eye WEEKLY
Toronto's arts newspaper
February 9 1995
We came to talk makeovers but nobody brought the lipstick.
Here's the story: A decade ago, 30-year-old Rob Goetze of London, Ont., was gay. He had "no sexual thoughts for women at all." Now, two therapists later, he's "about a 1 on the Kinsey scale" -- a married heterosexual and father of one.
What happened to Goetze is the subject of rancorous debate among scientists and church leaders. Can homosexuals be made straight through counselling?
The Toronto-based group that now employs Goetze as a paid staff worker says they can. New Direction for Life Ministries turned 10 this year. A referral agency for Exodus International, a worldwide network of Christian organizations, it labels all homosexual activity sinful and destructive. According to the 1994 PBS documentary One Nation Under God, Exodus claims to have treated hundreds of thousands of homosexuals and boasts a success rate of 71.6 per cent.
But Exodus keeps no follow-up records or statistics to validate the claim "although it's something we ought to be doing," admitted a spokesperson on the phone from their California office. "People are always asking us for numbers."
Their mission is underscored by a small group of therapists in Canada and the U.S. who believe that homosexuality is a treatable scourge.
Just what they're treating -- and changing -- is a little nebulous. Goetze, for example, never had a gay sexual relationship, only strong feelings of attraction to other men.
Even when sexually active gay men and lesbians stop having sex, fantasies usually persist, says an article on homosexuality in the October 1994 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Moreover, it declared the data on studies of changes in sexual orientation to be wholly inadequate.
That doesn't dissuade Joseph Nicolosi, an American psychiatrist and one of the founders of the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality. "We all have our little fantasies," he says. "We are all meant to be heterosexual."
Elizabeth Moberly, a U.S. therapist and Donahue and Shirley veteran, says the new Christian tolerance toward gay sexuality is "contrary to psychological good sense as well as spiritual good sense." Moberly, with a doctorate in theology from Oxford University, has a unique theory that compares gay men and lesbians to "little boy[s] . . .and girl[s]" looking for the love of their same-sex parent.
Pointing a finger at mummy or daddy will make "gay men become more comfortable in their masculinity and lesbians become more comfortable in their femininity." The eventual goal: looking, acting and being straight.
Goezte assures me it works: "The stuff with my father follows classic Moberly." (Indeed, one of Moberly's books, Homosexuality: A New Christian Perspective, is required reading at ND support groups.)
"My father loved me very much, but because he was away at work a lot, and I didn't know that, I felt rejected or forgotten and I wasn't affirmed in my masculinity," says Goetze. He came to that conclusion after reading Moberly's book. So much for the science behind the makeover.
"These are all post hoc explanations which are substantiated by a circular process," explains Donald Meen, a Vancouver-based clinical psychologist who served on the Anglican Task Force on Homosexuality. "If you look at the research thoroughly, you'll see that there is no substantiation for any particular pattern of parent-child relationship or any other factor."
And Meen says there's no reason to cure people of something that isn't pathological in the first place: "The research is very consistent that gays and lesbians, especially self-affirming gays and lesbians, are as psychologically healthy as any other group. There's a wealth of literature there and a very strong consistency of finding."
Besides, insists Meen, it probably doesn't work: "Any evidence for change [of sexual orientation] is anecdotal and descriptive. There has never been any scientifically controlled, experimental evidence -- it just isn't there."
"Well yeah, obviously, I have certain beliefs about homosexuality in my life," counters Goetze when I mention that if homosexuality is intrinsically change- worthy, like alcoholism, then surely change should be everyone's goal.
"Look, we're very upfront about our beliefs about homosexuality, that we believe change is possible, and that it's a process. Obviously, if someone comes and all they want to do is have arguments with everyone, that's not really appropriate and it's not the place to do it. It's not productive for them or anyone else."
But what do you do with the evidence -- the millions of apparently well-adjusted gays and lesbians in North America whose lives are otherwise unremarkable?
"My only response to that is that our ministry is here for people who are not happy," says Goetze.
I ask Marion, a tall, reedy woman in her 30s who felt her first sexual attraction to women at age 13, the same question.
"For people who don't want to change, it's probably true that they could have an all right life, but I don't think it's God's best," she observes. The curious phrase, "God's best," will surface several times during our interview. Apparently homos are the exception to the glory of the created world.
Around Marion's dining-room table in her compact basement apartment, we talk for nearly two hours. Marion used to work in a health food store but now she temps -- sometimes for New Direction, occasionally for 100 Huntley Street, the Christian television show.
In the '80s, she'd had a relationship with another woman that lasted eight years. Then an eye operation and making "a personal commitment to Jesus Christ changed my life. A few months later, I felt he was telling me to leave the lifestyle and the relationship."
She joined the Toronto-area New Direction for Life support group in 1991 and "just loved it."
"The wonderful thing about it was that I was in this room with all these people, more guys than girls, and I thought, this is wonderful. I never thought I'd want to deal with the hurts in my life and here we were, sitting there, talking about the hurts in our childhood ... We had gone through the homosexual lifestyle and now we desired freedom."
She then articulates the New Direction for Life philosophy, perhaps best summarized in this passage from a handout to group members: "Everyone has experienced rejection in one form or another, at one time or another. Rejection is part and parcel of the homosexual condition. Part of the reason why we develop homosexual patterns is because of the rejection we experienced as children."
Confides Marion, "I was verbally abused most of my life, as a young kid, mostly by peers. I was told I was ugly by one guy I really liked. It just crushed me. I mean, I didn't know it then at 13 but I put a wall up.
"I started to sexualize my needs, the need for affirmation, attention, and I started to sexualize it with women because I had a pretty good relationship with my mother, my sisters -- that was where the comfort was."
"So you don't follow Moberly?" I ask, pissed off about the schoolyard bully, but wondering if rejection by the family cat will be mentioned next.
She clarifies: "Elizabeth Moberly's theory kind of holds true in my case because my mother and I -- we had a great relationship -- but there was a separation when I was very young. I was in the hospital and we were separated for a few weeks. That can be traumatic when you see your parents leaving."
It may not be scientific, but no one can quarrel with conviction, and Rob Goetze and Marion wholeheartedly believe -- they know -- they are straight. In Marion's case, the transition seemed, if not exactly painless, then surely fearless. Even the eight-year relationship proved "not really difficult" to break off.
"That sounds very cold, but I think God had really done a work in my heart," she offers, folding her arms quietly. A few minutes later she retrieves her bible from the bookshelf and reads me several passages from the New Testament.
All the sections on homosexuality are underlined in angry red ink.
SIDE BAR
Twenty-five years after Stonewall, counselling homosexuals to "go straight" is as popular as ever. "It's a growing trend," says Barry Lee, who runs the U.S.-based Living Waters program for "the sexually broken" -- including homosexuals -- out of Evangel Temple on Yonge St. Lee says he has a waiting list for each 25-week program cycle.
Last year, New Direction for Life Ministries launched a new Winnipeg office. It now holds support groups in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Kitchener and the Niagara Region, and provides one-on-one counselling and Christian resources on various aspects of homosexuality through its head offices.
Support groups -- the most popular venue for those seeking counselling -- combine prayer, discussion of theories of homosexuality and discussion of childhood and family issues, and are led by lay counsellors.
Last year also saw the opening of Edmonton's Flight Ministries. Its coordinator, Pentecostal minister Norm Layton, told the Western Report that being gay is "an addictive behavior, a source of pain that seeks sex for relief while sinking further into death."
Layton says most of the folks in his current support group of 20-plus are gay, but some have problems with sex abuse and sex addiction. He too has a waiting list for each 25-week cycle.
The oldest ex-gay group in Canada is run by the Burnaby Christian Fellowship in Burnaby, B.C. Its founder, Frank Shears, died of AIDS in February, 1994, after he admitted his 18-year struggle to be ex-gay had failed miserably.
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"...Break the Gutenberg Lock..."
Recently, founders of yet another prominent "ex-gay" ministry, Exodus International, denounced their conversion therapy procedures as ineffective. Michael Busse and Gary Cooper, cofounders of Exodus International and lovers for 13 years, were involved with the organization from 1976 to 1979. The program was described by these men as "ineffective...not one person was healed." They stated that the program often exacerbated already prominent feelings of guilt and personal failure among the counselees; many were driven to suicidal thoughts as a result of the failed "reparative therapy."