While watching the TV show "American Horror History" I found out that the church was performing a series of brutal therapies developed and experimented at BYU with the intention to "cure" same sex attraction. I was in total shock to see that and it was another proof of how stupid TSCC is.

Although there is no reason to believe this is still happening, I have a dear and close relative in his early 20's who came out about 3 years ago and I do not know what is his situation but my guess is his mother is pushing him to fight it and therefore he IS receiving therapy for it at LDS Family services.

I will appreciate any information about how is this handled with therapy. Is it legal at all?.
What I have noticed is that even people who try to "change" or handle that kind of attraction, end up living a lie until they finally give up and start living how they really want. For some people this will take very little time but for many in the church this might take years, even after getting married and having children, hurting more people than needed.

I just want to know if any around here has more information. I want to support my relative as much as I can without getting in the middle of his very personal situation or getting between him and his parents. I just want to be ready when his journey turns hard or whenever he decides to live with his real feelings.

I don't know what Mormons are doing now for their supposed "therapy." Most likely just a push for suppression. Supression is reinforcement. You don't have to read many psychology books to find that out.

At least as far as is known, they no longer practice the Electroshock therapy or vomit inducing therapy. Hope this is true but you can't trust the Mormons.

You can't change your sexual orientation so any program they have is just a dangerous grasp at straws. You might check out what Josh Weed is doing. He and a few other gay Mormons run counseling programs wherein they claim to be leading gloriously happy heterosexual lives despite their "inconvenient attraction to men." Josh and several like him are just Judas goats fooling these poor kids into thinking that they have the answer.

If you want to help the best thing to do if you are close enough to this relative is give him your view. When I was a young gay Mormon I would have been so happy to have anyone say, "There is nothing wrong with you. This is who you are and it is good. Don't let anyone tell you there is anything wrong with you because there just isn't."

All this kid is hearing in his Mormon environment is the opposite. "God doesn't love you as you are." "You have a special challenge in life." "God wants you to overcome your SSA, deny your true feelings, live a life of desperate loneliness and then he will reward you in the next life."


He needs to hear the opposite. He needs to hear that someone gets it, someone understands. He needs to hear it is okay. It is him against the world right now, at least the world he knows.
He needs to know that state by state the country is banning what the Mormons are pushing on him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2016 05:51PM by blueorchid.

Here's a report on the APA--American Psychological Association--and their view of such barbaric quackery.

http://www.hrc.org/resources/the-lies-and-dangers-of-reparative-therapy

I "count as two of my proudest contributions" to the RFM board a "rhetorical blood atonement" of a particularly noxious homophobe who used to frequent this site (and full praise to Steve Benson and TLC for having my back on that one; Tom put up a thread that literally moved me to tears), and the report from a lesbian cab fare of mine who admitted to me she'd undergone the electroshock procedure while at BYU. Sadly, she asked me not to say anything further, and I'll respect her wishes, but it became obvious to me she was horribly traumatized by the experience.

And no, it's not because I have any latent homophobic issues; for many years I dated a woman whose son was obviously gay from his early teens. I had the pleasure of attending his wedding reception a few years ago; he married his partner in San Francisco before the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage was legal.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2016 08:04PM by SL Cabbie.

Thank you so much for posting that link SL Cabbie. I think it would be valuable for this gay relative of the OP to read this very article. The truth needs to be out there. Facts are only helpful if you are aware of them.

If he is allowing any type of therapy for his homosexuality to happen he should be getting this side of things from the psychological community.

One of the occasional board regulars gave me a copy of your book--I remember it was even signed--and I gave it a go, but I always have a lot of my reading plate (like two books on LDS History), so it remained unread.

I gave it to an old high school friend who had the cojones to come out on the class website. He sends his thanks, visits here occasionally, and is a regular at the behind-the-Zion Curtain get-togethers I help orchestrate from time to time. He's also given a presentation at Sunstone...

We walk with giants.

blueorchid:
There is nothing wrong with you. This is who you are, and it is good.

I know, I know -- decades late.
Still, I wanted to say it anyway.

Love ya :)

It's never too late. I'll take all I can get.

In contrast to the Mormons, it seems like the better part of the country is saying it. I hope the young ones are hearing it.

Never thought I'd live to see the day!

He and I did a lot of talking with bishops, SP, and I even sent a letter to Boyd. They have NO answers. They actually have the wrong answers and just mess up more and more lives.

The best thing I ever did for my ex was to accept him as he is. It took me a long time to figure it out--like 22 years. I've known he is gay since 1983. March 22, 1983. Nothing much has changed. In fact, with their last policy, they just made it much worse than when I was 25 years old.

There is one book that was really good that I've read. I'm sure there are several more. It was called, "Perfect: The story of a gay mormon." Or something like that. I think you can get it on Amazon now.

The last thing he needs to do is to GET MARRIED to a woman. They say they don't tell them to anymore, but they still do. Nonsequiter, who is a member of this board, has been told by his SP, bishop, and MP just in the past few years.

I hate to say it, but I worry about Josh Weed and his family and all the others like him.

He needs to know there is someone out there who accepts him as he is. Someone on this board usually posts the stories about the electroshock therapy once a year or so. I assume they are archived.

The lds HAVE NO CLUE about gays. Your family member needs to RUN.

I can't believe how much pain this subject caused just little old me. I can't imagine what gays go through. This subject tortured me for YEARS. Letting go was one of the most freeing moments of my life, finally realizing my ex is fine just the way he is. It is so very simple, but they make it complex. It infuriates me the pain they put gays through for NO REASON.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2016 05:59PM by cl2.

If someone had told my ex that his feelings of attraction towards men was normal for HIM and that he was just fine the way he was, it would have saved him and me a lifetime of pain, misery and ultimately his death.

In 2015, there is absolutely NO place for the terrible attitudes towards LGBT people. TSCC is still stuck in the 50's and it is horrible.

Please, please let him know you are there for him and someone he can talk to.

You can research the "ex-gay" movement to see how Christians in general have handled this (one word summary: poorly).

I'm gay. I told my bishop about "SSA" and was referred to Jeff Robinson of LDSFS. I guess he's their go-to guy down in Utah County. (This was about 10 years ago.)

Jeff preaches reparative therapy---you can essentially become straight. He was smart enough to point out that you'll always have the same-sex attraction, but insisted that you could bring out your "straight" feelings more, to the point where you could marry. (He used to say he had some clients he'd even let marry his daughter.)

Jeff was the standard TBM: had previously been bishop, etc.

Reparative therapy doesn't work. It's been outlawed in a few states because the outcomes were so bad. It just preaches that you're broken when you aren't, and that you can change when you can't. It basically just messes with you mind, and failure is guaranteed.

New Jersey is one of the states that has banned reparative therapy for minors.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/chris-christie-signs-bill-banning-gay-conversion-therapy/

>I want to support my relative as much as I can without getting in the middle of his very personal situation or getting between him and his parents.

Your relative is a legal adult. Talk to him about whatever you want. I like Blueorchid's advice above which details how to hold such a discussion.

I was really glad to see the writers put that in about the BYU therapies. I think there's an Ex-Mo writer on the staff, as AHS:Freakshow featured a familiar scene that many Exmos will connect to JS.

Just wait and don't be too squeamish, because it's going to get a hell of a lot more graphic.

OP, if you'd like to review the history of gays and the church, here is a concise review:

http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.html

It's an interesting read and will give you details of what was done at BYU to 'cure' the gay...

Sexual orientation and sexual identity are innate to each individual and immutable. It can't be "fixed." Trying to change someone by force is not only utterly futile and impossible but it's also wrong and does great harm.

I'm just wondering about two things:

Was "reparative" therapy practised on lesbians also?

and

Has anyone who went through the electro shock therapy ever

sued the chuch?

I wonder because I think my cousin went through that therapy

years ago and subsequently attempted suicide by driving his

car into a tree. He is no longer alive because he commited

suicide years after the first attempt but I feel that if he

had known how false and evil the chuch was he might still be

alive now, I wish he was.

SL_Cabbie@yahoo.com unless you still have the one we touched bases with years ago; it's still my principal e-mail addy...

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SL_Cabbie@yahoo.com unless you still have the one
> we touched bases with years ago; it's still my
> principal e-mail addy...


You have mail !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a lesbian and was outed when I was a senior at BYU in 1989. At that time, some of the gay men I knew there were subjected to electroshock therapy, and all of them were in counseling, a lot of effort being directed at "straightening them out". I, on the other hand, was "counseled out" of school very quickly - it took about 2 weeks. See how they call it that? As if I had some choice in the matter? On paper it looks like I voluntarily withdrew from school, but in fact, I had no choice. It seemed to me that as a woman, I was expendable. The men, on the other hand, must be rehabilitated, no matter what it required. Not that I would have preferred being tortured, no thank you. The letter I was given said I could be readmitted to school if I had a letter from my bishop saying I had repented and a letter from a therapist saying I was cured. I had had only a very innocent experience with another woman at that point (LOTS of kissing a little grinding), so there was really nothing to repent of.

Having been one of those that my stake president sent to church social services after spilling the beans about my years in the army, discovering boys, and subsequently sent to Provo for a summer of 'treatment', I will say that it is impossible for a person to sue the church for damages.

The church and BYU will say that it never took place, and that there are no records of it having happened. Trying to talk to family members or lifetime friends about it is a futile effort. You are accused of lying and trying to give the church a black eye with no justification. I was pretty much quiet about this until the past two years when I moved back to Utah. I was basically gone since 1974 except for a two year period when I returned after the military. Moving back here and living in a rural community, the flashbacks have been horrendous.

The whole experience was something I put on the back burner. After that summer of 1978, I basically stayed drunk for eight years. When I sobered up, I just got on with living and getting my life going. Annual visits to Utah were spent mostly surrounded by family and I didn't venture out anyplace.

Since coming back here, I get nauseated even when I drive near BYU or downtown Salt Lake. It all came back to me as though it were yesterday even though I had put it aside all these years. I find I have become a hermit here and don't go out except for my two day a week job here in town and to family get togethers. Heck, I was in charge of my life on an international basis for so many years mingling with top people throughout the world in our common profession yet now I only find solace in staying out of the limelight and away from anything LDS.

If I could move away, I would, but one reason for moving back to Utah was I needed family to help me out because of health problems. To say coming back here was one of the stupidest things I have ever done in my life is putting it mildly. I suppose I shouldn't be dumping about all of this here because I am generally a very upbeat an positive person. I thought I could handle returning but I have been proven wrong.

I'm a Big Love fan and one of the saddest scenes in the whole series is when Albie Grant, the closet gay prophet, is shown with the chaos of his countless wives and children. I realized he was expected to have sex with all of the wives.

Listen to this podcast. It's all about a young fellow who went through all the "evergreen" therapies.

http://mormonstories.org/michael-ferguson-seth-anderson-fighting-gay-conversion-therapy/

I met with an LDS social services counsellor about 3-4 times to appease my parents when I came out to them 5 years ago. I finally agreed because they backed down from hoping I would change to just saying that meeting with a counsellor could be good for helping me cope. I'm pretty sure they just wanted to trick me into getting my sexual orientation changed.

To the therapist's credit, he said that USUALLY change refers to behaviour and not attraction, but then he went on to say that a few of his clients had turned straight.

He wanted me to use a specific set of definitions.

SSA : somebody who does not act on their attractions.
Homosexual : somebody who occasionally has a Gay fling.
Gay : somebody who consistently lives a Gay lifestyle.

He told me that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Gay men to have a healthy longterm relationship with each other because there is an addictive component to homosexual attraction that doesn't exist in heterosexual attraction. So even if I felt like I found a boyfriend and was happy, it would last 5 years at the most. This gnawed at me for years and I was worried that it might be true. Turns out it is BS.

Our sessions then took an unexpected turn. We focused on controlling negative thoughts and setting goals in order to boost my confidence. I have no idea where he hoped to go with this. They had to cancel one of my sessions and said they would call back to reschedule within the next 3 days. They never called back.

He was lying about more than just gay people not being able to have long term relationships. There is no convincing evidence that anyone has been able to change their sexual orientation through reparative therapy. So his "few" success stories either lied to him, or he lied to you,or both.

Just 5 years ago? Will they never get it? How much more damage will they cause?

The LDS therapist my ex was going to after he told me he was cheating told ME that if you like having sex with cows, you don't stop and have sex with every cow you see on the side of the road. I was so shocked by what he said, I never told ANYONE. Not even my ex. I just told him this a few years ago. He was furious.

This same therapist--we had decided we would share our house and he would live downstairs and co-parent our children. We were going to put in a door downstairs so he basically had an apartment and go ahead and live his life, but this same stupid therapist told him that wasn't fair to me and he needed to leave. I thought that was MY CHOICE.

NOW, my ex lives downstairs and I live upstairs. It works great. I have a boyfriend, he has a boyfriend.

In the 33 years since I found out my ex is gay, not a hell of a lot has changed where mormons are concerned. So many people kept saying, "See, they are making strides." Then the new policy came out. I knew they weren't making strides.

APA has condemned conversion therapy as abuse. Oregon, New Jersey, California, Illinois and DC have all banned it. Hillary Clinton wants to make it illegal for minors.

BYU was known to use aversion therapy in the 1980s in the SWKT. That is where they show pictures of hot men to gay guys and then induce vomiting or electrical shock. In other words, they torture gay guys to turn them straight.

My bishop offered such therapy to a friend of mine. He told him that God didn't want him to be abused, so he left the church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy

BTW, I really did have an Aunt Sadie... :-)

There's evidence it persisted far longer, and if the lady customer I had is truthful (and who-the-hell would lie about that stuff to a stranger, no matter how friendly he was?), even if she was in her late teens, that still puts it square in the 90's...

I love to see the way the faithful emulate Brigham Young with their "plausible deniability" tactics. Young did that with Mountain Meadows as well as other murders we can pin on him committed by the likes of Porter Rockwell and Bill Hickman.