"I Spent Seven Years in Gay Conversion Therapy"

[Crocoduck]

Interview in Esquire with a Mormon man who took part in church-recommended conversion therapies. There is some seriously abusive stuff going on in these programs. Trigger warning on the excerpt in the spoiler tag.

Spoiler

What happened at your private sessions?

I had a hypnotherapy session. It was based on the unfortunately widespread theory that your homosexuality is related to absentee fathering and not having same-sex peers when you were developing, and that you projected sexual desire onto the absence of these male relationships in your life. It's totally nonsense.

Under hypnosis I was supposed to regress back to these places where the emotional attachment to my father supposedly should have been.

Once I was hypnotized the therapist told me I needed to take off your clothes in order to take off more of my inhibitions. He said that because of my addiction to men, he was inducing deeper hypnosis. He said that he needed to be the one I was attached to so strongly that it was going to feel like an addiction. That this was the only way to dig deep enough into my emotional memories and create an attachment to men and meet these unfulfilled needs from childhood development. Then, once they were met, I would be released from my homosexuality.

He blindfolded me and had me undress myself completely.

Reporter's note: Michael was uncomfortable going on the record about the details of what happened after he got undressed during hypnosis.

These "therapies" are worse than I could have imagined. I am grieving for everyone who has been through this type of abuse.

[December]

What a powerful article. I don't know how those programs are legal; the only reason I can imagine is that people don't actually understand how questionable the tactics and psychology of conversion therapy are. 

Glad to see the man in the article has been able to use his horrific experiences to make positive change, and in addition has found love with his husband. 

[Crocoduck]

Agree @December. The "therapy" described is actually sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse. After reading about it I absolutely support a ban.

And yes, the transformation Ferguson has been through is remarkable. I'm very happy for him and his husband.

[Cleopatra7]

A couple of years ago, the NYT Magazine had a long article about religiously conservative adults who were seeking conversion therapy of their own accord. However, it is obvious that claiming that you can change another's sexual orientation is inherently unethical medicine, whether the patient/victim is an adult or not. The "therapy" detailed above sounds like sexual abuse in and of itself.

[Lurky]

My partner underwent "pray away the gay" therapy as a teenager in the UK from her Vineyard church - nothing as serious as this, lots of laying on hands and "Christian counselling" from people with no training at all.  They were telling her at 17/8 not to go to uni, but to find a guy, any guy, and "just get married and have children as soon as possible, because once you have kids, nothing else is important". 

She thought and prayed about it all, and decided God wouldn't want her to live a lie; and that she couldn't believe in a god that was cruel enough to make her gay, then expect her to be single and alone forever, following the "love the sinner, hate the sin" model.  So when they told her that she had to choose between her church & friends & community, or loving women, it was no choice - she was and is gay.  It was super-hard for her, but she says choosing was like a weight off her shoulders, and far from the horror stories she was promised would happen if she didn't repent, we've been together for over 20 years, in a normal, boring, everyday-happy life!

[Lurky]

(I should say, it took a long, long time for my partner to stop struggling with serious self-loathing, and her anti-gay "therapy" made everything so much worse - I don't want to make it sound like I'm minimising that, and I can't begin to imagine what these full-on physical interventions, and worse, the camps taking people into weird isolated, prison-esque environments are like)

[Crocoduck]

@Lurky I'm so glad your partner was able to find happiness eventually. The self-hatred forced upon LGBT teens is horrifying. It's wonderful to hear a story of someone who was ultimately able to get out of that system.