Nine Leaders Of Ex-Gay Movement: ‘Conversion Therapy Harms People’

So-called “ex-gay” therapy is the foundation of many anti-gay beliefs, policies, and laws — if gays can change, then being gay is a choice. Now, nine leaders of the flailing “ex-gay” movement announce they were wrong.

In an historic move, nine of “the founders, the leaders, and the promoters” of ex-gay therapy, also known as reparative therapy or conversion therapy — all pseudo science designed to try to make gay people straight — have joined together to announce that ex-gay therapy is a sham.

In a deeply moving open letter, signed by former members of Exodus International, Love In Action, Courage UK, and other promoters of sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), the nine founders, directors, and coordinators write,

We once believed that there was something morally wrong and psychologically “broken” about being LGBT. We know better now. We once believed that sexual orientation or gender identity were somehow chosen or could be changed. We know better now. We once thought it was impossible to embrace our sexual orientation or sexual identity as an intrinsic, healthy part of who we are and who we were created to be. We know better now.

Other who know this too are the American Psychiatric Association and many leading major medical organizations worldwide, who have deemed gay conversion therapies harmful and ineffective.

In an exclusive report announcing the letter today, Buzzfeed’s Tony Merevick writes it was released “in partnership with the National Center for Lesbian Rights,” which is “calling for a ban on gay conversion therapy and saying that LGBT people should be celebrated and embraced for who they are.”

Many of the signatories on the letter have previously spoken out against — and in some cases apologized for — supporting and advocating for gay conversion therapy. But for some included, it’s the most public statement they’ve made since renouncing the practice, like John Smid, who was a member of Exodus International and who served on its board for 11 years.

“We all got together and said it’s time to produce a statement that is not a statement of apology, but a statement on our beliefs on how conversation therapy harms people,” Smid told BuzzFeed. “We felt like we needed to make that statement.”

Smid said he experienced the harms of gay conversion or reparative therapy firsthand — enduring what he described as the damaging message that gay people are somehow “broken and sick and that they need to be repaired,” he said.

…

“In my own life, that message kept me trapped in a cycle of believing that I was emotionally ill and incapable of having a healthy life until those things are fixed,” he said. “For over two decades, I lived in that mind-set. That’s why reparative therapy is so damaging. That was the message that I received and that I taught in my involvement with Exodus and Love in Action.”

Several states, including California and New Jersey, have passed laws banning the use of SOCE on minors. 

The Christian Post this week reports that “bans similar to California’s and New Jersey’s laws prohibiting sexual orientation change therapy, or SOCE, for minors have been voted down or withdrawn in Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Washington, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Rhode Island.”

The complete letter is available at Buzzfeed.

 

Image by Daniel Gonzales via Flickr