In case anyone doesn’t know, reparative “therapy” is the practice of trying to “fix” homosexuals. Anyone ever have any experiences with it?
I have an older brother who works with Love in Action. But I’ll not ask him, on account of having so much contempt for him.
Anybody? Bueller?
Not quite what you were asking, but… A very good friend of my ex-girlfriend was a lesbian in her mid-fifties who had been with her partner for almost 30 years. She was quite the “bull dyke” in both looks and demeanor, and was jovial with quite the laugh-riot personality. Their church got a new pastor who encouraged them to shun all things gay, which meant not associating with us anymore, and throwing out all photographs, gifts, and mementos from any of their other GLBT friends and family.
Her partner was not comfortable with any of this, since it really alienated them from pretty much everyone in their lives outside the church. Eventually our favourite bull dyke, left her same-sex spouse to join a branch of their church in the southern U.S. She “renounced her homosexuality” and started to grow her hair and wear make-up because the church really wanted her to meet and man and marry. In what few pictures we saw before she completely cut off her family, she looked like a man in a wig and make-up (really she was the hardcore bullest of bull dykes and could probably out-man the average WWE wrestler).
I have no idea how things worked out for her in the end, since she essentially disappeared and no longer contacts anyone from the previous 50+ years of year life. We do know she was miserable and before cutting off all contact from her family, her emails were written strangely as if she was drugged (not likely though, but quite probably sleep deprived) and they were concerned about her despair. From what I understand, she was counseled by her fellowship and was told her great sadness was caused by the burden of carrying her sin of gayness around for her entire adult life, but Jesus would eventually set her free. I have no idea what happened to her after she completely disappeared. AFAIK her abandoned spouse never heard from her again.
That has to be the saddest story ever. Hopefully in ten or twenty years churches who are visably anti homophobic will be like those churches where Bob Jones Univeristy is considered “too libral”
Doon’t know anyone myself that has any experience with this, but I just read a couple of hours ago a blog post by Derren Brown on the subject.