Friday, July 22, 2005

"Ex-gay"

"In 24 years of clinical experience, I've never had someone come to me troubled over his heterosexuality and wanting to change."
( -- Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, Director of Comprehensive
Counseling Services, West Conshocken, PA.)


"Ex-gay." That little word touched off explosive controversity back in July 13-15, 1998, when a coalition of Christian organizations ran a series of full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. Dominating the first ad was a photo of an attractive young woman identified as "Anne Paulk -- wife, mother, former lesbian," above the headline: "I'm living proof that Truth can set you free." A second at showed a large group of smiling faces with the headline: "We're standing for the truth that homosexuals can change." A third featured NFL football star Reggie White making a plea for homosexuals to take the cure.

Reporting on the event, Mike Aquilina published an article in Our Sunday Visitor (September 6, 1998) entitled "Debate: Can homosexuals be 'straightened out'?" The newspaper ads, he says, were largely the work of Exodus International, a worldwide network of ex-gay ministries. Co-sponsoring the ads were 15 organizations, including the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council. The article reports:
Reaction was swift -- and shrill. Within days, a coalition of pro-gay organizatins contributed their own full-page ad, in the same newspapers, countering Exodus' claims.

In the opinion pages of The New York Times, columnist Frank Rich attacked the premises of the ads, countering with his belief that homosexuality is "innate," unchangeable and normal. The ads' sponsors, he charged, "are putting [homosexuality] in the same category as kleptomania and alcoholism."
The article continues by suggesting that probably neither the members of Exodus or the Catholic Church would deny the charge. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is an objective moral disorder (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, amended edition, no. 2358). This is where Christian tradition parts company not only with the "gay" subculture, but also with the mainstream of the medical, psychiatric and psychological professions -- at least since 1973 when, not for reasons of science but under pressure from the National Gay Task Force, the board of the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Other professional associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, have followed suit. Members of the APA who specialized in the treatment of homosexuals protested their board's decision, but to no avail. Yet a growing number of professionals have dissenting from these positions from their onset in the early seventies and have continued to treat homosexuality as a curable disorder. The article continues:
That is the position, for example of Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, director of Comprehensive Counseling Services of West Conshocken, Pa.

A psychiatrist, Fitzgibbons draws from his own clinical experience as well as published research. He dismisses as nonsense the APA's claim that homosexuality is a normal variant. "In 24 years of clinical experience," he told Our Sunday Visitor, "I've never had someone come to me troubled over his heterosexuality and wanting to change."

Fitzgibbons said he has, however, helped many homosexual clients to develop an opposite-sex attraction. "People can overcome same-sex attractions and behaviors," he said.

"There are at least nine major studies that show that the recovery rate is about 30-50 percent, which is the recovery rate you'd expect from most addictive or emotional disorders." He added that, if patients "bring in the spiritual component," the recovery rate is "significantly higher."

Fitzgibbons does not hesitate to classify homosexuality with disorders such as slcoholism and kleptomania.

"A growing number of professionals see same-sex behavior as a type of addictive disorder," he said. "We're looking at a lifestyle in which people have, on average, 20 to 40 sexual partners per year, sometimes engaging in sadomasochistic practices. Forty percent engage in unsafe sexual practices in the era of AIDS, when 50 percent of males in the homosexual lifestyle are HIV-positive by the time they're 50. All of this indicates the sort of highly reckless behavior usually associated with addictions."
Still, while the Catholic Church calls homosexuals -- along with those who struggle with any moral disorder -- to "chastity" and "self-mastery" (CCC, no. 2359), the Church takes no position on whether or not they should seek to develop heterosexual attraction.

For example, Fr. John Harvey, the founder of Courage, an international Catholic support group for men and women who struggle with homosexual attractions, admitted to Our Sunday Visitor in an interview with Aquilina that for 20 years he doubted that homosexuals could develop a true heterosexual attraction. But he began to change his mind in the 1970s.
That was when two men I knew became heterosexual without really trying. They had had homosexual attractions and had acted out physically -- it wasn't just a mind game -- but they later turned over. One of them is married now, with several children. I watched another young lady, who fought me in the beginning, become happily married, now with her third baby on the way.

I changed my mind because I saw the facts. Against a fact, no argument is valid.
Nevertheless, it remains also a fact that some men and women fail in their attempts to change. Many critics of The New York Times ads were quick to point out that the two founders of Exodus eventually "fell in love," left the movement and moved in together in a "familial" partnership. To be fair, however, Fitzgibbons counters by noting that such behavior occurs in recovery from any addictive disorder. "People fail for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the sexual addiction is accompanied by substance abuse and alcohol abuse. That makes it very hard to walk away from it. In any recovery, you might have to stop five times before you really stop." Aquilina continues:
Carl's experience seems to bear this out. Speaking with Our Sunday Visitor on condition of anonymity, Carl (not his real name), an East coast man in his 30s, admits that he proceeded to recovery only by fits and starts.

A former gay activist who had been sexually active for seven years, Carl made the decision to leave the lifestyle behind in 1992. But he stopped short of pursuing a heterosexual attraction. "I could have, but I didn't -- on purpose. I had such a bias against it that I chose to seek chastity only."

But, after three years, he noticed that, in pursuing chastity, he had begun to change anyway. "I began to notice a gradual growth in heterosexual attraction and a diminishing of homosexual attraction and identity. I guess God is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Carl acknowledged that the change is difficult. "I didn't have a heterosexual adolescence, and in some ways I had to go through that at 35. I had to look around for role models and reliable men who could give me advice."

Though once a skeptic, Carl said he now believes that change is possible. "I know from my own experience, and I probably know around 30 others who have successfully made the transition."
To be fair, again, Aquilina reports Carl as saying that he does not believe that heterosexual attraction is possible for everyone who seeks it. "It's wrong to say that everyone can change," Carl says, "just as it's wrong to say no one can. Some can and do. In general the younger the person is and the less they've acted out physically, the better their chances of a complete change."

Carl follows Fr. Harvey in placing the main emphasis on chastity. "Whether or not you can develop a heterosexual attraction, you can be chaste, and you can be happy. People need to know that, no matter what the media say, there is a way out."

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