My life as an ex-gay. The ordeal of therapy

Testimony by Gabriel Arana dated 11 April 2012 taken from the website “The American Prospect” (United States), freely translated by Adriano C.

At the beginning of my freshman year of high school, I came home to find my mother sitting on her bed; he was crying. He had spied on my emails and discovered a message in which I confessed to having a crush on a male schoolmate of mine. “Are you homosexual?” he asked me. I confessed to her that it was so. “I always knew it. Ever since you were a kid." His resignation didn't last long. My mom is a problem solver, and the next day she handed me a stack of papers she had printed off the Internet about reorientation, or “ex-gay” therapy. I threw them away.

I replied that I did not understand how, an interview in an office of a therapist could have made me stop being attracted to the boys. My mother replied asking me if I wanted a family, then he threw a hypothetical: "If there was a pill that you could take to become heterosexual, would you take it?". I had to admit that life would have been easier if a tablet had existed like this. I had not yet meditated on the weight that would have in my life the fact that I liked the guys. In fact, I had always imagined myself like a middle -aged man, married to a woman, and with a son and a daughter; Isn't that what everyone would like? "The homosexual lifestyle leads to solitude," she said.
I was talking about Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a California hospital psychologist who was president of Narth, the National Association for Research and Therapy against homosexuality, the largest organization of the country for professionals who applied ex-game therapy. He told me that Nicolosi had edited hundreds of people who had then been able to live a "normal" life.

I read the articles my mother had retrieved from the trash can. There were interviews with Nicolosi's patients, who talked about how the therapy had helped them overcome depression and made them feel “comfortable with their masculinity”. The testimonies seemed sincere and the patients were grateful. I agreed to go with my father to Los Angeles so we flew from our small town on the Arizona-Mexico border to have an initial consultation.
The St. Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic was on the thirteenth floor of a modern building on Ventura Boulevard, one of the main streets of the San Fernando Valley. Nicolosi's corner office had an emerald green carpet and mahogany bookcases on which shelves lined books whose titles were 'Homosexuality: a distant freedom' and 'Homosexuality and the politics of truth'. Middle-aged with thick, graying black hair, Nicolosi grew up in New York and speaks with a faint Bronx accent. Brusque but affable, he put me at ease.
When my father and I met him for the first session, Nicolosi explained to us what he meant by "cure". Although I had never felt a spark of excitement upon meeting a woman walking down the street, as I progressed in therapy, my homosexual inclination would diminish. Maybe I would still have thoughts that made me linger about men, but it would no longer have control over me.

Nicolosi's recognition that the change would not be absolute made the theory acceptable to me. His confidence in the outcome gave me hope again. Before speaking with Nicolosi, I had resigned myself to the idea that, desirable or not, my life would have to adapt to the fact that I was homosexual. But maybe this was something I could work on.
§In the second half of the meeting, I spoke alone with Nicolosi. “Tell me about your classmates,” he asked. I told him I had two female friends. “No male friends?” I had to admit that I had always had trouble relating to kids my age. When I was in primary school, during recess, I preferred to help the teacher clean the classroom instead of playing sports.
“Are you open to therapy?” Nicolosi asked me “if you think it can't work, you can stop at any time”.

I agreed to start weekly sessions by phone. After our face-to-face meeting, I joined some of his patients for group therapy. I was by far the youngest person there. The other men (four or five in all) were in their forties or fifties and spoke of their past life as a “homosexual lifestyle,” saying they had achieved only unhappiness.
They wanted normal, satisfying lives. They were tired of going to private clubs, of drug use, of promiscuity, of relationships that didn't last; they complained that homosexual culture was obsessed with youth. If this is what it meant to be homosexual (and since they were 30 years older than me and certainly knew it), then I wanted to be normal too.

I left the office with a copy of Nicolosi's most recent book, “Healing Homosexuality,” and with a questionnaire that classified different emotions into columns of “true” and “false.” In the “true” column he classified masculinity as “adequate, equal,” “confident, confident, capable,” and “comfortable in his own body.”
The “false” column included feeling inadequate and insecure, and feeling uncomfortable in one's body. It seemed correct to me. I had been teased my entire childhood for being effeminate, and for being a lanky, goofy teenager with bad skin, I certainly wasn't comfortable in my body.

Another leaflet illustrated the “triadic relationship” that leads to homosexuality, a passive and distant father, an overly involved mother and a sensitive son. I felt closer to my mother than to my father. I was shy. The story seemed to fit, which was comforting. He gave me the confidence that I could be cured.
According to Nicolosi, identification with a parent of the opposite sex is outside the bounds of biological evolution. Because of this, it was impossible to become whole through homosexual relationships. I wanted to be whole.

On July 13, 1998 (the same year I began therapy), a full-page ad appeared in the New York Times with a photograph of a radiant woman wearing an eye-catching diamond engagement ring. “I am proof that the truth sets us free,” he proclaimed. This woman, Anne Paulk, said that molestation during her adolescence had led her to homosexuality, but that she had been healed by the power of Jesus Christ.
The $600,000 advertising campaign (sponsored by 15 faith-based organizations, including the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council, and the American Family Association) ran for several weeks in popular magazines and newspapers such as The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. Robert Knight of the Family Research Council movement called it “the Normandy landings of the Culture War.”

Since there were few voices challenging the testimonies, journalists considered it a revelation. Newsweek ran a cute cover story on change therapy, and national and regional newspapers reported on "ex-gays." It has never been easier for my mother to find information about how the “ex-gay” theory had become the banner of the Christian rights culture war.
The advertisement was released 23 years after the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified homosexuality from being a mental illness. As a result of that decision, many forms of therapeutic reorientation were discontinued; for example some extreme forms of aversion therapy such as electric shocks or drugs that caused nausea.

A small group of therapists continued to practice conversational therapy that encouraged patients to see homosexuality as a mental disorder, but they remained on the sidelines until the Christian right began to support their cause. This was a calculated political move.
Instead of eternally fiery denunciations from pulpits, ex-homosexual movements allowed Christian law to lean on the psychologist's couch and condemn homosexuality in a way that seemed merciful and compassionate. The “Focus on the Family” movement called on its new ex-gay ministry, Love Won Out, to talk about healing and healing for homosexuals.

The ex-homosexual movement rhetorically turned homosexual rights against itself: why shouldn't an ex-homosexual be able to engage in therapy and live their life as they want without having to face discrimination?

The two largest groups offering counseling to ex-gay men are Exodus International, a non-denominational Christian organization, and NARTH, its secular counterpart. If Exodus is the spirit of the ex-gay movement, NARTH is its brain. The organizations share many members, Exodus parroting the evolutionary theories about homosexual attractions that are supported by NARTH.
Together with the late Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist who led the opposition to the declassification of homosexuality from a mental illness, Nicolosi founded NARTH in 1992, calling it a "scientific organization that offers hope to those struggling with unwanted homosexuality."
In 1998, the group held an annual conference, published in its journal, in which it offered courses to psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors. Nicolosi still remains NARTH's most prominent supporter.

There are no reliable statistics on how many patients have received ex-gay treatment or how many therapists practice it, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this therapy enjoyed a legitimacy it hadn't had since the APA had removed homosexuality from its diagnostic manual. Exodus has 83 locations in 34 states.
Its president, Alan Chambers, announced in 2004 that he knew “tens of thousands of people who had managed to change their sexual orientation”. Nicolosi often appeared on television programs such as Oprah, 20/20, and Larry King Live. Whether or not the Christian right's alliance with ex-gay movements constituted a D-day in the culture war, it successfully challenged the prevailing idea that the best choice for gay people was to accept themselves.

After our initial meeting, I spoke with Nicolosi weekly by phone for more than three years, from the age of 14 until I graduated high school. Like a rabbi teaching Torah to his disciple, Nicolosi encouraged me to interpret my daily life through the lens of his theories.
In a book by Nicolosi, "Reparative Theory of Male Homosexuality", I read that he tries to position himself as a supportive father figure, characterizing the type of his relationship with patients in this position because he believes that they have never had a relationship with his father. Indeed, I too have come to the point of seeing it in this light.

We mostly talked about how my masculine identity was being damaged by being attracted to other boys. Nicolosi asked me about my crushes in school and what I liked most about them. Whether the characteristic was someone's size, beauty, popularity, or confidence, this conversation always ended with a detour to questions: Would I have liked to have that size? What would my feelings have been if one of these guys had hugged me? Would I have been happy to be liked and accepted?

Of course, I longed to be like the classmates I admired; naturally, I would have liked to be accepted and appreciated by them. This type of questioning made me feel worse. Nicolosi explained to me, session after session, that I felt inadequate because I had not had enough masculine affirmation during my childhood.
I began to think that my attraction to men was due to a lack of connection with my father. Every time I felt offended by some male friend of mine (for neglecting to call me when I wanted, for not inviting me to a party) I was reliving my father's seminal rejection. Many guys, it was explained to me, let these things slide on them (as an expression of their masculine confidence) but I was shocked by these attitudes because it reminded me of a previous trauma.

My parents were surprised at how much the therapy made them feel guilty about my condition. At first Nicolosi had told them that we were not one of those cases that fit the form of “triadic relationship”; in other words that my sexual orientation was not due to their fault. It later became clear that Nicolosi held them responsible, and they got out of it.
They continued to pay for therapy but no longer had regular contact with Nicolosi and did not ask what we had talked about. I was happy to be able to challenge my parents. If the complaint was that my curfew wasn't long enough to keep me home late or that my allowance wasn't enough, I felt empowered enough to argue that I perceived injustices. Every opportunity became evidence of how my parents had failed.

As I progressed in therapy, I felt that I was learning more about the origin and cause of my sexual inclination. The problem was that these urges wouldn't go away. At Nicolosi's urging, I told my best friend that I had to get away from her. Nicolosi instead encouraged me to form “real non-sexual bonds” with other boys. He paired me with another of his patients, Ryan Kendall, who was my age and lived in Colorado. We spoke on the phone every few days.

Most of our conversations were banal. We talked about our respective friends and people we didn't like, telling each other about each school work and successes we achieved. We often deviated from the therapist's approved discourse, from the simple talk that was supposed to help us. We flirted, a new experience for me, there were no openly gay boys in my school. Ryan and I physically described each other. He told me he had brown hair and eyes, that he was short but cute; I told him I was tall and thin (but I neglected to tell him about my bad skin). We promised to exchange photos, but we never did.

“What would Nicolosi say?” we asked ourselves. It became a catchphrase, an acknowledgment that we were behaving badly. Part of the bond we developed was about sharing our rebellion with the therapist. For me, it had little to do with opposition to ex-gay therapy, it was more the giddy thrill of challenging authority.
Ryan was convinced that change was impossible: “Nicolosi is a charlatan,” he once told me. Despite my transgressions, I still believed in Nicolosi's theory. But my relationship with Ryan highlighted a big problem: As I discovered how my relationship with my parents would continue to shape my inner life, I still felt attracted to men. I chatted with older guys on the Internet and even met them on occasion.

I felt guilty about this, but I was pretty convinced that Nicolosi would admit that I was "experimenting." He told me to be very careful when meeting men I met on the Internet but he also told me that I shouldn't dwell on it and feel guilty. He told me that my sexual behavior was of secondary importance. If I understood myself and worked on relationships with other men, the attraction would have changed. I just had to be patient.
Later in my senior year of high school, Nicolosi had one last conversation with my parents and told them that the treatment had been successful. “Your son will never enter the homosexual lifestyle again,” he assured them.

A few weeks later our housekeeper caught me with a boy in our backyard. This marked the end of my therapy. My parents were convinced that the failure of therapy was due to Nicolosi blaming them instead of focusing on the fact that I had been teased by my peers when I was little. They took me to another therapist.
I only had one meeting then refused to continue. Although I accepted Nicolosi's theory about why some people were homosexual, I was also convinced that no amount of talk could change me. When I left for Yale, my mother gave me a warning: if she found out I had entered the “gay lifestyle” they would no longer pay for college. “I love you enough to keep you from hurting yourself,” he told me.

In 2001, the year I started college, the ex-gay movement received a major boost. In 1973, Columbia professor and eminent psychiatrist Robert Spitzer succeeded in his attempt to downgrade homosexuality as a mental illness.
Four years after Stonewall, it was the landmark event for the gay rights movement. But 28 years later, he released a study that claimed it was possible to change one's sexual orientation. Based on 200 interviews with ex-gay patients (the largest sample ever collected) the study makes no claims about the success rate of ex-gay therapy.
But Spitzer concludes that, at least for a highly select group of motivated people, it worked. Which, translated into the wider culture was: the father of the revolution in the classification and treatment of homosexuality, who could not be seen as an impartial crusader of the ex-gay theory, validated ex-gay therapy.

An Associated Press article called it “explosive.” In the words of one of Spitzer's gay colleagues, it was like "dropping a bomb into the gay community." For the ex-gay movement it was a godsend. Whereas previous successful reports appeared in lay journals, or were vainly paid to be published in Psychological Reports, Spitzer's report was instead published in the prestigious Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Spitzer's study is still reported by organizations as evidence of the effectiveness of ex-gay therapy. The report infuriated gay rights advocates and even several psychiatrists, who condemned its methodology and design.
Survey participants had been referred to Spitzer by ex-gay groups such as NARTH and Exodus, and had a vested interest in having them recommend and validate their work. The claims of change were from the participants themselves, and Spitzer never asked a control group to validate them in order to dispel doubts about their credibility.

Last spring, I visited Spitzer at his home in Princeton. He reached his front door with the help of a walker. Spitzer suffers from Parkinson's disease, is frail but still sharp. “It's a pain,” he told me about his illness. I confessed to him that Nicolosi asked me to call him in 2001 telling him about my success in therapy, but that I never called him. “I had a lot of trouble finding participants,” Spitzer told me. “In all those years of ex-gay therapy, you would think that Nicolosi could have given me many more success stories. He only managed to get me nine patients.”
“How did it go for you?” he asked me. I told him I was in the closet for a few years, longer than I would have liked, then I accepted my sexuality. At the end of college, I began to have constant boyfriends, and in February of last year (ten years after my last meeting with Nicolosi) I married my partner.

Spitzer was weary about the topic of ex-gay therapy because it was controversial (“I've always been attracted to controversy”) but he was troubled by the way this relationship had been received. He did not mean to suggest that homosexuals should go to ex-gay therapy, his goal was to determine whether his counter-reliability (the fact that no one had ever changed their orientation through therapy) was true.

I asked him about the criticisms that had been leveled at him. “In hindsight, I have to admit that I think the criticisms are largely correct,” he told me. “The results can be considered evidence of what those who have been subjected to the ex-gay theory claim, but nothing more.” He said he spoke to the editor of Archives of Sexual Behavior about writing a retraction, but that the editor declined. (Subsequent attempts to contact the magazine went unanswered.)

Spitzer admitted that he was proud to have helped remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses. Now in his 80s and retired, he feared the 2001 study would tarnish his legacy and perhaps harm others. He told me that failed attempts to free himself from homosexual attractions “can be very harmful.” However, he has no doubts about the struggle undertaken in 1973 for the declassification of homosexuality.
“If Bob Spitzer hadn't been around, homosexuality probably would have been removed from the list of psychiatric disorders anyway,” he said, “But it wouldn't have happened in 1973.”

Spitzer was starting to get tired and asked me how many more questions I had to ask him. None, I told him, unless I have something else to add. He had it. Would you like to print a retraction of my 2001 study, “so I don't have to worry anymore”?
The ex-gay movement has relied on Spitzer's study as a cornerstone of evidence that therapy can work. The need for this evidence became pressing in the early 2000s, when a team of gay rights bloggers began to keep the movement under observation, ready to expose any hint of hypocrisy. There was a lot of material.

John Paulk, founder of Love Won Out, chairman of the board of Exodus International, and married to Anne Paulk, was seen and photographed at a gay bar in Washington, D.C. Richard Cohen, the founder of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (Relatives and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) which is the opposite equivalent of PFLAG (Relatives, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), was expelled from the American Counseling Association for ethics violations. Michael Johnston, founder of “National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day,” was found guilty of infecting men he met online with HIV and had unprotected sex with them.

A scientific member of the NARTH board sparked controversy for declaring that the slavery of blacks was a good thing, as it allowed them to escape from "wild" Africa. Shortly thereafter the NARTH board removed Nicolosi, who was still president. In 2010 it was revealed that NARTH's executive secretary, Abba Goldberg, was a fraudster who had been locked up in prison for 18 months.

Some therapists associated with NARTH and Exodus were accused of sexually harassing their clients or engaging in questionable therapy practices. Among these Alan Downing, the leading therapist of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality), who made his patients undress and forced them to touch themselves in front of a mirror; NARTH member Christopher Austin, who was convicted of “intentionally and knowingly violating the law by causing penetration” of a client; Mike Jones an Exodus affiliate, who asked a patient to take off his shirt and do some push-ups for him.

The movement has also suffered from several high-profile defections. John Evans, who founded the first ex-gay ministry outside San Francisco, gave up on theories of change when a friend committed suicide after failing to become heterosexual. Ex-gay Peterson Toscano, who has been involved in the movement for 17 years, founded Beyond Ex-Gay, an online community for "ex-gay survivors." In 2007, Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee apologized for his role in starting the organization.

In response to the resurgence of ex-gay therapy, major professional organizations have taken tougher positions. From 2007 to 2009, the American Psychological Association conducted a review of all the literature on efforts to change sexual orientation. Judith Glassgold, president of the working group that conducted the research, claims that the group found no scientific evidence regarding the good results of ex-gay therapy.
In fact, it was found that patients were at risk of becoming anxious, depressed and sometimes suicidal. “It raises false hope, which could be devastating,” Glassgold says. “By focusing on the psychopathology of homosexuality, self-esteem and self-esteem are damaged.” The APA now asks its members not to engage in these practices.

In recent years, Exodus has also begun to show cracks in its support of ex-gay therapy. The organization has softened its rhetoric by encouraging its ministries to promote celibacy rather than change, so that it can live consistently with its religious values. The group no longer recites "Freedom from homosexuality" (its motto) but talks about the nobility of continuing to fight against homosexual attractions.

Exodus has also begun to distance itself from NARTH. In September 2011, Exodus removed all references to Nicolosi's books and articles from its website. In January, Exodus president Alan Chambers spoke at a Gay Christian Network meeting. When asked about the possibility of gay people changing their sexual orientation, Chambers (who once claimed hundreds of successful cases) said that "99.9 percent" of people who have attempted to Homosexual attraction had failed.

There are other signs of decline. Attendance at Love Won Out, the Focus on the Family conference, the movement's largest gathering, dropped dramatically. Focus on the Family recently sold Love Won Out to Exodus. Ex-gay activists no longer appear at religious right events. Twenty years after NARTH was founded, the movement has lost its luster.

I have known several of Nicolosi's patients and others who have undergone therapy from NARTH members. I've seen one occasionally at a conference and interacted with him in the blogosphere, he's part of an informal network of retired ex-gays. Perhaps the best known is Daniel Gonzales, who writes on the “Box Turtle Bulletin” website.

Nicolosi had also asked Daniel to participate in Spitzer's study. When Daniel finished therapy, he thought he had gained valuable information about his condition but ultimately gave up resisting his homosexual urges. “I wasted a year and a half of my life in therapy,” he says.
“For many years, the things Nicolosi said about homosexual relationships continued to haunt me.” His relationships with men continued to fail because he was convinced, as Nicolosi told him, that they would fall apart the moment he began to feel comfortable with them, at peace with his own masculinity.

Nicolosi's ideas were more haunting to me. The first two years at university were the basis of how I saw myself: a leper with no hope of cure. I was covered up but still had sexual encounters with classmates. I became increasingly depressed but didn't go to mental health counseling because I was afraid that some therapist would warn my parents about my homosexual "lifestyle."

I planned what to do if my parents decided to stop funding my studies. I would have stayed at university and gotten a job. I was going to try to get a scholarship from the Point Foundation, which provides financial aid to gay kids who have been disowned by their parents. I would never go back to Arizona. I would never meet an ex-gay therapist again.

I spent hours in front of the window of my third-floor room, wondering if I would die if I jumped down or just be paralyzed. I managed to get a prescription for some sedatives and thought I'd take the whole bottle then perch on the ledge until I was sure I'd get it over with.

I'm not sure how I got certain ideas. Maybe it was the academic pressure combined with the increased conflict between my ideals and my behavior. In the spring of my sophomore year, the disparate parts of me that I was trying to keep together fell apart from each other; the part of me that thought being gay was wrong, the part of me that slept with other men anyway, the part of me that let it show, and the part of me that suffered in silence. For two nights I managed to sleep 20 minutes in total, I was consumed by desperation. I looked at the medicine bottles with worrying excitement. I reached the point where I was more afraid of myself than I was of what would happen if I were gay.

Realizing how close I was to the impulsive decision to kill myself, I went to the university president's office and confessed that I was suicidal. He took me to the University Department of Health and I was committed to Yale Psychiatric Hospital. During the admissions interview, I had a panic attack and wrote the counselor a handwritten note that said “Whatever happens, please don't send me away from here.” I signed my full name and dated it. Most of all, I feared they would send me home.

My first note in hospital was dark and cold. I remember looking out the window of the room I shared with a schizophrenic. Snow covered the ground down in the inner courtyard. I was restless, I took a stack of magazines from the common area and started leafing through the pages, looking at the men in the fashion ads. I tore out the adverts and put them in a transparent folder. I lay down on the bed and held the folder close to my chest, muttering, “It's OK, it's OK, it's OK.

I had to return home for a year before returning to school again. At that point my father, who flew to pick me up from New Heaven the day I was committed, realized that the therapy (and the pressure my mother put on me) was absolutely not good for me. “I'd rather have a homosexual son than a dead son,” he said.

My experience had reached a turning point. Although it took years of counseling to destroy the ideas I had learned during therapy with Nicolosi, for the first time I met professionals who said that my sexuality was okay and for the first time I began to think that being homosexual was not wrong .

Ryan, my therapy partner, was even more profoundly affected. Two years ago I found his name in interviews and transcripts of the lawsuit against California's same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, in which he testified to the harm Nicolelosi's therapy had caused him. I later became friends with him on Facebook.

We recently met in person at a restaurant on Manhattan's West Side. It had been 12 years since we last spoke on the phone. At 28, Ryan had moved to New York from Denver to begin his graduate studies at Columbia. He looked just like the photos uploaded to Facebook, stocky and short, with a shaved head and big brown eyes.

Ryan began legal proceedings against his parents at age 16 to escape therapy, suing them for abuse and neglect. It was around the time we lost contact with each other. He dropped out of high school and lived occasionally with friends, then with his brother until they kicked him out of the house. Ryan often had no fixed abode. He had a series of short-term jobs and for a time dealt soft drugs to make money, but most of the time he was broke. To eat, he sometimes filled a trolley with food and then ran out of the supermarket without paying. “I was out of control,” he told me. “Something had gone wrong inside me. I was trying to self-destruct because I had internalized all the homophobia from therapy."

When did things change for him? A few years later, he told me, he landed an administrative support job in the Denver Police Department. It was then that he began to get involved in gay rights cases. “The Prop. 8 case was the first time people believed in me,” he told me. “I was surrounded by smart people, important people, and they were counting on me.”

I could say that: being at Yale was the first time I felt validated by intelligent and important people. I asked Ryan what he would have wanted to say to Nicolosi if he had been at the table with us.
“I would ask him why he doesn't stop.”
It might have helped to know what Nicolosi would say to me, or to Daniel, or to Ryan. Did he think we had failed? Did he believe he himself had failed? Have you listened to the stories of your former patients that have changed their thinking and have been uploaded to YouTube and the blogosphere? I decided to call him and find out.

I was worried about talking to Nicolosi again, afraid that the conversation would set me back. He knew me, as a teenager, better than my parents and friends.

When I got to speak to Nicolosi the first time on the phone, he told me that he remembered me well and that he was surprised that I “had gone back in the homosexual direction. You really seemed to have the situation in hand." The conversation was short. He was with some clients so we decided to talk more calmly after a few days.

I called him and told him I was recording the conversation. “I'm recording it too,” he joked, “you know, in case I said 'Nicolosi said homosexuals are sick weirdos and they're perverts and they're all going to hell.'”
I giggled. He was as I remembered him: irreverent, warm. He told me he had been thinking about me since the first call. I asked him why, because he thought I “had things in hand,” I had never had a change in my sexual orientation.
Nicolosi told me that his techniques had developed: his patients now focused more on moments of sexual attraction rather than speaking generically about the causes of homosexuality. The therapy, he told me, has become more effective. But part of the reason it failed me, he said, was that I was stuck: There were no men I could bond with, and my parents didn't understand me. It was the same thing he had told me during my time at university.

What do you say about people who don't fit your model? “After almost 30 years of work, I can say that I have never met a single gay man who had a loving and respectful relationship with his father,” he says. I've heard it before.

As he talks, I think about all his talks about understanding the homosexual condition, what it feels like to be homosexual beyond Nicolosi's experience. For him, the change of sexual orientation in a person is a hypothetical matter. He has never experienced it firsthand. Only his patients had to face the failure of his ideas.

I quote Ryan accusing Nicolosi of destroying his family. Nicolosi says he doesn't remember Ryan. But he is defensive about taking any position of responsibility. “Regarding all these concerns that I have caused harm to people, where is the harm? We are currently treating 137 people. Over 30 years, don't you think there would be a ton of people who have been harmed?”
I asked him what he remembered about me. “I can visualize a little boy in his bedroom in a small town,” he tells me. “You wanted to talk about your loneliness, about the kids at school: you didn't have any friends. You were desperate to get out.”

He was trying to get me out to talk to him openly. He is the therapist and I am once again his patient. I'm reticent. I told him I no longer lived in Arizona.
“And I encourage you, right?” he asked me. “Honestly, Gabriel, I hope you don't see me as someone who made you feel worse, someone who never forced you to do or believe something about yourself that you didn't want.”

It's true that while I was in therapy, I didn't feel forced to believe in his therapy. I was never forced to believe in his theory. The damage came later, like a nuclear exposure, when I realized that my sexual orientation would not change. I could have told Nicolosi about my suicidal instincts, my time in the mental hospital.
I could have told him that my parents still don't understand me but that I've grown up now and put more than one safety cushion in my life. I could have told him that I married a man. But I knew it wouldn't do any good: I changed the moment I left therapy, but Nicolosi never changed.

For years I shared my innermost feelings with him. Now I want to keep them for myself.
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Original text: My So-Called Ex-Gay Life