Denver News - Fact or Friction? - page 1

Today John Paulk--once "Candi" the queen in Columbus, Ohio--works out of an office at Focus on the Family's headquarters in Colorado Springs; he's the "homosexuality and gender analyst" for the world's largest religious broadcaster. From there, he and Anne travel around the country spreading their message that gay is godawful and that gay people are doomed to eternal hellfire unless they switch to their "natural" heterosexuality. (No allowances are made for bisexuality or any other gray area of sexual behavior, attraction or orientation.)

In addition to his Focus duties, John Paulk is chairman of Exodus International, the umbrella organization for "ex-gay" ministries. The Paulks say they are products of these ministries, which claim success in converting gays to straights: Homosexuals, they contend, are made, not born.

Like others in the movement, John Paulk argues that people who turn to gay behavior actually are straight people whose "gender identities" become confused, often "subconsciously" and because they "fail to bond" with the parents of their genders. Re-establishing those "bonds," say Paulk and others, will "restore" gay people to heterosexuality. The specific targets of this conversion effort are gay conservative Christians who grow up in churches where their feelings are openly condemned; gays who don't have a fundamentalist Christian background are less likely to respond to the guilt trips promulgated by the ex-gay movement.

Gay Christians have a special place reserved in John Paulk's vision of hell.
"The term 'gay Christian' is an oxymoron," Paulk tells Westword. "If someone is calling himself a 'believer' and is practicing blatant sin, he is laughing in the face of God. I don't mean that to be offensive. But they are living apart from Scripture. The nature of God is expressed in the heterosexual relationship."

Despite all the talk about God, when you pull back the covers on this anti-gay campaign, you find a shrewd plan of media manipulation that dates back several years but is far from pre-ordained. And John Paulk himself, while lying in bed with his wife, still thinks about having sex with men, as he did when he was an $80-an-hour hooker. Some things never change.

Rather long, but an interesting read.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

In the UK therapy is completely unregulated. Anyone can do it for any reason, charging whatever they want to, and there's no lack of schools, centres, institutes and groups peddling modalities that are often pure quackery.

This isn't a recipe for effectiveness, or sanity.

Most people are in the field because they really want to help - but like any other field, people make mistakes (and fewer, like in many other fields, shouldn't be in the mental health field at all).

If one is going to be an honest and high quality therapist, then one has to be acutely aware of what ones capabilities and limitations are - and keep working at that, because sometimes we have to admit we can't handle certain people or problems. Most of the therapists I know work very hard to be competent, and use consultants and/or classes to keep improving (and in California, ongoing training is mandatory - specifically around ethics - 36 hours of classes every 2 years must be taken, or the license is discontinued).

But I don't feel therapy is quackery - many people have gotten help.

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

(I once saw Windy Dryden give an amazing demonstration counselling session in front of a room of client centred therapists.  When he said "You know what your problem is..." I swear the pressure in the room dropped as the entire audience had a collective sharp intake of breath).

There's obviously a wide variation in practice, however.  I took some (client centred) counselling courses a while back, and when presented with a similar but different issue, I did tell the client that I didn't believe I could provide a "cure" in the sense that was being requested. And it wasn't an easy decision-a choice between failing to be open to a client about my abilities and intentions (which I believe would be unethical), or, risking driving them to someone who would offer them the "help" they were asking for and therefore, in my view, do them harm.  It worked out well in the end, but maybe I was just lucky.

That's part of it's charm. I figured that out when I was 11.  

Woody Allen does a scene where his psychiatrist asks him "Do you think  sex is dirty, nasty and disgusting ?"

Woody answers. "It is if it's done right".

Various heroines amongst the cis-gendered have advocating talking cures for the transgendered lurking in their histories. Robyn Morgan, Germaine Greer, sheila Jeffreys, Janice Raymond and, nowadays, Julie Bindel. The Guardian allows this to be printed in its pages; that transgendered mtfs just need counselling and they can be persuaded to be normal gay males. So I'm surprised they get on their high horse about talking therapy for gay people. It's the same thing.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Don't be surprised, the gay community has push a while for this concept as that gives them an excuse : it s not their fault, they are sick.

Personally, my approach is to make sure to spend time talking about the counseling, coaching and/or psychotherapy process at the beginning. Truly, informed consent. It is amazing how many people really have no idea what it is about, or what to expect, or what their rights are, or what the different ways it can be approached and managed, when they can leave (anytime), etc., etc. I have interviewed people that have what I call "therapist wounds"- where they were misunderstood or even mistreated by a therapist - and in those cases, I made sure we tried to address this so we wouldn't run into any problems. When a person goes to someone in trust that they will get help, but instead they are in some way mishandled , it can cause lots of problems. But when we get through that, we can make a lot of progress quickly, I've found. But...there's a lot of pressure on a therapist to not make things worse, that's for sure.

And one last thing, regarding psychotherapy - very few psychiatrists are trained as psychotherapists - the majority are medical doctors trained to look for symptoms that they can medicate (or not). Period. And mostly they are oriented towards telling you what to do (or not to do). In my experience, very few have gone to the effort to get the additional training required to be an effective therapist. On the other hand, I have worked with some phenomenal psychiatrists - caring, super knowledgeable, careful about types and amounts of meds., interested and aware of other ways that people can be helped besides meds., etc - so they are out there!

Its a complicated business - but it sure makes me sad (or mad) to hear when someone treats a gay person like they are something wrong. Its 2009...lets get on with it...

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia