How Reparative Therapy is different from Straight Guise

There is an excellent four part story on the ex-gay movement entitled My Ex-Gay Life: Dissecting Reparative Therapy My Ex-Gay Life: Dissecting Reparative Therapy

There is a great quote they start with:

"Sexuality is a fluid, dynamic thing. There’s no such thing as sexually-fixed identities - those are things that are fabricated by man." - Michael Glatze

And then the lies begin by those interviewed from the reparative therapy camps:

We are an organization of psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists around the country who really are committed to helping individuals who are dissatisfied with their same-sex attractions," says Joseph Nicolosi, one of the founders of the organization who currently serves as its President. "We’re defending their right to receive such treatment, and our right to offer such treatment."

The lie is that their treatment is the belief that everyone is born straight and that homosexuality is heterosexuality gone bad!

They will state in their literature that there is "nothing gay about homosexuality". This is the problem with NARTH, Nicolosi, and other programs for "ex-gays". That one can become "ungay"--like the 7-UP commercials for the un-cola I guess.

The problem is that they are calling homosexuality inherently damaged and a result of pathology. This is old school thinking.

No one can go from gay to straight. They can stop sexual behaviors but the gay man is still gay and the lesbian is still a lesbian. I always say if I never have sex for the rest of my life I am still a gay man.

However, the straight man who engages in homosexual behavior and stops was never gay from the start! He was a straight man having sex with other men for many reasons that are not all pathological.

Nicolosi goes onto say:

"[They need to] get those needs met thought a relationship with other men," he says. "The focus is not on not having gay sex... it’s putting the emphasis on making deep emotional attachments. And we have seen that when these men make deep emotional attachments to other men, their sexual interest diminishes."

Nicolosi is saying that gay men who put emphasis on making deep emotional attachments with other men they will no longer be gay. Tell that to the thousands of gay men--including myself--who have deep emotional attachments to other men and are still gay.

Are there straight men who hunger for male intimacy and act out homosexually and once the need is met they no longer seek out sex with men? YES.

Are there bisexual men who are more attracted to women but have sex with men and stop? YES.

Yes. But they are straight or bisexual from the start. They are not gay.

The issue at hand here is that reparative therapy has confused a gay identity with straight men who have sex with other men. They are apples and oranges. The theories are accurate in why someone would seek out sex with other men but they are not about being gay or homosexuality.