I have heard all the testimonies, all the propaganda, all the bull, and I just don't see it working, and more importantly, it doesn't have the ring of Truth. The ex-gay concept is based on outdated, flawed psychology completely abandoned and condemned by (secular) psychological community, and on what I think is a flawed understanding of Scripture.

What I see when I look into the concepts and results of the movement are multifaceted.
Some people who find change from the programs were never gay in the first place, but deeply confused people; victims of abuse, neglect, and rape who find that God offers them freedom from those past pains. This is good! But could be served better by a program aimed at that, and with greater understanding of it.
Some who fine healing in these programs are plagued not by homosexuality, but carnal promiscuity that goes beyond their natural orientation into pure sensation and lust that knows no gender. They find freedom from their promiscuity, and support in their group and/or wife. Those who are really straight but were caught in that lust for anythng with a hole, find healing in their spouse because they are finally being who they really are. This is good! But could be better served by a more specific program, and with greater understanding of it. Those who are gay find safety in their spouse from their promiscuity, but struggle with still not being attracted to them. But they endure this (to one degree of success or another) because they believe that with out them, they will return to their carnal former life. This is not so good, and could definately be better served by a more specific program, and with much better understanding of the problem.
Some people who fine change are bisexual, and find a person of opposite gender to love. This is what I believe to be the largest set of people who claim to have been healed, followed by the straight promiscious ones. It's not really bad by itself; after all, the people involved fall in love and are genuinely attracted to each other. But there is some falsehood in their reasons and beliefs about why they came together that can cause complications beacuse they don't understand fully. Again, better served in other ways.
Some people are women, who, I have it on good authority, will/can feel attraction to someone with whom they feel an emotional intimacy with, regardless of gender, so it is not so difficult to make the shift, if one wants to do so. The ex-gay movement is based on the concept that everyone is like this, but the studies strongly suggest that it is only really true of a slight majority of women, and very few men at all.

One thing that you will not hear the ex-gay proponents talk about is all those who leave the programs, and you will most definately never hear them talk about people who get married (and are thus counted by their program as a 'success') whose marriage falls to peices after the honeymoon phase is over, and they get divorced at a rate that appears much greater than even the standard average (though there is no study I'm aware of that attempts to report on the number of failed ex-gay marriages). Cat can tell you the pain of being married to, and loving, a person to whom you are not attracted to. It is not just about one's self, but about the other person: you cannot give her "her due" of your Self, you cannot "want" her, and she feels the lack, and it hurts all around. Cat and his wife should be commended on their strength for fighting for eachother as long as they have! But it is cases like theirs and many others' I have heard over the last few years that strongly suggest to me that the ex-gay movement is wrong: both incorrect as current psychology suggests and as I suggest as it regards Scripture, and sinful as it misleads and harms as many and more people as it helps. The success rates that the ex-gay's report speak volumes if you have taken a few scientific or engineering-based statistics classes. If I as a physist got results similar to theirs, I would not even look to my methods, but to my hypothesis itself for logical errors. It would suggest to me that there is something, or a set of somethings going on that are related to my initial theory, but that the theory itself is untrue. The numbers are all wrong from what one would expect, even allowing huge margins for human randomness.

I wrote more than I intended right now, so I'll leave it at that and head out.

Love in Christ,