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from Social Issues
Gay Canadian Journalist
Critiques 'Love Won Out' Conference
May 11, 2004 -- David Graham, a journalist on the Toronto Star staff,
attended a "Love Won Out" conference in Vancouver in May, 2004, and described
his experience in "They say gays can be 'cured.'"
Graham detailed his own encounter with aversion therapy for his homosexual
feelings thirty years ago as a student at Queens University and spent weeks of
sessions at a psychiatric hospital with tiny electrodes attached to his wrists
and ankles.
He attended the "Love Won Out Conference" "... because I believe the organizers of
this event are my KKK, that if they had their way they would eliminate my
people, and I wanted to hear their message first hand."
Graham described Dr. Joseph Nicolosi's presentation this way: "Dr. Nicolosi
walks us through the sorts of families that are more likely than others to
produce a homosexual child, 'to find out why junior is wearing mascara.' He
introduces us to the usual suspects, the absent, ineffective father and the
cold, unfeeling mother--or is it the other way around? But this new,
well-meaning person, armed with a little knowledge, terrifies me."
Love Won Out, Graham admits, does not advocate the now-abandoned approach
(aversion therapy) that he underwent thirty years ago. He quotes Love Won Out
presenter Mike Haley, an ex-gay man:
"The approaches are different for different people," Haley says during an
interview in the basement of the church. "We have to understand the root of
their drives. We want to know why they are inclined to act sexually on their
unmet emotional needs."
Graham notes that Haley suggests that "as a homosexual begins to appreciate the
love associated with appropriate male bonding, the inappropriate homosexual
urges and fantasies slowly fall away. He acknowledges it is a life-long struggle
and admits recidivism is a big issue."
Even though the therapy is long, difficult and may not be successful, "Still,"
he writes, "every year countless parents wipe the clear nail polish off their
son's fingers, pry the baseball bat from their daughter's hands and enroll them
in reorientation programs."
During the conference, however, Graham observed, "They are not going to shun me
or shake a condemning fist at me. Rather, they will kill me with kindness,
eradicate my personality with love and understanding. I gag. I want to hate
these people. But I can't. They are as close to the subject of homosexuality as
I am. The difference is they believe it is a sin and I don't. And now they
believe it is changeable, and I don't."
Updated: 8 February 2008
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