enness,

As I understand the ex-gay claims, they do not claim merely to have stopped engaging in homosexual activity. They claimed to have stopped wanting, or being tempted, to engage in homosexual activity. They claim their sexual feelings for men (I don’t think we have any lesbians who claim to be ex-gays) have been transformed into sexual feelings for women. If homosexuality is something you can be “cured” of, then you don’t need continuing therapy to maintain the cure. If we make the analogy to addictions, it is generally claimed that addicts aren’t cured. People aren’t “cured” of alcoholism. They stop drinking, but they call themselves “recovering alcoholics.” With certain other conditions or ailments, we speak of remission. If ex-gays want to claim that their homosexuality is in remission, then it would make sense to continue therapy. But if you are “cured” of something, you don’t need continual therapy to hold it at bay.

I think we would all acknowledge that, say, ex-smokers still may experience the temptation to fall into habit…so why not?

Yes, all important aspects of one’s life itself proceed on a “continuum” and involve an inner struggle – at least for those who take faith and the concept of free will seriously – between what one wills to do and what one has done or does.

The proposition I find most disturbing about sociological/psychological explanations of human behavior is that they seem, in many cases, to exclude the will of an “acting person”. In any area of life, a person can decide to change in spite of the fact that the process will be most difficult, arduous. There will be painful failures. This, in my opinion, is part of the process.

The question as I see it is: should those who seek to change, to re-form themselves in accordance with a freely chosen standard, one which seems more consistent with health of mind, heart, body, soul, be encouraged to “be not afraid,” to trust that the outcome will be a higher stage of inner development and more, not less, freedom? My answer is a most emphatic “Yes”.

The emphasis must, it is true, be freely chosen. There is otherwise no possible chance of success. But neither is there any change of success if one is discouraged or, worse, prevented, from beginning.

The truly cheering truth about life’s continuum is that, while we are living persons on earth, it is never too late to begin again – and again. Painful, yes; but not too late.

It makes sense to think of sexual orientation as a continuum. I think there is plenty of evidence that a great many people who consider themselves heterosexual have some homosexual experiences, and many people who consider themselves homosexual have heterosexual experiences. (Weren’t a large number of the people in the Regnerus study heterosexual married couples in which one of the spouses had a homosexual experience outside the marriage?)

It is not surprising at all that some people strongly motivated could in some way or another subdue their homosexual temptations and urges and function more heterosexually. That seems to me very different, though, from parents taking their young gay teenage to someone who claims to do “reparative therapy” and saying, “Our son/daughter is gay, make him/her straight.”

Now, I feel compassion for anyone who is distressed by his or her sexual orientation. (I also feel compassion for anyone who is distressed by his or her gender, which to me seems like a much greater burden.) But I see no reason to make such a person a hero or a martyr.

I think the people who believe in reparative therapy are frequently Freudians, and it’s good to remember what Freud himself said in his Letter to an American Mother:

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why do you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis. . . .

If they are ex-gay why do they require therapy? Is the suggestion made that once one is no longer gay they must continue to experience same sex attractions? If so then clearly they are about as ex-gay as I am Mrs Joseph Ratzinger.