Gay 'Conversion' Therapy

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I meant negative connotation as in being judged or held culpable for a crime/offense/sin/etc.

SSA is just one of many common human conditions. It is one of many disorders, although we don’t usually label them as such (e.g., anger, jealousy, hatred, etc).

Straight people are not exempt from disorders, and SSA/straight people can have the same disorders.

(Personally, I find patience and dealing with those that I find emotionally and mentally burdensome more difficult than dealing with SSA. I probably commit the same amount of, if not more, sins due to them than because of SSA.)

As for the “duration” of SSA, one doesn’t feel straight/gay/etc all the time. Thankfully our mental capacity only allows concentration and perception on a limited number of things at a time.
 
phil19034 said:
Catholics have equal issue with people who publically tell children that fornication and adultery are not bad too
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I would like to accept your contention, but I would have to prefix it with “Some, but even fewer on the internet, including this website”

Especially in the Catholic Living, Traditional Catholicism, Liturgy and Sacraments, and (most especially) World News threads, which seem (but, admittedly, oniy IMHO) cloak Catholicism in right wing politics.
 
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Well, about 1/2 of all Catholics in America are Republicans. And, I would argue that most (nation wide) who attend Mass every Sunday, every holyday, and/or who often attend daily mass are socially conservative (even if they are not Republican).

54 or 55% of self identifying Catholic voted for Trump. And of all the people in my Suburban Philadelphia parish, everyone I know of in parish ministry either voted for Trump (even if they held their nose) or skipped the Presidential vote.

I know of several former Democrats in my parish who vote Republican only because of life issues, and many of them the would be happy to go back to the Democratic Party if they stopped supporting aborition, euthanasia, etc.

Heck, I’ve voted for Democrats before. When I used to live in Delaware, I voted for Biden. And, I even voted for Obama twice (after voting for Bob Dole and twice for G W Bush). I was attracted to his message. But after his 2nd election the buyer’s remorse set in and he reversed his stance against SSM, declared war on the Little Sisters of the Poor, etc. When Joe Biden said that “Will and Grace” changed his view on SSM and married two couples himself… that’s when I realized that the Democrats are very far gone at this point in time.

The problem is, the Democratic Party is now controlled and being pushed farther left by the Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren supporters. After all, the current national chairman of the Democratic Party has said that prolife Democrates are not welcome.

In the Republican Party, the the majority of Catholics are part of the Religious Right, Conservative, or Moderate branches/fractions of the party. Both the Religious Right & Conservatives have a lot of influence in the Party.

I personally know of very few practicing Catholics who are true liberartians, neo-conservatives or PaleoconservatIves.

And the neo-conservatives have already started to fall from grace and it’s only a matter of time before the PaleoconservatIves fall from grace too.

Basically, the anti-Catholic factions of the Repbulican party’s days are numbered, while the anti-Catholic factions of the Democratic Party are growing in strength.
 
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Constantin said:
Conclusive. It confuses me that a bishop should say something which is that obviously wrong. How come there was not a larger upheaval about this then? Why did the other bishops not correct him?

I read so many things, so many differing opinions even from people within the church.
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The word for this is scandal.
 
I’ve found therapy, without even having a professional therapist through alot of it, struggling through a book myself, quite helpful. It definately works a bit. Now I agree with you saying, people do need to realize their dignity is not defined by their sexual attraction, and that’s one of the dangers of doing therapy incorrectly. Howeaver, That doesn’t mean therapy is bad, or should be condemed, or believed to be bogus. It genuinely helps people who go into it, or develop, with a genuine healthy attitude and motivation. howeaver, since it is so stigmatized, I think their is room to improve it. I’ve seen “The Third Way”, as well.

There have been alot of people that changed their mind about therapy after going through it, which I have thought carefully about, and I think it can be attributed to unrealistic expectations, or unhealthy motivations. Like expecting a garunteed change in sexuality, and thinking they must change their orientation, which is not what its about. I think that is the biggest unpreached danger of the whole thing, However, Joseph Nicolosis therapy model, which I am following, does not encourage those attitudes at all.
There also multiple people practicing different thing, and some of them are bound to be doing it incorrectly. That doesn’t mean its all wrong. You also have to take into account the political bias in the mental health orginizations.

It bothers me that it keeps getting absolutely condemed.
 
I ran into them the day before they were posted. Quite the coincidence. I’ll admit the content of the video covering the journey into manhood weekend made it look silly at first, which suprised me because I read about it and was impressed with the idea before. I took a second look, and those feelings that it looks ridiculous have diminished ridiculously. There was this leadership class at my school, and they did things that seemed silly, but that didn’t diminish the value of it.
 
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I agree, I think it depends on what is meant by “conversion therapy”

I think most people think “conversion therapy” is supposed to cure a person of same sex attraction, which it doesn’t.
 
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yes, Actually the therapy I am refering to is titles “Reparative Therapy”, I guess because its more about repairing whats broken then being absolutely focused on changing sexuality. It usually gets condemned the same way though.
 
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Well It does claim it can heal sexual orientation on a continuum, but not guarunteed, probably not 100%, and as an accident of looking at and resolving other deeper issues, which makes it worth it, regardless of an orientation shift.

If you mean “cure”, as in you flip switch someones orientation, then I agree. What you learn from the therapy you apply to the rest of your life. It’s a bit like a drug addiction, you can always fall back into it, but it gets less and less appealing over time.
 
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Constantin said:
Still, I wonder whether a “therapy” could make sense. Therapy implicitly says they are sick. This is not a nice/Christian thing to say.
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We have no duty to be nice; we have a duty to be kind. If someone is sick, it is no help to tell them they are well. However, therapies should work. I am not convinced that conversion therapy works. I am, however, convinced that some awareness of one’s own issues and their causes can help a person resist sin and reduce temptation. But I would never call that conversion therapy, even if very rarely it ended up removing SSA.
 
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I wouldn’t attribute it to one orginazation, but pressure from very demanding gay activists who have spread all over the place. but whatever the cause the majority are convinced that all conversion or reparatitve therapy is scientifically bogus and dangerous. If you decided to embrace a gay lifestyle, were disapointed by therapy not curing you 100%, you would want to put down anyone anything that supported an alternative, to free you of any guilt or second guessing, or out of anger/envy that someone might suceed at taking on a challenge when you gave up and took the easy path.
 
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Joe_73 said:
I wouldn’t attribute it to one orginization, but pressure from very demanding gay activists who have spread all over the place. but whatever the cause the majority are convinced that all conversion or reparatitve therapy is scientifically bogus and dangerous.
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yeesh. i must confess i hold the same views because i was always taught that conversion therapy was wrong 😦
 
Joe1 said:
yeesh. i must confess i hold the same views because i was always taught that conversion therapy was wrong 😦
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Media influence is pretty strong, especially if nobody else shares different opinions with you. I kinda was thinking the same thing a couple years ago. Actually I didn’t even know therapy existed, but I believed homosexuality was a born condition.
 
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Joe_73 said:
I wouldn’t attribute it to one orginization, but pressure from very demanding gay activists who have spread all over the place. but whatever the cause the majority are convinced that all conversion or reparatitve therapy is scientifically bogus and dangerous.
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One cannot underestimate the degree to which the lived experience of gay people who tried very hard to be straight, and failed, has affected the popular opinions about gay conversion therapy. As I said above, Joe, I think that aspects of reparative therapy are great, and I don’t think it deserves its horrible reputation. But I do not think that reputation is entirely attributable to gay activists. It’s also just a matter of same-sex attraction being deep rooted in a way that Exodus and similar organizations were massively in denial about.
 
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Yes.This is especially aparent on some articles on patheos.com which I read a couple days ago. It made me think. I thought about it, and was able to reconcile my point of view to a middle ground. and I also saw the people in these videos talking about being survivors of reparative therapy. Just one person in the video I suspected of dishonesty, but I really don’t know.

my previous post.
There have been alot of people that changed their mind about therapy after going through it, which I have thought carefully about, and I think it can be attributed to unrealistic expectations, or unhealthy motivations. Like expecting a garunteed change in sexuality, and thinking they must change their orientation, which is not what its about. I think that is the biggest unpreached danger of the whole thing, However, Joseph Nicolosis therapy model, which I am following, does not encourage those attitudes at all.
There also multiple people practicing different thing, and some of them are bound to be doing it incorrectly. That doesn’t mean its all wrong. You also have to take into account the political bias in the mental health orginizations.
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Makes sense – and I missed that post in this huge thread, so thanks for pointing it out. I will say that I would feel much more positive about reparative therapy and the like if I personally knew a single person who had come through it with dramatically positive results. I have never met such a person.

I have met people whose experience of temptation has dramatically decreased as they followed the Lord and grew in personal discipline. That’s the tack I want to take.
 
I’ve actually seen Andy give a talk, so my only excuse for not meeting him is that I didn’t stick around to ask questions. He seems like a good guy, and I agree with a number of things Dr. Nicolosi and Andy say in that interview. I certainly don’t think “sin management” is the long-term goal. Perhaps my only difference with them is semantic: I do not believe that the cessation of distinctive attractions to the same sex is any sort of goal, since I don’t see that it is likely to be accomplished. But I would call these distinctive attractions a part of SSA, since men without SSA don’t have them – not even the nonsexual ones, like the butterflies in the stomach feeling, etc. It seems to me that Andy would call those feelings “nonsexual”, and say that they have nothing intrinsically to do with SSA. I just disagree about that. But I’m not sure anything hinges on the difference.
 
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