"condemned by (secular) psychological community"

*Ahem*. So are boylovers.

The ex-gay community is not a uniform community, any more than boylove is. Some statements made by certain folks in the ex-gay community are strongly opposed by other folks in the ex-gay community. These all tend to get jumbled up together in media reports, in the same way that serial rapists and NAMBLA members and Christian boylovers all tend to get jumbled together in media reports about adult attraction to minors.

(I'm a journalist. I have a very strong skepticism toward the ability of the media to report any topic fairly.)

"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"

I know this not to be the case; I've held such conversations with ex-gays. What is true of just about every community, I think, is that there is a reluctance to wash dirty laundry in public, lest admitting their faults publicly gives ammunition to their enemies. The boylove community is a partial exception to this rule only because nearly all of its activities occur in public, i.e. on Web forums. Yet even so, not everything that goes on in the boylove community is publicly announced.

If the boylove community's activities mainly took place in private meetings, as the ex-gay community's do, then I think it would be in a better position to criticize the ex-gay community, since its situation would be comparable to the ex-gays', and it would be able to judge thereby whether boylovers had the integrity to wash their own dirty laundry in public if the option existed to keep dirty facts hidden. As it is, "Judge not, lest ye be judged" springs to mind.

I'm not going to try to defend the ex-gay philosophy, as I consider it fundamentally flawed. But I think there's a difference between believing in a philosophy and believing in the experiences of individuals.

When I was eighteen, I read my first "ex-straight" stories. These were memoirs written by men who believed that they had always been gay, but who had gotten married, had sex with their wives, begotten multiple children, and then decided later in life that they had been trying to force themselves into a sexual orientation that did not apply to them.

These men didn't call themselves bisexual. Partly this was because they were living in an era when bisexuality was less of an option than it is today, but the "ex-straight" testimonies continue right up to the modern day.

When I first started reading ex-gay testimonies, my reaction was partly the same as yours, that some of these men and women were mistaking promiscuity and abuse for homosexuality. But to some of the other stories, my reaction was, "My God! These are just like the memoirs of the gay guys that I read when I was young, only in reverse."

I'm solidly bisexual, so it's very, very hard for me to imagine, from the inside, what it's like to be attracted only to one gender - just as hard, I imagine, as it is for most people to believe that it's possible to lose sexual attraction to a gender that one was previously attracted to. But some people tell me that it's possible for them to be only attracted to one gender, and I believe them, because they are people of integrity. Likewise, I've met people of integrity (ones who weren't promiscuous or abused) who say that they were once attracted to folks of the same gender and no longer are. I believe them. If I didn't believe people of integrity who had sexuality experiences I don't share, I'd have to question the existence of heterosexuality and homosexuality, because I've never personally experienced those orientations. I've always been bisexual.

So I'd suggest that we not confuse philosophies and theologies with individuals. One can doubt the theories behind the ex-gay movement without necessarily doubting an individual's testimony as to his or her own experience.

For those who are interested, the best organization I know of to learn more on this topic is Bridges Across the Divide (linked below), an online community for pro-gay/ex-gay dialogue. It's not a place where one can discuss BL issues (at least, it wasn't when I was last there), but it's a wonderful community for getting to know folks with varying viewpoints on homosexuality who wish to share their experiences with each other.

Dusk



• ( http link ) Bridges Across the Divide
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