From: [email-masked]

"Curing" Homosexuals
   
A handful of conservative Christians tries to turn
gays into straights through counseling.

   by Phil Campbell

     John Smid is sitting in his office in Southeast Memphis trying to
     make a point about how difficult it has been for him to adapt his
     homosexual desires to heterosexual behavior. The slim 41-year-old
     man has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington
     Post, and both San Francisco daily newspapers. He also appeared on
     the television talk-show Jerry Springer.
     Smid points to the gold-colored wall across from where he is
     sitting.
     "If I'm looking at that wall and suddenly I say, `It's blue,' and
     someone else comes along and says, `No, no. It's gold.'"
     "But I want to believe that that wall is blue," he says. He pauses
     briefly, focusing his attention on the wall.
     "It's blue, it's blue, it's blue," he insists.
     "But then God comes along, And He says, `You're right, John, it is
     blue," Smid says. "That's the help I need. God can help me make that
     wall blue."
     Smid has turned to God because he says he is a Christian who
     believes that homosexuality is a sin, an abomination that has been
     clearly defined in the Bible. More than a decade ago, Smid was a
     sexually active homosexual who divorced his first wife when he came
     out of the closet. One same-sex relationship he had lasted three
     years.
     Now, he's married again and is the executive director of a group
     called Love in Action, an organization run by "ex-gays" whose
     mission is to help other homosexual men "convert" themselves into
     heterosexuals. For $12,000, a gay man can live in Smid's therapy
     house in Memphis for 10 months. Group spiritual sessions every
     weeknight help Smid's clients, 10 other gay men, realize "God's true
     calling" for men.
     Love in Action is just one of four similar programs to be found in
     the Memphis area. In Bartlett, psychologist and fundamentalist
     Christian Duff Wright devotes part of his practice to helping gays
     change their sexual orientation. At Central Church in Hickory Hill,
     gays and lesbians gather every Sunday evening with "other sex
     addicts" to discuss their personal failings and support each other.
     The American Family Association, a national organization based in
     Tupelo, Mississippi, occasionally holds sex-addiction workshops just
     south of Memphis that address homosexuality. Their last workshop
     took place earlier this month.
     Christians helping Christians, they say. But the issue has more than
     a few people in the medical and psychological fields riled up, not
     to mention many of those in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual
     community. A growing consensus of psychiatrists, psychologists, and
     medical doctors are concluding that the issue of homosexuality and
     bisexuality is not a personal decision that one can make. Changing
     sexual orientation - heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual - is
     simply impossible. It is a waste of time, like believing that a wall
     is blue when it is actually bright yellow. Worse, it is a
     potentially harmful practice, many argue, defying Christian
     fundamentalists to offer proof to the contrary.
     As for the gay and lesbian community, the issue is one of
     discrimination. By trying to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals,
     even if the conversion is voluntarily sought, conservative
     Christians are perpetuating long-held beliefs that anything other
     than an opposite-sex relationship is immoral. Gay and lesbian rights
     activists say that the practice is one of the many roadblocks that
     prevent homosexuals and bisexuals from being treated equally, and
     they want it stopped.

     THIRTY-FIVE PEOPLE ATTEND THE November meeting of the local Parents
     and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), held in the basement of
     St. John's Episcopal Church on Greer Street near the University of
     Memphis. Of those attending, only Arnold and Myrna Drake, the
     chapter's founders, are willing to have their names released to the
     public; the rest, both homosexuals and their relatives, are firmly
     in the closet. They are afraid of the consequences of coming out in
     the conservative Mid-South.
     One of the homosexuals attending, a tall, stocky man in his early
     30s, had an experience with conversion therapists that lasted a year
     and a half. He says he joined an aversion therapy program because he
     was convinced he wanted to be heterosexual. As part of the therapy,
     he had to present himself before a board of counselors every week
     and give updates on his sexual activity. If he abstained for that
     week, they let him go. If he had had intercourse, he had to describe
     it in intimate detail and then listen to a lecture on his personal
     failings. The man says that none of the people who attended the
     therapy sessions with him were converted. "It was a shameful,
     horrible experience," he recalls.
     Gulit-based aversion therapy is one of the more lenient ways
     psychologists and doctors have thought that homosexuals could be
     successfully converted into heterosexuals. One of the more extreme
     practices includes showing homosexuals erotic photos to arouse
     sexual stimulation, then administering electric shocks or inducing
     vomiting until they find same-sex intercours abhorrent. This
     practice was used most widely in the 1950s and '60s, but isolated
     cases of it continue to be reported today.
     Medical and psychological opposition to using conversion methods
     began building in 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association
     concluded that homosexuality is not an illness but a normal sexual
     variant. Two years later, the American Psychological Association
     supported the decision, declaring that mental-health-care providers
     should "take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that
     has long been associated with homosexual orientation."
     The American Medical Association, however, has only recently changed
     its policies. From 1981 to December of last year, when it publicly
     revised its opinion, the AMA supported efforts to convert gays and
     lesbians into heterosexuals. In last December's declaration,
     however, the AMA concluded that aversion therapy "is no longer
     recommended for gay men and lesbians."
     Increasingly, a large consensus of psychiatrists, psychologists, and
     physicians say that any type of conversion therapy is not only
     ineffective but also potentially harmful. In an updated summary of
     findings in 1990, the American Psychological Association said that
     scientific evidence has yet to show that the method works. "It can
     often do more harm than good," the statement reads. One of the
     largest side effects to conversion therapy is a lower self-esteem
     and a sense of inferiority to "normal" heterosexuals.
     Many psychiatrists and psychologists now believe that, while one can
     change sexual behavior from homosexual to heterosexual, one cannot
     change sexual orientation. In other words, a gay man might be able
     to perform in bed with a women, but his sexual fantasies, thoughts,
     and reactions remain fixated on other men. And the "success stories"
     of conversion proponents, doctors criticize, are usually bisexuals
     whose interest in the opposite sex is reinforced, but not to the
     total exclusion of same-sex attraction.
     Michael Bailey is a psychologist and professor at Northwestern
     University who has done extensive studies on the origin of
     homosexuality. His research has lent further proof to the theory
     that there is genetic predisposition about one's sexual orientation.
     
     Bailey says he's not surprised that some psychologists and Christian
     fundamentalists are still in the business of conversion therapy:
     "There has been conversion therapy for a long time. A lot of gay men
     would like to be converted. Their families sometimes reject them.
     Their life can be very difficult. There's no surprise that there's a
     market for this."
     Pausing, he adds, "Nobody's taking a gun and forcing them to go
     there. On the other hand, in 1950 in the South, if you had made
     available treatments so that black people could become white and a
     lot of people took advantage of it, and if that had been voluntary,
     that's the same thing."

     CONVERSION THERAPY FOR HOMOSEXUALS has become almost exclusively the
     domain of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. While calling
     homosexuality a sin, most conversion proponents focus specifically
     on homosexuality among men because they believe that gay men engage
     in an excessive amount of sexual intercourse. Conversion therapists
     - both lay and professional - believe that homosexuality among men
     is a sexual addiction, lumping it together with an obsession with
     pornography, masturbation, nymphomania, and pedophilia.
     "It all falls under the sexual-addiction umbrella," says Neal
     Clement, director of the outreach division of the American Family
     Association. "All of these subgroups all think alike, they just act
     out in a different way." The association hosted a sexual-addiction
     workshop from October 31st to November 5th at an undisclosed
     location in Mississippi just south of Memphis. Clement estimates
     that four or five of the 17 people who attended the latest workshop
     were homosexuals who are uncomfortable with their sexual
     orientation. Almost all of the participants were Christians.
     Clement takes a stronger stance on this subject than local
     conversion proponents. As with any other kind of addiction, Clement
     says, most homosexuals go through a period of denial. One must first
     confront the homosexual, challenging their behavior on moral
     grounds. Minors don't have any rights in the issue; parents should
     immediately seek conversion therapy for their homosexual children.
     Christian friends of adult gays and lesbians should not waver in
     their belief that homosexuality and bisexuality is a sin.
     "There have been many, many adolescents and adults who have come
     into recovery when people make decisions for them," Clement says.
     "When they learned about their addiction and released some of their
     anger and were broken and surrendered their addiction, then they
     were able to accept (the counseling) that is to come."
     Clement and other conversion proponents attack the medical
     communities' statements on the issue of homosexuality. They claim
     that they have met with success. And few are held up more often as
     the Christian conversion success story that John Smid, the executive
     director of the Memphis-based Love in Action.

     SMID'S COMFORTABLE OFFICE IS LOCATED in an innocuous three-story
     building in Parkway Village that houses a number of lawyers,
     realtors, and the Memphis Area Teachers Credit Union. Before
     launching deeply into an explanation of his personal struggle with
     homosexuality, Smid says that he won't use too much "Christian-ese"
     so that non-Christian readers can understand him better.
     Early in his life, Smid says, he had an affection for males that
     other boys did not have, and as he entered puberty he began to have
     fantasies of men rather than women. Nevertheless, he denied these
     emotions and thoughts and married a women. Having two daughters,
     however, did not quell these desires as he had hoped they might. His
     sexual and emotional need for men only grew.
     He finally came out of the closet in 1979 after he met another gay
     man and was introduced to the homosexual lifestyle. After his
     divorce, he continued to see his children every week, but his
     submersion in the gay subculture was complete, he says.
     Relationships with other men were temporary most of the time, though
     near the end of the openly gay part of his life he had a
     relationship with a man that lasted three years. "It was driving.
     Was I addicted (to homosexual sex)? No question."
     Smid turns his discussion of his homosexuality quickly to the moral
     conflict that it created for him. "It was gratifying to an extent,
     but the more I was involved in that culture the more I realized I
     still had a need," he says. Gay support groups were helpful, but
     something was missing, he says. Smid believes that the Bible clearly
     states that homosexuality is a sin. Regardless of what scientists
     may conclude about how a person becomes a homosexual - a genetic vs.
     environment debate, or some kind of combination of the two factors -
     Smid believes that the Bible declares it wrong in several places.
     "I discovered that there was a real place, a real need, for God in
     my life," Smid says. "I began to see some peace come into my life
     when I realized this...Personally, by being gay I felt like I was
     compromising my own moral values."
     He started to attend "ex-gay" ministries and started to abstain from
     homosexual intercourse by 1984. Three years later he joined the
     staff of Love in Action, which at the time was located in San
     Rafael, California. Two years after that he took over as the
     organization's executive director.
     Smid had remarried in 1988, this time to a women named Vileen. "(My
     marriage) is diferent because I'm much more conscious of what I'm
     thinking and feeling today than 20 years ago. I'm much more aware of
     what to relate to." Though he describes his sex life with his second
     wife as "very normal."
     "The same as any other marriage," he says.
     Smid compares his suppressed homosexual desires to the sex fantasies
     of any man who's married and has thoughts of other women. "Do I
     still have homosexual thoughts?" he says. "Sure. But they're not
     major, they're not predominant." Smid will not call himself anything
     but a heterosexual now. "Some people may call that bisexuality, but
     during that period of my life I led a very singularly homosexual
     lifestyle."
     The high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay area led Smid to
     move from San Rafael last December. Memphis is better, says Smid,
     because real estate values are lower and there is more Christian
     support for his program. Still, getting started hasn't been easy. In
     California, Love in Action owned three houses with 36 live-in gay
     men who had made a pledge of celibacy. Smid won't reveal the
     location of the Memphis Love in Action house, but he says that 10
     gay men live there. Only one of the residents is a Memphian; the
     rest are Christians of all denominations from all over the United
     States, he says.
     Besides the 10-month treatment program, the organization has begun
     to distribute literature about reaching youths who are confused
     about their homosexuality. In its September newsletter, Love in
     Action stresses the importance of reaching homosexual minors by not
     patronizing or labeling them. Smid also maintains an extensive phone
     and letter-writing campaign for struggling homosexuals across the
     country.

     CENTRAL CHURCH AND DUFF WRIGHT attract far less attention than Smid
     and the American Family Association. Sharis Blackburn helps run
     Restoration in Him, a weekly support group at Central for lesbians
     and gays. The church also runs a support group for the parents and
     friends of lesbians and gays, though it runs a far different program
     from the more well-known national support group, Parents and Friends
     of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
     "PFLAG's worldview says that homosexuality is a viable alternative,
     and that is not our stance. We believe homosexuality is a
     destructive lifestyle," Blackburn says. "Our ministry is not to
     condemn anyone. Our ministry is to deal with those men and women who
     are unhappy with it and who choose to deal with their root issues."
     She denies, however, that the organization espouses anything other
     than a love-the-sinner philosophy.
     Duff Wright is a psychologist who is affiliated with Charter
     Lakeside Hospital in Bartlett. He has a private practice through an
     organization called Rapha, which is Hebrew for "healing." Rapha, he
     says, is a Christian-centered psychological institution which has
     dozens of branches throughout the United States.
     The only time Wright has been mentioned in the press occurred when
     he unsuccessfully ran for an alderman position in Bartlett last
     year. He says he specializes in addictions in general, but he
     occasionally works with patients who are struggling with their
     sexual identity, people often referred to him by local churches.
     Wright says that anybody who is homosexual and seeking reassurance
     in their sexual orientation is not likely to be referred to him.
     Wright describes himself as a fundamentalist and evangelical
     Christian. He will not condemn the 1973 decision by the American
     Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the list of
     mental illnesses, but he suggests that the APA acted under an
     atmosphere of intense political intimidation by homosexual
     activists. Gays have increasing political power, he says, making it
     more difficult for psychologists and psychiatrists to treat patients
     on a case-by-case basis. "God gives each of us a mind and expects us
     to use it," he says.
     He describes how he talks to homosexuals in his office: "If someone
     came to me and said, I'm gay but I struggle with that and with what
     God says in the Bible, and I want to do something about it, I would
     not just say, Well, you're just gay and you have to get used to it."
     
     All of these Memphis-based therapists claim that they only counsel
     adults who want to change their sexual orientation. Sharis Blackburn
     says therapy doesn't work for a homosexual who doesn't want to be
     converted. "We feel very strongly that the person himself must want
     help."
     Gay and lesbian rights advocates don't believe the conversion
     counselors. They don't believe that anyone really wants that kind of
     help. If gays and lesbians aren't being pressured by society to
     change, then they wouldn't want to change, argues Kate Kendell, the
     legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is
     based in San Francisco.
     "There is no doubt in my mind that if society's prejudice and
     harassment, and in some cases outright violence against lesbians and
     gays, ceased to exist, so would these conversion centers," Kendell
     says.
     "There is no independent desire to change one's sexual orientation.
     Instead, there's a bent, a feeling of tremendous condemnation and
     hate from others in society."
     Local advocates wonder how voluntary the Memphis conversion programs
     have been, too. Susan Mackenzie is an attorney who frequently
     represents gays and lesbians in civil-rights cases. She has recently
     dealt with Duff Wright in court, once when Wright acted as an expert
     witness in a child custody case involving two homosexual men, the
     other involving a gay teenager who wanted to be set legally free
     from the custody of his parents. In the second case, Mackenzie says
     that the parents of the gay teenager were sending him to Wright for
     therapy that he did not want.
     Even though the teenager made it clear that he was not going to
     cooperate, Wright continued to counsel him about his sexual
     orientation, Mackenzie says. All the while, the parents were
     threatening to send their son to live in the Love in Action house
     for forced conversion. Mackenzie says the issue was eventually
     settled out of court, with the parents retaining custody of the
     teenager and agreeing not to send him either to Wright or Smid.
     Mackenzie says she does not know how many times the gay teenager
     visited Wright, but estimates the number of treatments from two to
     at least a dozen.
     "What he (the gay teenager) felt was that the urgency of the
     situation required him to file a lawsuit to have his disability as a
     minor removed so that his parents could not force him to go to Dr.
     Wright," Mackenzie says.
     The Memphis chapter of PFLAG also got into the act. Dr. Arnold
     Drake, the organization's president and a private physician,
     represented the teenager to give him legal standing in court. Drake
     calls Wright's approach to homosexuality "abusive psychotherapy."
     Wright denied that he has treated anybody unwillingly.
     "I would only see a youngster long enough to determine his
     willingness to treatment," he says. Once he realizes someone does
     not want to be converted, Wright says, "I would tell him that there
     would be a place to come if he ever changed his mind. In that
     particular situation, that's exactly the way that it operated. I
     would see them just to make sure that's the way that they want to
     be. I'll tell the parents, look, the time for counseling is over
     with. That's always the way I have proceeded. As far as I know,
     there have been no exceptions to that rule."

     WHEN IT COMES TO HOMOSEXUALITY, many people already have
     hard-and-fast viewpoints concerning its morality. Even they must
     wonder, however, which of several competing viewpoints will
     ultimately prevail. Despite numberous gains by the gay and lesbian
     community in the past two decades, the religious right has been on
     the resurgence, claiming victories in a number of legislative and
     societal battles across the country. Thus far, there is little
     evidence to show conversion therapy can work, but organizations such
     as Love in Action persist because they continue to receive support.
     Most people would rather not take a side, preferring to watch from
     the sidelines to see whose viewpoint comes out ahead. Although PFLAG
     founder Arnold Drake is rigidly opposed to conversion therapy, both
     conservatives and liberals and all factions in between still have to
     come to terms with his overall philosophy.
     "I'm a believer in freedom and plurality," he says. "Everybody has
     the right to make choices, even the right to make the wrong
     choices."

   
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