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from "Born that way" theory
New Ex-Gay Website
Several successful reparative therapy "graduates" and others who have
experienced profound change from a homosexual past have created a new
website, www.peoplecanchange.com (click on the web address to go
directly to the site). The purpose of the site, according to its
founders, is to tell their own personal stories and to describe what was
(and what was not) helpful in the change process.
"There is so much 'noise' in the media about the impossibility of
change," says Ben Newman, who helped initiate the site. "There is
even the idea that talking about the possibility of change is tantamount
to hate speech."
"So we've created the site to give hope to those who want to find their
way out of homosexuality," he explained, "and to point out the way that
worked for us."
Mr. Newman said the web page is respectful toward those with other
viewpoints, "while sharing the healing and joy that change has brought
us - change that, to many of us, didn't seem possible before we found
reparative therapy."
The website has been launched with an initial group of seven men sharing
their individual and collective experience. Additional personal
accounts of change are currently being written, and the group is looking
for more men who have experienced change to be willing to step forward
and share their experiences on the site - using a pseudonym, if they
prefer.
"We hope many more men who have experienced positive change from
unwanted homosexuality will join us in sharing their stories," Mr. Newman
said. "The more men who share what worked for them, the clearer the
path out of homosexuality becomes for others who still struggle."
The website attempts to take a holistic approach--recognizing the varied
roles of therapy, spiritual conversion, Twelve-Step recovery programs
and individual resources including family and friends, "all of which
have played a vital role in the change process for different men."
"Most of what is on the web now testifies only of the spiritual aspects
of healing homosexuality," Mr. Newman notes. "While that is totally
valid, most of us have found there was much more work to do. This work
involves our emotional lives, our personal sense of identity, and all
our relationships.
"We want to provide a holistic path to healing. We hope that some
people will be receptive to it, who might not be receptive to spiritual
conversion alone."
Individuals who want to contribute their stories are invited to e-mail
ben@peoplecanchange.com.
An excerpt from the website:
"Gender-Affirmative Therapy" Can Help
Gay-affirmative therapy is supposed to be the "cure" for unwanted
homosexual desires, according to gay activists and the major therapeutic
associations (whose professional motto seems to be, "If we can't figure
out how to fix it, it must not be broken"). The problem, they say, is
not with the desires, but with the fact that they are unwanted.
But we didn't want to be affirmed as gay. We wanted to be affirmed as
MEN.
Call it "gender-affirmative" therapy: learning to experience at last, in
non-sexual ways, the masculine love and affirmation we had secretly
longed for all our lives. In many ways, that is what those of us who
sought out reparative therapy or inner-child therapy experienced.
Gay activists have lambasted and politicized reparative or sexual
re-orientation therapy and persuaded the major therapeutic professional
associations, out of political correctness, to vilify and condemn it.
Deliberate mis-characterizations of reparative therapy abound.
But those of us who went through reparative therapy found it to be a
deeply healing experience. It helped bring us out of shame. It helped us
release anger. It helped us heal lifelong hurts and emotional wounds. It
taught us how to "repair" childhood yearnings for male affirmation and
acceptance by fulfilling them, often with new heterosexual male friends
and mentor-father figures, instead of repressing them. Instead of
focusing on our sexual orientation, reparative therapy focused on
healing with other men (especially our fathers and peers) and with
ourselves as men.
As the clients, we directed the therapy. We were never coerced. We were
never shamed. (And we certainly never received electric shocks, as some
myths claim!) And because good reparative therapists act more as a
compassionate mentor than an aloof, disinterested professional, we began
to learn to trust men and overcome our defensive detachment from them,
sometimes for the first time in our lives...
So what could be so wrong with such healing reparative therapy? Only
that it is politically incorrect in today's society for someone who
experiences homosexual urges to not want to be gay.
But we are not talking about politics. We are talking about our very
lives, and our freedom to heal. "Going straight" is not a hate crime.
For us, it is an affirmation of our true identity as men.
Updated: 13 March 2008
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