Madison news - feature: undercover at a gay "cure" group

Across Australia, religious groups are offering to help gays and lesbians overcome same-sex attraction. Clair Weaver went inside to learn what the growing movement teaches its followers.
 
Hands in the air, eyes to the sky and bodies swaying to the music of a live Christian band, the congregation bursts into an animated song of worship. "Praise the Lord!" comes a shout from the front of the room. "Hallelujah!" calls another. People start clapping. A young woman throws her arm around her neighbour’s shoulder. In this evangelical south Sydney church, the devotion is palpable.

No wonder: this is a place where miracles supposedly happen. Where gays and lesbians can become straight.

It’s a Sunday evening and I’m one of around 50 people attending a healing service led by a charismatic Californian named Andy Comiskey. He is the founder of Living Waters, a worldwide program with one goal: to help people overcome homosexuality and other forms of what it calls "sexual and relational brokenness". Living Waters is but one small part of the"ex-gay" movement that’s active worldwide. In Australia, new support groups are sprouting up, high-profile preachers are flying in from overseas and ministries are reaching out to gay youth online, claiming they can teach them how to go straight. I decided to infiltrate the movement, under the guise of a gay woman, to study just how these leaders make their argument – and to share with madison readers what happens behind the closed doors of the churches where these meetings are held.

Comiskey tells us he was a religious young man who developed feminine leanings at a young age and was attracted to other males by the time he hit puberty. After graduating high school, he moved into what he calls the "gay ghetto" of Long Beach, California, where he says he was gang-raped, beaten up and suffered STIs. Having sex with other men, he says, was ultimately unsatisfying; Comiskey felt empty and tormented, especially at church. "I’ve done terrible things to my body and others’ bodies," he says. "And I can’t take that back."

But we can be welcomed back into Jesus’ arms like the Bible’s prodigal son, says Comiskey, if we just turn our backs on homosexuality. He did – and now, he says, he’s happily married to his wife Annette, setting a moral example for same-sex attracted Christians. Pastor Ron Brookman, who directs the Australian division of Living Waters, is another of the movement’s success stories; he used to lead a double life, secretly delving into Sydney’s gay scene while working as a Uniting Church minister. These days, however, he’s devoted to his wife Ruth and finds the thought of a long-term relationship with a man "repulsive".

Living Waters isn’t the only outreach program that’s been through Sydney in recent months. I first learned about the ex-gay movement’s theories at an all-day conference called "Someone I Know Is Gay" held at St Paul’s Anglican Church in the leafy Sydney suburb of Carlingford.

That event is staged by Beyond Egypt, an arm of the church set up to help people overcome same-sex attraction. I arrive early and make my way inside the nondescript brown-brick church, where organisers are preparing for the event, and pay my $30 registration fee. Feeling conspicuous, I busy myself reading as a stream of people turn up and take seats in the pews. The key speakers are Ricky Chelette of Living Hope Ministries in Texas and Sue Bohlin of Probe Ministries (also from Texas). Their "Down Under Tour" includes dates in Melbourne and Brisbane.

Understanding the "roots of homosexuality" is apparently key to straightening out. So firstly Chelette, an earnest and baby-faced pastor in his 40s with black-rimmed glasses, explains the cause. Just so we’re clear, he says, no-one is born gay. "There is no scientific evidence that homosexuality is really either genetic or biological," he says. It’s a behaviour, we’re told, that stems from childhood problems: if we don’t get enough attention, affection and affirmation ("the three As") from our parents, suffer sexual abuse or fail to bond with peers, we may develop inappropriate "gender identity" and turn out gay. The arguments are neat and logical and many of the people in the congregation nod in agreement with the claims, which Chelette illustrates with metaphors, gender stereotypes and snappy acronyms.

Chelette then gives an emotionally charged account of being abused at the hands of his step-grandfather. He attributes this experience – coupled with a father who failed to be a role model to his "sensitive" son – as having "activated" his homosexuality.

Over a lunch break, with a large spread of food prepared by friendly church members, I get chatting to a 20-something woman with a warm and open demeanour. We converse easily, flitting between casual topics such as the weather and our travel experiences. But there’s one subject we don’t broach: the reason why we’re both here.

After lunch, there’s a choice of two seminars, one of which tackles the "messy" and "complicated" issue of lesbianism. It’s led by polio survivor Bohlin, an extrovert with a contagious laugh that booms through the church. In her talk, "The Nature of Lesbianism & Relational Idolatry", she claims the latest research shows that 80 to 85 per cent of lesbians were sexually abused in the past. It’s a shocking statistic but she doesn’t say where it came from and I’m unable to establish its veracity.

Bohlin also says women who weren’t nurtured or breastfed by their mothers are more likely to end up sexually attracted to females. Quoting an ex-gay counsellor, she says: "They want to rest in another woman’s arms; they want to suckle at a breast. They want to gaze into the eyes of another woman like a baby would a mother."

Popular culture takes a bashing, too. Bohlin says women under the age of 26 may become gay or bisexual because of a "disgusting" new generation of US TV shows and movies that glamorise same-sex relationships: "I’m sorry for sending American garbage [to Australia] but you pick up a lot of what we pump out to the rest of the world."

So how does the movement suggest same-sex attraction can be overcome? Praying is obviously the first line of defence. Chelette also suggests forming new, non-gay relationships. The principle is similar to cognitive behavioural therapy – start acting like a straight person and eventually you’ll become one. "The only way a person is going to really come out of homosexuality or same-gender attraction," he says, "is for them to find very positive, strong, supportive heterosexual relationships that they can walk in [for] a long time." He suggests parents, "appropriate" older role models of the same gender, and members of ex-gay support groups. (Ironically, attendees are usually banned from knowing each others’ surnames or making contact outside the meeting for fear they will hook up.)

By day’s end, we are invited to submit questions anonymously. I scribble one for Chelette: Do you still struggle with same-sex attraction? His answer: "Yes. Do I want to go have sex with a man? No. Do I at times… feel drawn to somebody in a way that I know is probably inappropriate? Yes. How do I deal with it? I recognise what is taking place and why I feel the way I feel and decide that in that moment I still really love Jesus and my wife more than I love what momentary pleasure I might get by sinning."

This answer, with its baldly competing desires and obfuscation, mirrors a recent shift that has seen the ex-gay movement’s leaders admit that same-sex urges don’t just disappear once someone is "cured". As they see it, these urges aren’t sinful unless acted upon. Chelette essentially admits that his wife acts as a filter, banning him from working with certain men whom she suspects might tempt him.

It sounds like an awful lot of hard work. Which might be why Bohlin says we should be focused on "raising gender-healthy kids" in the first place. In her session for parents, she claims boys are born on a spectrum from sensitive to rough and tumble, and that girls range from girly to tomboy. "Girls who are glad to be girls and boys who are delighted to be boys tend not to be the ones who will struggle," she says. "It has been said it is easier to raise a healthy child than to repair a broken adult and it’s absolutely true. Homosexuality can be prevented the majority of the time."

Chelette advises fathers to treat their daughters protectively, like princesses, and to be affectionate with their sons because "he needs to feel that affection from a man that is safe so that, should there be affection that isn’t safe, he will know what it feels like, be repulsed by it and move away from it."

But aren’t we all a lot more complicated than that? Anthony Venn-Brown thinks so. He was once a church role model – a Pentecostal preacher with a wife and two daughters. After undergoing exorcisms, ex-gay therapy and 40-day fasts, he eventually realised that "the gay never goes away". He left the church in disgrace in 1991 and co-convened Freedom 2 b[e], which helps Christians reconcile their faith and sexuality. Venn-Brown dismisses ex-gay theories as "outdated" and "false".

"Parents can’t make their kids gay or straight," he says. "Sexual orientation is basically determined prenatally."

Many of the people at today’s session are middle-aged. Some are obviously the unhappy parents of young people who have come out, in attendance because they want things "fixed". Chelette concedes that might not come easily; he says it’s up to the individual to want to change. But he does suggest that "it’s generally not a good approach to whip out the Bible when they make their announcement [that they’re gay]. It would be far better to just sit and weep than for you to bring out a whole lot of scripture passages and beat them in the head with it.

" They need to see it’s hurting you."

This is a edited extract. For the full feature, including more real-life stories from people who have undergone ex-gay therapy, see madison's January issue, which is on sale now.