20/20 to Feature Love Won Out Conference

Tonight on the television show 20/20 they are doing a story on an organization called, “Love Won Out” which is an anti-gay activist group which proposes that gays can convert to straight.

Focus on the Family's Love Won Out
conference will be featured during a segment of ABC's
20/20 scheduled to air Friday. The show, called "The Toughest Call," is
to air from 9 to 11 p.m. EST. "It's about people who have to make tough
choices in their lives," said Allison Lynn, a 20/20 producer.

Focus on the Family's Love Won Out ministry exhorts and equips the church
to respond in a Christ-like way to the issue of homosexuality. And to those who
struggle with unwanted same-sex attractions, the event offers the Gospel hope
that the desires can be overcome. "Many of the speakers at our conferences
had to make a very difficult choice," said Mónica Martí, Love Won Out media
manager. "They had to choose to live their lives by God's standard for
sexuality, instead of bowing down to their own feelings or what popular culture
said was unavoidable. The courage and transparency they exhibit during their
sessions resonates with men and women struggling with the same decision
today." ABC News Correspondent JuJu Chang visited the conference in Omaha,
Neb., held in April.

As you know if you are a regular blog reader of Straight Guise, I am vehement that if anyone is helped by these organizations and actually "converted" from gay to straight they were not gay to begin with! They were one of the straight guise I identified in the beginning of this blog.

THE CASE OF TED:

Last night I met with a client (Ted), of whom I have had hundreds like him, who was acting out homosexually from sexual abuse as a child and is in full recovery–not of homosexuality but of trauma and abuse.

Ted found guys through the Internet that he could get to worship his muscular athletic body and fellate him. They would even kiss.

While Focus on the Family and Love Won Out would say, “This guy is gay or at least bisexual”–he is neither.We uncovered he was reenacting his childhood trauma and abuse.

As an adolescent an older man told Ted he had a great build for his age–which he did. The abuse went on for several years.

This client is looking for intimacy with men–which our society leaves little to no room for among men.

And Ted is not gay. He is aroused by women, desires women, has sex with women and compulsively sexually acts out with men. He does not desire men, he sexually acts out with them for physical release and other psychological issues--none of which have to do with a homosexual identity.

Focus on the Family and Narth would take these straight men, label them as “homosexuals” struggling with “same sex attraction” and when they heal identity them as ex-gay.
It is not gay. I wish they would leave “gay” and “homosexual” out of their entire discussion.

They believe all homosexuality is about pathological origins and slant good information about heterosexual men and women who have issues with homosexual behavior and label them gay and lesbian.

The other part--perhaps more offensive and hateful--is that there are gay men and women who are riddled with self-hate who look to these organizations as hope that they can change and rid themselves of being homosexual. This is called, "sexual anorexia".

Sexual orientation cannot change–ever!

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.

Father Hunger and Straight Men Who Have Sex With Men

I belong to an international group called The New Warrior hosted by The Mankind Project (MKP) which is an organization helping men learn how to have healthy relationships with others and live in personal and relational integrity.

In the MKP my work as a psychotherapist with gay, bisexual and straight men I see men who have have father hunger. I remember sitting across from a therapist at the age of 15 in 1978 who told me that my homosexuality was a result of my absent father who neglected me my whole life. I believed this therapist as he was my all-knowing doctor but inherently I knew that this desire for my father was separate to my gayness.

I still believe this today. Homosexuality is not the result of father hunger as some psychoanalysts and reparative therapies theorize. Both straight, bisexual and gay men suffer from this when growing up where their father was not around, unavailable, unaffectionate and perhaps may have been abusive.

I do not believe that father hunger creates a gay orientation in any way. There is no evidence to support this silly concept anymore than mother hunger would make a man straight.

That said I do believe that father hunger can direct the search for intimacy with another man for gay men, bisexuals and straight men to have strong desire for intimacy with other men.

For the gay man it would include romance, affection, and possibly sex that is congruent with how they see themselves.

For the bisexual man, it might include romance, affection and possibly sex--maybe even all three--that is congruent with how they see themselves as well.

For the straight man, it might include affection and possibly sex but it is not congruent with how they see themselves at all. Romance is not a part of the sexual contact for the straight men.

Males are taught from childhood that it is taboo to touch, show affection and love another male. So for straight men, going on the "downlow" for sex with men is their unconscious way to achieve this affection. In my office these men do not desire other men the way gay and bisexual men do. They are not struggling with desire or attraction to be sexual with a man nor are they distracted by images of naked men as gay and bisexual men are.

In the book, "I Don't Want To Talk About It", author and psychotherapist Terrance Real talks about growing up male I admire Real’s work for many reasons, chiefly because he writes mostly about heterosexual men and their fathers. It illustrates that straight men have problems with their fathers similar to those that gay men face. In other words, the father issues gay men face have little to do with being gay, but everything to do with growing up males without appropriate father figures. Again, the “scientific” explanation for homosexuality is that a weak father abdicates power to the mother. Thus the boy cannot identify with his father and separate from his mother, and the boy’s hunger for a male role model becomes eroticized. “This myth,” Real writes, “is repulsive.” I totally agree!

What boys need from their father, Real argues, is “affection, not ‘masculinity’.” He rightly stresses that men need more emotion and vulnerability, which they need to learn from their fathers. By being gay, little boys experience even more disconnection from their fathers but, again, this does not make them gay. Having a queer son can horrify a father. Yet how would he know if his son were queer? Perhaps a gay son is more clinging and emotional toward him, thereby provoking a harsh response, because he’s worried that his son is effeminate. If men are so ingrained to reject anything “feminine,” then imagine how a father reacts to an effeminate son or one who doesn’t behave in gender-appropriate ways. The distance is more extreme and the disconnection more severe.

Father hunger is the reason for homosexuality promotes groups like NARTH and other anti-gay reparative groups who believe change is possible.

My stance is that father hunger can direct erotic play and be separate from one's sexual orientation. It does not make someone gay or bisexual but can promote homosexual behavior. That is what separates my work from reparative therapists who do not believe in healthy gay and bisexual orientations which I do.