Year: 2007

Here is an article that bring together several topics covered here on the blog. The Healthy Self-Expressions program works to curb sexual cruising in Salt Lake City and is run by Pride Counseling, a GLBT oriented counseling center. Many men are married and identify as straight.

Buie says many of the program’s participants identify themselves as straight. Many are also active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and roughly 40 percent are married, he says. The average length of those marriages is 23 years. Two of the men with whom he is currently working have been married for more than 40 years…

…”Just because you have an attraction to men doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to those attractions,” he says. “As a therapist I try to encourage people to be honest with themselves.”

Since my initial post on the New Warriors Training Adventure, I have been asking around for reactions to the weekend. Also, I have been in contact with a large group of people who have attended one of the initiations. There is much secrecy surrounding this organization and the tone often borders on fear. I plan a series of posts on this topic to provide some information about what has been a fairly popular recommendation within reparative therapy circles. In fact, a couple of years ago, there was a significant rift in the New Warriors about a local branch that hosted a talk by Joseph Nicolosi. More on that in a later post.

I start with an account by an alum of the weekend and the follow up program, used by permission but anonymously. This describes reactions to the “welcome” offered by the staff of NWTA.

My NWTA

When you arrive at the NWTA all your possessions are taken away from you and searched. I didn’t want to hand over my camera because it cost a lot of money back then and I didn’t want them to have it.

They asked me if I had a camera and I said no. Then they opened my duffle bag and emptied everything on the floor and searched it. They opened my sleeping bag too. They found the camera and were angry that I lied to them. They took everything away, including tooth brush and tooth paste. (You know after all these years it’s still a little painful to remember this.) The only thing we were allowed to keep was an extra change of clothing, extra shoes, sleeping bag and pillow. Everything else was violently taken away from us.

After they searched my belongings, then they searched me. They did a pat down frisk, like the police do to a criminal. I was told to give up wallet, car keys, cell phone, money, jewelry, wedding ring, everything. We were not allowed to keep one thing on our bodies except our clothing.

I felt like a common criminal. The whole time they yelled at us, degraded us. They wouldn’t let us look at the other men. We could only look where they told us too look. The whole time this was done by men who were dressed in total black. They also had black makeup on their faces to conceal their identities.

After this we were all taken to a small damp room and instructed to sit on a damp concrete floor. This was some kind of storage shed. There was no heat. This was in November. There was only one candle for light. After all the men were taken into this room, someone came in and yelled and cussed at us and he kicked over the candle, putting it out. We were then locked in this dark, totally lightless room for several hours.

I was cold and I was in pain sitting on the concrete floor. I didn’t know who was around me. I was separated from my friend that I came to the NWTA with. I didn’t know where he was and I wasn’t allowed to be by him. I began to cry. At last a door opened and we were allowed to go out. It was night and there was total darkness in the sky. We arrived at the NWTA at about 5 pm and it was light. Now it was after 9 pm and dark. Four hours in that lightless room. It was like I was kidnapped by a gang of terrorists.

I am aware this program is controversial and some who like NWTA might say that this is an unfair negative appraisal. However, the consistency of those who I am in contact with is significant and matches the stories of others who are more positive about the weekend. I provide this and future posts for information purposes.

Another blog that analyzes human potential groups has picked up on this issue a bit here…

Hoping your Thanksgiving is at least this much fun…

A reader sent this link to Richard Cohen on Universal Peace Television, a Moon controlled internet television network. Cohen is interviewed by Michael Marshall, a Unificationist and Editor of United Press International. My purpose for posting the link has little to do with the source but rather the content. We have discussed the theories of sexual orientation on this blog and noted the inadequacy of any of them to fully capture the variation of sexual orientation. The research is mixed with perplexing contradictions and modest effects.

On point, there is an amazing statement, among several, in this interview about half way through. Mr. Cohen says, “I can tell you why any man or woman has homosexual feelings. Give me three hours with him or her and I can tell you specifically what occured in their life to create these desires. It’s that predictable.”

Putting aside that Cohen is claiming an ability to reconstruct and not predict, such claims cannot really be proven or disproven. They of course would be guesses that generate from the premise that sexual orientation stems from some kind of wounding in childhood. In his new book, Gay Children, Straight Children, he even invokes “inherited wounds” as the contribution of heredity. For him, heredity is:

Inherited wounds, unresolved family issues, misinterpretations, a predilection for rejection. At the core of SSA [same-sex attraction] is a sense of not belonging, of not fitting in and of feeling different. These feelings and thoughts may be inherited from one’s racial, religious or cultural lineage. This is not the same thing as the so-called gay gene. However, these lineage issues may imbue a child with a predilection for rejection. (p. 72) 

The phrase “predilection for rejection” based on ancestry is confusing. Predilection means a preference for something. I wonder if he really meant to say that. In any event, none of this sounds like heredity in the way most researchers define it. A preference for rejection based on ethnicity or the actions of someone generations before provides the therapist with an out when no present day or childhood wounds can be found. “It must be your heritage.” Seems like identical twins would be more concordant than research shows, if this were true, since the inherited wound would be true of both children. Practically, how could you test this? In any event, if the lineage is unclear, Mr. Cohen has 9 other types of wounding that will qualify. As I read it, any wound will do.

That statement brought to mind the powers of prediction given to Karnak the Magnificent. I’ll bet Karnak would not need three hours.

The FBI hate crimes report is out. Click here for a summary and check out a couple of interesting articles examining local relevance. For instance, in California, San Francisco has more of such crimes than anywhere in the state. And how about this? Mississippi reported no hate crimes.

So that means it is safer to be in Mississippi than San Francisco, right? This is the kind of interpretive question I enjoy posing to my students. Let’s see how readers do.