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Three days before ex-gay
conference comes to Boston,
ex-gay survivor to tell it
like it is
The party line from the
ex-gay movement is that
people enter the movement to
get rid of unwanted
homosexual impulses by
choice and that the LGBT
community should not stand
in their way. Marc Adams, a
former ex-gay and a former
student at Jerry Falwell's
Liberty University, paints a
different picture: ex-gays
who submit to the
humiliations of reparative
therapy are doing so because
they believe they have no
choice in the matter at all.
"The reason you go into it
is that you've been
brainwashed to need to make
your life acceptable to
God," said Adams, who wrote
about his struggles at
Liberty and in the ex-gay
movement in his 1996 memoir
The Preacher's Son,
which was a Lambda Literary
Award finalist. "It's really
not voluntary from that
perspective, then. It's
really not voluntary if you
want to make God happy."
Adams will be speaking out
against the ex-gay movement
Oct. 26 at Grace Episcopal
Church in Newton Corner, at
an event sponsored by
Greater Boston Parents,
Families and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
and the Religious Coalition
for the Freedom to Marry.
The event takes place three
days before Love Won Out, a
traveling ex-gay conference,
makes its first stop in
Boston.
Adams speaks from
experience. As a child
growing up in a conservative
Baptist home in Shavertown,
Penn., he realized early on
that he was gay, but the
only messages he heard about
gay people were from
fire-and-brimstone sermons
at his church, which
convinced him that he was
hellbound. At age 15 he
finally heard a different
message from Falwell
himself. He saw the famously
anti-gay preacher on
television talking about
reparative therapy as a way
for gay people to straighten
out, and he made the
decision to seek out
reparative therapy as a
student at Liberty
University, to get as close
to Falwell as possible. He
says he had so much anxiety
about being gay that he saw
it as his only option.
"That's pretty common for a
lot of people who go into
reparative therapy. They
have two options, they have
suicide and reparative
therapy," said Adams. He has
learned just how common his
experience was through
HeartStrong, a nonprofit he
founded 10 years ago and
incorporated in 1998 that
does outreach to LGBT youth
struggling at religious
schools.
Having graduated early from
high school, Adams arrived
at Liberty U in 1984 at age
16 only to find that
attending reparative therapy
on campus was not an option.
He said even the hint that
he might have been gay could
have been grounds for
expulsion. He found a
practitioner off-campus,
where for three-and-a-half
years he embarked on what he
describes as the initial
stages of reparative
therapy. He said his
sessions with his therapist
focused largely on
spirituality, and he was
told that he was plagued
with homosexual longings in
part because of a deficiency
in his faith.
Ironically, what finally
prompted him to leave the
ex-gay world was a phone
call from a former Catholic
priest who was HIV positive.
In his senior year Adams
worked answering the 1-800
number for Liberty
University's recruiting
office, which had become the
target of gay activists
placing regular phone calls
to run up the phone bill.
Most activists who called
were belligerent, but when
the former priest called he
had a different tone.
"One time when I answered
the phone a man started
talking to me instead of
cursing at me, and he said,
'I want to know what Jerry
Falwell is doing about
people dying of AIDS,'" said
Adams. He said he followed a
script provided to him,
saying that Falwell and the
university would not
interfere in God's judgment
on homosexuals. "He started
talking to me about, how did
I think it was a choice to
fall in love with somebody
and to get this horrible
disease, and I told him I
would pray for him. And he
hung up on me. And that was
the first time I had heard
what I was saying."
He said that call forced him
to see the hypocrisy behind
the ex-gay movement and
Falwell's teachings. He
stayed for one more semester
and then left both the
university and reparative
therapy.
Since founding HeartStrong
he has made it his goal to
reach out to other students
at religious schools who are
going through what he went
through. He said that
compared with his own
experiences, some students
in reparative therapy now
are enduring "treatments"
that border on torture and
abuse, such as forcing men
to look at gay pornography
and administering electric
shocks when they get
aroused.
While there is no one set
form of reparative therapy,
leading medical
associations, including the
American Medical
Association, the American
Psychological Association,
and the American Academy of
Pediatrics, say it produces
no medical benefits.
Adams said the students at
religious schools are
particularly susceptible to
the ex-gay sales pitch,
since many ex-gay
organizations are
religiously oriented.
"People who come from
religious backgrounds are
the primary target of
reparative therapy, not the
general public," said Adams.
"The students who go to
these schools are most at
risk, more than anyone
else."
During his presentation at
Grace Episcopal Church he
said he will talk about his
experiences in the ex-gay
movement as well as the
stories of some of the
students who contact
HeartStrong for help. There
will also be a question and
answer session where
attendees can ask Adams
about his own perspectives
on the current ex-gay
movement and how LGBT people
should respond to it. Adams
said it is important for
people to realize that while
it is tempting to brand
ex-gays as hypocrites, the
last thing they need is to
be attacked and judged by
the LGBT community.
"Eventually everyone who
gets into this will fall off
the wagon, that's guaranteed
from the start," said Adams.
"When it comes to this thing
you really have to have
compassion for the people
who are going through it."
Marc Adams will speak Oct.
26 at Grace Episcopal
Church, 76 Eldridge Street,
Newton Corner at 7 p.m.
Free; call 781.891.5966 for
more info. |
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