Interview of an ex-gay man by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi

I just read an interview on the NARTH website called “An Ex-Gay Man Describes the Change Process: Gordon Opp.” The interview is done by NARTH executive director Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of an ex-gay man named Gordon Opp, and its purpose is to allow Opp to explain the process he has gone through to diminish his homosexual desires. Opp describes how he analyzes the motivations behind his homosexual impulses and then combats them through engaging in healthy behaviors rather than acting upon them sexually.

Now as I have said before, if someone really wants to pursue the reparation therapy path, I’m not going to stand in their way because as a Christian I can understand the religious motivations behind someone wanting to be rid of their homosexuality. But when I read a transcript like this it’s awfully hard for me not to be skeptical about NARTH’s interpretation of what they think they are achieving with their therapy. Nicolosi and Opp view male homosexuality as a person’s need for the affirmation of other males to bolster his sense of personal masculinity, except the pursuit of that affirmation somehow became sexualized. The theory is if you can get those needs met in healthy, legitimate ways other than by acting out sexually, you can overcome your homosexuality.

Here are two excerpts where Opp comments on this:

In fact it's interesting, even now, the remaining homosexual desires that I have, I realize have so little to do with sex. It's like I look at a guy, and if I go so far as thinking what he would look like without clothes on--at this time in my life, such a thought would be disgusting to me. But it's something else I'm feeling... I wish he would come over and shake my hand and talk to me and give me some kind of attention.

I have found that when I have a close friendship with a straight man who I find attractive, I can get those needs de-sexualized. I can get them met in a satisfying way.

This is what it means to be “ex-gay”?

Before we get into the theory Opp is working from, I’m sure you’ve noticed as I did that Opp openly admits that he still sometimes imagines other guys without their clothes on—though it disgusts him—and he still singles out certain guys as being attractive. I know that he’s just being honest and he would say that these residual thoughts and feelings normally linger when a guy is trying to detox from homosexuality. I appreciate his honesty and am not interested in bagging on a guy for opening himself up in that way. But I have to say from the get-go that because of these admissions I already have a hard time getting on board with his interpretation of what’s going on in his life. It seems to me that a person who is having those thoughts and feelings and is continually struggling with them and trying to put them away is what I would call a homosexual who is struggling with his thoughts and feelings and trying to put them away. I wouldn’t choose to label such a person “ex-gay.” Especially since he repeatedly describes his homosexual feelings with words like “excitement,” “fantasy” and “zing,” in contrast with the reserve with which he speaks of even the high points about his marriage to his wife

If a straight guy who used to live a life of fornication decided to clean up his life, join the Catholic Church, and become a priest, he too would have a live a life of continually struggling with thoughts of imagining women with their clothes off or noticing the ones in a crowd that are attractive. I would not call him “ex-straight” for embarking on that struggle. Nor would I interpret diminishing thoughts and feelings in that area as signs that he is overcoming his heterosexuality. I would just view him as a straight guy who has done really well in managing and controlling his sexual impulses.

Where are the differences?

Now moving on to Opp’s theory about his homosexuality, I also have a hard time getting on board with his claim that the dysfunctional way he has sought to have his emotional and psychological needs met by other men has anything to do with homosexuality in itself. Millions of straight guys seek relationships with girls for the exact same dysfunctional reasons Opp describes. Opp cites his “needs for acceptance...feeling like one of the guys...for compassion and understanding from men.” Straight guys also pursue sex with women as a way of feeling more manly about themselves and as a substitute for having healthy emotional relationships with others. Opp says his sexual pursuits were like seeking a “quick fix” drug, infused by an overblown fascination with good-looking men that left him feeling inadequate. He knows the trick is to de-mystify them by getting to know them as regular people.

Then there are the few that are particularly attractive, and with those guys, I kind of force myself to get to know them well enough so that they don't intimidate me and give me that feeling of weakness, of being "less than" them, which could trigger an unwanted attraction on my part . . .

So instead I try to get to know them, maybe even touch them with a pat on the back, or a healthy handshake or something, and get under their skin just a little, and then all of a sudden I see their weaknesses--this is just a guy, and the mystique is broken.

This resembles the typical story I hear from so many girlfriends about how a guy came along and swept them off their feet, talking about love and marriage after two weeks of dating. Then by the three-month mark when he realizes she is just a flawed human being and the mystique has worn off, he dumps her. The difference of course is that Opp is trying to de-mystify other men as opposed to running up against their ordinariness after three months of dating. The end result is the same: loss of “zing.” Apparently dysfunctional homosexuality is a lot like dysfunctional heterosexuality. It’s no secret many straight guys also seek relationships with women as a “quick fix,” and their need for self-affirmation combined with real sexual drive plus the mystique of a beautiful woman often combines to create unhealthy obsessions with sex and a skewed view of women. You hear the obsessions of straight guys about women blared in the lyrics of love songs on the radio all the time. “Every fool’s heart aches with every step you take” and stuff like that.

I have to wonder how the existence of these dysfunctional dynamics could be blamed on homosexuality itself if it has so much in common with the heterosexual male experience. From a Christian perspective I don’t think it is healthy or good, but because it is so common to young, straight males our society does tend to view it as a regular part of what many young men have to go through before they learn to “settle down with a nice girl” (i.e., get the mystique out of the way, get real, and have a healthy and balanced relationship). In view of all this, it seems to me that this interview with Gordon Opp hasn’t really accomplished anything except reveal to me just how many parallels there are between homosexuality and heterosexuality, instead of something to the contrary.

Gay conservative Christians

I’m critical of the leaders of ex-gay ministries, but not so much of the regular folks who seek them out for help. Let me explain why. There are a lot of gay and lesbian Christians out there who cannot accept their own homosexuality as “okay” in God’s sight. For these people this is a very personal decision. It is born out of a faith that informs their conscience. They cannot act upon their sexual orientation without feeling like they have committed a sin, thus causing serious injury to themselves. If you are not a religious person this may be a hard thing to understand, but I understand it very well. I imagine that I would probably feel the exact same way if I were gay.

The problem is where do these people go? As far as the visible gay and lesbian Christian community goes, they appear to be in the minority. Churches that are gay-friendly would tell them that they are self-haters and condescendingly try to encourage them to just get over it. Regular conservative churches would agree with them about the sinfulness of acting upon their homosexuality, yet they would also run them out of town. The logical place to turn to is an ex-gay ministry. It is the one place where gay people who hold to conservative Christian beliefs about their homosexuality can get together without fearing persecution from either straight conservative fundamentalists or gay liberal fundamentalists. Gay conservative Christians need a safe haven too.

What disgusts me most about the public face of ex-gay ministries is how they allow themselves to be used by Family Research Counsel and other Christian organizations to promote false ideas about what homosexuality really is. But when you dig down to the actual individuals who join up with ex-gay ministries, I get the impression that it is quite a mixed bag. Some people buy into the idea of trying to change their orientation, but others are more realistic and just want support for living celibate. There is love and spiritual support to be found in such groups, and many of these people desperately need it. It is hard enough being gay. It is harder still being gay and Christian. But when you are gay, Christian and conservative I think you have it the toughest of all.

I’ve been watching grenades being lobbed between the camps of affirming gays and ex-gays for some time now. I agree with the criticism of affirming gays about ex-gay ministries. But I also have a suggestion to offer. In my opinion if affirming gay Christians were to be more respectful toward gay Christians who have more conservative leanings, and not try so hard to push them into accepting their gayness, they wouldn’t drive so many of them into the arms of groups like Exodus and NARTH. It is partly this hostility that ensures ex-gay ministries will always have people flocking to them. It is only the opinion of an outsider, but that is what I see from my vantage point. Of course the real problem is that the regular old conservative churches and institutions are the ones that should be supporting their own conservative gay and lesbian members instead of kicking them out in the cold. But don’t even get me started on that one.

Call for testimonies

I’m still waiting for someone to send me an ex-gay testimony like the one I described in my post last Friday. If you know of a credible testimony by someone, preferably a guy, who had once been truly homosexual, who had an orientation change and became convincingly heterosexual (and please read my previous post so you know what I mean by “convincingly”), please send it to me. Because quite honestly, I’m beginning to doubt if such a testimony even exists. The leaders in ex-gay ministries sure know how to talk it up as if it does exist. You can go to the NARTH website and hear them talk about “orientation change” and read the testimony of Exodus president Alan Chambers who says, “I used to be homosexual and today I am not.” Yet specific, detailed testimony of people being transformed into true blue heterosexuals is always missing from these claims.

So what am I to make of this? Maybe the really convincing testimonies do exist, but they are being withheld from the general public. Is that it? You almost get the impression that maybe they were excavated some decades ago from a set of clay jars in the caves of the Dead Sea and now sit someplace in Germany pressed between two sheets of acid-free glass to be examined only by an elite team of six scholars, but the rest of us hoi polloi are forbidden to lay our uneducated eyes on them and have to just take the experts’ word about what they say. Is that what’s going on here?

I say to ex-gay ministries, Don’t hold back any longer. Take out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, run your best slam-dunk testimonies for a whole week and put an end to this debate once and for all. If you convince me, there would be no need for me to "muse" any longer. I can take down my website and this blog and use the money I normally pay to the web-hosting company as a donation to your cause. What do you say?

What I believe about homosexuality

When I consider posting thoughts on how I think the teaching of the Bible bears on the question of homosexuality, I think of what a pain it will be to have to explain every single time what I mean when I say that I believe homosexuality to be a “fallen” and “sinful” condition. Then by the time I am done with all that repetition, it will end up sounding like I believe homosexuality to be so much more fallen and sinful a condition than all the millions of other fallen and sinful conditions that plague humanity, it will leave entirely the wrong impression. So how about if I get the explanation over with right now; that way I can simply refer people to this post in the future, if I still like what I wrote.

As a Christian I use the terms “fallen” and “sinful” to refer to aspects of our human existence that do not measure up to the absolute perfection of the newly-created world described by Genesis 1-2 prior to the fall. To be “sinful” is to be anywhere short of morally perfect. It is failing to have perfect love, patience, contentment, wisdom, purity, honesty, selflessness, etc., which is to say that sometimes what the Bible calls “sinful” is what most people would call being “merely human.” As for being in a “fallen” condition, according to my understanding, that refers to our propensity to get sick, get tired, dread going to work, need an epidural when giving birth, sprout gray hairs and eventually kick the bucket. Because of the fall humanity lives in a broken existence, like a watch whose delicate internal mechanisms have been thrown awry.

In my judgment, homosexuality belongs more in the category of fallenness because it is one of those can’t-be-helped states of human existence that has befallen a certain portion of the population. However, since one’s sexuality inevitably affects one’s relationship to other human beings, being homosexual isn’t completely separate from moral categories either. If it bears upon the thoughts, feelings, conduct and actions of one human being toward another, it is a moral issue, and to the extent that it falls short of the ideal it is sinful. The big problem I have with the term “sinful” is that it makes it sound like a person’s homosexual orientation is a willful choice, which is not what I believe. If there were a term that lay somewhere in between “fallenness” and “sinfulness,” that would probably best describe my view of homosexuality.

So if homosexuality is about fallenness and fallenness is brokenness, then how broken are we talking about? Here’s an analogy I just thought of. Suppose I have a watch that reads “8 p.m.” when it is really “8 a.m.” and vice versa. It doesn’t give the correct time, yet I keep wearing it because aside from that particular problem, I can still tell the time just fine. Now if someone were to try to badger me into believing that “p.m.” is exactly the same as “a.m.” and there is no difference between the two, I would have to dig my heels in and insist that is not the case. But otherwise I can live with the brokenness of the watch, because although it is incorrect, it is also correct in all the ways that matter most to me.

Maybe in my view gays and lesbians do not love people of the “correct” sex; however they really and truly do love. They are capable of loving in the same way heterosexual couples love each other. For having a different orientation does not devalue their love, does not make them less in the image of God, does not make them less valuable, less beautiful, or less worthy as human beings. God loves gay and lesbian people. They are “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the Psalm says. He delights in their existence, sets forth good purposes for their lives, and graces each one with all the good gifts that make every individual unique. These are the things that matter most to me.

Footnote

A word about the link I posted yesterday. No, I don't endorse the title of the article; that's why I called it "inflammatory." As I said in my post I think the article is actually more measured and rational in tone than what the title suggests. I hope everyone who sees the link will look past the title and consider carefully what this author has to say. However, I can understand that calling a ministry "of the devil" sounds over the top, which is why I've changed the title of my Monday post.

Secondly, no, I am not in favor of abortion as this author is, but the article is not about abortion. That issue is only mentioned in passing, and people on both sides of the abortion issue can certainly agree with what this author is saying about the destructiveness of legalism. That's the main point, and I've rarely heard it made so well.

Faith-destroying legalism

Whenever I do a google search for “Focus on the Family” I come across an interesting article called “Why Focus on the Family is of the Devil”. I’ve read it many times and have yet to find anything that I fundamentally disagree with. In spite of the inflammatory title, the author makes a rational and compelling case for why ministries like Focus on the Family often destroy rather than build up people’s Christian faith (which is exactly what the devil would want . . . if you believe in the devil, as I do). I know from personal experience that the author has really hit on something here. His insights do not just apply to Focus on the Family. I’ve known many, many other Christian ministries that have followed in the exact same faith-destroying pattern. Unfortunately the Christians that are most harmed by them are the honest and humble people, the ones who are most keenly aware of their sinfulness, or who struggle mightily with problems that cannot be resolved in this life. Perhaps that is why the author, who is straight, is particularly sympathetic toward gay and lesbian people, as you can see from other articles on his site.

Just one thing before you click on the link above. If you are someone who is easily offended by criticisms of anything Christian--from the Holy Scriptures to your favorite Christian talk show host to “Jesus Loves You” ball-point pens--then you probably shouldn’t read this article. In fact, I recommend that you don’t. Now if you go ahead and read it anyway and it makes you upset, I recommend that you deal with it in some other way than firing off hate mail to the guy who wrote it. When the author of this article first posted his piece, he was a Christian who was just trying to think outside the box. But thanks to all the hate mail and even death threats that he got from fellow Christians as a result, he has given up his faith. If you feel absolutely compelled to send hate mail to someone, send it to me. But leave that guy alone and don’t make things worse. ‘Kay?

Those ex-gay testimonies

I read a couple of ex-gay testimonies yesterday, recommended by a very nice reader as illustrations of how “gays can change.” You know, every time I point and click on a link to an ex-gay testimony someone sends me, I think, “This will be the story that proves all my skepticism about ex-gays wrong. After reading this I will have to change my tune and become a true believer.” Then I read it and end up disappointed once again.

Now, I’m not interested in getting down on anyone who wants to join up with an ex-gay ministry. If you insist on giving it a whirl, then far be it from me to discourage you. My main problem is with these ex-gay, poster-boy testimonies touted by such ministries as proof that homosexuality can be cured. Because every single ex-gay testimony that I have read goes like this:

He grows up in a certain kind of dysfunctional family situation, experiences homosexual inclinations at such-and-such an age, and eventually indulges in the gay lifestyle. Then comes the desire to change, the joining of an ex-gay ministry, and the resolve to struggle against temptation. So far so good. But then the story gets sketchy and he suddenly does this quantum leap into claiming he is now cured of homosexuality. He may point to the fact that he hasn’t had gay sex in x-number of years. He may point to the fact that his thoughts about gay sex have greatly diminished over the years. He may even point to the fact that he is now married to an opposite-sex partner. Out comes the photograph of his lovely wife and five beautiful kids. Proof that a bonafide heterosexual lifestyle has been achieved.

At this point I feel like saying, Dude, I’m happy for you and all, but you know the old saying about how being in a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car. Well, being in a marriage with a wife and producing a bunch of kids isn't what makes you a heterosexual. I should know because I am one, I'm married to one, and you can’t fool me. The part of your testimony that’s missing is where you say something like this:

“I knew I had been cured of my homosexuality when one night I made love to my wife and found it to be the most exhilarating, joyous and deeply satisfying sex I’d had in a long time. After that I began experiencing the wondrous journey of discovering how attractive, alluring, sensuous and seductive a woman’s body can be on a purely physical level. And, oh man, once my true heterosexual nature started kicking in, things really went into overdrive and I even had a major problem with indulging in Internet girlie porn for awhile. Don’t worry, I’ve got that under control now, but in truth it was such a relief to have that problem instead of the other one. In fact, as the years go by, I have a harder and harder time remembering why I used to like guys so much, especially when I compare it to the tremendous excitement and deep satisfaction I get out of having sex with my wife. Woo hoo! Yeah, baby!”

See what I'm driving at? I’m still looking for a story like that. I’ve never seen one and I’ve only been searching for the past six years. But if it exists, send it along. I’ll provide the link to it on this blog.

Betrayed by whom?

Explain this to me, please.

I’ve seen or heard of several cases like this. A couple in the church has been married for 20+ years, when the husband comes out and admits he is gay. The wife is, of course, devastated. Family and church members rally around her. Obviously she is hurt, she is distressed, she is angry—who wouldn’t be? Her whole life has been turned upside down. Her whole marriage has been revealed to be, essentially, a sham, or at least not what she thought it was. Then she and all her supporters turn on the gay husband and accuse him of “lying to” and “betraying” her.

Strictly speaking, they are right about the lying. It is true that the husband was not honest with her, his family and his church about his homosexuality all those years. He may not have even been honest with himself. So I guess that means everyone would have much preferred that he had come out with the truth about his struggles with homosexual feelings from the very start, right? Gosh, why do you suppose he might not have had much incentive to do that? It couldn’t be all the sermons he’d heard over the years from the pulpit condemning homosexuals as perverted, depraved, abominable, sick, pedophilic, sexual predators, now, could it? Or maybe he should have been encouraged to greater honesty by the way he saw fellow Christians squirm, scowl, sneer and jeer every time the subject of homosexuality came up in casual conversation. Sure, I’d want to spill my guts about my struggles too in the midst of company like that.

And what’s the deal with this “betrayal” he is supposedly guilty of? Everyone who is a part of the conservative church knows that the standard counsel given to those who struggle with homosexual inclinations is that they are encouraged to mortify their flesh and kick-start their true heterosexual nature by getting married and continuing to have sex with their opposite-sex partner until something magically clicks. So how did the husband “betray” his wife, his family and his fellow Christians by taking the church’s advice so completely to heart? He was doing exactly what he was being told to do. And now that this advice has been proven wrong twenty years later, is that all his fault?

Now that the guy is at the end of his rope, his homosexuality having never gone away, his marriage falling apart, he and his family suffering public humiliation, somehow I don’t see his pastor and elders coming up to him and taking responsibility for what happened. I don’t see them approaching him humbly, slapping their foreheads and saying, “Jimmy John, we are so, so sorry! That advice we’ve been dishing out all these years about using marriage to try to change people's homosexual desires is so obviously wrong! Could you and your wife ever forgive us for the part we played in ruining your lives with that completely asinine counsel? And would you be so gracious as to join a committee we are setting up to rewrite our church’s policy on how to pastor and counsel homosexual members in our church?”

But no. Instead what I’ve seen is that the gay husband is somehow to blame for everything. For following the godly advice of his spiritual leaders. For trying to live up to his “true” heterosexual nature. For demonstrating at tremendous cost to himself, his wife and his kids that the church is entirely mistaken about the nature of homosexuality. It’s a good thing he’s gay and everyone hates him already, because it makes it all the easier to cover the church’s rear-end by scapegoating him.

Evangelical passions

I guess it pays not to jump into every crazy evangelical fad that blows through the church every six months. When The Passion came out two years ago, I felt like I was the only Christian in the country who didn’t see it. No great reason, I just didn’t care for the goriness. But when you’re a part of the evangelical church, you’re not supposed to have blah reasons for failing to support the-chosen-means-by-which-God-is-going-to-evangelize-the-world. You’re supposed to have these super amped-up moral reasons for everything you do, certain that you have divined the secret purposes of the Almighty. It’s not supposed to occur to you that a movie is just a movie and a director is just a human being who might embarrass you someday.

God seems to elude the grasp of evangelicals just when they think they’ve captured him in their box. After riding the crest of The Passion's smashing success, many pro-Israel dispensationalists are now faced with the reality of Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic tirade. It has been a similar irony that after two and a half decades of campaigning for lasting marriages and family values, the evangelical right is finding that at long last their message is being embraced . . . by the gay and lesbian community.

No girlie-men here

I have a lot of gay male friends, and it is always annoying when I sense that my straight friends who have never met any of them usually imagine them as womanish guys. As if for me it's no different than having girlfriends and all we do is talk about hair spray. But nothing could be further from the truth. With the gay men I know, I've found it to be just the opposite, that in many ways they are more guyish than straight guys.

There's a reason for that. Straight guys have to mingle with women. They have to adjust their behavior to get along with women because after all they are either married to one or might get married to one someday. In other words their heterosexual sex drive makes accommodating the female species a necessary survival skill. Gay men on the other hand do not have as pressing a need to associate with women. Many of them can and do exist in an all-male world. Of course it's not good to make too many generalizations, and many gay men do have female friends Will & Grace style. But the fact remains, women aren't as necessary a part of a gay man's world as they are a straight man's world.

The kind of friend every woman should have

With my first gay male friend, the first thing I noticed in our email exchanges was just how--I don't know how else to put it--strictly male he was in the way he answered my questions about homosexuality. There was none of this kindly condescension I'd get from straight guys, as if they think it's kind of cute to hear a girl talking all intellectual--and whatever you do don't hurt her feelings! Not so with Bob. He was very respectful but strictly business. I'd throw out one idea and he'd simply say, "Yeah, I think you're onto something." Or, "No, that's not how it is." No big cheering section for thinking profound thoughts, and no holding back if I'm a little off-base.

Talking with Bob was refreshing and intimidating. I'd hadn't realized until then how much I had subconsciously relied on straight guys having lower intellectual standards for me (something that is probably subconscious on their part too). However, I discovered when the guy is gay, you're more likely to get the straight scoop (so to speak). For the first time in my experience talking with a guy, it felt simply like one human being talking to another. Now, whenever I seek the opinion of some of my gay male friends I have to be ready to hear the truth. And if they approve I feel more satisfaction, and take away a greater sense of self-confidence.

Is this blog for you?

This blog is for anyone who is currently musing, wrestling, struggling, climbing the walls or tearing out their hair trying to reconcile the issue of homosexuality with the Christian faith. For those of you who are not familiar with my MusingsOn.com website, I will be musing from the perspective of someone who is straight and takes a conservative position on the issue of homosexual sexual relations (namely, that the Bible teaches it is sin); yet also as someone who has come to a greater appreciation of the complexity of this issue and of how important it is to try to understand and sympathize with those who might disagree. An account of my journey toward that greater appreciation and understanding can be found here.

My plan is to stick to the subject at hand: Christianity, homosexuality and the Bible. So if you are more interested in reading personal news items such as when my baby took his first steps, or where I found that great bargain on my new toaster oven, then sorry. I don't plan to include too many of those types of items here, unless they are indirectly related to the main purpose of this blog.

Also, if you are one of those types that surf the blogosphere for the sole purpose of looking for people whom you can convince of The Only Right View on the Planet (namely, yours), then this blog is not for you either. Of course, you are welcome to visit here as often as you like--it's a free country and all that--but you ought to know that there are plenty of other bloggers out there who would be much more willing to argue, cross swords and co-hyperventilate with you. I don't know who they are exactly, since I don't read them, but I am told on good authority that they exist in abundance. Try a google search.

Welcome

This blog is an extension of my website MusingsOn.com which I began on November 19, 2000. My goal in starting that site was to post quarterly articles recording my "Musings on Christianity, Homosexuality and the Bible." Everything was going well until the project was interrupted by controversy when people in my (then) denomination found out about the site's existence. Almost two years later, after we were forced to leave the denomination (October 2003), I spent another year documenting the controversy, which my husband posted on his website. By the time I was finally ready to start writing for MusingsOn.com again (2005), I became pregnant with our third child, whom we had in April 2006.

Needless to say, taking care of a newborn and homeschooling our two older kids won't leave me much time for working on the full-length articles I had planned for the Musings On website. About the best I can do now is set up this blog to help me record "More Musings on Christianity, Homosexuality and the Bible," as I write on the fly between lessons, feedings and diaper changes.