I am an openly and unashamedly gay man — and yet, when I hug a male friend, gay or straight, I don’t need an instructor in my ear reminding me it’s a non-sexual hug. It is, contrary to the mythology of the ex-gay movement, possible to be a healthy, gay-identified man without foisting your sexual attentions on every other man that comes along.
A BBC documentary broadcast earlier this week followed several ex-gay men, some of whom need coaching in how to desexualize an embrace. As 35-year-old Aaron received a group hug on an Adventure In Manhood camping weekend (similar to but not to be confused with Journey Into Manhood), his group leader, Arizona therapist Floyd Godfrey, provided a running commentary:
This is non-sexual. Nobody’s sexualizing this with you. This is just healthy buddies. You don’t have to have sex with a guy to feel loved or to get healthy touch.
Asked how he felt during the embrace, Aaron affirmed:
I’m a man, and I have emotional needs … and I’m not gay.
Watch the clip below:
Then there was TJ, 19. During a session with Floyd Godfrey, TJ reported a reduction in his “same-sex attractions”:
I’ve even noticed, I’ll experience a severe diminishing of the SSA feelings, but that’s not necessarily true of the addiction to [gay] pornography. … Where I’ll still be struggling with the pornography issue, but I’m not going through my day, I’m not being triggered by guys that I’m seeing, I’m not feeling the needs. But I’m still struggling with the pornography. So I’ve really seen that distinction grow over the last couple of months.
If the bizarreness of this confession were not already apparent, presenter Stacey Dooley explains:
It’s a really odd one, cos TJ will stand there and tell me that he absolutely doesn’t feel sexually attracted to men any more, when he sees a lad crossing the street that’s quite handsome, doesn’t do anything for him; the feelings have gone, they’ve diminished because of Floyd. Then in the same breath he’ll say, but I am still watching gay porn, and I’m masturbating to gay porn. I know I’m not a genius, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but if you’re mad keen on gay porn and straight porn isn’t doing it for you, maybe there are still gay elements of you…?
Watch below:
TJ later explained his friendship with a fellow struggler, an older male, also same-sex attracted, who helped him remain accountable by offering him support when he was tempted to look at gay porn. Asked whether there was any sexual element to their relationship, TJ replied:
We’ve even gotten to the point where I spent the night over at his apartment the other night, and we were just, you know, wrestling around and just being boys, and there was no attraction.
The show was presented largely through the eyes of ex-gay clients themselves, leaving the producers open to the charge of having only shown one side of the story. But what a story — is much counter-argument needed when the ex-gay movement does such a fine job of making itself look ridiculous?
But as well as the absurd, there was also the tragic. In particular, the guilt reparative therapy places on parents, as well as the guilt some Christian parents put on their gay children, came across very strongly.
“Skylar’s dad has been told that his poor relationship with his son may have contributed to Skylar’s attraction to men,” said the presenter at one point, before we witnessed Skylar’s father tearfully confessing how his inadequacies as a parent made his son gay.
Elsewhere, a Mormon dad told cameras how difficult it was to take the news that his failings had turned his son homosexual. His son, now-married with two children, despite his same-sex attractions, told the presenter that he and his wife were doing everything they could to prevent his own child growing up gay:
I try to make sure that I’m conscious of them, their feelings. Jude was always more independent. … Desmond’s a bit quieter, and kinda reminds me of me a little bit, so with him, I may have to make more of a conscious effort.
If one of his sons came out gay, he said, “I would have to take a good look at myself and see, what did I do, where did I mess up?”
The documentary ended with an interview with Dr Joseph Nicolosi, the pioneer of reparative therapy, who repeated his irresponsible and pseudoscientific mantra that poor dads are to blame for gay kids:
[What about gay people that will tell you, “I’ve got a perfect relationship with my parents. My dad was spot on. Mum was great. Everything ticked along nicely”?]I will tell you very clearly. Over the many years of work that I have been doing – thousands of men – I have never met a homosexual who had a loving, respectful relationship with his father.
[Really?]Yes.
Viewers in the UK have until Sunday November 11 to watch Stacey Dooley in the USA: Gay to Straight free online through BBC iPlayer.
This is very interesting. Where can I find the full documentary?
I find it hard to believe that this way of thinking is still so prominent in certain circles.
@Steve
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00zhq9f/Stacey_Dooley_in_the_USA_Gay_to_Straight/
“His son, now-married with two children, despite his same-sex attractions”
I think it’s really important we NEVER use their hideously biased framing (terminology): the son doesn’t have “same-sex attractions.” Even if he (tragically) doesn’t affirm himself as gay, he nevertheless has a homosexual orientation: always has had, always will.
Sorry but if I was spending the night at a female friend’s apartment, and we really were just friends, I can’t imagine how wrestling would come into play at ALL.
Little overnight excursions like those are obviously sad episodes of sublimation.
@JCF
We understand that you think this is important as you have reacted to it’s use here before. However, a bisexual has “same-sex attractions” as well as “opposite-sex attractions.” A heterosexual has “opposite-sex attractions.” That doesn’t mean there is no other aspect to their sexuality. Context is important, as is perspective.
@Emily K
I think most gay men could empathize with the significance of “wrestling with a buddy.” The fact that TJ mentioned that in an otherwise brief description of his relationship with the other guy is also very telling, I think.
When I was a boy, and knew i was gay, there were any number of very attractive boys (Gerry Hauser, where are you now?) that i would wrestle with any time I could. But it wasn’t gay wrestling, it was non-same-sex-attracted wrestling.
A world of difference when you’re 13, but delusional when you’re an adult.
I really liked Stacey Dooley’s presentational style. Had the documentary been twice as long, it would have been interesting to see Dooley take time to press Floyd Godfrey very hard on exactly what the nature is of his own sex drive and how or if it changed. Also to challenge Joseph Nicolosi at much greater length.
It was interesting to see Nicolosi deny ever meeting a gay man whose relationship with his father was good. A few years ago there was a transcript somewhere online (I can’t now find it) of a seminar where he was speaking. A gay man in the audience protested strongly that he had always had an excellent relationship with both his parents, especially with his Dad. Nicolosi’s response was simply to disbelieve him; in effect to brand him a liar. “You’re gay so you MUST have had a bad relationship with your father, whatever you say”.
The young guys having the “therapy” are clearly in the “I’m flying!” phase of the fish who leap out of the water wanting to fly.
Notably, as always, there was a total absence of any person who had actually completed a change in the direction of operation of his sex drive and could convincingly describe in detail how this took place.
Joseph Nicolosi increasingly these days seems to be talking about *preventing* homosexuality, rather than changing the sex drive. This kind of talk reminds me of the joke about the city worker painting white lines on the road. A passerby asks “Why are you painting while lines on the road?” and the worker says “To keep the elephants away of course”. “But there are no elephants in the city!” says the passerby, to which the worker replies “I know. It works!”.
JCF, it’s not an either/or. Their framing SSA needs to be used to understand them, and then our framing of them as SSO can be used — but only sometimes. It’s still important, if even in our own words to describe them as SSA to show how they see themselves.
Dave wrote another post describing it like this:
There is a clear distinction, which probably should be explained more often, yet despite the importance of communicating this, wordy caveats like that get tiresome and to often end up as off-putting distractions.
—
Dave Rattigan: “But as well as the absurd, there was also the tragic.”
To further that thought, and I consider this to be the crux of the matter, their believe systems are based on the notion that one’s sexual orientation is biologically based. In other words, they consider the physical body to be the cause of one’s attractions/orientation, anything outside of heterosexuality throws this belief into chaos, thus the need to come up with every absurd explanation under the sun to make sense of homosexuality.
Though biology may be the case (for some), those who understand reincarnation to be true, also understand life before birth to be true, and if there’s life before birth there can be gender before birth, making a gay man just a matter of a female spirit entering a male body and vice versa for lesbians.
If that’s too much, one could easily be open to the idea that God simply did design for some souls to be SSO.
So I think the tragedy within the tragedy is that their belief system frameworks are designed to make it “sinful” or just plain unconscionable to even question WHY they believe as they do.
I really feel like going for one of these sessions. No hard feelings. I really would benefit from that kinda hugs which I have never ever received in my entire life. Dont know whether itll change it me or not, but these camps are cool.
@PrestonCharles
I think that’s the draw for many, really, including those who sponsor them. They get some of the physical contact and emotional satisfaction they won’t allow themselves normally, and it’s all “safe” under the guise of getting rid of the gay. Otherwise I doubt many would be willing to entertain the idea that one could “hug away” one’s sexual orientation — the idea is absurd on the face of it.
It’s a free country, and the communes of the 60s certainly showed the way to such group emotional bonding. But to literally sell it as a “cure” for homosexuality is nothing less than fraud.