HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
STRAIGHT TALK
Stories like this have supplied
critics with ample fodder. As the
gay rights activist Wayne Besen
put it, in a blog on The Huffington
Post, “If so-called ‘ex-gay’ therapists had a slogan, it would be
‘Getting paid and getting laid.’”
Not everyone has required the
prodding of public humiliation to
call it quits. Just a few years after
he appeared in advertisements
with his wife saying “change is
possible,” Alan Chambers, the
head of Exodus until its disbanding last month, announced at the
group’s annual meeting last year
that he no longer believed homosexuals could be “cured” through
Christian prayer and psychotherapy. When I spoke with him,
he said he was “deeply sorry”
that he’d had a hand in promoting the therapy. “It causes people
shame, and shame internalized
never produces freedom,” he said.
“It causes death, and for the rest
of my life I’ll do everything I can
to help people realize they don’t
need to be ashamed.”
Chambers said he’s starting a new organization to help
any Christians, gay or straight,
who choose to live a celibate life.
“There are always going to be peo-
ple like me who view the Bible in
such a way that calls them to celibacy,” he said.
Perhaps the biggest blow to the
movement came last spring, when
Dr. Spitzer acknowledged in a letter to the editor of the Archives of
Sexual Behavior that there was no
way of knowing whether the subjects of his influential 2003 study
had truthfully responded to his
questions. He apologized for “making unproven claims” and asked for
the forgiveness of any gay person
who “wasted time and energy” because of his endorsement.
Ex-gays and their political supporters have long accused defectors of bowing to political pressure. David Pickup, an ex-gay
therapist who acts as an unofficial
spokesman for NARTH and continues to cite the Spitzer study
on his website, told me he didn’t
think the defections proved anything. “Does authentic reparative
therapy work for everyone?” he
asked. “No. Does it work for some
people? Yes.”
We were at Nicolosi’s counseling center, a drab corporate building in Encino, an L.A. suburb. A
handsome minister’s son with
a deep, confident voice, Pickup
spoke in glowing terms about
his own experiences in reparative therapy. “It saved my life,” he