If I had to pick one glaring, gaping, horrifically, horrendously obnoxious hole in the vast majority of conversations about being gay or lesbian or ex-gay or Christian or Wiccan or DollyPartonian or what-the-flip-ever, it would be this:
What the heck happened to our collective sense of humor?
When did the world get so all-fired serious that we forgot how to laugh at ourselves?
Saturday night I rediscovered my tickle button. Let loose a guffaw. (Or 43, give or take a dozen.)
I ventured a couple hours from home into Hartford (first time planting my feet on fine Connecticut soil) to experience a one-man show:
Doin’ Time in The Homo No Mo Halfway House
How I survived the Ex-gay Movement
Peterson Toscano shares his experience surviving the Homo No Mo Halfway House.
A vignette from Toscano’s bio tells part of his story:
As a gay man, his journey out of the closet has been long and complicated. After years of submitting to reparative therapy through counseling, ex-gay support groups, and even a stint with a Jamaican exorcist, Peterson enrolled in the ex-gay residential program, Love in Action. He graduated successfully from the program nearly two years later, but in January of 1999 he finally came OUT and fully accepted himself as a gay man.
Even more significantly in my mind, though, is that Toscano emerged from his ex-gay life with his sense of humor intact.
Looking for self-pity? Victimhood? Shrieks of blame? A ruined psyche in agonizingly slow recovery? You’ll have to look elsewhere.
As Toscano describes it, his ex-gay experience wasn’t always easy or pleasant, but he has adapted to the the fact that it was the path he was destined to take, learning volumes from it along the way. As a young adult he discovered he was hard-wired to seek out faith-based experience, shaking up his parents more by becoming a born-again Christian than later when he came out. There was a natural, organic feel to the rules and structure of conservative Christianity for him, particularly if it could deliver on the promise of freeing him from attractions to guys.
When he chose — freely, consciously, uncoerced — to enroll in the ex-gay residential program, the answers he needed were still eluding him. A couple of light-bulb-style aHAH! moments in that phase finally allowed him to let loose of old hurts and begin clearing his head.
He describes the some of the work he did in his upcoming book:
I filled my head with rules. I even made up some of my own. I rewarded myself for any success and bitterly punished myself for the many lapses I made. I pointed out to my brothers their own faults, and soon became the self righteous, Challenge Queen. I arrived in the house feeling like a total loser, but I realized their was a way I could claw myself out of my corruption and maybe even stand up in front of the group and proclaim, “I have nothing to confess this week. Gurl, I didn’t even mastabate!”
Graduating from the program and pursuing his ex-gay life brought the peace of knowing he had done everything he could possibly do, fixed everything that could be fixed, followed every rule that was supposed to produce a contented, spiritually grounded life.
Except for one thing.
Seventeen years of ex-gay life had not made him straight.
The thing that sets this story apart is the characters that he uses to tell it. Chad, a high energy young guy with spiky blonde hair, conducts most of the house tour enthusiastically. Married family man Tex drawls his way through tales from his 700+ days in the house. Read about all of the characters (and watch video clips!) here. Each of them lays out their experiences (rules, rules, and more rules) without devolve into airing of dirty laundry. Each of them is based on (or a composite of) folks that Toscano cared deeply for, and it shows.
While exploring their world, the audience is left to draw its own conclusions about the program. As tempting as it was to get busy blaming and judging, I couldn’t help but connect some of the madcap events from the house with the flavors of insanity that weave their way through my own life.
The play doesn’t preach and doesn’t judge. It demonstrates one guy’s approach for surviving the Ex-gay movement without generalizing about what other folks could or should do:
- Humor: I use humor like a pot holder to handle issues and memories that are too hot to handle with my bare hands…
- Acceptance: Since I rejected myself for so many years, I experienced healing when others accepted me unconditionally exactly as I am…
- Dealing with Childhood Sexual Abuse: Once I separated my gayness from the horror of abuse, I began to accept myself and find relief from the inner pain I carried.
Take the tour of HomoNoMo.com, as well as p2son.com productions. This poem marked one of the highlights of the play for me. Performances are scheduled in NY state and Michigan, and I hear that the show has legs if you want to lure Peterson into your neck of the woods.
That sounds so cool. I’ve heard a few healthily, happily gay people tell me that their time in exgay ministry was positive for them because it helped them realize who they really were. Indeed, it is not a hellish experience for everyone.
I find the idea of live-in recovery programs for homosexuality highly offensive–I mean, I can lose all my hard-won understanding and insight and respect whenever I hear about one of those. So I find this interesting. But you’re right–what’s even more interesting is that he still has a sense of humor and isn’t too bitter. It’s an example for all ex-ex-gays and ex-Christian queers.
Homo No Mo Halfway House sounds hilarious. Ex-gay groups are more harmful than helpful and there is typically more anxiety than laughs. But I think ex-gays would even admit that there are some aspects of their program that are hilarious.
Excellent point about separating child abuse. One of the most difficult ex-gay messages to unlearn is the message that one’s sexuality is defined by their childhood abuse. Certainly there is some truth that early sexual experiences affect a person’s development. But it is very harmful to associate one’s adult sexual identity with child abuse. One of the appealing aspects of ex-gay therapy is the promise of building a new straight sexual identity by disassociating from childhood experience. Of course when the heterosexuality doesn’t materialize, then the guilt of abuse returns as well.
It was hard for me to see the residential facilities as anything other than abusive or cultish, too, Jayelle. I came away from hearing Peterson’s experience with a little different perspective.
During the talk-back session after the show, he mentioned that one of the things the glbt community can improve on is its understanding of, compassion toward, and support services for folks dealing with sexual addictions. Regardless of whether they end up self-identifying as gay, ex-gay, or in between, some of the folks there get the tools they need to defuse compulsive behaviors that had caused harm and created turmoil.
Does ‘sexual addiction’ have an actual definition? I had thought the concept was either a right wing pseudo-idea or something out of touchy feely land. Did not realize this might be an actual idea. Does it replace the concept of ‘fetish’ or ‘compulsion’?
I look forward to seeing this show. I like the notion that he has a great sense of humor / and used a bad situation to make good for himself. Bravo!
From what I can tell ‘sexual addiction’ seems to come more from pop psychology than from the right wing. Unfortunately, I wind up hearing a lot of right wing propaganda and I have yet to see someone mention it. Right now there is a lot of disagreement as to if it is possible for someone to become addicted to sex and if so where do you draw the line?
I think the evidence for sexual addiction is a little more strong than something merely coming from “pop psychology”. What we have is the testimony of straights and gays that some people experience something like an addiction to sex. There are still some who challenge the addiction model for drugs and alcohol and there is disagreement even as to whether one can become addicted to those substances. One of the arguments there is that alcohol is not addicting and that those who claim to be addicted to it are really people who have been trained, or convinced, by AA and addiction counselors, to view their normal desires for alcohol as a graving. I personally would prefer to think that people are not that easily duped and that the testimony of most recovered alcoholics can be trusted as to what they are really experiencing. Here is the connection to sexual addiction. If people who claim to be in sexual addiction recovery claim that they experienced sex as an addiction I too am willing to believe them,just as I would a recovered alcoholic. I am even more willing to believe them than supposed experts who do not accept the addiction model. And since, unlike ex-gays, those claiming to be recovered from sexual addiction are not pushing a political agenda, not labeling others, and not tied to any one religion, and are from all parts of the sexual/racial/gender spectrum, I am even more willing to believe that they are expressing what they really feel. It is a matter of believing people’s descriptions of themselves when one is unable to discover any motivation for bad faith, or self-deception, on their part.
I’m not well-acquainted with sexual addiction specifically; I used the phrase to quote Peterson directly without interpreting it. To clarify, I personally see choices, habits, compulsions and addictions as interrelated.
By whatever name, support and assistance are available for folks looking to reign in maladaptive sexual patterns.
I’m more familiar with research and public policy related to substance abuse and dependence. While there are those who discount the disease model of addiction completely (like Shaler and Peele), there are many more folks who interpret the available research and find value in the disease model yet less universally than is supported by public policy.
Essentially, there is evidence which supports that substance abuse often doesn’t progress to addiction and then to death; that client-centered approaches to resolving ambivalence are often more effective than interventions in defeating denial; that cognitive behavioral training works better for some than personal powerlessness and the higher power of 12-step; that harm reduction therapy can save lives and provide a conduit to abstinence; and, that teaching self-empowerment and alternatives to abstinence can bring people into treatment sooner and produce positive results.
Bottom line, sometimes substance use habits become maladaptive, and folks can often bring their lives back into balance with 12-step or other support. I suspect the same is true for maladaptive or compulsive sexual habits.
I would not disagree with the gist of what Steve B. has written, except to note that it is particularly difficult to get hard figures about what approach helps whom, and how many, in the field of addiction studies. It is indeed very likely that some are helped more by approaches other than the by-now-traditional AA/addiction model approach. It is also very hard to identify who will benefit from which approach (until tried) and how many benefit from which approach.
This seems to be the nature of psychological studies on human beings. We are too complex for any one scientific model or any one therapeutic approach, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we humans have the ability to “react back” to approaches used to change us. All this applies to the gay/ex-gay movement issues as well. One problem with the ex-gay movement is that they deny the real complexity of humans and of human sexuality. Gays must not fall into the same trap.
These comments on sexual addiction are helpful. Along with my ex-gay efforts, I participated in a 12-step sexual addiction group (SA) for ten years. Despite following the steps, I never achieved more than a few weeks of “sobriety.” My desire as a heterosexually married man to have sex with strange men in dark, dangerous places was powerful and compulsive. I was encouraged, prayed over, provided ‘accountability,’ and exorcized. Finally I figured out the truth for myself: As long as I held on to shame, fear, and self-rejection because of my orientation, I would never beat the compulsion. Finally accepting myself as a gay man and stepping out of the closet did for me what two decades of counseling, 12-stepping, praying, and hoping ever achieved – it broke the power of the addicton. Why was that so hard for me (and those who supported me) to figure out?! 🙂