Members of the Christian right have long touted the success of conversion therapy in turning homosexuals into ex-gays. In reality, scientific evidence in no way supports the success of this type of therapy. The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists are taking on the claims of the Christian right with Abomination: Homosexuality and the Ex-Gay Movement, which will be shown at the Reeling International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. The documentary explores the lack of scientific evidence around conversion therapy, asks where the ex-gay leaders of yesterday are and points out the dangers of these supposed treatments. Dr. Alicia Salzer, M.D., director and producer of the film, spoke with Windy City Times about the documentary, a film that she hopes will have universal appeal to anyone who has ever felt like they had to pass or change to be a part of their community.
Windy City Times: What led you to pursue this particular issue and take on this project?
Alicia Salzer: I am a member of a professional organization of psychiatrists called Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. They're the ones that funded the film and they were really the force behind it. They have an increasing concern about the fact that conservative Christians were making more of a media presence with billboards, TV commercials and ads that were basically saying 'Look, we've changed and you can too,' and we felt that it was misrepresenting what they had to offer because there was really no waiver that said, 'Results not typical. This may be harmful. This hasn't really been proven to be successful except in anecdotal situations. This is expensive.' So, we felt that people were being misled into the idea that this was a treatment that was safe, reliable and effective, and we felt that we had to share what our views are on the topic as well, so people had that to inform their decisions about whether they want to undergo this type of therapy.
WCT: When this type of therapy has failed, are their certain dangers that have been particularly documented, or certain issues people tend to face afterwards?
AS: I mean as far as documented evidence, that's where you can get into trouble, because it's very hard to study people who have or haven't changed. ... As far as meeting with people, talking with people, and reviewing what, for example, [ psychotherapists Ariel ] Shidlo and [ Michael ] Schroeder found when they spoke to their subjects, they characterized several different types of danger. … As a client of reparative therapy, you're told if you fail it's because you're not trying hard enough. So when they do fail, they're set up for a kind of self-loathing. ... Part of many reparative therapies is that your family is coached to not love you unconditionally.
I think a lot of families are really severed because they're coached to reject their children. I think there's also harm because as we said in the film a lot of people may be encouraged to marry as an ultimate goal of the therapy and then when those marriages fail it's harmful to the wives, it's harmful to the children.
The thing that struck me most about the people that I met through the film is that they had spent decades of their lives not having relationships and engaged in this passionate, agonizing struggle to be straight to such an extent that they didn't have any time or energy to focus on their careers, friendships, relationships, hobbies, nothing. ... I think that falls into the realm of harm, too.
WCT: With all the evidence pointing to the failure of conversion therapy and the fact that most members of the psychiatric profession don't believe this type of therapy is scientifically backed, why do you think that organizations like Exodus flourish?
AS: You asked kind of two questions. One is why do they continue to flourish, and the reason they continue to flourish is because they continue to create a market for themselves by misinforming people that what it means to be gay is that you'll be disenfranchised, you'll live a life of sneaky, unsafe sex and drugs and never have a relationship, kids, or a family, and that you'll ultimately die of AIDS. … Add to that the threat of losing your family, your church, your community, and everything you believe in. So, I think they perpetuate the demand for the service.
If your question is why do they continue to offer it when scientific evidence shows that it is potentially harmful and not proven, I think there's a range of answers. … I think that these ex gay ministries do know for the most part that it doesn't work. On a kind day, I believe that they feel it's worth trying anyway. ... On a day when I'm feeling more angry by the hurt and misrepresentation I see, you have to acknowledge that this is an enormous industry financially, and you also have to see that there is a political agenda that underlies it.
It seems to me that a lot of the basis for 'Well, you can't deny people these rights, this is how people were born, this is how God made them,' so I think there's motivation to prove that gay people can change, because if it's a choice then in their eyes perhaps gay people don't deserve these rights.
WCT: On the video these conversion therapies are supposed to be based on healing someone from issues of their past that caused them to be gay, but then they use things like teaching gay men to cross their legs differently, and that seems absolutely absurd to me that you could change someone's sexual orientation that way.
AS: I used a lot of restraint to not enjoy the humor that I feel goes inherently with that, because what I learned from my subjects was that when somebody's harping on you every day about how you stand, or how you pronounce things, or how you walk, it's actually a misery [ and ] not at all funny. Because it's easy to laugh at that, but I think their premise is that maybe gay guys just didn't feel very masculine, they weren't good at sports, they didn't feel like they could relate to other guys. [ However, ] if we can teach you how to feel more comfortable in the locker room—how to feel like a guy–then you'd have that bonding intimacy with other guys that isn't sexual, and you could focus your sexual attentions on women. So that's the premise. I think the premise is flawed. There's nothing in the world of psychiatry that says that makes any sense.
WCT: As far as people working within these conversion therapy programs, do they even have credentials to be doing this kind of work?
AS: There are a handful of people who do have the legitimate credentials that they are therapists. ... What's interesting is that for the most part, most of the people that you find doing this type of work, they're reluctant to call it therapy or, in fact, I find that they're calling it therapy less, because that's a tricky zone; they're not necessarily therapists or they're therapists who have lost their licenses or who have had ethics violations lodged against them, for example. But many people are just ministers or practitioners. They're coming at it from a religious standpoint and they don't call it therapy. They, in fact, feel that they are doing a religious family intervention, or doing a prayer intervention, or invoking God to try and help us change. … They don't necessarily have to regulate their facilities as if it's a therapeutic facility. … There's not the same standard of informed consent.
WCT: The woman in the video said she had struggled for 20 years before finally deciding to stop trying to change. Once someone accepts that they aren't going to be able to change, is there a sort of typical pattern they go through?
AS: It's enormous. Not only do they have to reconcile, but they also lose their families. ... The most important transformation they have to undergo is that they've been raised on the Bible ... and they have a very close relationship with God. They have to sit down and become a theologian and figure out what does the Bible really say; they have to reconcile their whole relationship with God and see if they can be who they are and still be in good with God. ... Very few of them utterly abandon religion.
Abomination: Homosexuality and the Ex-Gay Movement will play during the Reeling 2007 Film Festival in Chicago on Nov. 17 at 3 p.m. at Center on Halsted along with God Only Knows: Same Sex Marriage.
