However, working as a trauma counsellor in Sydney, Australia, I get to see the horrendous damage inflicted upon gay men by a cruel and unaccepting world. It is time to finally bury all this arrant nonsense about conversion or reparative therapy and instead, let us embrace and celebrate the diversity of our sexual lives.
Yes, it is possible for someone to change from same-sex attractions to attractions towards the opposite sex if the person has the right commitment and recognizes that this attitude is in a way disordered and unnatural. When have you seen two homosexual men produce a child by mere sexual union and two lesbians produce a child by the same method?
Unless our physiology changes to asexual reproduction, this is not in accord with the laws of nature. Our culture has inculcated for a long time in the minds of people, especially on people who struggle with this issue, that it is a normal process in our human growth and that there is nothing wrong for a man to feel attraction towards another man and for a woman to have interests in other women.
These people should not be condemned because the "attraction" part is a weakness and it CAN be corrected, regardless of what others say. We all suffer from weaknesses and unfortunately, they have been burdened with this. The union part, on the other hand, is completely wrong because of my point earlier.
We as a society must work together to change our beliefs and attitudes about this issue and help re-orient the lives of those people who suffer from same-sex attractions IF and only if they are willing to be helped.
When our culture and society accepts that homosexual relationships are just another way of life, we as a society have lost our sense of value for the family. You are all buffoons. There is no such thing as "gay" or "straight" - you should change the topic of this debate to focus on why we think people have to be one of two polarized choices. This story hinges on a ridiculous framework of discussion. Gay people who really try and be straight can do it with a small degree of success, but they'll never meet their own expectations in doing so, and will probably only make themselves extremely miserable in the process.
Probably why so many of these ex-gay types require religion to fill the resulting gaping holes in their own psyche. Being gay is only a major morality question because we're always told it is. In reality it's no more unusual than being left-handed. If you really want to make life hard on yourself, go ahead. But you are what you are, and no amount of pretending nor praying is going to change that.
It's pretty sad to see there are still some out there who think being homosexual a choice. It's like saying that being born a redhead is a choice, or going bald is a choice, or growing to a certain height is a choice. The ones like Haggard and Fryrear have simply suppressed their true selves partly because of their real fear of getting sent to Hell, and partly out of hatred and embarassment for who they really are.
Yet, if they believe that a guy named Jesus turned water into wine several, according to storybooks written by ordinary men a couple thousand years ago, then I guess they'll believe in anything. I came out of the born-again Christian movement when I finally accepted myself as a lesbian. I'm sure there are many gays in the born-again movement who suppress their homosexuality just like I did for close to 20 years. I guess if people want to live that way that is their business but sooner or later the lid will blow.
I don't believe you can change your sexual identity - only suppress it. This must be a joke. You cannot change form gay to straight OR straight to gay, the most you get is being Bisexual. She is honestly just going to live a life of misery and deniel. A gay-women like myself can like a guy and hug them along with other things yet I cannot feel the same I feel for a women. You can't jump around this, You're born gay or straight or Bi you cannot be like yo me is straight today 'cause Sir wouldn't you belive if all of us 'homosexuals' could do that we would of already then to deal with prejuidice and hate and so many horriable things?
I do not think anyone decides to get beat up and mocked and hated instead of being able to live nice and "Normal" with no hate but just acceptance We all live according to how we think. A change of the mind has no other choice except to bring about a change in behavior whether it's sexual or otherwise.
No one has to have sex with anyone, it's all a matter of choice. I've never heard of anyone dying because of a lack of sex. That goes for those who have embraced either homosexuality and heterosexuality. Why is it that we want to label people, when the one thing that is consent in life is change? We falsely believe, once something, always something, when life keeps proving to us other wise. Astronaut today, unglued tomorrow, why do we keep trying to make a moving target, stand still.
It is a defeating task. Change is life, and labels are an unrealistic way of living and looking at life. Posted By Lynn, P. Not possible to change your sexual orientation, trust me, I tried and tried. That is the way I was born. I am 58 years old and raised Southern Baptist and it was not okay to be gay so I wasnt I have been married twice and have two children and I tried, prayed, went to lots of therapists, and did everything I could to make the internal feelings go away.
I could change my behavior but not who I was or what turned me on no matter how hard I tried. At 40 years old, I decided to live my life in accordance to what I felt and who I was attracted to and wanted to love. And be loved completely, spiritually, and physically. It took 7 years for my family to ever talk to me again when I came out to them as an act of love. I wanted them to know why I had gotten two divorces, been on anti-depressants and cut off all of my feelings.
Believe me I have tried. And if it is a choice, when did the straight guys make that decision? How old were they when they consciously decided? Did they get turned on by another guy at a certain age and just changed their internal desires and it just went away?
Did they notice both men and women and weighed the decision to be or not to be? Not for me. I now have a life partner and we met late in life. I was 45 and he was He had been married for 20 years also. We have been together for 13 years and all of our children and grandchildren love us. I truly am living the life of my dreams and am very grateful and happy that I finally accepted myself just as I am I was nineteen years old and my mother, at my dad's insistance took me to see a psychiatrist because they suspected that I would turn out gay.
After sitting with the doctor for 45 minutes or so he suggested that it should be my mother that needed help, he found me very well adjusted and happy. I have been in a secure loving relationship for years and my parents are a happy part of our lives. I really wish these religious radicals left the world alone and not try to poison society with their warped and sick sense of what they consider right or wrong! Well, first of all I believe that if you've ever had a Gay Relationship, you are not straight, and never will be.
At the least, you are bi-sexual and may choose one life style over another. The idea, that you can "become" straight, or choose to be is ludicrous. I think that certain religions do a great disservice to many people, by not allowing them to be who they are, and "guilting" them into trying to change. If I, were to live in a world where homosexuality was the norm, and had religious groups telling me it was a sin to be straight, I don't know how I could deal with that. I know there is no way I could ever change to be gay I'm sure most gay people feel the same way.
Can people change? We are all products of our upbringing. If we conclude by the way, without scientific evidence that some people are hardwired to be gay, why can't we also CONCLUDE that other people are hardwired to be polygamous, or whatever Some of my letters might be red, while some of yours are colored blue. This may sound counterintuitive, but those variations can also share similarities. The books that make up my family look similar to each other — in this example, they contain other shades of red.
The technique can be used to suss out why certain people and their particular genetic variations correlate with health conditions like autism , physical traits like curly hair or colorblindness, behaviors like handedness or emotions like loneliness. The strongest signals came from five random genes. Two of those genes correlated with same-sex sexuality in males, one of which is known to influence the sense of smell. One gene cropped up for females and two others showed solid patterns in both males and females.
But their individual scores never passed this 1-percent mark — meaning they are all minor contributors to same-sex sexual behavior. When the team looked more broadly across all the genomes — across the thousands of genes that they screened for the nearly , subjects — the genes similarities they found could only account for 8 to 25 percent of same-sex sexual behavior. Humans have tried to understand human sexuality for centuries — and genetics researchers joined the fray in the early s after a series of studies on twins suggested homosexuality ran in families.
These kinds of studies have continued through the years, going as far as pinpointing a gene on the X chromosome — Xq28 — as the culprit. His comments speak to the larger narrative about using biology to define complex behaviors — like sexuality — when science is always evolving and takes time to find anything close to definitive. Those early studies stumbled upon a concrete pattern: Sexuality can run in families and thus must have a genetic component.
But back then, the scientists had no way of comprehensively exploring this issue. But Spitzer's study, which has not yet been published or reviewed, seems to indicate otherwise. Spitzer says he spoke to men and 57 women who say they changed their orientation from gay to straight, and concluded that 66 percent of the men and 44 percent of women reached what he called good heterosexual functioning — a sustained, loving heterosexual relationship within the past year and getting enough emotional satisfaction to rate at least a seven on a point scale.
He said those who changed their orientation had satisfying heterosexual sex at least monthly and never or rarely thought of someone of the same sex during intercourse. He also found that 89 percent of men and 95 percent of women were bothered not at all or only slightly by unwanted homosexual feelings.
However, only 11 percent of men and 37 percent of women reported a complete absence of homosexual indicators. But they managed to change those feelings, he added. The study reopens the debate over "reparative therapy," or treatment to change sexual preference. Spitzer argues that highly motivated gays can in fact change that preference — with a lot of effort. But critics have challenged the study, even before it was formally unveiled at today's session of the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, which was jammed with television cameras reporting on the presentation.
Another study presented today even contradicted the finding. Throughout the s and into the mids, treatments in the U. Given that homosexual activity was also criminally prosecuted in the U. One of the most popular aversion techniques was "orgasmic reconditioning" — men would be shown erotic pictures of other men, and if they became aroused, they would receive an electric shock on their genitals.
Therapists also gave patients drugs that induced vomiting or paralysis, or exposed them to noxious chemicals like ammonia, whenever they were aroused by same-sex photos. Some aversion treatments included rewards — including pleasant smells — for arousal in response to pictures of women.
There was also shame aversion therapy, first used in the s, which involved continually subjecting the patient to public shame or humiliation over his same-sex arousal. Another method was satiation therapy , in which a subject was told to masturbate over and over while verbally describing his homosexual fantasies, until they disappeared — or, at least, diminished. These "therapies" were generally ineffective — the person remained attracted to the same sex — or over-effective — the person was traumatized and lost all sexual arousal entirely.
They "were used without people thinking about whether they were humane," Glassgold says. Not all treatments were so gruesome: Lionel Ovesey, a Columbia University psychoanalyst and author of Homosexuality and Pseudohomosexuality , created a behavioral method in the s. It was based on the idea that homosexuality originated from a fear of taking on the normal qualities of one's gender. Other non-aversive treatments following this theory focused on building "educational skills" like dating techniques, assertiveness training, and affection coaching to increase interactions with women.
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