'Ex-Gays' Seek a Say in Schools
In response to campus programs supporting homosexuality, critics call
for offering an alternative view: that people can go straight.
By Stephanie Simon
The Los Angeles Times
May 28, 2006
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Over the last decade, gay-rights activists have
pushed programs to support gay and lesbian students in public schools.
Their success is striking:
More than 3,000 Gay-Straight Alliance clubs meet across the country.
Nearly half a million students take a vow of silence one day each
spring in an annual event to support gay rights. California may soon
require textbooks to feature the contributions of gays and lesbians
throughout history.
Critics, mostly on the religious right, view all this as promoting the
"homosexual lifestyle." Unable to stop it, they have turned to a new
strategy: demanding equal time for their view in public schools and on
college campuses.
Conservative Christians and Jews have teamed up with men and women who
call themselves "ex-gay" to lobby — and even sue — for the right to
tell teenagers that they can "heal" themselves of unwanted same-sex
attractions.
They argue that schools have an obligation to balance gay-pride themes
with the message that gay and lesbian students can go straight through
"reparative therapy." In this view, homosexuality is not a fixed or
inborn trait but a symptom of emotional distress — a disorder that can
be cured.
Alan Chambers, a leading ex-gay activist, recalls how scared and
depressed he felt when a high-school counselor advised him to deal with
his attraction to other boys by accepting his homosexuality. He had no
choice, she told him: He was gay. "It was very damaging," Chambers
said. "I didn't want that. I hadn't chosen it."
His senior year, Chambers found his way to Exodus International, a
network of groups that support ex-gays. He is now married to a woman, a
father of two — and the president of Exodus.
Mental-health professionals overwhelmingly warn against therapy to
change sexual orientation, calling it ineffective and potentially
harmful to patients' self-esteem. But ex-gays say they have managed to
eliminate or reduce their pull to the same sex, though it often takes
years of struggle.
"That's an important perspective," Chambers said. "If you're going to
allow one side into the schools, you need to allow the other side, too.
People want alternatives."
That rhetoric echoes the creationist campaigns of the 1980s and '90s:
Just as conservative Christians demanded equal time for Genesis
whenever Darwin got a mention, ex-gays and their allies are insisting
on equal time for their views whenever homosexuality is discussed.
Several ex-gay websites offer equal-time policies that parents can urge
their local school boards to adopt.
Teachers, too, are beginning to raise the subject with their principals
and in the classroom. "It's been our hottest issue over the last two
years. Without a doubt," said Finn Laursen, executive director of the
Christian Educators Assn. International, which represents 7,000
teachers, mostly from public schools.
Though the equal-time argument didn't work for creationists, ex-gays
have begun to notch some successes.
A high school in New Hampshire invited ex-gay activist Aaron Shorey to
present his story on Civil Rights Day last year. He told several
standing-room-only classes that he refused to let his attraction to men
define him as gay. "I have experienced change," he told them. "Change
is possible." He's working with several other New England schools to
get permission for similar presentations.
The ex-gay group Inqueery, based in Des Moines, has also sent speakers
to public high schools, including one in Chicago this spring.
In Boulder, Colo., educators are considering including an ex-gay
pamphlet in a resource guide to help teachers handle questions about
sexuality. The pamphlet states that sexual identity is fluid and that
conversion therapy can help some gays and lesbians overcome depression.
The district — in one of the most liberal cities in the country — does
not endorse that philosophy, but "we're a big believer in providing all
viewpoints," spokeswoman Maela Moore said. "It would be negligent to
omit."
The ex-gay movement's biggest victory came last year, when a federal
judge sided with Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays, or PFOX, in a
lawsuit against a Maryland school district.
PFOX, a national advocacy group based in Alexandria, Va., had sued to
block the district's new sex-education curriculum, arguing that its
treatment of homosexuality was one-sided. The judge agreed that
students should hear other perspectives, and PFOX took a seat on the
committee charged with drafting new lesson plans.
Similar lawsuits may be filed soon. New Jersey-based JONAH — Jews
Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality — is seeking parents and
students willing to sue to get the ex-gay view into schools. So is
Liberty Counsel, a Christian law firm in Orlando, Fla. The firm joined
PFOX last month in urging teens to form Gay to Straight Clubs and hang
"Choose to Change" posters in their schools. If an administrator tries
to censor that message, Liberty Counsel promises to provide legal
backup.
Already this spring, the firm has threatened to take a Wisconsin high
school to court for inviting a gay speaker — but not an ex-gay — to
Diversity Day. (The school responded by canceling the program.) Liberty
Counsel is also weighing action against colleges in Ohio and
Connecticut after students said they were barred from putting ex-gay
literature in the campus gay and lesbian centers.
The ex-gay movement considers same-sex attraction to be a
gender-identity disorder, brought on by inadequate parenting, unmet
emotional needs and, often, childhood sexual abuse.
Mainstream associations of psychiatrists and psychologists resoundingly
reject that model, but the ex-gay movement promotes it through groups
such as the National Assn. for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.
That group's president, psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, opened a recent
conference for men and women seeking to overcome homosexuality with a
ringing statement:
"There is no such thing as a homosexual. We are all heterosexual. Our
body was designed for the opposite sex."
The audience of more than 700 sat rapt in the pews of a Fort Lauderdale
church. Some held Bibles. Others took notes. Nicolosi went on to tell
them that fathers could help their sons stay straight by bonding
through rough-and-tumble games, such as tossing them in the air.
"Even if [the dad] drops the kid and he cracks his head, at least he'll
be heterosexual," Nicolosi said, chuckling. "A small price to pay."
Critics say such comments reflect a deep homophobia and can devastate
men and women trying to come to terms with their sexual orientation.
"There's a fine line between saying 'Change is possible, and I have
changed' and saying 'Change is possible, and you better change because
something's wrong with you,' " said Eliza Byard, deputy executive
director of the nonprofit Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.
Protesting the ex-gay conference in Florida, Jerry Stephenson said his
three years in conversion therapy plunged him into despair and
self-loathing. He could not break his attraction to men; ashamed of his
weakness, he contemplated suicide. Today, Stephenson counsels others on
accepting their homosexuality.
The idea of promoting conversion therapy in schools frightens him:
"Let's save the children from this," Stephenson said. "All it does is
bring oppression."
Even the most ardent champions of ex-gay therapy acknowledge that it's
not always possible to banish unwanted attractions. Nicolosi says only
one-third of his patients are ever "cured" — and even then, "that
doesn't mean they never have a homosexual thought or feeling again."
Embarrassing lapses have plagued the ex-gay movement: In the 1970s, two
of the men who founded Exodus fell in love and left their wives to live
together. In the 1980s, the founder of Homosexuals Anonymous was caught
having sex with men who sought his help going straight. In 2000, a
leading ex-gay speaker with Focus on the Family was photographed
leaving a gay bar.
When Dr. Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist at Columbia University,
interviewed 200 people who had sought to change their sexual
orientation, he concluded that many of them had succeeded and were
happier for it. But many of his subjects for the 2001 study had been
referred by — or worked for — ex-gay groups, and Spitzer relied
entirely on their self-reporting of thoughts and desires. He now says
that some of his subjects may have been deceiving themselves or lying
to him.
"If some people can change — and I think they can — it's a pretty rare
phenomenon," said Spitzer, a strong supporter of gay rights.
Promoting conversion therapy in schools, he added, may be giving teens
"false hope."
Ex-gay activists, however, take heart from guidelines developed this
spring to help educators around the country deal with clashing views on
homosexuality.
Drafted by an unlikely coalition of gay activists and conservative
Christians, the guidelines call for schools to open a respectful
dialogue with all parties.
That doesn't necessarily mean all views deserve a place in the
curriculum, said Charles Haynes, a 1st Amendment scholar who mediated
the process. Educators must decide which perspectives are
scientifically valid and which lessons will help their students grow.
But Haynes is adamant that the ex-gay community at least deserves a
hearing.
"I can see where it might be offensive to some to say that ex-gays, or
any other group with controversial views, should get a place at the
table," he said. "But that's America. That's who we are, on our best
days."