Ex Gay Watch posted a link to an interview with Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson that covered many topics but included several of recent interest to readers here. He specifically says that he had twice weekly reorientation therapy in his younger years.
He says it worked but didn’t work at the same time.
Q. Did you feel it (the therapy) had worked, or did it just put you in denial?
‘It didn’t work, and it almost never works for people who attempt it. I guess I did think it had worked. I suspect it didn’t make the same sex feelings go away, but it certain worked in that I felt ready emotionally and spiritually and physically for a relationship with a woman, so it certainly made that part of myself possible. And so when I entered into a relationship with the woman who became my wife, it was full of integrity – I wasn’t pretending to be something that I was not. And yet within a month of meeting her, I shared that all of my primary relationships had been with men, that I had been in therapy to make a heterosexual relationship possible, and that I felt I was in a good place to do that.’
Speaking descriptively here not prescriptively, many people in the ex-gay movement might characterize their results very similarly (same-sex attractions remain but opposite-sex attractions develop), but would consider this outcome a success. An unasked question in the interview was what changed in his thinking, beliefs, or values that led to the mutual decision to end the marriage.
Read the whole article; in my opinion, it is a candid and fascinating interview.