{"id":116407,"date":"2018-08-13T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=116407"},"modified":"2018-08-10T14:16:48","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T13:16:48","slug":"i-still-have-flashbacks-the-global-epidemic-of-lgbt-conversion-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/08\/i-still-have-flashbacks-the-global-epidemic-of-lgbt-conversion-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Still Have Flashbacks\u2019: The \u2018Global Epidemic\u2019 of LGBT Conversion Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It sounds like a historical horror, but \u2018treatment\u2019 for sexual orientation remains legal in most of the world, including the UK.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u2018My depression was serious. I gained 60lbs. I felt suicidal\u2019 … conversion survivor Mathew Shurka in New York City\u2019s West Village last month.
Photograph: Tadej Znidarcic\/Guardian<\/p><\/div>\n

8 Aug 2018 – <\/em>Mathew Shurka was 16 when he sat down with his father and told him he was gay. Brought up in a conservative New York suburb, the youngest child in a secular Jewish family and the only son, he was \u201cterrified\u201d. But, in that highly charged moment, the reaction was good. \u201cHe said: \u2018I love you. I\u2019m going to be on your side, no matter what,\u2019\u201d Shurka says. \u201cHe created security, which is what my father does … He said: \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we\u2019ll figure it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What he meant was he was going to try to \u201ccure\u201d him. Shurka\u2019s father started talking to psychotherapists in New York. Within a week, he had found one who insisted there was no such thing as homosexuality, that everyone is born heterosexual and \u201csame-sex attraction\u201d is the result of childhood trauma or dysfunctional familial relationships.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was thought that, because I was still young, I had the highest chance of overcoming it,\u201d Shurka says. \u201cI was told how hard my life would be if I came out. I was told I could have the same attraction for girls as I did for boys. This was 2004. I\u2019d never met an actual gay person. I was scared. I wanted to do whatever it took.\u201d He adds that his father believed he was being supportive.<\/p>\n

“Most people who have experienced conversion therapy in the UK go through it on a Sunday morning in their church service.”<\/em><\/strong>
\n— Sally Hitchener<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Shurka ended up in conversion therapy for five years. He saw four therapists in four states at a cost of $35,000 (\u00a327,000). He was instructed to use Viagra when having sex with women. He was told he was a \u201cclassic case\u201d of someone with too many female role models and was instructed to avoid his mother and sisters. \u201cAs part of my treatment, I didn\u2019t talk to them for three years,\u201d he tells me \u2013 despite living under the same roof. How did his mother respond? \u201c[She] argued that no therapy can be good if it involves separating a child from its mother,\u201d he says. \u201cBut my father was so adamant about [it] succeeding that he was willing for us to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

How was Shurka affected? \u201cI knew that my feelings were not going away. I blamed myself; I wasn\u2019t trying hard enough. My depression was serious. I gained 60lbs [27kg]. I felt suicidal all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two films about conversion therapy will be released in the US this year, which is remarkable, considering most people probably think of it as a historical horror, from a time when homosexuality was criminalised and electric shock treatment was routinely offered as a cure. The Miseducation of Cameron Post<\/a>, on which Shurka consulted, is an adaptation of a novel by Emily M Danforth about a lesbian (Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz<\/a>) sent to a conversion camp. It is based on the real case of a 16-year-old who posted on Myspace about being sent somewhere similar. The Oscar-tipped, star-studded Boy Erased<\/a> is adapted from a brilliant memoir by Garrard Conley<\/a>, the son of a Baptist pastor who was enrolled on a Love In Action programme. Both stories unfold in the 21st century, which is when most of the survivors I speak to were subjected to conversion therapy. And is it not happening only in the US Bible belt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Forrest Goodluck, Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz and Sasha Lane in The Miseducation of Cameron Post.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Shurka was 19, he attended a weekend conversion camp called Journey Into Manhood, where Jack and the Beanstalk was the fairytale narrative of choice used to reclaim masculinity. \u201cTo get your seeds back from the giant in the clouds,\u201d he says wryly. \u201cThey tried to make it fun with sports and activities.\u201d One activity involved each of the 80 men sharing the trauma that supposedly made them gay. The others then had to re-enact it, but change the outcome to rewrite the individual\u2019s history. Journey Into Manhood has run programmes in Poland, Israel and the UK. On the website\u2019s timeline, it states that its \u201cexperiential weekend program for men conflicted over their same-sex attraction\u201d was offered outside the US for the first time in 2007 \u2013 in England.<\/p>\n

Conversion therapy \u2013 sometimes referred to as \u201ccure\u201d therapy, reparative therapy, ex-gay therapy or sexual-orientation change efforts \u2013 refers to any treatment aiming to change a person\u2019s sexual orientation or suppress their gender identity. It is a nebulous term, encompassing what can be a range of highly damaging practices from an app offering a 60-day \u201cgay cure\u201d, available on iTunes and Google Play as recently as 2013, to spiritual interventions, talking therapies, drugs and, more rarely, extreme physical measures such as electric shock treatment, aversion techniques and \u201ccorrective rape\u201d<\/a>. All share in common the false, unethical assumption that being LGBT is a condition that requires curing. A psychological disorder, in other words.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat we\u2019re still having this battle 45 years after the APA [American Psychiatric Association] removed homosexuality from the diagnostic manual is incredibly disturbing,\u201d says Carolyn Reyes<\/a>, coordinator of the #BornPerfect campaign to end conversion therapy, which was launched in the US in 2014 by the National Center for Lesbian Rights<\/a>. As she says, homosexuality was removed from the APA\u2019s list of diagnoses in 1973 (although not completely excised from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1987), yet conversion therapy continues to be practised all over the world. Malta was the first country in Europe to ban it<\/a> \u2013 only two years ago.<\/p>\n

It remains legal in the UK, where a nationwide survey published in July<\/a> as part of the government\u2019s LGBT action plan found that 2% of the 108,000 LGBT respondents had undergone conversion therapy and 5% had been offered it. In 2015, the charity Stonewall found that one in 10 health and social care staff had witnessed colleagues express the belief that sexual orientation can be \u201ccured\u201d<\/a>. A 2009 survey of more than 1,300 mental health professionals<\/a> found that more than 200 had offered conversion therapy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u2018I became destroyed\u2019 … Bisi Alimi. Photograph: David M Benett\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The momentum to end the practice is growing, however. The UK government recently announced a commitment to ban it, following a Church of England vote last year that condemned the practice<\/a>. All major counselling and psychotherapy bodies, as well as the NHS, have signed a memorandum of understanding<\/a> condemning the practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe survey has shown the government what many people have known for a long time,\u201d says the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who has raised the issue repeatedly in parliament this year. \u201cThis is more widespread than people realised. Announcing a ban is the easy bit. The difficult part is drafting the legislation and implementing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the US, anyone can give conversion therapy to an adult, but 13 states have passed bills stating a licensed professional cannot offer it to a minor. A report published in January by the sexual-orientation thinktank Williams Institute found that 698,000 LGBT adults in the US have received conversion therapy<\/a> at some point in their lives, while an estimated 20,000 LGBT teenagers in the US will be subjected to it by a licensed healthcare professional before the age of 18.<\/p>\n

Leandro Ramos is the director of programmes at All Out<\/a>, an organisation that campaigns on LGBT rights around the world. He is in Brazil, where last year a ban on conversion therapy was overturned. He calls \u201cso-called \u2018gay cures\u2019\u201d a \u201cglobal epidemic\u201d. The impact can be nothing short of devastating. It is thought to increase suicidal thoughts by almost nine times<\/a>. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, loss of faith, high-risk sexual behaviours, guilt, isolation and self-hatred are all common effects.<\/p>\n

Conversion therapy has historically been under\u200b\u200breported, under\u200bestimated\u200b or \u200b\u200bdenied altogether<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cConversion therapy teaches people that who they are cannot be healthy or right,\u201d says James Guay, a survivor and a psychotherapist working with the LGBT community in West Hollywood. A lot of his work with clients involves \u201cdeprogramming from a cult-like experience\u201d. He says recognising that there is nothing to repair can take a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, conversion therapy has historically been underreported, underestimated or denied altogether. When one campaigner, whose partner killed himself after it was recommended he see a psychiatrist for a \u201ccure\u201d, got a meeting with the home secretary at the time, Amber Rudd, he claimed her response was to ask: \u201cWhy can\u2019t we just tell people not to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Twocock, the director of campaigns, strategy and research at Stonewall UK, says: \u201cPeople [who have been undergone conversion therapy] don\u2019t come forward to Stonewall very often. It\u2019s a marginalised and underground activity.\u201d The full extent of conversion therapy is unknown.<\/p>\n

Bisi Alimi grew up in a mixed Christian-Muslim family in Lagos, Nigeria, and became a born-again Christian at the age of 15. \u201cAs soon as I thought I might be gay, I felt it was wrong,\u201d he says. When two friends suggested he get help, he agreed to tell a pastor. \u201cThey were trying to help me, to be fair to them,\u201d he says, beginning to cry. \u201cThey loved me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversion therapy lasted seven days, during which Alimi, then 17, was locked in a dark room and made to fast and pray around the clock. \u201cI\u2019m not allowed to eat anything or go out,\u201d he says, slipping into the present tense. \u201cI only have access to water and olive oil for anointing. The pastors are praying with me all night. I\u2019m being constantly reminded of what happens to people like me in hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, Alimi made his first suicide attempt. \u201cI became destroyed,\u201d he says. How did he manage to walk away? \u201cI\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever walked away,\u201d he says quietly. \u201cI\u2019m married now [to a man]. But I still have flashbacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u2018It\u2019s the most vulnerable people who get hurt\u2019 … Jayne Ozanne.
Photograph: Sam Atkins<\/p><\/div>\n

Now a gay rights activist and UK citizen, Alimi says conversion therapy is \u201can epidemic\u201d in some black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities. \u201cWe have to be bold enough to say it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the lives of young people who are transported to their [or their family\u2019s] country of origin to go through conversion therapy. These are British citizens being taken out of the UK to go to Nigeria, Ethiopia and Uganda. We can ban it here, but what laws will protect them?\u201d What evidence does he have that this is happening to LGBT BAME people? \u201cPeople come to me,\u201d he replies. \u201cBlack Africans have told me they have been made to go through it here in London by pentecostal churches.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Jayne Ozanne, a leading gay activist in the Church of England \u2013 and the person who proposed the motion that condemned conversion therapy to the General Synod \u2013 a recognition that it is now almost exclusively carried out by faith groups is essential. Research she conducted last year found that 217 of the 553 LGBT people of faith who responded to her questionnaire had experienced conversion therapy. Almost half were under 17 at the time. \u201cIt has been part of the frustration for campaigners that people just didn\u2019t believe us,\u201d she says. \u201cSome of us have been trying to convince the church, the government and even the LGBT community that this is a significant problem. It goes on in secret and it\u2019s the most vulnerable people who get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ozanne is a survivor herself. Growing up in a conservative community in Guernsey, she joined a charismatic evangelical youth group called the God Squad in her teenage years. When she started falling for women in her 20s, she put herself through years of conversion therapy. \u201cI spent thousands trying to make myself into something I should never have felt the need to change,\u201d she tells me. \u201cYou don\u2019t talk about this in the \u2018real\u2019 world. I\u2019m an Oxbridge graduate. I was in a very senior position [in the Church of England]. You might think I should have known better, but the world I was in believed it with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: Psychotherapy and issues of sexuality<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What form of conversion therapy did she experience? \u201cPrayer ministry, healing ministry, deliverance ministry,\u201d she says, referring to spiritual interventions sometimes termed \u201cpraying away the gay\u201d. \u201cI got appointed to the archbishop\u2019s council. I didn\u2019t want people to know I was struggling with this, so I went to Germany to go on a course. I literally went round the world asking all the key figures in the evangelical world to help me. If there was a T-shirt saying: \u2018I\u2019ve tried every conversion therapy,\u2019 I would wear it,\u201d she laughs. The impact on her physical and mental health was huge. \u201cIt drove me to hospital twice, because I just couldn\u2019t cope with the stress. I had huge undiagnosed pain, which was eventually put down to extreme levels of stress. I then had a mental breakdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

After suffering a second major physical and mental breakdown, Ozanne finally made the decision to embrace her sexuality when she turned 40. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing what loves does,\u201d she recalls of her first relationship with a woman. \u201cThe transformation was incredible. Many of my friends disowned me overnight and my family found it difficult, but the brave few who saw me couldn\u2019t call it bad or evil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people right now being put through this,\u201d she continues. \u201cIf you\u2019re part of a community teaching it\u2019s sinful to be gay, you will do anything to try to change. And it\u2019s not just a Christian issue. It happens in the Muslim faith, Sikh faith \u2026 many black pentecostal communities will send their child back to Nigeria or Uganda, where \u2018corrective rape\u2019 therapy happens. I often compare it to FGM [female genital mutilation]<\/a>: it happens in the back streets, performed by well-meaning people who cause deep harm. It takes a lifetime to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Th\u00e9odore Pellerin and Lucas Hedges in Boy Erased.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sally Hitchener is an Anglican priest and founder of Diverse Church<\/a>, a community supporting 1,000 young LGBT Christians in the UK. \u201cMy experience of speaking to our members is that it has been prolific in the church in recent times,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the 90s and 00s, every city in the UK would have a church doing it. People are sent to the US to go to 24-hour immersive camps,\u201d she says. \u201cOne young person I worked with was told there was something cancerous inside him and promised it could be got out. I know people who were encouraged to take off all their clothes in large groups and [were] then shouted at.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the majority who have experienced conversion therapy in the UK go through it on a Sunday morning in their regular church service. People who are supposed to be encouraging faith are doing the opposite. Goodness knows how many future bishops, priests and nice old ladies we\u2019ve lost because we didn\u2019t allow them to be who they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shurka finally found the courage to leave conversion therapy. \u201cI have a great relationship with my mother, father and sisters today,\u201d he says. He is in \u201cthe most secure relationship of my life\u201d with a man. His new religion is activism. How did he do it? \u201cI never met anyone who changed,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the end, I just walked away. That was six years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cI was in a lot of pain for a long time. It has been an incredible journey to discover there was nothing wrong with me all along.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing <\/em><\/strong>jo@samaritans.org<\/em><\/a>. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at <\/em>befrienders.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Chitra Ramaswamy is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh. She is the author of<\/em> Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Aug 2018 – Mathew Shurka was 16 when he sat down with his father and told him he was gay. He ended up in conversion therapy for five years and saw four therapists in four states at a cost of $35,000. He was instructed to use Viagra when having sex with women. He was told he was a \u201cclassic case\u201d of someone with too many female role models and was instructed to avoid his mother and sisters. \u201cAs part of my treatment, I didn\u2019t talk to them for three years,\u201d despite living under the same roof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":116414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sexualities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}