HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
STRAIGHT TALK
said. “It helped me become much
more my true self.”
Pickup never thought of himself as gay. But in his late 20s,
he started getting into gay porn.
Over 15 years of therapy, he said,
he learned to come to terms with
a childhood trauma: He was sexually abused at the age of 5 by a
16-year-old male neighbor. By his
account, the therapy boosted his
self-esteem and confidence, causing his homosexual feelings to go
away “spontaneously.” At 56, his
relationships with women have
become “more authentic,” he said.
But he hasn’t found that special
someone. “I’m still looking,” he
said, laughing.
Pickup is the lead plaintiff in
one of the lawsuits filed to stop
California’s ban on conversion
therapy for minors. “I refuse to
see a group of children abused,”
he said. “This law will continue
the emotional abuse and, in cases
when children have been abused
sexually, it will continue the sexual abuse.” Pickup’s conviction
that he wasn’t born gay anchors
his belief that sexuality is changeable. “The problem,” he correctly
points out, “is in the strictest scientific sense, no one can prove it
either way.”
W
hile science has little to
say about the mutability of sexual orientation, it’s also largely
silent on the question of whether
or not sexual conversion therapy
causes harm, and to whom. According to the American Psychological Association, however,
the risks appear to outweigh the
benefits. Dr. Judith M. Glassgold, chair of APA’s task force,
addressed the lack of “methodologically sound studies” in a
statement on the group’s findings
in 2009. “Psychologists cannot
predict t he impact of these treatments and need to be very cautious, given that some qualitative
research suggests the potential
for harm,” she warned.
Among those who allege harm
is Chaim Levin, a young man from
an Orthodox Jewish family who
met Mathew at Journey Into Manhood. In the recent lawsuit filed by
former patients and their parents
against JONAH, Levin and a handful of others accused the organization of “fraudulent businesses
practices” that led to “depression
and other emotional harm.” In the
written complaint, Levin described
his sessions with a man named
Alan Downing, an unlicensed
therapist at JONAH who called
himself a “life coach.” According
to Levin, Downing asked the teen-