Can same-sex attraction be changed? (OneNewsNow.com)

Can same-sex attraction be changed?

Marcia Segelstein - OneNewsNow Columnist - 2/9/2010 10:35:00 AM

Reluctant Rebel logo Thanks to a mainstream media that values political correctness more than truth, some subjects are virtually off-limits. You'll rarely hear, for example, about the psychological and emotional suffering common among women who have had abortions, or about the negative effects of daycare on children...or about the fact that many people with same-sex attraction actually want to change, and do so successfully.

NARTH is the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. NARTH is anathema to pro-gay organizations because it threatens the very premises upon which they're founded -- that being gay is innate and unchangeable, and that being gay is fine and there's no reason to want to change. Such organizations also have an ally in the American Psychological Association, which has been highly critical of the reparative therapy NARTH offers and supports.

Reading NARTH's mission statement makes it clear that it is not evil, or hateful, or homophobic. Quite the contrary.

We respect the right of all individuals to choose their own destiny. NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality. As an organization, we disseminate educational information, conduct and collect scientific research, promote effective therapeutic treatment, and provide referrals to those who seek our assistance. NARTH upholds the rights of individuals with unwanted homosexual attraction to receive effective psychological care and the right of professionals to offer that care. We welcome the participation of all individuals who will join us in the pursuit of these goals.

On the NARTH website is an interview with Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a past president of the American Psychological Association. Over the course of his career, he personally worked with over 2,000 individuals with same-sex attraction; his staff worked with another 16,000. Most of those patients were dissatisfied with lifestyle issues such as the transience of relationships, guilt feelings about promiscuity, fear of disease, and the desire to have a traditional family. Very few patients entered therapy with the goal of reorienting, but many ended up wanting to change, with 2,400 patients doing so successfully.

Cummings describes himself as "a lifelong champion of civil rights, including lesbian and gay rights." As president he appointed the APA's first Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Issues. "In that era," he recounts, "the issue was a person's right to choose a gay lifestyle, whereas now an individual's choice not to be gay is called into question because the leadership of the APA seems to have concluded that all homosexuality is hard-wired and same-sex attraction is unchangeable."

He believes that the APA's efforts to discredit sexual reorientation therapy are just plain wrong. "The APA has permitted political correctness to triumph over science, clinical knowledge, and professional integrity. The public can no longer trust organized psychology to speak from evidence rather than from what it regards to be politically correct."

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi is a past president of NARTH. He recently conducted an interview, published online at Anglican-Mainstream.org, with a man who practiced homosexuality for a period of time, but successfully changed his sexual orientation. Gordon Opp has now been married for 31 years. He and his wife have three grown children and five grandchildren.

Dr. Nicolosi asked Opp about his life before marriage. "There was about a four-year period in my twenties when I practiced homosexuality off and on. I experienced quite a few one-time sexual contacts with individual men, and I had a few relationships that lasted three or four months each."

Opp freely admits that it was hard work overcoming his same-sex attraction. He was motivated by a desire to have a family -- "the American dream," as he puts it -- and by his Christian faith. Opp is offended by the APA's recent report that there is "insufficient evidence" to prove change is possible. He identifies himself as "a heterosexual man who has struggled with a homosexual problem," living proof that change is possible.

In the interview, Dr. Nicolisi discusses some of his experience dealing with this issue. "Clients will tell me, the more I understand the origins of my same-sex attraction, the more it changes the quality of the homosexual experience because I know this attraction is not happening to me just because this guy with me is 'hot.'"

Opp concurs. "I wasn't really looking for sex, I was looking for something much deeper than that." He is very open about his personal background, including a father with whom he was not close. "That," he says, "was the beginning of my feeling different from other men." Opp has since come to terms with his relationship with his father.

When he was 11 years old, an adult camp counselor made homosexual advances toward him, and Opp never told anyone about it. Nicolosi believes it was a highly significant event. "[H]ere you were, a boy who craved male attention and esteem, and unfortunately, when the attention came to you, it had sex attached to it."

Gordon Opp concludes the interview by responding to people who've told him that he's not being true to himself by rejecting homosexuality. "I have indeed been true to myself -- and I have so many blessings because of it. My family is just unbelievably important to me, and I can't imagine life without them. I never would have had that if I had been true to what I once thought was myself -- if I had been 'true to' homosexuality and let it define me."

After ten years as a producer for CBS News, forty-something years as an Episcopalian, and sixteen years as a mother, Marcia Segelstein (mvsegelstein@optonline.net) considers herself a reluctant rebel against the mainstream media, the Episcopal Church (and others which make up the rules instead of obeying them), and the decaying culture her children witness every day. Her pieces have been published in "First Things," "Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity," and "BreakpointOnline," and she is a contributing editor for Salvo magazine.

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