In Saturday’s Progress, Brandon Shulleeta had a long, detailed article about a ridiculous sounding “gay-to-straight camp” run by a guy in Greene County who says he can change people’s sexuality. He claims a whopping 13% success rate for attendees of his $650 weekends. (For straight folks who can’t understand why this is so dumb, consider whether a weekend-long camp would be sufficient to make you gay. Yeah, you neither, huh?) This isn’t normally the sort of thing I’d write about here, but there were a couple of paragraphs in there that I loved—I’ve revisited them with a chuckle about once a day since—and I’ve just got to share. Shulleeta talked with Ted Cox, a straight guy working on a book about the faux science of gay-to-straight therapy, who attended the camp, posing as a gay guy wanting to go straight:
At one point during a camp weekend, participants were told to perform a hold with each other that’s similar to how a parent would hold a child, Cox said. Another hold involved one man leaning back into another’s chest. The positions were not sexual in nature, Cox said, but he doesn’t see how they could help someone become straight.
“I would think that some of the things we did at the camp would be counter-productive,” said Cox, who called the weekend “literally the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
If you think that’s as funny as I do, you might enjoy an article Cox wrote about the experience.
The unfortunate thing about all of this is that there may in fact be some fraction of the gay population who are conflicted about their same-sex attraction and for all we know it is rooted in confused notions of masculinity during adolescence. Programs like the one in that article seem ridiculous to the point of parodying themselves. My guess is that these programs take no initiative to advise people against attending who will see no benefit from it.
Some of the comments on the DP are outright depressing (big shock).
“If someone is born with a desire for the other sex, and I highly doubt it, that is a birth defect. There are many people born with birth defects, and some of these defects are fairly common. Does that mean they were “planned” by God? Of course not! They are a defect, a mistake, a situation that is not normal, or desired.”
(sigh)
This bit from the article was .. interesting:
“They’ll take any sort of negative event in your life, any kind of negative thing in your childhood and say, ‘A-ha! That’s why you’re gay,’” Cox contended, claiming one participant struggled to come up with something in his life that made him feel isolated; the man then pointed to a time in childhood when his father shooed him away because he was reading a newspaper.
The participant proceeded to act out beating his father with a bat, Cox said.
My favorite quote (in the ironically-named Cox’s Alternet article:
I’d bet about…oh…13% of them. ;)
consider whether a weekend-long camp would be sufficient to make you gay.
yeah, for most folks it takes about 3 semesters of art school, give or take.
Read the alternet article.
Funniest quote from the article:
The rest of it is just sad. Very very sad. Instead of finding acceptance for who they really are, and realizing happiness within that framework, they’ve bought into someone else’s myth that there is something wrong with them.
The people who run these conversion camps “for profit” are evil. And if they aren’t running them “for profit” then they’re deeply misguided.
I saw the DP article last week. Read it, and thought it’s not going to help anyone, and that guy doesn’t deserve the publicity and free advertisement that the article provides.
The for a straight person the equivalent for these “Gay to Straight” conversion (B.S.) programs would be a “live Your Life Celibate” program. Because as we know… God says all of those urges are evil. (;p)
@just bob, thanks for for the quote. This man is being paid $650 to press his erection into the back of a gay man? Who’s gay? Why aren’t the men charging him for the privilege?
@Cville Eye,
My guess (and my quote was from the Alternet article about the program in AZ) was that the “Guide” was one of the 15 staff members that are employees of the JiM (Journey Into Manhood)program founded and run by the 3v1l @$$h0le Rich Wyler.
Sounds like a big circle-jerk to me.