On the heels of Dave Rattigan’s recent post about the BBC’s “Gay to Straight” documentary, Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch finds conversion therapist Floyd Godfrey on the Linda Harvey show with an interesting take on the nature of homosexuality.
You may want to read that post first to prepare you for Godfrey’s inanity in this one.
Tashman:
Mission America president Linda Harvey this weekend hosted ex-gay therapist Floyd Godfrey, who describes his own path to ‘healing’ his homosexuality by befriending more men.
[I] went on to take beginning softball, basketball, weight lifting and gymnastics … I even got a job at a Chevron gas station so I could be around guys and learn mechanics. Little by little, I felt myself growing as a man … I was becoming what I was attracted to in others [“true” heterosexual masculinity].
Tashman:
Harvey and Godfrey claimed gays and lesbians were most likely abused as children or have such envy for same-sex peers that they develop sexual feelings for them… just like cannibals who eat their own leaders.
(Just FYI, Harvey’s Mission America site should only be viewed on an empty stomach.)
To distill Godfrey’s use of cannibalism as a means to describe the nature of (male) homosexuality: Gay men are devoid of true masculinity and therefore feel compelled to “consume” it from other men.
So, full picture, in order to sate one’s same-sex “appetite” for men, they should bond with them non-physically, but to bond with another man physically — and on every other level of being — only prolongs one’s “appetite” for them???
Incalculable irony notwithstanding, both Harvey and Godfrey believe homosexuals can fully transform into heterosexuals.
Harvey, via the Family Research Council (pdf), wrote that, “Thousands of men and women have testified to experiencing a change in their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.”
And Godfrey, from his own healing homosexuality site, says, “There are scores of individuals who have experienced a shift in their orientation from homosexual to heterosexual.”
Not even Exodus International, “the largest informational referral ministry in the world addressing homosexual issues,” makes such an absolutist claim. The president of the organization, Alan Chambers, admits he’s never even heard of such a complete, or even any sort of consistent level of transformation, by a factor of 99.9%.
But Godfrey will set you straight right over the phone, for a cost (not including the price).
If you are interested in contacting us about professional counseling, our offices are located in Mesa, Arizona. If you are not within distance of attending sessions, you may schedule telephone sessions. The cost is $100-$120 per session and sessions run 45-50 minutes.
Oh, and:
Yes, make sure your therapist knows all about the lifetime of trauma caused by coming out of your mother’s womb.
Godfrey also writes:
Dr. Elizabeth Moberly had talked about homosexuality like cannibalism because we’re so hungry. And that is what it feels like to those who struggle with homosexual feelings.
Sexual feelings are a form of hunger, Godfrey, which makes everyone with sexual feelings cannibalistic. In fact, the metaphor can be quite apropos, and when lyricized and set to music, delightfully entertaining:
Maybe he just misunderstood what someone meant when they said “bite me.”
I literally live like one mile away from his “workplace,” talk about ironic, and another embarassment for Arizona. His website is the biggest load of bull I’ve ever read.