Freedom to be …?

Food wasn’t supposed to be a part of the $50 attendance fee, but by mid-morning, conference organizers decide it is safer to go into lockdown mode rather than risk interference with the mob outside. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is in town rallying a peace demonstration around the block, and some of the war protesters have filtered over from the Boston Common, blocking traffic on Tremont Street.

At lunchtime, Josh stands in the lobby watching the protesters. He had ventured outside earlier, but the protesters started yelling at him, and one guy spat at his feet. It pissed him off. “I’ve been just as actively gay as he has, but I’m not renouncing him,” Josh says. “From a human rights point of view, people have a right to choose not to be gay.”

Josh is not here for the Christian message, but because he is seeking support in being straight — and the idea of becoming ex-gay offers him hope. If the ex-gay movement is to gain any acknowledgment from nonbelievers, people like Josh are the only chance it’s got.

“I come from a very fucked-up, dysfunctional family, and I’ve always had this dream of correcting that by getting married to a woman and having a family of my own,” he explains. “According to Nicolosi, if you resolve a lot of those childhood issues, natural heterosexual desires will emerge. The way I look at it is that I’ve got to deal with those issues anyway, and if it’s in the framework of reparative therapy, no matter which direction I go in my life, I’ll win at the end. If I resolve all the issues but I’m still gay, I still resolved the issues. And if I resolve the issues and transition to a heterosexual life, then I’ll be happier.”

I ask Josh why he believes he’d be happier with a woman if he’s sexually attracted to men; it seems a needless sacrifice in an era when gay relationships are socially accepted in many areas, if not legally sanctioned. “I know that argument, because I play it to myself all the time,” he admits. “Why don’t I just find a husband, have some sort of ceremony, figure out a way to have kids, maybe have emotional and sexual monogamy, maybe not. I probably could, if I wanted to. I just feel like it’s easier to find that mainstream lifestyle that I want.”

In his quest for that lifestyle, Josh attends weekly meetings of the New Warriors, a men’s organization. Reparative therapists say forming healthy, nonsexual bonds with people of the same sex is essential to overcoming homosexuality. He’s also heavily involved in the Jewish ex-gay group Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH), sees his reparative therapist on a regular basis, and has read all of Dr. Nicolosi’s books. He’s even attended psychotherapist Richard Cohen’s $250-a-head “Love/Sex/Intimacy” weekend seminar, an experience he says didn’t make him straight, but did make him sexually numb for a time. “I didn’t have attractions to men for a month afterward,” he tells me. (In early 2005, Richard Cohen was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association due to ethics violations. However, his “Love/Sex/Intimacy” seminars, “experiential weekends which combine emotional processes and cognitive understandings,” continue to be held.)

When I ask Josh whether he believes homosexuality is a sin, he shies away from religious discussion, instead citing an organic example. “If you have a cold, and you blow your nose, is that going to cure your cold? No, it’s just going to get the snot away,” he says. “You gotta take medication to kill the germs, and that will stop the cold. People in reparative therapy look at homosexuality as the runny nose. If you just wipe it away, that’s not going to cure the issues inside. But if you deal with the issues inside that cause the homosexuality, then the runny nose will stop.”

“Why is the runny nose bad?” I ask.

“Because you don’t want to walk around all day with a runny nose,” he says.

“Why don’t you want to walk around all day with a runny nose?” I press.

“Well, the truth is, if you want to, that’s fine,” Josh admits. “People in reparative therapy aren’t going to argue with you. I’m not going to go around and missionize to my gay friends and tell them they need to look into why they’re gay.”

Looking out through the glass doors at the protesters, though, it bothers Josh to think that they equate his attendance at the conference with bigotry. What did it matter to them if he came here today because he was interested in what Nicolosi had to say? It meant they had put him into a box labeled “ex-gay,” and Josh hates boxes, though he admits the assumptions of the protesters aren’t totally unfounded.

“Guys go into this process for three reasons,” he says. “They’re religious, and they believe that they have to. They’re married, and they’re trying to save their marriage. Or, they’re over 40 and they’re ugly.” He’s quick to clarify that he doesn’t mean to be nasty, but rather to point out that the gay scene can be overly materialistic and concerned with physical appearances. As an afterthought, he adds: “This may make me sound like a total fucking fag, but I’ve also met very good-looking guys in this process.” He doesn’t sleep with them, though opponents of ex-gay ministries widely allege that hanky-panky between members and leaders frequently occurs.

There’s also a fourth category, the one that Josh falls into: those who don’t want to be gay, but not for religious reasons. “People get confused, especially nowadays,” he says, “because it’s like you have these feelings, at the age of 15 you come out, you get beaten up in high school a bit, you join the gay-straight alliance, and then you go to college and you march in parades, and then that’s it.” But what if that doesn’t make you happy? What if changing your sexual orientation did?

That happiness is what Josh is banking on, though he won’t say that he’s been entirely successful at getting rid of his urges. Maybe that’s because for all the time and money he’s invested in dealing with his same-sex attractions, Josh still hasn’t done the one thing ex-gay therapists say is crucial in the healing process, which is cutting off all ties to the gay community. This seesaw between dual and opposing worlds is tough for him, especially when he gets spat upon by gay activists for what he sees as a distinctly personal journey.

“Guys in the process like me, we don’t give a rat’s ass about the political agenda that Exodus may have, or that gay activists may have,” says Josh. “We really just care about our lives. That’s why I’m very closeted in going through this process, because I know it’s just a very politically charged message that gets across. Most people don’t realize that my involvement in this has nothing to do with politics.”

That people who lack political motives but struggle with deep personal issues are being co-opted into the ex-gay movement is a symptom of Christian fundamentalism’s growing presence in politics, says gay activist Wayne Besen. “It’s a slick PR [public relations] tactic,” he argues. “It’s about tricking Americans into believing that homosexuality is a choice, so they will decide that homosexuals don’t need equal rights because they can change. Once that happens, then they’re one step closer to their Christian nation. These are highly trained public relations experts, with very tested language with which they can make themselves look loving. But you look at the anti-gay laws, the discrimination — it’s happening because of them. It’s happening because of ‘Love Won Out.’”

Besen, who refers to Focus on the Family as “Fucking Up the Family” and calls Exodus “a group of victims creating more victims,” says that while ex-gay spokespeople and leaders may be decent people, the politicians backing the ex-gay movement are indifferent to the personal pain of the followers they target. “It’s just collateral damage for getting a Christian nation,” he says. “They don’t care about these people. They all know it doesn’t work. James Dobson’s got hundreds of millions of dollars, but they [give very little] to the ministries. They’d give Exodus $20 million if it were a factory for turning out straight people.”

But what about people who, like Josh, relate to Nicolosi’s triadic model and feel that going from gay to straight is both a personal choice and a constitutional right? “Dr. Nicolosi pulled [his theory] out of thin air, and I honestly think you have to be an ignoramus or a dolt to subscribe even the slightest bit of validity to it,” says Besen. “He doesn’t have a shred of evidence. He’s basically taking an old stereotype from the 1950s and calling it science, but it’s just pure, unadulterated fiction. I’ve spoken with some of his patients, and he’s doing quite a bit of damage. It’s amazing what some people will do for a buck.”

Whether or not Nicolosi is a quack, Josh finds his theories interesting and relevant, and for him, that’s reason enough to pursue reparative therapy, which he defines as repairing emotional wounds as opposed to repairing sexual orientation. “This is my journey,” he says. “I’m not running for president, I’m not trying to change any political charters out there. I want to have the freedom to explore my own life without people telling me I have these feelings and therefore I have to be gay. I’m gaining so much from where I am, and this is my own process, and it’s working great for me.”

A journey’s end

By the end of the day, the stage is taken by former Exodus president Joe Dallas, who says that more important than winning the culture wars or politically defeating gay activists is winning the souls of the opponents and calling them to the Kingdom of God. “Our model has been pharisaical,” he thunders. “The message we send is that ‘you nasty people should be more like us.’ Homosexuality is a sin, but so is hypocrisy. We spend millions to defeat them, but pennies to minister to them. I think we’ve got the hate part down just fine, but we need more evidence that we love them despite their sin.”

To show gays and lesbians just how much he loves them, Dallas concludes the conference by inviting any homosexual strugglers in the audience to the pulpit, where he and Exodus leaders in blue “Love Won Out” polo shirts will pray with them.

As people crowd the alter, tears streaming down their faces, and others sit in the audience weeping, the crux of the ex-gay movement emerges, the simple reason it can exist at all in modern America: People are sad. They’re fearful in an age of uncertainty, they feel far away from God, they’re wrestling with personal demons, and the ex-gay world offers them a forum to explore their pain.

Near the conference’s end, many people — including Tom — seem to need a breather. Dragging on his cigarette, Tom stands watching the protesters, almost in tears. One of them breaks away from the crowd and approaches him.

“Are you in there? Are you okay?” she asks. “You’re not going to change, are you?”

“No,” replies Tom, “I’m just here for my mom.”

“That’s great,” says the woman, “but you look like you need a hug.”

Then she hugs Tom, in the middle of the street. It is a profound moment for him: the recognition that things aren’t as black-and-white as Mike Haley’s wedding photograph, and the understanding that people don’t attend such events because they necessarily wish to deny homosexuality, but for a variety of reasons. Including fear. Including love. “The conference [speakers] kept saying there’s no fulfillment, there’s no joy, there’s nothing good about being gay,” says Tom, “but when I went outside, I saw that there was.”

Update: Tom has been in a relationship with another man for a year and a half, and is graduating from college next year. Even though his mother doesn’t like Tom’s sexual orientation, she has come to the conclusion that people are born gay, and one’s sexuality cannot be changed. Tom’s family is now very supportive, and his relationship with his mother has gotten stronger.

Josh stopped seeing his reparative therapist in July 2006, and has since decided to not continue on the path of reparative therapy. He is in the process of coming out.

Erin Marie Daly