Are ex-gays aligned with New Warrior Adventure Mankind Project

The reason for my blogging these articles about MKP is that I want men to know that it is a safe place for all men to attend whether you are gay, bi, straight, questioning or a man who has unwanted sexual attractions to men. Sexual and romantic orientation is not what the workshops are about. It is about becoming mature men who find direction in their personal journey.

Last week Wayne Besen, author of Anything But Straight, a book exposing ex-gay reparative groups, wrote a column about The New Warrior Adventure called, Nude Warrior Adventure, which included some material which was not true.

In the column, Besen discussed the troubling ties ManKind's New Warriors program has with ex-gay ministries, which aggressively tout the retreat in their efforts to supposedly instill masculinity in their clients.

Besen has since learned and now written that this any ties from MKP to exgay groups is false. He has since written a second column about it.

Here is Wayne Besen's follow up column to the first article:

Last week, I wrote about the ManKind Project, a weekend retreat that tries to jolt men into dealing with deep personal issues. In the column, I discussed the troubling ties ManKind's New Warriors program has with ex-gay ministries, which aggressively tout the retreat in their efforts to supposedly instill masculinity in their clients.

It turns out, however, that the love affair may be one sided. The ManKind Project does not support ex-gay therapy and does not believe that their program helps gay men go straight. Indeed, New Warriors has a large gay following and many who attended consider it helpful to their coming out experience.

I received more than 25 letters from gay men who said that the program helped them accept their sexual orientation."The ManKind Project gave me the confidence and wherewithal to finally say, 'I am a gay man,'" said one participant from Wisconsin."The program helped me become a better husband,' wrote another gay man from the Washington, DC area. "As I knocked down the walls, I became more comfortable with myself and able to give 100 percent to my partner.

The program literally saved my relationship."These letters are incongruous with the cheerleading ManKind receives from homophobic ex-gay groups, such as Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and the website People Can Change. In fact, People Can Change director Ben Newman, who served as a trainee and co-staffer in the New Warrior program, started the ex-gay retreat, "Journey Into Manhood" with several other New Warriors.

So, is the ManKind Project's New Warriors program gay affirming or does it cater to ex-gay fringe groups? I posed this question in a conference call with the group's Executive Director Carl Griesser.

Well-known gay author Joe Kort - a vocal proponent of the organization - was also in on the conversation. Griesser said he was troubled by the way ex-gay ministries had been promoting his group and that his organization did not support the ex-gay cause. He suggested they had misinterpreted what his group meant by instilling masculinity in men."There is a difference between masculinity and sexual orientation," Griesser said on the call. He pointed out that almost every New Warriors training session has at least one openly gay or bisexual man.

Kort, a psychotherapist, passionately defended the organization as a group that helps men "live in honesty and integrity...whatever their sexual orientation is." "Straight men and gay men are all welcome and come together helping each other be part of the male culture even with the differences," explained Kort.

In fact, New Warriors has a position statement that flat out says, "We do not and will not attempt to change a man's sexual orientation." However, this statement is not currently on the group's website, making it difficult to know that ManKind is not an adjunct of the ex-gay ministries. Griesser said he would take this issue up with ManKind officials in a call later this week. I certainly hope that they take this issue seriously, as not to cause any confusion of what the group stands for. In my previous column, I also discussed how the organization had some unorthodox activities.

This includes:** Blindfolded walking tours in the nude** Men sitting in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called "The Cock"** Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammerWhile this may seem bizarre to outsiders, Kort and Griesser defended the activities as helping men accept their bodies."There is so much shame about the body," said Griesser. "The nudity put me and others in an honest space to deal with the shame...the goal is to take men's sexuality out of the shadows."

Critics also point to the harsher aspects of the program, such as meeting participants with men in dark clothing and painted faces."We want to shake men up," said Griesser. "They can only be awakened if we shake them out of their routine." There is also the problem of a lawsuit by the family of a Texas man who committed suicide after attending the program. They are charging that New Warriors is administering therapy without trained professionals. "This is therapeutic, but not therapy," Griesser said. "It is a legal issue that will be addressed in this case."

Whatever one thinks of the group's tactics, it is clear that many gay men find it beneficial. It is also a relief that what ostensibly appears to be a program sympathetic to ex-gay ministries, is actually opposed to them. However, the ManKind Project must do more to publicly distance themselves from these dangerous groups. To downplay how ex-gay organizations have latched on to them, leaves the ManKind Project naked and fully exposed to criticism it might not deserve.

Mankind Project's New Warrior Adventure: The Best Program for all Men!

Lately the New Warrior Adventure--sponsored by the Mankind Project (MKP)--has been getting some negative press. The false belief that is being written is that it promotes reparative therapy and helps gay men turn straight. This is the promise given by some reparative therapy groups and therapists. However, this is completely untrue. The MKP teaches men how to be and live as better men--whatever their sexual and romantic orientation is.

I should know. I was initiated through the MKP in 1999 and am proud of it. I have referred hundreds of men through my book, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love, in which I talk throughout the book of my experiences in MKP and how it helped me and healed me. I have recommended to my male clients that they go and they have returned with nothing more than positive results.

The New Warrior Training Adventure provided me with a group of men, mostly straight, whose mission in life is to help men become better and more mature. Still, I went to this workshop not knowing what to expect—and I’m glad I didn’t. That is exactly what made it so powerful for me. This workshop changed my life, liberated me as a man among men, and opened up new possibilities for me.

Here I was, able to have straight men love me, hold me, and help me feel part of the male culture. It is what I’d wanted and waited for all my life. It helped me heal some work I needed to bond and attach reciprocally with other men.

I can hear a reparative therapist right now saying, “See, it was too late. If Joe had had this experience earlier in life, he wouldn’t have turned out gay.” The truth is that as children, the other men attending also had suffered at the hands of male peers, and most were straight.

To believe that mistreatment makes you gay, you would have to go back and look for the reasons why—first assuming that there’s something wrong with being gay. When heterosexual males suffer mistreatment, no one bothers trying to establish through research that it made them straight.

When I was ten, I went on a camping trip with my uncle and his two sons on a sort of Boy Scout trip with boys and their fathers. I recall dreading it, since I knew this uncle didn’t like me and disapproved of my “sissy” behavior. I remember him talking to my mother and the other adults about me, and most of them in fact agreeing with him!

My own family referred to me as a “mama’s boy.” So to please my mother and those trying to “make a man out of me,” I went on this trip, which turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life. For the canoeing part of the trip, everyone was paired up except me.

Somehow I was separated from my uncle’s boys and got partnered with Uncle Alvin himself.
I recall both of us in life jackets, and feeling the boat tip one way and then the other as my uncle shifted in his seat behind me as he paddled. Being that I was a skinny ten year old and he weighed at least 300 pounds, my uncle’s weight rocked the canoe. I became frightened. Most of the time, I couldn’t see the bottom of the lake. We were alone, with no other canoes in sight.

Sure enough, he leaned too far to one side and we tipped over.

I went under. When I surfaced with the help of the life jacket, I saw the canoe overturned and my uncle trying to right it. I knew we were in deep water, since I couldn’t touch the lake bottom, and I was afraid I would drown. My uncle looked afraid and not in control, which only scared me more. The next thing I recall is both of us back in the canoe, and my uncle yelling at me because I was crying from being scared. For what seemed like hours, he said cutting things such as, “You will never amount to anything. You are a sissy! All you like to do is play house and play with dolls! You are a crybaby, a mama’s boy!” He shouted these patronizing, contemptuous epithets at me, over and over.

As a child you believe what adults say. To a child, adults are always right; so the child makes himself wrong.If the child is right, then the adults in charge must be wrong—and to a preadolescent, that is too overwhelming. So the child unconsciously agrees to be wrong in order to get along with the adults. When we arrived back on land, I was too humiliated to tell a soul about Alvin’s barrage of verbal and emotional abuse. It was as if he’d said aloud what I knew others thought about me—and, in fact—what I felt and believed about myself. I had been crying hard, and my cousin, Alvin’s son, still tells me how shaken I looked when we returned. All I wanted was to get away from him and everyone else.

For years afterward, this incident was the topic of much of my own therapy. Initially, therapists thought this had contributed to my homosexuality—that Alvin’s verbal abuse contributed to and cemented the homosexual identity taking place during my early years.

Today, reparative therapists (and even some other professionals) would say that all of this trauma made me gay; but this would mean that you can shape sexual and romantic orientation. But it doesn’t, because this type of mistreatment happens to any male who doesn’t fit the image of how men should look and act; it doesn’t shape his sexual and romantic orientation.

The fact is, gays and lesbians who raise their own (or adopted) children almost invariably have sons and daughters who grow up straight. Growing up in gay or straight families doesn’t impact children’s sexual orientation either way—but mistreating a gay or effeminate little boy certainly creates low self-esteem, which makes him feel less than a man. Again, this is separate from one’s sexual interests. What makes things worse for gay men is the covert cultural sexual abuse that allows men to be violent to gay males as if we were less than human.

Trying to heal that abuse from my uncle and male peers in therapy did not make me straight. But it did help me understand how those incidents traumatized my masculinity, not my sexual orientation; these are two related but separate entities.

I highly recommend all men who feel they want to improve their lives to attend the New Warrior Adventure and see for themselves the hope, the help and the love that these men who--other than the leaders--volunteer their time and efforts to make these workshops happen--

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.