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  TODAY

Gay 'conversion': Morality or bigotry?

This is the moment Bob Davies has dreamed of.

After 13 years of toiling in relative obscurity to bring what he sees as a message of salvation to homosexuals, Davies is in the spotlight. The phones in his Seattle office ring constantly, thanks to recent newspaper ads, bankrolled by conservative and Christian groups, that say gays can turn straight if they seek help - help that Davies' group Exodus International offers through its network of 90 U.S. ministries.

But the calls coming into Exodus' toll-free line aren't all from gays seeking help; in fact, Davies says, more than half are from people "who want to banish us to the hottest flames of hell . . . They're calling to tell us we're hateful, we're bigoted, we're homophobic."

In the war over homosexuality, circa 1998, the battle over the gays-can-change ad campaign is emblematic: Emotions run high, name-calling is rampant and no one claims high moral ground without a challenge.

The full-page ads, which have run in USA TODAY, The New York Times and other publications, carry testimonials of people like Anne Paulk of Colorado Springs - "wife, mother, former lesbian" - and proclaim that God's love "can set you free" from "sexual sin."

They bring attention to a church-based homosexual conversion movement that started more than 20 years ago, about the time that most psychiatrists stopped treating homosexuality as a disease.

Homosexuality is "not a simple moral choice" and not easily overcome, Davies says. But groups like his exist, he says, to give hope and help to those who believe that they cannot be both Christian and gay. While some churches now embrace openly homosexual members, the gay conversion movement flourishes among those who believe that the only morally acceptable sex takes place within heterosexual marriages.

But gay rights groups say the ad campaign isn't about helping people or presenting options. Instead, they say, it's about undermining gay rights by suggesting that homosexuals don't need protection from discrimination because they aren't a special group - just confused sinners who could go straight if they tried hard enough.

"We are in the midst of the one of the most concerted attacks on gay rights ever," directed by the groups behind the ads, says David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, Washington, D.C. "The ads start with the premise that something is wrong with homosexuality, so homosexuality must be changed."

But beyond the politics and the rhetoric, as always, are real lives.

There are people like Davies and Paulk, who call themselves Christian "ex-gays," saved from sin, shame and emotional emptiness by groups like Exodus, Love in Action and Homosexuals Anonymous. And there are gay men and women who say such groups condemned them to years of guilt and duplicity, to empty marriages, unnecessary loneliness, even thoughts of suicide.

"What we're not hearing about in these ads are the stories of people who have killed themselves because they couldn't change," says Doug Upchurch, a Houston man who runs a Web site for "ex-ex-gays" like himself, people who tried conversion therapy but now lead gay lives.

Not a disorder

The mental health community is overwhelmingly on the side of those who say homosexuality is not a sickness or a choice that can or should be changed.

Although some psychiatrists still offer treatment for homosexuality, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. The group says there's no scientific proof that any kind of therapy can reverse a person's sexual orientation.

The American Psychological Association says that there's no evidence such therapy works and that it may do more harm than good.

And the American Academy of Pediatrics says that while some teens who are uncertain about their sexual orientation might benefit from therapy, therapy designed to change sexual orientation is discouraged, "since it can provoke guilt and anxiety" while holding little or no potential for success.

Caitlin Ryan, a Washington, D.C., social worker who counsels young gays, says she worries the ads will encourage parents to push adolescents into therapy. Many parents, she says, already "push gay youths into heterosexual experiences, thinking if they have heterosexual sex or have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, then they won't be gay anymore."

But leaders in the conversion therapy movement say they don't want to pressure anyone to join them. Joe Dallas, who runs Genesis Counseling in Orange, Calif., says he tells parents that suggesting therapy to their sons and daughters probably will backfire. Conversion therapy has a chance of succeeding only when people are deeply committed to it, he says.

"The movement is primarily speaking to people who already hold a worldview that excludes homosexuality," says Dallas, an Exodus graduate. "We are there to speak to the people who are not satisfied, who are at odds with their sexual orientation."

But Dallas, Davies and other leaders concede that even for the committed, success is far from certain.

In fact, the most famous failures in conversion therapy history were the founders of Exodus, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper: They fell in love with each other and left the group, and their wives, in the late 1970s.

"There are no statistics," Davies says, but "I would say that a minority of individuals coming through these ministries have made it in the long run . . . remained free of homosexual behavior for five years or more."

And he says even fewer develop full-fledged attractions for the opposite sex or go on to marry, as he and Dallas have. But "we don't promote marriage as the ultimate goal."

And so, the leaders say, success often means celibacy.

While critics may say that's unhealthy, Dallas says, "I think it's unhealthy for people to live in a way that violates their conscience.''

But critics say those who can't change, whether inwardly or outwardly, end up in pain.

People who seek such therapies "obviously have some strong shame or guilt or self-hatred," and often are trying to conform to the expectations of their families and churches, says Clinton Anderson, who heads an office on lesbian, gay and bisexual concerns at the American Psychological Association in Washington. When they can't change, he says, their feelings of failure only intensify.

The ministries "send the message to gay young people that their sexual orientation really is a vile and dreadful thing that needs to be changed, and that's destructive enough in and of itself," says the Rev. Michael Seiler, an Episcopal priest in Philadelphia who has counseled conversion therapy dropouts. "It gets even worse when they find out, as the vast majority do, that those qualities can't be changed. Then they are left with guilt and shame and rejection."

Those who try marriage despite less-than-complete conversions hurt others as well, Anderson says. "You're generating a lot of unhappy marriages, a lot of painful divorces."

Conversion ministries also hurt families because they tell people that their homosexuality was caused by early trauma or emotional neglect, Upchurch says. "One of the first things you learn is that it's your parents' fault that you're gay," something mainstream therapists have long ceased to believe, he says. "These groups tear families apart."

Aim: To heal families

Conversion groups don't deny that they look for the roots of homosexuality in troubled families or early abuse, rather than in genetic predispositions or the hard-wiring of the brain. But, they say, their aim is to heal families. And to heal relationships with God.

"I know of all kinds of people who are gay and go to church every Sunday, but the tenets of their faith are different from mine. We are in disagreement," Davies says. His God "does not have a special vendetta against people with homosexual attractions. But there is only one approved way of expressing sexuality, and that is within a permanent heterosexual marriage. The people in Exodus are seeking to be obedient to what God is asking of them."

Paulk, the woman in the ad, says: "I wanted to change, not because I wanted to change, but

Those who changed, those who didn't

• Exodus director recalls his search for sexual identity
• Woman says 'God accepts me' after years of trying to conform
• Long marriage didn't change gay man's orientation
• Once gay, couple is now a family

By Kim Painter, USA TODAY

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