The indoctrination to fear, hate, and self-loathing is so destructive to the individual and to society. This guy has tortured so many people, and himself, for so long.
And he has no qualms having done it, this despicable man.
Really? Let’s read the article!
Edit: Yup. No remorse. And also, this is a five-year-old article. OP is a misleading little removed.
I have somewhat of a pet extension to projection theory… Many people who are anti-gay think that it is a choice as they themselves have made that choice. ie. They are repressed bisexual/gay.
Completely unsubstantiated with no evidence but I find it fun to think about as it would explain their complete misunderstanding of it not being a choice. “I made the tough choice and am living with it, why can’t they?!”
I could definitely see that. Their obsession with the idea that kids are being ‘groomed’ to be gay suggests they think it’s a choice. Makes one wonder if they are dealing with internalized uncertainty and cognitive dissonance about their personal choice
Kids really are being groomed by adults into having homosexual thoughts and homosexual arousal. But it’s not the gay adults who are doing it, it’s the homophobic adults. Homophobia causes homoeroticism as a fetish.
I wouldn’t take that article too seriously. It’s not citing any sources directly, and the sources regarding penile plesthysmography were not terribly solid studies, IIRC. Medium is a glorified blog site, much like Elephant Journal.
Yes, that blog is my blog.
I grew up with a gay-hating mother. She felt like it was a choice and had lots of books on the matter. It wasn’t until my mid twenties I thought… “who the fuck needs this many books on gay being a choice??”
Lo and behold, a few years later my sister comes out and my mom chastises her because of course you can choose, look at her choosing (after a few rounds of conversation therapy). She couldn’t stand seeing my sister as a happy lesbian and my theory is that it’s because she would never be able to admit to herself that SHE herself could be a happy lesbian if she’d been brave and made different choices.
Anecdotal of course, but…
This is just a fact. If you think sexuality is a choice it’s because you have made it one personally and no one has been able to give me a good reason why it isn’t true.
Yep. I like to use foods as a metaphor. You see, I hate olives. But I’m physically capable of making the choice to eat them by the handful, with a big grin, and proclaim my love for them to the world.
I can do that… But it wouldn’t change the fact that I hate olives.
Not the best metaphor, because you can force yourself to like a food by continuing to eat it.
Perhaps the better metaphor would he cilantro. Which to some people tastes like soap. Though sometimes I wonder if I also think it tastes a bit like soap, and maybe I’m just less picky
The sheer amount of energy people put into hating others who just want to be left along is mind blowing.
I remember a discussion with a friends sister. They were making some anti trans argument/joke or whatever, and I butt in with something like “why do you even care? How does it affect you in the slightest?”
She told me this story about how she asked a Costco employee for assistance. “Excuse me, ma’am… ma’am!” And the employee pointedly ignored her and walked away. Then another employee ran up and quietly told her that the employee identified as a male, but that he’d help her.
That was it. That was the one Trans story that she could bring up on how her life was negatively impacted by a Trans person.
At least she accepted how absurd her complaint was when I laughed in her face and told her “and? So Trans people can be dicks just like anyone else?”
Probably wasn’t even a true story. Sounds like the type of vague shit that gets circulated on Facebook.
I don’t even think that employee was being a dick. He’s a man, the customer was calling for a woman. How’s he supposed to know she wanted his help if she won’t say so? She was just bad at communicating with her words, not his fault.
That’s a given, as far as I’m concerned. When someone tells me they think sexual orientation is a choice, I ask them, “When did you decide to be straight? Because if you chose to be straight, then you must have felt some attraction to the opposite sex. If not, then there was never a choice to be made.”
I think the ones who are the most adamant about it being a choice are likely to actually be bi/gay.
While I think that would describe a significant portion of the people who are dedicated to the ‘choice’ narrative, there are also a large number of gay and lesbian people who have been coerced into pretending to be straight and are parroting what worked on them. They are choosing to act opposite their inherent sexuality because of social pressure.
There are some objective methods to measure sexual attraction for men where you attach electrodes that measure blood flow to the penis. With these tools there have been studies that have shown those who are homophobic show more attraction to men. The same thing is found for those with transphobes as well. Just like who you like without shame.
I have to wonder how they persuaded homophobic men to sign up to such a study.
“Scientifically prove you’re not gay! We’ll even give you a certificate that states how straight you are!”
Penile plethysmography is not actually a very accurate way of measuring sexual attraction. It’s just the best thing that we have right now.
Listen, it’s a very easy premise: these anti-gay workers and activists believe homosexual thoughts are something everyone struggles with, because they experience similiar thoughts and urges all the time, and homosexuals are just people made the wrong choice. The logic is easy to follow. People bias their own experiences and wrongly assume that most people have similiar thoughts and feelings. So when you have feelings that you have been told your whole life are “wrong”, “unclean” or “evil”, you don’t assume that they’re unique to you; you see them as demons that everyone faces and attribute your ability to turn them away as a virtue. These people believe homosexuality is a choice because they believe themselves to have made the other choice.
The hate you see isn’t loathing for things they don’t understand. It’s resentment. It’s a deep-seated bitterness born of resentment and envy for people who chose not to fight against their own nature and instead celebrate it. And they believe they’re doing good by helping people like them make the “correct” choice, and eliminating any attitudes, conversations or, in extreme cases, persons, that would normalize the “incorrect” choice.
Wait…
Everyone morning I wake up and think “don’t think about dicks, don’t think about dicks, don’t think about dicks…”
YOU MEAN EVERYONE ISN’T DOING THIS???
That’s weird because every morning I wake up, I think “Dicks, dicks, dicks!”
I feel like we should get to know each other over coffee sometime…
Well, I mean… Not EVERY day.
People bias their own experiences and wrongly assume that most people have similiar thoughts and feelings.
(Neuro)typical people and narcissists thinking everyone experiences life like them 🤝 people with an undiagnosed disability thinking typical people experience the same exact hardships they do and being self-deprecating over it
Apparently thinking things you’re allergic to are just spicy or acidic and really taste like burning is common, or that everyone hates their dad for being a douching ball of suck.
I love my dad. My dad was, and is, great. Yeah, he was absent a lot, because work and church shit kept him busy, but I’ve never met anyone IRL that was as genuinely kind and willing to help.
If I live my life being only a tenth of the man that my dad is, I’ll be doing well.
…My mom on the other hand…
I worded that reply very badly, and it’s not clear to me reading it again what it would mean to you when you read it. So my bad all around. To clarify, I ment to communicate, hopefully humorously, that people assume their very specific life experiences are typical, and that everyone is going through what they are going through, even though that’s not a universal or even typical experience.
You might already know all this, so sorry, but I think the reply I wrote was badly written.
You’re making a lot of sense. I’ve never thought about it that way.
Listen, it’s a very easy premise: these anti-gay workers and activists believe homosexual thoughts are something everyone struggles with, because they experience similiar thoughts and urges all the time
What is the mental defect that makes people think everyone is like them or everyone is the same?
It’s just the classic case of projection.
I’m not sure. For me and some others, just mental maturity. Mine wasn’t that bad, I just thought a song was so good everyone would love it, then realized once I pushed some into listening to it that that wasn’t true. Vihart has a (to me) nice vid discussing her experience.
“Mormon therapist” is a red flag for sure. And uh, mixed orientation marriages? uh…
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Umm ACKCHYUALLY…
the Nile river covers 11 countries: Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Republic of Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, and Egypt.
but that doesn’t contradict them
You’re not wrong.
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If you can’t tell that’s intended as a joke then I have some bad news for you.
Hmm…no, I don’t think he’s being sarcastic either.
There’s a great documentary about something similar to this, the pray away the gay movement which is essentially this same thing. It’s Pray Away and it’s on Netflix. It’s fantastic and goes into how many people who are in this super anti-LGBT sphere are in fact members of the community just in deep repression.
Conversion Therapy is torture. And there’s different intensities of it. I once had a super catholic girlfriend, literally majored in theology at a catholic school in Virginia. The entire time we were together she refused to go to communion or engage in church rituals. Not because she thought the church was shit to queer folk, but because she personally believed that being queer was a sin and that if you are gay you have to be celibate. She genuinely believed that our relationship was inherently sinful, she was constantly trying to “save me” the entire relationship too. Now, she never went to a place to be “converted”, but she was home schooled and was almost always around bigoted Catholics, she believed in the church and what priests and her parents told her so much that she literally majored in it. Just being in a religious community that is bigoted is conversion therapy. It makes you believe the things others say, makes you hate yourself because you’re queer, makes you desperately pray to god to fix you. That is just as much a conversion therapy as being forced to go to a place to “convert you” is.
Fuck this guy and what he’s done, I hope he knows the harm he’s caused the community and that he knows some of us will not forgive him.
Always the ones that shout the loudest. Self hate is such a powerful and destructive thing.
The Conversion Therapist doth protests too much, methinks
May he never find peace, love or joy.
I hope he finds a voice on the other side and fully realizes the error of his ways. Those who were once on another side and flip can be a strong voice and can help in getting others to see the error of their ways too.
But I had stopped growing and was starting to die.
But all those other fags should just deal with it, right? What a terrible person.
What a scum bag. Think of how many lives he’s ruined.
Tale as old as…well, conversion therapy 🤷
This is a 5 year old story! Why post it here as news?
Honestly, this is hesrt breaking. Always expected from anyone “converted to straight”. But this guy spent his whole life denying himself and then made his profession pushing and reinforcing that shame on to others. He is absolutely a victim, but I imagine that accepting himself comes with a lot of regrets regarding others the people he… “helped”.
One can only hope he becomes a force for acceptance and self love moving forward. But, I imagine regrets will haunt him for the rest of his days. Poor guy.
For anyone else who didn’t read the article:
“My time in a straight marriage and in the “ex-gay” world was genuine and sincere and a rich blessing to me. I remember most of it with fondness and gratitude for the joy and growth it caused in me and many others. But I had stopped growing and was starting to die. So I’ve embarked on a new life-giving path that has already started a whole new growth process. I wasn’t faking it all those years. I’m not renouncing my past work or my LDS faith. And I’m not condemning mixed-orientation marriages. I continue to support the rights of individuals to choose how they will respond to their sexual attractions and identity. With that freedom, I am now choosing to pursue life as a gay man.”
Yes, he was a victim, but this dude has no remorse WHATSOEVER. Hopefully that changes with time.
Where he is right now, he can’t have remorse. At the time that this article was written, he was probably still a believing Mormon, and for him to admit that he was wrong would be the same as admitting that his religion–which was likely one of his personal foundations–was also wrong. Mormonism is a cult, and it’s very, very hard to leave because of how deeply it sinks tentacles into your brain.
If this was his way to meet other gay people, I can think of much better ways.
