Duration has nothing to do with it - They’re working on altering his mind. The methods they use are torturous after even an hour.
Would it be a more serious torture if it lasted six weeks, or six months? Sure. But why should LiA get a free pass for using mental torture merely because its a lesser period of time? This really is one of those rare black-or-white situations - Either mental torture is OK, or it isn’t.
brickbacon-go to Zach’s blog. Read, in full the list of rules that he has to abide by during the 2 weeks, because it doesn’t sound like you have.
It’s a lot worse than two weeks of having to listern to “these fucking wackos, nod his head, quote some Bible verses”.
He’s forbidden from speaking, making gestures or eye contact with another human being for the first 3 days.
After that he may communicate only with approved people, and only in an approved manner.
His only privacy will be 15mins in the bathroom in the morning, and any bathroom breaks during the day (he’ll have someone standing outside the cubicle or door though).
He will be forced to reveal his innermost thoughts to the group, on pain of punishment.
All members of the group are encouraged to report an infringements of the rules by their peers.
All of it involves breaking someone down with the intent of building them up in the way the LIA wants them built. The same sort of methods used by cults, interrogators and torturers.
It IS brainwashing: independent thought is discouraged, rewards depend on group approval, and group approval is based on following arbitrary rules.
Human minds are complex and mysterious things. If Saved is based on a true story, then it is possible that people can meet and fall in love at these sort of camps. If this happens, then yes, the camps have helped people.
Likewise, I can think of a few situations in which gargling gasoline would be helpful.
However, given that in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, gargling gasoline (or attending these camps) isn’t helpful in the slightest, and is actively harmful (see comments about suicide), claiming that it has helped people is disengenouos.
Tell ya what, brickbacon, why don’t you go see if there’s a branch of Moonies recruiting near you. Perhaps if you’d actually expose yourself to the kind of enviornment where this sort of stuff happens, you’d get an appreciation of how it works. Till then, take the words of those of us who’ve been there. In the vast majority of cases, they work.
I think you’re reading a bit much into it. I was just attempting to interpret what Cervaise posted. I even qualified that it was a Wild Assed Guess. See how that works?
However. I will agree that it has probably helped some people assimilate in “normal” society by hiding who they are in a fiction.
I’m sorry, how does length of time have anything to do with it? If I only hit you once, does that mean I can’t be accused of assaulting you? It was only once.
And just because he knows what’s right and what’s wrong, that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to be damaged by what’s being done.
You need to stop telling me what I need to do. I can be calm and decry what I know is wrong at the same time.
Your apologist bullshit to defend the parents and the camp is SICKENING.
You are dishonest and I’d say agree with the concept and intent of this obscene camp.
Your insults towards the other participants in this thread only make your ethical bankruptcy and lack of compassion more glaring.
You are a fucking joke.
FriarTed
On the off-chance that you return, I’d still like to get your response to this:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6248415&postcount=152
Thanks.
Or, to put it another way, these camps are nothing but examples of avoidance therapy. They cause people to stop having sex for a few years, as other have said, but their actual ability to convert gays is in fact 0%.
Uh huh.
I’ve lived through the shit he’s dealing with to a lesser degree.
You’re talking out your ass and being insulting to anyone who disagrees with you and proves you wrong.
You are PATHETIC.
How do you figure?
Seems to me there must be a reason for that response, though I don’t see it.
What an amazingly coherent and persuasive argument. I so totally see your point now.
Honestly, brickbacon, don’t be so sensitive. Suck it up. It isn’t as if you’re required to sit here and listen to us spout our opinions at you 24/7 for, say, two weeks straight without the luxury of being able to respond the way you want. I mean, really. How difficult is it to be called ignorant and wrong and just take it? They’re just words. Right?
http://www.exgaywatch.com/blog/archives/2005/01/subjective_view.html
According to this, it’s hard to determine exactly what the role of Cooper in the organization was, but it’s clear that “just a volunteer” is yet another lie told by the ex-gay movement in order to save a little bit of face.
And yet the fact that you can’t prove it sorta puts the lie in it - even if this were a relevant point. Why would it be okay even if it reliably worked? To take a kid, cause him emotional anguish to the point he develops suicidal ideation, put him in a camp against his will to turn him straight - why would that be okay even if it worked?
Second, you can’t prove that it worked, which is why you haven’t. You can claim to high heaven that they must work for some people, but there’s no evidence to support your claim. I can yell, and scream, and cry that the sky is green, but it won’t change the color. So no, the ignorance is making a counterfactual claim and expecting it to become true because you yell it so much. Your argument is like this - “I personally have never heard of this happening. Statistics say it doesn’t happen. Research into people’s sexuality shows why it doesn’t happen. Nevertheless, it happens sometimes.”
How often, brickbacon? How often does it happen, do you think? How many “successes” does it take to make this okay, since whatever argument you’re trying to make seems to depend heavily on these programs being effective. Basically, you think taking a thousand gay kids, against their will, effectively imprisoning them, isolating them from everyone they care about, and trying to forcibly change their sexuality - you think that’s all okay, so long as it’s effective in one of those thousand cases? Why? Why would that make it okay?
I will continue saying that it’s never worked for anyone, even once, at actually shifting their sexual orientation, until it’s proved otherwise. Because there is simply no reliable evidence that suggests anything else.
Why is it okay? Why is it okay to imprison a kid against his will? Why is it okay to drive a kid into considering suicide? What exactly is immoral to you, if driving a kid to contemplate killing himself isn’t enough?
We get it. You don’t care about the kid. You don’t think it’s wrong to take a 16-year-old - practically an adult - against his will, isolate him from his friends and life, keep him from so much as reading a book - in order to change his sexual orientation when he doesn’t want to change. You have no problem with that. That’s because of your own moral blindness and utter lack of empathy for others. If you don’t care about anyone but yourself, that’s your perogative. You demonstrated the same feelings in your thread about why cheating in school is okay. Fine - but you aren’t going to convince anyone else of your bizarre, twisted viewpoint.
You’ve made it clear. You have no problem with torturing this young man until he considers suicide, which is what his parents did. Who knows how much worse he feels now? He can’t tell anyone. You consider that morally acceptable. That’s your opinion, you’ve stated it, now you’re done. No one here agrees with you. Continue your self-righteous ranting - no one cares.
If only the same could be said for you.
OTOH, he could mean that thinking Excalibre agrees that it’s greater than zero % is ignorant.
Well, I just found out about this and came to the pit to open a thread. I guess I need to click on a link every now and then.
I would apologize on behalf of Memphis, but the [rul=http://www.fightinghomophobia.blogspot.com/]protests were mobilized by some friends of mine (and yet I still didn’t know about it until today!), so I think my fair city has at least somewhat acquitted itself in this affair.
BTW, tomorrow is the Mid-South Pride Parade in Memphis.
Yeah, I thought about that after I made that post. :o
Makes a lot more sense that way.
brickbacon, how would you feel about being forced to go to a camp that literally mentally and emotionally tortured you to make you stop being black?
Funny, the same thought occured to me.
They would use skin bleaching, straighten your hair, not permit you to be around your black friends to avoid their influence on you. And of course it wouldn’t work - but using brickbacon’s logic, we couldn’t be certain that you wouldn’t come out some blond blue-eyed white boy rather than a Michael Jacksonesque monstrosity. And hey, even if you didn’t want to become white, even if there’s nothing wrong with being black, maybe it’ll work. And according to brickbacon’s crazy logic, that would be okay.
Hey, it would be compassionate: according to some people (this view was a common justification of slavery, of course), black skin marks your descent from Ham, the son of Noah who was condemned to servitude, along with his descendents, for ridiculing his father. So if we bleached you thoroughly, and trained you to pretend to be white, that would remove the stain of your ancestry. No problem, eh?
Amd you are a hateful, wifully ignorant waste of skin.
I think the poster who suggested that you have something neurologically wrong might be on the right track.
I can link to the camp’s own claims about the success of their programs, but I think we can both agree that they are grossly inflated. You can’t prove they don’t work either, so I don’t know how that weakens my point any. I’m sure you can provide examples of people it didn’t work for just as you could do with any behavior modification program. Doesn’t prove the program doesn’t ever work. Not that that would make the program necessary or worthwhile. The initial statement with regard to this matter was not an attempt to defend the camps, just to say that people’s statement about them never working are, in all likelihood, false.
There was some guy on Penn and Teller talking about how a similar program worked for him. I’m sure I could find others who feel the same way. So yes, there is evidence that these programs can work. Where’s your proof that they don’t work?
Show me where I said these programs were effective or necessary??? When did I say it was okay or even advisable? Stop putting words in my mouth!
There is no test for sexual orientation. If someone says they changed, you can either accept their self-evaluation or reject it. There are people who say they have changed.
[QUOTE=Excalibre]
Why is it okay? Why is it okay to imprison a kid against his will? Why is it okay to drive a kid into considering suicide? What exactly is immoral to you, if driving a kid to contemplate killing himself isn’t enough?
Again, please show me where I’ve said it was okay? This whole suicide thing is sad, but if this kid is contemplating suicide because of this, then he wasn’t wrapped too tight anyway. This is two weeks of camp. He will be able to move far away form these people in a year or so. If he is so shortsighted as to think suicide, then he needs other sorts of help. I see you didn’t mention his mentioning killing his mother. Very telling. This kid lost a lot of sympathy from me when he thinks about killing his mother because she’s (in all likelihood) a homophobe.
Alright, now you are lying. I never said this camp or cheating is school was okay. You don’t know anything about me. The fact that you think you do is pretty delusional.
My problem is with people calling this evil and saying they are torturing him. Nothing in those rules seems like torture to me. I’ve already stated many times that this was wrong.