May 11, 2007. My experiences in "ex-gay" ministries

There has been a great deal of interest lately in the experiences of those who have gone through "ex-gay ministries," so I thought I'd share some comments about my experiences in two such groups (though "ex-gay" is not quite the right term for one of them, as will become clear later): the Portland Fellowship; and Courage, the Roman Catholic ministry to gay and lesbian people who wish to follow the official teachings of the Catholic hierarchy on homosexuality,

I'll start with the Portland Fellowship. While that group predicates its approach to sexuality on a fundamentalist, and I would argue, naive reading of the Bible, one largely uninformed by the insights afforded by over one hundred years of historical-critical Bible scholarship, it also seeks to undergird and justify its approach by drawing on psychological theories that have been largely discredited by scientific consensus, as embodied in the positions of the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and other mainstream professional mental health associations.

One of the theorists most mentioned by many associates of the Exodus Ministries is Elizabeth Moberly. Moberly, a former British research psychologist, was once a conservative Anglican, who later converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Her theory is essentially that homosexuality is grounded in what she has called "defensive detachment." Basically, the idea is that homosexuality stems from a detachment by some people from the gender of their same-sex parent, a detachment rooted in a wounded relationship with that parent, either through parental neglect, abandonment, or abuse. "Same sex attractions," according to Moberly, are at root a "restorative" drive to undo the effects of that detachment--one of the primary effects, Moberly teaches, being insecurity about one's gender identity--, a drive which at puberty becomes "sexualized."

At the time I participated in the group sessions of Portland Fellowship, they were led by its founder, Phil H., a married man and father of several children, who had once identified as gay. Though he had no professional credentials as a counselor, he offered private counseling/therapy sessions to those participants who desire them. (I did not seek these out.) The group was then, and is now, affiliated with Exodus International, an "umbrella group" of ex-gay ministries, under the leadership of Randy Thomas. Thomas had published several books about his own "liberation" from homosexuality, and had earned a graduate counseling degree from Biola University, an evangelical institution. I read several of his books, and they led me to investigate the theories of Elizabeth Moberly, then to seek out the Portland Fellowship. H. and the official "assistants" of the Portland Fellowship, like other prominent associates of Exodus International, paid relatively little attention to emerging scientific evidence that casts doubt on the theory that sexual identity is rooted primarily in nurture, not nature, including from studies showing a statistically significant incidence of homosexuality among identical twins separated at or very nearly at birth. Nor did they give much attention to the paucity of peer-reviewed, scientific data to back up Moberly's theories. Most of her "evidence," from what I can tell from my reading of several reviews of her studies, is anecdotal in nature, taking the form of "case studies" gleaned from others' "therapeutic" experience.

Like other leaders within Exodus-affiliated ministries, the leaders of the Portland Fellowship group at the time I participated in it gave particular attention to the notion that homosexual people "suffer" from "insecure" gender identity, and to Moberly's advocacy of "restorative therapy," in which attempts are made to offer homosexual people opportunities for forging non-sexualized same-sex friendships to address their sense of a wounded relationship with the same-sex parent. On that basis, members who were identified as particularly serious about their efforts to "change" were offered the opportunity to enter into a dorm-like living arrangement at the house in which the Portland Fellowship was based, where they could forge "non-sexualized" same-sex friendships under the scrutiny of ministry associates. We were also encouraged to forge such friendships within our home churches. Attempts were made to form basketball and other sports activities for male participants, I suppose under the theory that these might reinforce our sense of our own masculinity. (I was disinclined to participate in either the living arrangements or the sports.)

At one time, Moberly's theories made sense to me. My father had committed suicide when I was seven, so it was not difficult for me to identify the "abandonment" issue that may have produced in me a "defensive detachment."

One incident that sticks in my memory took place during one of our group meetings' question-and-answer sessions, when H. was directly asked whether he never experienced "same-sex" attractions any longer. What struck me was that H. would not deny that he did. Rather, he spoke of his commitment to his marriage, his wife and family, and spoke of his satisfaction with the sexual dimension of his relationship with his wife, which he emphasized could not and should not be isolated from other dimensions of their relationship. But, then he went on to make what struck me as a rather surprising admission: i.e., that there was a kind of excitement and passion he associated with his earlier sexual relationships with men, which he admitted could be a source of temptation, were it not for the resources of prayer, godly associations with other, supportive Christian men, a supportive church community, etc., etc.

Some years after my involvement with the Portland Fellowship, H. stepped down from his position of leadership, confessing to "inappropriate emotional involvement" with one of the men he was counseling.


While I sought out and accepted the "ministry," and the underlying psychological theories, of the Portland Fellowship, I did not feel very comfortable with many of its religious elements. It was clearly allied with a strict, evangelical Protestantism which did not jive very well with my own Anglo-Catholic upbringing and leanings. I bristled at the fairly frequent denigrating comments about liturgical and "mainline" churches, especially the Catholic church, made during the group meaning "talks," usually given by H. (During the year of my active involvement in the program, and for the following two years, I was studying for my master's degree in Sacred Scripture at Mount Angel, a Roman Catholic seminary .)

The disparity between my own traditionally Anglican understanding of Christian faith as established on the three complementary "legs" of Scripture, tradition, and reason, one the one hand, and the "sola scriptura" orientation of those most closely associated with the Portland Fellowship, on the other, made my participation often awkward. While I placed great emphasis on Moberly's psychological theories, which then seemed to jive with my own experience and with what I took to be a traditional, but non-literalist, catholic reading of scripture, the leaders of the group did not really give it a place of primary importance. For them, what ultimately mattered was their sense that the "clear meaning of scripture" condemned homosexuality (something I even then sensed was not so simple: "homosexuality," according to our modern understanding, was simply unknown to the authors of the Bible). I remember several occasions when leaders and other participants affirmed that, even if Moberly's or other, similar, psychological theories were ultimately discredited, even if it were somehow established by science that homosexuality was rooted in nature, not nurture, it would not change for them their basic understanding, which was that the Bible states unambiguously that homosexual behavior is sinful, that the Bible is inerrant (as an Anglo-Catholic, the language of "inerrancy" never made much sense to me, though neither did the alternative formulation that the Bible could be "in error"), that a homosexual orientation was therefore disordered, and that a merciful God could not fail to offer people the recourses necessary to avoid falling into sin.

For the group leaders, the primary such recourses were clearly prayer, mutual support, and the faith necessary to endure and resist temptation. If certain psychological theories offered workable therapeutic measures, then those were to be employed. But, if the theories and their resulting methods of "therapy" failed, that did not change the basic conviction that homosexual acts were revealed by the Bible to be sinful and that, as such, unless repented of, they emperilled ones salvation. Thus, while the Fellowship offered opportunities for private counseling and "therapeutic" measures such as "gender-appropriate" activities in fellowship with others of ones gender, and "supportive" communal living arrangements, these were not required, and were not given primary emphasis.

The primary emphasis was on the "program," a six-month-long sequence of weekly large-group sessions. Those were structured much like an evangelical Protestant service of worship, beginning with announcements; an opening prayer led, usually, by H.; half an hour of singing contemporary "praise songs" (H. played the guitar); a half-hour indoctrinating sermon by H.; time for "testimonies" by participants; concluding prayer; then, a half-hour in which we broke into smaller groups of about ten people each, mediated by a small-group leader who had "graduated" from the program, working through the "steps" of a workbook written by Randy Thomas. The latter was loosely patterned on the AA twelve-step program.

It seemed to be understood by H. and other leaders that, at the beginning of the program, some participants would be ambivalent, and might continue to maintain friendships and other "ties to the gay community." Over the course of the program, increasing emphasis was placed during sermons and talks on the need for participants to cut these ties, to "make a commitment" and live a life of "consistency." At some point, those who were known not to have done so were "counseled," and if this did not result in changed behaviors, were quietly asked to leave the program.

I found it odd that participants were not encouraged to repeat this program after it concluded at the end of six months. Rather, we were taught that we had to resist the impulse to become too "dependent" on the group, and that, at the end of six months, we should transfer our focus of energy to participation in the life of our local congregation. At the time I was involved, at the request of myself and several participants, we were somewhat reluctantly allowed to meet at the Fellowship house for a subsequent series of weekly small-group Bible studies. But, this was regarded as experimental, and at the end of several months, the leaders of the Fellowship made the decision that the group was to be disbanded. I don't believe the experiment was allowed to repeat under the auspices of the Portland Fellowship.

The underlying assumptions to all this seemed to be that anyone engaged in an "actively homosexual lifestyle" must not be sufficiently "churched." The Portland Fellowship, whose leaders referred to it as a "parachurch ministry," seemed to regard itself as a kind of "half-way house" for full entry into the church, and full conversion, which was best supported through full participation in the church, was regarded as the best and, apparently, sufficient "treatment" for homosexuality. This added to my sense of awkwardness, as I did not feel the least bit "unchurched." It is also struck me as odd that a number of other participants made it clear that they had been raised in the church, and grew up regarding it as the primary context and force in their lives, after their biological family.

Needless to say, the Portland Fellowship, like all ex-gay ministries, does not keep a record of the "success rate" of its "graduates." If it had, I suppose it would have thought it had found in me something close to a success story. For twelve years, I aped an heterosexual existence. Like, I suspect, many others, I kept my same-sex desires confined to furtive, secretive experiences. In my case, these did not include sex with other men. For others, they did, and even resulted in disastrous media exposure. I recall one man, in particular, John Paulk, who visited with our group on several occasions, and who had gone through an ex-gay ministry (I'm not sure if it was the Portland Fellowship or some other) prior to my involvement, and was held up as something of a hero for having gone on several nationally syndicated talk shows with his wife to talk about their "liberation" from homosexuality. He became something of a public representative for the success of ex-gay ministries, later served as chairman of Exodus International, and was on the board of Focus on the Family. He had been a drag queen, and his wife, a "butch" lesbian, but at the time I met him, they were the embodiment of the conservative Christian couple. Except, in 2000, years after my involvement came to an end, he was caught on camera leaving a gay bar in Washington, DC.

My small group leader got married shortly after the end of our six-month large group session. Then, I found out at a six-month reunion picnic held for program "graduates" that he had been removed from all leadership with the Fellowship, and his contact with it sharply curtailed, because he admitted to having an affair with another man after his wedding. His wife divorced him.

Now, for my later involvement, beginning six years ago, and ending three years ago, with Courage, the Roman Catholic ministry to gays seeking to toe the line on the official Catholic teachings against homosexual "behavior":

The group was founded by Fr. John Harvey, a Catholic priest, in response to the perceived needs of several homosexual men under his pastoral care. Harvey was concerned about the social isolation of these men, and believed they needed a support group. He was concerned that the only "ex-gay" ministries available were evangelical Protestant, and often anti-Catholic in their orientation.

He also had philosophical/theological differences with these groups. Official Roman Catholic teaching about homosexuality is somewhat more respectful of secular learning, including the scientific consensus on the origins of homosexuality. Courage is thus unwilling to affirm unwaveringly that people can "change" from homosexual to heterosexual orientation. It contends that this may be possible for some, but not for all, and indeed, not for a great many. Thus, strictly speaking, it is not an "ex-gay" group. However, it affirms the "traditional" teaching that homosexuality behavior is sinful, and that the homosexual "condition," therefore, while not strictly speaking sinful or requiring repentance, is "innately disordered," inasmuch as it involves a "predisposition" toward sinful acts.

Participants are encouraged to regard their homosexuality as a cross to be born, and to embrace the inherent struggle and suffering involved in keeping chaste (either celibate, or confining sexual expression to a "heterosexual" marriage) as a participation in the sufferings of Christ, something to be offered up to God "in communion with Christ's sufferings." A lot of the talk during meetings consisted of drearily repetitive laments about participants' failures to "keep chaste."

The group met at The University of Dallas. Participants, who came from throughout the metroplex, were never very numerous; the numbers varied from as many as fourteen, to as few as two or three at a meeting. Meetings were loosely structured, sometimes involving a "study," sometimes just "conversational fellowship," usually under the supervision of a priest from the Dallas diocese--a genuinely caring, if (I would now argue) misguided man--who volunteered to be the spiritual pastor of the group, with his bishop's consent. (In most Courage groups, the priest/pastor is either straight, or does not address the question of his own sexual orientation. The priest/pastor must, of course, embrace the discipline of celibacy.) One of the complaints often heard at meetings from the priest and Roman Catholic participants was that, while Courage was the only officially sponsored Catholic ministry to gay people, it enjoyed at best spotty support among Roman Catholic clergy. The Fort Worth diocese showed a remarkable lack of enthusiasm about including a link to the ministry on its official web pages, though it had, at one time, given such exposure to Dignity, the pro-gay, non-officially-sanctioned ministry.

To me, at one time, the official Roman Catholic position seemed a more humane, more humanistic and enlightened approach to dealing with homosexuality. Now, it strikes me as cruel, inasmuch as it seeks to divide ones homosexual "behavior" from ones nature. As Bishop V G Robinson has recently pointed out in a wonderful talk given at the University of the South (http://www.sewanee.edu/gsa/talks/vgr_041407), such a division between ones nature and ones behavior is ultimately incoherent, and the distinction between "sinful" and "innately disordered" is really straining at gnats.


As Bishop Robinson puts it, calling someone "innately disordered" is not particularly compassionate. It's hateful. And, as I recall, even in Fr. Harvey's writings, this hatefulness occasionally breaks through. For all his protestations of compassion, when he generalizes about the psychological instability and immaturity he believes to be typical of, and innate to, gay people, he sounds like pretty much any other bigot. Occasionally, our priest/pastor would raise those ideas as a subject for discussion, and it always made me uncomfortable, as I did not recognize most gay peopleI knew--including the men in the group, whom I admired and cared about--as especially more unstable or immature than heterosexuals, at least in areas of their life beyond their conflicted take on their own sexuality.

What is interesting about Courage is that, given its unwillingness to embrace fully an "inerrancy" doctrine in respect to Scripture, or a "nurture, not nature" position on the origins of homosexuality, it must fall back more squarely on the argument that homosexuality is sinful simply because a majority within the church holds it to be so. (Of course, they would argue that the church always had held this to be the case, but this falls afoul of the evidence that what we now understand by "homosexuality" was simply unrecognized prior to about 130 years ago.)

I recall once a young man training to be a doctor attended several of our meetings. He was raised Catholic, and still attended Mass regularly, but was very ambivalent about the Church's teachings, and he challenged us by referring to his extensive reading on the medical and psychological studies contesting the notion that homosexuality was a primarily a result of social conditioning or parental influence. Our priest and several participants affirmed that, even if sexuality were shown to have nothing to do with such conditioning or influence, this would not change their minds or the doctrine of the church. I disagreed, and declared that, while I had "placed my bets" on Moberly's theory of the psychosexual genesis of homosexuality, I believed there was no incontrovertible proof on either side. I declared that, if I were to cease to believe that homosexuality was the result of a kind of psychological "wound," I would have to admit that I had simply gotten my take on homosexuality wrong, in spite of the implications this would have about the life I had constructed for myself.

Those words proved to be prophetic. At the time, though, I did not feel unduly troubled by this position, as it seemed to me that there was no way convincing "evidence" could be presented to settle the matter. In the absence of incontrovertible proof, one had to simply "place ones bets," and live with consequences of that choice.

What I failed to understand is that, one of the consequences of my particular side of the "wager," was that I was denying the force and necessity of real, down-in-the-marrow love. Luckily, the woman to whom I was married refused to accept the consequences of that denial. For that part of the story, see the letter below.

I guess the as yet unanswered question my story begs is, What in the world was I thinking? Frankly, I don't have a complete answer. Part of what led me down the path I chose, I suppose, was a reluctance to accept the challenges of living as the object of pervasive bigotry and prejudice. I thought I was, when it came to prejudice, a liberal. But, objecting to the oppression of others is a far different thing than accepting the fact that one is oneself a member of a despised class. (Things have gotten a lot better than when I first came to understand that I was homosexual.) I was a white, middle-class American male, not raised to think of myself as a member of an oppressed or undervalued class, and with no close models of how to deal with such an eventuality.

I was lonely. I wanted to belong to a community. And, the communities of which I was aware, of which I had thought myself to be a member, sent strong signals that they rejected homosexuals. At the time, this seemed to include my family.

At some level, my path was directed by a kind of false optimism and idealism, and by a degree of egotism not, unfortunately, especially unusual; I simply found it difficult to accept that a majority of people could be so unjust as to reject me out of senseless bigotry.

Last, but far from least, was the effect on me of our culture's pervasive misogyny. I would have told you, even during my involvement with these groups, that I rejected misogyny, and would have even acknowledged that the hatred of gays, which I believed I rejected, was rooted in misogyny. Gay men have long been perceived as more disturbing than lesbians, "passive" and "effeminate" gay men as more objectionable than masculine ones, and I believe this is rooted in disgust at the notion of men willing to forgo male "superiority" by "acting like women." But, I believe I have been prone to underestimate, like most members of our society, the degree to which misogyny has distorted for millenia our past and present culture.