Here is a story about a young man who may have entered an ex-gay program. I am not going to comment much at this point as the details are still fuzzy.
One side, a former boyfriend and activist looking to make a name for himself, say the young man was forced into a program. The other side, including the fellow’s parents say he chose to enter.
Eventually, we will find out.
Families are complex systems of support, nurturing, challenge and confusion. Ultimately they prepare a person for a complex world, with a set of values, and understandings of themselves and others that equips them well, with a minority of exceptions, for their lives as adults.
For a lot of families, this may be an unfamiliar path their child has taken. No matter the age of a person, I think it is okay for a family member to question their loved one’s lifestyle. If there is not open and honest communication, then understanding of one another will never be reached. And it is also okay for family members to ask their loved one to look within to the whys to the conclusion they have reached.
I sense way too much judging with all the above comments. I also sense fear. God created family for a purpose. I pray for both parents and son the grace and patience needed to move beyond the pain they are feeling right now. With open and honest communication, this is possible.
@ Tonya,
Thanks for stopping by:
As a parent I can almost agree. But I am aware of other parents who have kidnapped their adult children from religious communities (cults?) because they assessed the adult child’s devotion as brainwashing…it wouldn’t surprise me if they violated much milder boundaries similar to what you describe.
In the long run, the parents and the adult child were alienated for some time, and the child ended up choosing a less radical faith as their own person…later the parents and the child reconciled.
Financial and emotional coercion by parents is common in childhood…and late into adolescence (up to age 25) parents may make more coercive bids to prolong the parent child relationship.
Ultimately, each child has the option to choose to live as an adult with all its costs and rewards.
If a bright pre-med student cannot make this calculation in the current, open culture; we are all endless victims and weaklings.
May grace and truth both prevail through everyone: the parents, the son, the partner, etc. regardless of the outcome. Sad that privacy can be lost so easily these days.
@Debbie,
Yeah , it’s not like we ever forget our past or are totally going to deny it. It is something that is there that can present itself again.
Seems to me the most intelligent thing I’ve heard said in regards to this line of reasoning came from Warren on the Exodus-PFOX decoupling thread. He used covetousness as a representative sin of which no one appears to be an “ex.”
Can I say, “If I could meet just one (substitute the infirmity, sin or temptation) who is not stumbling in thought or deed, I’d believe atonement, justification, sanctification and all the rest were applicable in the Christian life”? Don’t you see the flaws in your attempt at logic, Michael? Why must ex-gays (I don’t really give a rip what we are called) never be allowed to experience any SSA thoughts or temptations again? WHERE IS IT WRITTEN? Why does Romans 7 not apply to them? It applied to Paul. Are they/we supposed to have righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes”?
Now, on the psychological side of the house, I also take issue with the once addicted, always addicted mode of thinking. How rare is it to really overcome and not be a slave to past addictions in any sense? I don’t know, but I do know we can’t take that hope out of the equation completely, and we dare not limit God, with whom all things are possible.
This is not complicated, folks. It is reasonable, searcheable and there for all to see.
The opinion is that if orientation cannot be changed then it falls within the protected class of people population. If it can be changed then (this is how gays think conservatives view things – and some do) it can be “fixed” and rights or privileges can be withheld. I often feel the gays feel strongly against anyone who really does change because it threatens their movement. It took my mom some time to understand that gays can change (or at least I have)
I have a question. I often hear it said that gays can change their sexual orientation but that the gay community wants to suppress that information. Why would we want to do that?
Correction — From Box Turtle Bulletin:
He told me he doesn’t like the term and thinks it should be officially retired because it is “more confusing than anything” and does not “convey what the change process is really all about” . He stresses that the change is not to heterosexuality but towards holiness.
EXODUS’s own website doesn’t actually describe a change in what we would call “orientation”. It speaks instead of changes in attitude, identity, behavior, lifestyle and the reduction in the intensity of SSA. Not the elimination or “reorientation” of same sex attractions — but only the “possibility” — or hope of — reorientation.
Karen Booth of EXODUS says it is her opinion that such reorientation to complete heterosexuality is “rare”, “seldom” occurs and should “not be expected” by clients or loved ones.
And if “ex-gay” means “someone who was once exclusively SSA who is now exclusively OSA” — which even those who like the term says it does not — then even EXODUS president Alan Chambers says he “doesn’t think he has ever met one”.
That’s what he told the LA Times. I he knows some, why isn’t he spreading the word around?
Also to Dave G.: And I have permission of at least one current EXODUS leader who doesn’t mind if I quote her on that. Another former leader, who says pretty much the same thing, does not wish to be quoted by name. They should know. EXODUS has been trying for over 30 years.
To Dave G.:
You speak as if “the gay community” knows it’s true. Provide some good, solid, scientific evidence of what you are claiming. If you have it, spread it around yourself. Share it here. I won’t spread something around if it is not true.
If I could meet just one male ex-gay who is not SSA, I would personally spread the word around. Even EXODUS leaders admit that if such “healing” exists, it is “rare”, “seldom happens” and “should not be expected.”
1. Travis is my son.
2. “Make a name for himself”. Doesn’t need to, he is a political figure and his name is already well known.
3. Of course Bryce “chose” to go, after they (his parents) hit a brick wall prior to withholding; job, housing, family, communication and transportation.
4. Travis is not Bryce’s first boyfriend. He just happened to be the one Bryce’s mother “caught” Bryce with. And I say “caught” because NO PARENT has any right to go through an adult child’s email, chat logs, smail mail and voicemails!
5. No one has heard from Bryce. Fox News had a “statement” and information from a “family representative”. What that tells me is, someone, wherever he is, wrote something down and submitted it with Bryce’s name on it. That proves nothing.
6. Bryce is an adult. Bryce can speak for himself. Bryce has remained silent. Thus telling me, he is, infact, unable to communicate and/or make decisions by his own account, on behalf of himself.
7. The website that is up is NOT my sons website. He is not responsible for it, he did not put it up, he cannot take it down.
8. “Yeah, you’d never hear such things if a heterosexual lover got coerced into a re-education camp.” If a heterosexual camp like this exisited, I would hope people around the world, gay and straight, would ban together to have such places abolished.
Stepping down.
First off, I’ll agree with Timothy.
Second, if the ‘gay subculture’ is seen as about nothing but sex that is simply the view religion has compelled upon homosexual relationships and does to this day. There was a really bad article in a leading Catholic magazine a few years ago which purported to show why marriage for gays and lesbians was a bad idea. It started off describing a gay relationship something like this, ‘Bob and Tom share renting an apartment, Tom regularly sodomizes Bob.’ That was it. Nothing about their relationship, feelings, love. If sex is in any way ‘everything’ in gay culture then it is religion and the societies it fostered that has forever pushed it in that direction.
And my elder life-long celibate friend after that article and after hearing the rather hateful comments coming from some other Catholics came out one day and proclaimed that he was gay. Before that he would have simiply said he had a homosexual orientation.
Yeah, you’d never hear such things if a heterosexual lover got coerced into a re-education camp.
Yeah, but only if you believe the Bible has credibility concerning any of the mythology it portrays.
Lynn David
I respect those who choose to live their life in accordance with how they believe God has called them to live.
concerned
Oh come on, concerned. That’s just a foolish and hateful statement.
On behalf of gay people everywhere, let me assure you that no one “in the gay subculture” thinks “sex is everything”.
Ya know, I want to be supportive of your decisions. I’m even OK with you insisting that these declarations of “hope” (the ones I call false advertising) at Exodus and others give you strength and encouragement. I am not trying to talk you out of striving for heterosexuality.
But do you really have to slur me? Can’t your reorientation be about you instead of me?
Mary
You said it best: Bryce is an adult.
There are many more in the LGBT community who at least had the guts to stand up for themselves and walk away – and I repsect them. There are many other sons and daughters who walked away from money in a dysfuntional family. People have started their lives over – from scratch over much less.
What gets me is that it happens all the time to straight children too. They are told to never – 1) say that again 2)see him/her again 3) visit a place again 4) etc….
People are held hostage by their parents money well into adulthood in the expectations of an inheritance or some other support be it either financial, social, or whatever.
Bryce is an adult. Bryce is an adult. Bryce is an adult.
Lynn David writes … “And I was thinking of people like Alan Chambers who admits to being more or less only spousosexual.” Yep, from a Biblical Chrstian perspective that’s how its supposed to be. Before the Fall and before the introduction of the sin of lust into the world, that was God’s original plan.
The thing that disturbs me most about the Faulkner story is the almost unquestioning cred some folk are giving to the claims of a possibly jilted lover. One young man tells a story, one which happens to be a particularly favorite meme of ex-gay critics, its picked up by a self-professed by highly questionable “minister,” and everyone hops on the bandwagon. Unbelievable!
Lynn David,
I commend your Catholic friends for being true to their faith inspite of so much pressure from others in the gay subculture who seem to think sex is everything. Just because one chooses to close the door on the possibility of change that does not give them the right to insist over and over again that it is not possible for anyone. It simply means that they have stopped working in that direction. Bless them for their decision to stay true to the scriptures, but do not use this as a tool to close off the work that God might be doing in another persons life. Both individuals need all the support and encouragement one can offer for the journey they are being called to.
Then, of course, there is me…. whatever you want to classify my struggle during the 1970s concerning my sexuality as being. It certainly wasn’t the structured setting of Narth or Exodus in that time (they didn’t exist). I saw a psychologist for about a year, tried dating women (the thought still makes me want to hide in a corner), so if you want to call me an a former ex-gay…. eh, I’m just gay.
Where did I say I disqualify women? I just don’t understand them – even if I often feel like/think of myself as a woman.
Oh… you want to know if I know some ex-gays personally. Yes, I do. Most all are Catholic, they are all single and admit that nothing they have tried (if they have tried, a couple haven’t) has gotten them anywhere near heterosexuality. I have to hand it to them (whatever it is….) most of them have been celibate for a rather long time now. I know one who has been celibate his entire life of 65+ years.
Lynn David,
So you don’t know everyone, you only think of men when gay is mentioned, and women are disqualified because you say so.
Okee dokee.
I don’t know. Marriage to Christ, God, money, success …. they are all a form or camp.
It takes a lot of guts to choose to be a begger instead. Or to stand on your own two feet.
True…. but straights don’t often disappear into re-education camps. In my lifetime such were mostly the domain of communist governments like: China, VietNam, Cuba, the Soviet Union… – not tolerant, free-market Christians.
Bryce (if this story is true) is not the first child to be held financial hostage by his parents for having chosen a mate that they find unacceptable. It happens to straights, too. And it happens to children who refuse to go to medical school, or law school, or live in a certain city, or give up their religion etc….It happens to children who like like or dislike their step parents, to children who are abused and disbelieved, to children who refuse to enable their parents in addictions and on and on.
It happens all the time.
Excuse me for being sexist but I more often than not think of men when someone says gay. Like Michael Bussee I tend to think most women are bisexual anyway and more fluid in their sexuality.
And I was thinking of people like Alan Chambers who admits to being more or less only spousosexual. I was also thinking of all I have read in the past on this blog which seems to be mostly agreeing with the idea that whatever “sexual orientation” is, it is not changeable. And then there is the idea of men also having some bisexual orientation which is that which would provide an aura of ‘change.’
So… what are you thinking of, Mary?
Lyn “David,
Do you know all the ex gay people – or just those that have not changed?
I don’t doubt that he entered of his own free will, but only after their coersion, either economical or social.
I also see that Dave G. is behind the times like many.
There must be thousands who don’t know yet that “sexual orientation” is changeable. And the gay community does not seem to want the word to get around.