Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we all flew to school on pterodactyls, I was a licensed psychotherapist. I worked mainly with the GLBT community here in TedCruzLand aka Texas. Back in those days, it was RonPaulLand but that’s a tale for another time.
I was a thumping liar in those days. Here I was, presuming to deal with GLBT problems, and I was so far into the closet that not only was the door nailed shut, but it was bricked up and concreted over. It took the collapse of my 3rd marriage to make me face the truth that I’d always known and pretended didn’t exist: I was a lesbian then, and always had been. My earliest memory of knowing that I was different came when I was 5 years old, and my daddy picked me up – and I slapped at him and told him, “Put me down, I don’t YIKE boys!” Needless to say, that hurt my daddy’s feelings.
When I was 16, my folks caught me fooling around with my best girlfriend – nothing serious, just a lot of kissing and feeling each other up – and they took swift and direct action. They put me into a mental institution in Ohio to “cure” me of being gay. I underwent several different kinds of “therapy” – salt shock therapy, insulin shock therapy, electroshock therapy – all to cure me of being a sexual deviant. I was lucky at that; back in those days, a lot of “queer cures” also involved prefrontal lobotomies. I escaped from there, and I mean that literally. I climbed down from a 3rd floor secured wing and ran away.
Eventually, after some trials and tribulations – and getting married for the first time trying to prove that I was NOT a pervert but “normal”, I got educated and wound up in private practice. I also got married again, and, in the process, discovered that sex with a man under any circumstances still made me throw up. That marriage ended in divorce too.
And I was still in serious denial about what I was born as, what I was hard-wired to be: a lesbian.
Third marriage: utter failure from the get-go. It lasted 5 years and ended because he found a woman that was more of a woman than I ever could be. I sat down and took a long, hard look at myself at that point, and decided that it was time for me to quit lying to myself and everybody else, and quit being afraid that my folks would put me BACK into a mental institution because I was gay. Needless to say, my folks completely rejected my coming out, and it was many years later that we reconciled. My mother and I wound up being able to talk to each other about who and what I was before she died. That’s a memory that I’ll always treasure.
My 4th marriage has lasted almost 14 years. I am legally married to a woman in the state of Texas. We are in love, we love each other dearly, and we are completely well-matched to each other. The only happiness that I’ve known in my entire adult life has been with WonderWife. I just wish that we were going to have a lot more time together.
However, that’s not the purpose of this column. I wanted y’all to know where I was coming from, who I am and have been, and why yesterday was such a monumental surprize, blessing and vindication.
Yesterday, EXODUS INTERNATIONAL, the largest and more harmful of all the ex-gay ministries, ceased to exist. I DID live long enough to see it, after all.
The closure of this contemptible organization comes less than a day after EXODUS released a statement apologizing to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for years of undue judgment, by the organization and from the Christian Church as a whole. “Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical," said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus (full text of the apology can be read here: http://exodusinternational.org/2013/06/i-am-sorry/).
In April, John Paulk, former chairman of Exodus and the co-author of "Love Won Out: How God's Love Helped Two People Leave Homosexuality and Find Each Other," renounced his past involvement in the "ex-gay movement," and expressed remorse for his actions. “For the better part of 10 years, I was an advocate and spokesman for what’s known as the 'ex-gay movement,' where we declared that sexual orientation could be changed through a close-knit relationship with God, intensive therapy and strong determination," Paulk said. "At the time, I truly believed that it would happen. And while many things in my life did change as a Christian, my sexual orientation did not." He added, He added: "Today, I do not consider myself 'ex-gay,' and I no longer support or promote the movement. Please allow me to be clear: I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people."
Reversing himself like this is an act of high courage on Mr. Paulk’s part, and I honour him for it.
I’ve been yelling about “reparative therapy”, so-called, for the better part of 25 years. It does not work. It has never worked. It CANNOT work. “Therapists” of every ilk and so-called “christian” persuasion have, basically, tortured people into nervous breakdowns and even death because of the guilt that they laboured under through not being able to be “normal”. To be heterosexual. I understand that. I’m glad beyond anything that this sickening, shameful chapter in the evolution of GLBT rights is OVER.
{{As an aside: GOT to wonder what Michelle Bachman’s husband is going to do for a living now. SURE hope that they’ve saved SOME of the money that he extorted from all of the miserably unhappy and desperate GLBT people that he tortured over the years}}.
Sic Semper Tyrannus – Bonus Riddance.
{{** TRANSLATION: So passes tyranny – and GOOD RIDDANCE}}
I was a thumping liar in those days. Here I was, presuming to deal with GLBT problems, and I was so far into the closet that not only was the door nailed shut, but it was bricked up and concreted over. It took the collapse of my 3rd marriage to make me face the truth that I’d always known and pretended didn’t exist: I was a lesbian then, and always had been. My earliest memory of knowing that I was different came when I was 5 years old, and my daddy picked me up – and I slapped at him and told him, “Put me down, I don’t YIKE boys!” Needless to say, that hurt my daddy’s feelings.
When I was 16, my folks caught me fooling around with my best girlfriend – nothing serious, just a lot of kissing and feeling each other up – and they took swift and direct action. They put me into a mental institution in Ohio to “cure” me of being gay. I underwent several different kinds of “therapy” – salt shock therapy, insulin shock therapy, electroshock therapy – all to cure me of being a sexual deviant. I was lucky at that; back in those days, a lot of “queer cures” also involved prefrontal lobotomies. I escaped from there, and I mean that literally. I climbed down from a 3rd floor secured wing and ran away.
Eventually, after some trials and tribulations – and getting married for the first time trying to prove that I was NOT a pervert but “normal”, I got educated and wound up in private practice. I also got married again, and, in the process, discovered that sex with a man under any circumstances still made me throw up. That marriage ended in divorce too.
And I was still in serious denial about what I was born as, what I was hard-wired to be: a lesbian.
Third marriage: utter failure from the get-go. It lasted 5 years and ended because he found a woman that was more of a woman than I ever could be. I sat down and took a long, hard look at myself at that point, and decided that it was time for me to quit lying to myself and everybody else, and quit being afraid that my folks would put me BACK into a mental institution because I was gay. Needless to say, my folks completely rejected my coming out, and it was many years later that we reconciled. My mother and I wound up being able to talk to each other about who and what I was before she died. That’s a memory that I’ll always treasure.
My 4th marriage has lasted almost 14 years. I am legally married to a woman in the state of Texas. We are in love, we love each other dearly, and we are completely well-matched to each other. The only happiness that I’ve known in my entire adult life has been with WonderWife. I just wish that we were going to have a lot more time together.
However, that’s not the purpose of this column. I wanted y’all to know where I was coming from, who I am and have been, and why yesterday was such a monumental surprize, blessing and vindication.
Yesterday, EXODUS INTERNATIONAL, the largest and more harmful of all the ex-gay ministries, ceased to exist. I DID live long enough to see it, after all.
The closure of this contemptible organization comes less than a day after EXODUS released a statement apologizing to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for years of undue judgment, by the organization and from the Christian Church as a whole. “Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical," said Alan Chambers, president of Exodus (full text of the apology can be read here: http://exodusinternational.org/2013/06/i-am-sorry/).
In April, John Paulk, former chairman of Exodus and the co-author of "Love Won Out: How God's Love Helped Two People Leave Homosexuality and Find Each Other," renounced his past involvement in the "ex-gay movement," and expressed remorse for his actions. “For the better part of 10 years, I was an advocate and spokesman for what’s known as the 'ex-gay movement,' where we declared that sexual orientation could be changed through a close-knit relationship with God, intensive therapy and strong determination," Paulk said. "At the time, I truly believed that it would happen. And while many things in my life did change as a Christian, my sexual orientation did not." He added, He added: "Today, I do not consider myself 'ex-gay,' and I no longer support or promote the movement. Please allow me to be clear: I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people."
Reversing himself like this is an act of high courage on Mr. Paulk’s part, and I honour him for it.
I’ve been yelling about “reparative therapy”, so-called, for the better part of 25 years. It does not work. It has never worked. It CANNOT work. “Therapists” of every ilk and so-called “christian” persuasion have, basically, tortured people into nervous breakdowns and even death because of the guilt that they laboured under through not being able to be “normal”. To be heterosexual. I understand that. I’m glad beyond anything that this sickening, shameful chapter in the evolution of GLBT rights is OVER.
{{As an aside: GOT to wonder what Michelle Bachman’s husband is going to do for a living now. SURE hope that they’ve saved SOME of the money that he extorted from all of the miserably unhappy and desperate GLBT people that he tortured over the years}}.
Sic Semper Tyrannus – Bonus Riddance.
{{** TRANSLATION: So passes tyranny – and GOOD RIDDANCE}}
Sorry, I have no sympathy for the stupidity of the Bachmans. But the end of this hugely harmful and hateful organization is great news. I'm actually surprised it happened in my lifetime. Makes the future look just a little brighter.
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