August 28, 2023 • 46 mins
Through their spiritual mentors, Alana and Simon are introduced to Conversion Therapy. A deep dive into the psychological & theological theories behind this practice.
This episode contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Listener discretion is advised.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or
someone you know is in need of help, please contact
the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
After father Dave is reassigned, Alana gets even more involved
with her church, Saint Thom's. As Joyce remembers it, the
church invites a licensed therapist, a woman named Kate, to
offer low cost therapy to students. Alana, who's nineteen, eagerly
signs up.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
When I first met Kate, I was shaking. I was desperate.
I was nervous. She stared at me blankly, yet attentively.
I couldn't speak. I'm sorry, I'm so nervous. Don't be sorry.
I know it's hard. I'm a stranger. But she wasn't
(01:19):
a stranger. She had the aura of a mother, my mother.
I wanted her to help catch my tears and collect them,
keep them tucked away deep into her bosom. I felt
deep shame. I could barely get the words out I
(01:39):
struggle with same sex attraction. She asked, if God could
take away your same sex attraction, would you ask him to?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
From Tenderfoot TV, I'm Simon kent Fong and this is
Dear Alana, Part four Judo. I moved to New York
City after college to work at a Catholic media company
and Internet, a faith based NGO that lobbied at the
(02:14):
un Looking back, I was such a different person then,
but in some ways I haven't changed at all. I
was trying to find work that would help bring the
world closer to God. But the other reason I headed
to the Big Apple, the one I didn't say out loud,
was to find a therapist who could help me with
my same sex attractions. Unlike Alana, whose therapists kind of
(02:36):
fell into her lap through Saint Thom's, I had to
look a little harder. On the note that Father William
gave me when he told me these people will quote
fix you. He wrote down the name of a website.
That website was narth dot com. Which stood for the
National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. It was
(02:57):
the leading organization in the nineties and mid odts promoted
sexual orientation change efforts, what we now call conversion therapy.
What Father William didn't know was that I'd already been
to narth's website a thousand times before, I'd read every page.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We believe that homosexuality is a symptom of early childhood trauma.
We get the client to address those traumas and they
will experience a diminishment in their same sex attraction.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's Joseph Nicolosi, one of the founders of NARTH, who
I'll talk about later. Before I go any further, I
want to make it clear that all of my experiences
with this kind of therapy were self initiated. Not even
my parents pressured me to do it. And while obviously
I was influenced by my church, by the time Father
William told me to get help, I'd already gone through
(03:49):
dozens of websites and books on the subject on my own.
He merely confirmed what I was already determined to do
to be fixed, because now my vocation depended on it.
You see, I couldn't be a priest if I kept
having these tendencies. In two thousand and five, the Vatican
published its guidelines on seminary admissions. In it, they emphatically
(04:13):
said that those with deep seated homosexual tendencies should not
be admitted. Only if you grew out of this quote
transitory problem. Could you join in practice? Many gay men
lie and become priests anyways, But I didn't want to cheat.
I wanted to follow the Vatican guidelines and get over
this quote transitory problem. How is that going to happen?
(04:37):
Thankfully there was a solution. Conversion therapy. Conversion therapy refers
to the controversial practice of trying to change or convert
one's sexual orientation to go from gata strait or gay
to less gay. It can look like many different things, psychotherapy, healing, prayer,
even twelve steps, and it's not always blatantly.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
We're allowing people to be who they want to be.
We're not imposing, we're not forcing people to change. We're
just exploring.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Again, Joseph Nicolosi, using a free will argument to defend
the practice. When some people hear the term conversion therapy,
they may think of forced, gruesome practices like electroshock and lobotomies.
Those practices certainly existed, but conversion therapy today looks a
lot different, and both Alana and I pursued it to
(05:30):
follow what we felt was God's will.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
The reason I thought out therapy is because I need
to get this under control if I want to be
a nun or a wife.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Conversion therapy today is also a lot more common than
you'd think. An estimated seventy thousand youth in the US
will go through some form of conversion therapy before they
turn eighteen, And a big reason why it's still happening
is because, as you'll see for Alana and me, it
can be compelling to a young person who's desperate to change.
(06:03):
So it's two thousand and eight and I'm in New
York City. It's the middle of the Great Recession, and
I'd just saved up enough money to be able to
afford to see a therapist for the first time. But
who could help me? I couldn't just walk into any
therapist's office. I wanted to be fixed, not encouraged, and
I knew that most therapists would be affirming of my
(06:24):
sexual orientation and wouldn't agree to help me change it.
So I was kind of scared, what if a therapist
tried to steer me in a direction that went against
my faith? Luckily I found someone. He was the go
to Catholic therapist for conservative Catholics in the Tri State area.
Even Mother Teresa sent her nuns to see him. On
(06:45):
his website, he explicitly embraced the teachings of the Catholic
Church and also talked about the work of Narth in
one of his interviews. So he passed my litmus test.
I eagerly scheduled an appointment. In our first session, I
(07:05):
sat across from him in a worn leather armchair in
his dim Manhattan office. He was heavy set and in
his mid forties and spoke with a kind of Jersey confidence.
My palms were sweating. He asked me about my relationship
with my father. If I'd grown up with a strong
role model who rough housed with me and told me
I had what it took to be a man. No,
(07:28):
I said, my dad was your typical Asian dad, kind
of distant and strict, non confrontational, always busy with work.
He nodded. He asked me if I ever felt distant
around other boys growing up. Yes, I said, I'd been
bullied and didn't have many friends, boys or girls. He
(07:50):
asked me about my body and if I felt disconnected
from it in any way. Well, yeah, there were many
things I hated about my body. He then asked me
what I wanted. I don't want to have same sex
attraction anymore. Is this something you can help me with?
Speaker 5 (08:09):
He nodded.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The idea of treating homosexuality goes back well over one
hundred years. The original term homosexual was defined squarely as
a disease, and this idea that gay people were sick
in some way dominated the public consciousness well into the sixties.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
What Jimmy didn't know was that Ralph was sick, a
sickness that was not visible, like smallpox, but no less
dangerous and contagious, A sickness of the mind. You see,
Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate
relationship with members of their own sex.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
A dangerous and contagious sickness. With this fear in the air,
it's no surprise that in nineteen fifty two, the American
Psychiatrics so Uociation or the APA, listed homosexuality as well
a mental disorder. And what do you do with a
mental disorder, a sickness, a disease, you try to cure it.
(09:12):
So what am I supposed to do now? I'm so
d are you?
Speaker 7 (09:14):
You start masturbating with your homosexual image there, but at
that point of inevitability switch over to the female picture.
I mean, maybe nothing will happen, maybe you won't have
a climax, but you probably will, and I want.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
To know about it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Gay people became guinea pigs. Scientists experimented with everything from
shock and hormone therapies to testicular transplants, hysterectomies, and institutionalization.
Behavioral psychologists gave clients nausea inducing drugs while playing audio
of gay sex. They tried all kinds of things, but
the biggest influence on conversion therapy came at the turn
(09:52):
of the century from Sigmund Freud. In short, his theory
was that our psyches were shaped by our childhoods and
our parents, and his contemporaries were fascinated by the prospect
of using his psychoanalytic techniques to uncover how childhood traumas
and parenting patterns might hold the key to curing this disease.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
I do not believe that it is possible to produce
a homosexual if the father is a constructive father to
his son.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's Irving Bieber. Together with other New York psychotherapists like
Charles Sockerati's, he posited that homosexuality was caused by a
distant father and what he called a close binding mother.
Here he is in a nineteen sixty eight CBS News documentary.
Speaker 8 (10:37):
Doctor Charles Soccerreats is a New York psychoanalyst a clinical
assistant professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Here,
lecturing to a group of resident psychiatrists on homosexuality.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
I was wondering if you think that there any quotes
happy homosexuals. The fact that somebody is homosexual automatically rules
out the possibility that he will remain happy for long.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
In my opinion, the belief that homosexuality was a kind
of illness, compulsion, or parenting disaster dominated the public.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality.
The CBS News survey shows that two out of three
Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear. One
out of ten says hatred. A vast majority believe that
homosexuality is an illness, and this.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
View had a real impact on society. If you were
found out to be gay, you'd be fired from your job,
face interrogation and jail time, and denied entry into the
United States.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
The dilemma of the homosexual by the law, that is,
a criminal, shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society, a
displaced person.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
The cracks were beginning to form. By the late forties.
Research showed that homosexuality was far more common than previously thought,
and as the gay rights movement began to take off
alongside the growing consciousness of gay people in society, the
APA eventually removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders,
first partially in nineteen seventy four and then completely in
(12:10):
nineteen eighty seven, a few years after I was born.
For a deeper dive into the fascinating string of events
that led to this landmark decision, I recommend the documentary Cured,
as well as the episode titled eighty one Words from
This American Life. But conversion therapy wasn't just going to
go away soon. A new wave of conversion therapy research
(12:32):
and practice would begin a wave that would eventually come
for me. Alana's journals inspired me to dig up my
own notebooks. I'm looking at my notes from my therapy sessions.
I remember being such an A plus student that I
(12:54):
transcribed every session, sometimes sitting in the stairwell after my
appointment to write it all down so that I could
study it later. I begin my notebook with a prayer,
Dear Lord, this is my new workbook to work on
my SSA and the healing and recovery of my underlying issues.
(13:15):
SSA same sex attraction. It sounds very clinical, but that's
the point. For many Catholics and conservative Christians, same sex
attraction is the preferred word for homosexuality because other words
like gay are seen as reductive political labels used by
radical activists to hijack our identities. Instead, same sex attraction
(13:39):
describes a condition like psoriasis or depression, something a person
struggles with but doesn't fully identify as. When I first
heard the term SSA, I remember feeling relieved. These attractions
I was starting to have towards the same sex didn't
mean I was gay like those people on the news
who were underwear dancing at the Prime.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
I parayed.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Those people scared me. I wasn't gay like them, but
struggling with same sex attraction that fit better. A lot
of my early notes document my therapist's thoughts on the
importance of developmental milestones. Every boy needs to go through
certain stages when he's young, first looking up to a
(14:21):
strong and loving father and being told by that father
that he has what it takes to be a boy,
to be a friend, to play sports, etc. Then to fight,
to train, to test, to lead, then beauty and attraction
eventually to a woman, and lastly to be a wise
(14:44):
counselor what steps you missed out on you can't skip.
We must go back and experience those things. And my
relationship with my father played a central role in our sessions.
He asked me to think about the father I I
wished I had as a boy, that little boy inside
of me who longs for his dad. He's still there. Together,
(15:08):
my therapist and I will go and find that boy
and heal him. There was a lot I wished was
different about my dad. He was gruff and emotionally distant.
I was sensitive. We butted heads. I criticized him a lot.
He once locked me in the garage when I wouldn't
finish my supper. He was always working or sleeping. When
(15:30):
my therapist asked me if there was a moment growing
up when I felt the least connected to my dad,
one memory stuck out. When I was five or six,
my dad was obsessed with teaching me how to swim.
We signed up for parent child swim classes at the
community center, but I didn't want to go. It was cold,
it was one ore time, The change room smelled and
(15:52):
I would cry as we drove to the pool. When
it was time for the class to begin, I freaked out.
My dad commanded me to get into the water with him,
but I shook with fear and cried bitterly. I can't,
I want to go home. The more I cried, the
angrier he got his eyes burned with fire, and he'd
pull me into the pool. All I remember as I
(16:14):
entered the water was this primal fear, the sense that
I was going to die. I gripped onto my dad,
who pushed me away so that I could get used
to floating, but the panic took over, and I don't
know how long this went on for. When it was
all over and we were getting changed, my eyes raw
from tears and chlorine. My dad wouldn't talk to me.
(16:36):
His silence conveyed both embarrassment and frustration, and I dreaded
the following week when this would happen all over again.
You needed him to protect and encourage you, my therapist said,
but he didn't. This was a father wound, a wound
we must heal. It felt so good to be able
(16:58):
to talk about my childhood with some one, and all
of these ideas for my therapist connecting trauma to my
sexuality were really compelling to me. They weren't your typical
pray the gay away approaches, though many people still encounter those,
nor were they premised on the outdated idea that being
gay was a choice. Instead, these theories seemed really psychological
(17:21):
and appeared to map directly to my life. The person
most responsible for bringing a level of sophistication to conversion
therapy was this woman named Elizabeth Moberly. In the seventies,
while all the drama at the apadlisting homosexuality was going on, Moberly,
(17:43):
a quiet, bookish woman who had just graduated from Oxford,
decided to do some research on homosexuality. A lot of
her friends in the theology department were gay and she
wanted to better understand them. Here she is speaking at
a nineteen ninety eight conference organized by Fishnet Ministries.
Speaker 9 (18:01):
I believe that homosexuality derives not from genetic or hormonal causes.
I believe it is linked with difficulties in the early
relationship with the same sex parents. The parental identification is
(18:22):
particularly conspicuous in a lesbian relationship. Typically there is a
search for a mother figure, even if this is unconscious,
so really the lesbian partnership has the character of a
mother daughter relationship.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Moberly cites this unresolved attachment to mom and dad as
the underlying need that the homosexual is subconsciously trying to
resolve those unmet love needs. She thinks get transferred to
a same sex partner that the child will seek out
later in adulthood. The way my therapist described it to
me was that at puberty, my need for my dad
(18:59):
got a writis sized, but she goes further.
Speaker 9 (19:02):
Same sex love is not a deviation from normality, but
an attempt to resume and continue the normal developmental process.
It's not an abnormal sexual drive, it's a normal developmental drive.
A reparative drive, a reparative attempt to make good developmental deficits.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
She theorizes that by finding a same sex lover, the
homosexual person is subconsciously repairing a deficit in same sex
love that they never got from their parent, like a
body trying to heal itself. Her remember being drawn to
Moberly's reparative theory because she seemed to be suggesting that
my attractions weren't bad. In fact, Moberly spends a good
(19:51):
part of her talk scolding religious people for demonizing same
sex attractions that she says are at their root perfectly valid,
and then she's as something counterintuitive.
Speaker 9 (20:02):
Same sex love is not the problem, but the solution.
Not the problem, but the solution. I really do think
it's essential to get that person into therapy where they
can get a more intensified and focused experience of same
sex relating with somebody who is already fulfilled and secure
(20:25):
in their own same sex heterosexual identity.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Moberly's belief is that the way to heal the same
sex love deficit is through same sex connection, the non
Eurotic kind like when we were kids. By working with
a straight therapist of the same sex. The homosexual can
be healed of these mother or father wounds, have their
childhood needs met, and naturally become straight. At the time,
(20:53):
this all sounded plausible to me. Her theory seemed to
explain so much of my childhood. I didn't have a
great relationship with my dad, and others who since extended
Moberly's work have brought in the childhood trauma theory to
include not just the role of parents, but also peers.
Given that I was bullied for so long on the
schoolyard that totally checked out too. I never questioned whether
(21:16):
maybe my experiences were actually quite common for a lot
of kids. I was just happy to have an explanation
for my SSA, and by working with my therapist, I
was determined to heal these wounds and resume my developmental
journey towards heterosexuality. At the end of Elizabeth Moberly's talk,
she takes questions from the audience.
Speaker 7 (21:38):
My question is granted that I really believe the whole
framework and the whole everything you've been telling us. This
makes such sense psychologically, But I want to know what
are the bottom line results. How many people can you
give us? Percentages? Can you give us figures. Can you
give us some kind of hope? But no matter.
Speaker 9 (22:01):
I can give you a hope, but I can't give
you a head count.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Sorry, I'm loving for I love the idea, but I
need the results.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
You see, I'm screaming for g Bill.
Speaker 9 (22:12):
You go out and use these principles, and you come
back and you give me your headcount.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
The reason Moberley can't answer this question is because she
was never a clinical practitioner. She had never tested out
her reparative theory on actual patients, but others soon would.
In the late eighties, once homosexuality was no longer officially
(22:45):
considered a mental disorder, practitioners who'd spent their careers trying
to treat homosexuality were outraged. They called the APA's decision
a quote destructive and blind pursuit of political correctness, and
so Charles Charides, a Catholic, and his colleagues Joseph Nicolosi,
also Catholic, who you heard at the beginning of this episode,
(23:07):
and Benjamin Kaufman, who was Jewish. The three of them
got together and started NARTH, the National Association for Research
and Therapy of Homosexuality. They published their own research and
started to bring Moberly's ideas into clinical practice. The establishment
of NARTH injected new life into the conversion therapy movement.
(23:28):
Joseph Nicolosi would appear on news shows and Doctor Phil
Partner with Focus on the Family and advise Catholic and
Christian ministries on all things gay coming up.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
He claims he's reversed homosexual tendencies and hundreds of his
patients through therapy. I have the belief that all people
are heterosexual in their nature, and that the particular trauma
creates the homosexual condition.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
And they came up with a term that described their techniques.
They called it reparative therapy. You can see now where
that comes from. In fact, Elizabeth Moberly would later claim
that Joseph Nicolosi took credit for her ideas and they
publicly feuded over it. In the literature from the nineties onwards,
it was this kind of reparative therapy that captivated many
(24:13):
religious therapists like mine, eager to combine church teaching with psychology.
Since I had SSA, I clearly missed out on the
rights of passage that fathers normally give their sons, the
sorts of interactions that secured a sense of masculinity, so
(24:35):
my therapists would be stepping in to play that role.
He would become a sort of surrogate father to me.
He said, I'm intelligent, articulate, blessed with many artistic gifts,
and these are good, but we need to work on
my masculinity. For the next year, my therapist would teach
(24:56):
me about how men move their bodies and take up space,
how men insalt each other. As a way of bonding.
We practiced what he called verbal judo so that I
could learn how to spar with words and insult other men.
We role played situations from my childhood where I was
bullied and he had me fight back and tell my
bullies off. It wasn't easy, and honestly it felt a
(25:17):
little awkward at times, but I took it all very seriously.
There was no shortcut to growth. Looks like we had
a few months focused on inner child healing and this
is a letter I wrote to myself as my inner child.
Dear big Simon, I want to tell you about a
(25:37):
big hurt. For the longest time, I felt insecure and
not confident. Playing red ass at recess. That's a game
we used to play in elementary school where we'd have
to throw a tennis ball against a wall, and if
you missed, you'd get a letter until it's spelt red ass,
at which point you'd lose and have a ball whipped
at your ass. I always dreaded throwing the ball from
(25:58):
far away because I can't throw that. I remember running
to the wall to not get a letter, and then
I slipped on a patch of ice and smashed my
face against the brick wall. My glasses were destroyed and
I was bleeding for weeks. I had a nasty scab
on the right side of my face, and the other
boys teased me even more. I remember feeling so alone
(26:21):
and sad and so numb. No one cared. I wanted
to hide at home. I think this was the last
straw that made me give up on ever fitting in.
From now on, I just have to figure it out
by myself. To repair some of these same sex masculinity
(26:43):
wounds around sports, my therapist encouraged me to take up
a sport. I chose judo, maybe because of all the
verbal judo we were practicing, but also because I thought
it looked cool, so I gave it a shot. I
showed up at the dojo, and they paired me up
with some went at my skill level, which for me
meant the eleven year old boy or the middle aged woman.
(27:04):
Those were my options. Week after week, I'd get thrown
on the mat, get up, and get thrown again. It's
something you have to get used to in judo. One
time I dislocated my toe. Some days I'd throw up
from nerves. And the guys there, they were like comically attractive,
Like why are all the men in judo so good looking?
(27:26):
So he says, when the attraction comes, don't fight it,
accept it. There's something behind it. Take a pause, and
instead of freaking out, ask yourself why. What are the
hidden immediate thoughts that come to mind? How do I
feel about myself? What do I believe about this person?
Do I feel small and weak? Do I think he
(27:48):
has a better body. My therapist called this the exotic
becomes erotic theory. Because I was so cut off from
my masculinity, I saw men as the other and he said,
contributed to their eroticization since we're naturally attracted to opposites.
So I had to demystify these men by confronting them platonically,
(28:09):
especially the ones I felt attracted to. Remember, same sex
love is the solution, not the problem. There was this
one guy, Patrick, probably in his thirties, who I felt
extremely attracted to. This is an entry about Patrick. It
took a risk, but I started talking with Patrick, asking
him where he lives. He offered me a ride. I accepted.
(28:35):
Once we started talking, it broke the ice, and what
I thought that he thinks I'm a loser just didn't
seem true. In the car, he said he was into
computers as a kid, but didn't stay in it and
regrets it. He doesn't even know how to download pictures.
He's the leader of his police squad, climbing towers, etc.
He wants to retire in five years then open a
(28:57):
bar or a hot dog stand. So now the mystique
is broken. He's a man trying to live just like me,
and he seems to like me too. He called me
brother as I was leaving, Lord, thank you for arranging this.
I excitedly told my therapist about all of this, and
(29:17):
he was overjoyed. He said that this guy wouldn't affirm
me as a brother if he didn't see masculinity in me.
The therapy was working with time. I believed my attractions
would go away. September eighteenth, two thousand and eight, I
asked my therapist how am I progressing. He said, you
(29:40):
have a high probability to change between one and five years.
Your ssay is a symptom of a deeper problem. You
are a heterosexual man with a homosexual problem. He told
the story of one of his clients who began therapy
five years ago. Today he's dating. The idea of dating
women made me light headed and kind of nauseous. I'd
(30:05):
asked women out before earlier in college, when I was
trying to see if maybe I could make it work.
Usually we started out as friends, but whenever we'd get
too close or I felt like she was falling for me,
I'd back out. At the time, in the Catholic circles
I ran in, this was seen as virtuous behavior, a
sign of sexual purity. Restraint was holy. All that would
(30:29):
be required for me to change within one to five
years would be to grow into my masculinity. So I
returned every week, hopeful that my day of healing would come.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Kate said that my thoughts and attractions were not bad,
but if I acted on them, my soul would start
to wither away. They said I was making too big
a deal out of it, that it wasn't my true identity.
It was only a small part of me. It was
just a disorder. I was so confused.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I'm with Joyce flipping through Alana's journals. It's uncanny how
Alana is reiterating the same conversion therapy talking points that
I got from my therapist. I ask Joyce if she
knew about Alana's therapist, Kate, and what was going on.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
I remember I went to I met Kate.
Speaker 10 (31:22):
I went to the student center where all these kids
would meet with Kate and sign up and they paid
very short amount, but they paid.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
You know you did.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, she's Catholic therapist. Went to Institute for Psychological Sciences,
which is this Catholic psychology program that is run by
it started by a religious supporter. About the Legionarias of.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Christ and their anti ka I mean, they're.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
They're part of this like cluster of many different institutions
and organizations that are faithful to the teachings of the Church.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, their training and their how they are told to
counsel people will be within those frameworks. It's hard for
me to answer her with a definitive yes. Here because
the Catholic Church doesn't see itself as anti gay people.
It sees itself as anti gay sex, which it considers
an elective choice, a sin, something separate from the person.
(32:28):
Hate the sin, not the sinner. This is why so
much of the guidance I got in the church was
framed as protecting me from going to Hell, in the
same way that a parent would see denying their child
candy for breakfast as the most loving thing to do.
But as I see the confusion that this kind of
council had on Alana, I begin to wonder if maybe
(32:50):
she was right to feel like this didn't add up,
that compartmentalizing our sexuality in this way might be what's
actually wrong. When Joyce first met Alana's therapist, Kate, she
remembers Kate reiterating that as a therapist, she stands by
every teaching of the Catholic Church. But Joyce clearly had
(33:11):
no idea what that implied and didn't know about the
messages Alana was getting in therapy. When I was looking
for a therapist, I knew that faithful to the teachings
of the Catholic Church was code for a conservative therapist
who would support my efforts to change my sexuality. It
was a dog whistle that signaled that they'd likely be
open to conversion therapy theories. In the summer of twenty ten,
(33:41):
I went home to visit my family. We did the
usual family barbecues with my grandma and cousins. My younger cousin, Vivian,
was home from college for the summer, and we took
a car ride just me and her to pick something
up from the store. We were always close and joked around.
She was the comedian of the family, but that day
in the car, she was unusually quiet and kind of sullen.
(34:04):
I looked over from the steering wheel and asked her,
what was up. Nothing, She said, come on, tell me
what's going on. We pulled into the driveway, and that's
when something happened that I was not expecting. She came
out to me. I stopped in my tracks. Although her
news wasn't a huge surprise to me, I knew I
(34:26):
needed to say something, but how I had the opportunity
to be vulnerable with her in that moment, to share
with her my own struggle, but I was too ashamed
to admit it. I had worked so hard to get
to where I was with my therapy. I was so
close to being fixed that the thought of me opening
up to her and coming out was not on the table.
(34:48):
I chose my words carefully. Vivian, you do know that
you don't have to be gay, right She looked at
me and tears began to fall down her cheeks. Vivian,
there are resources out there. From what I've read, homosexuality
is a developmental delay caused by some sort of childhood trauma.
(35:10):
You don't have to go down the route that the
gay activists want you to go down. There are other
options like therapy. Vivian turned to look out the window.
She wiped her face, and then she said something I'll
never forget. You will never understand what it's like to
(35:31):
be me. You can go get married and have kids
and live your normal life, but I can never have that,
and you'll never know what that's like. She got out
of the car and slammed the door. Everything I'd been
(35:58):
working on with my therapy culminated in him suggesting one
day that I bring my dad in for a joint session.
My parents have always been supportive of me when I
first came out to them. I brought them to a
weekend conference organized by Exodus International, the largest Christian umbrella
network for conversion therapy. We attended lectures and purchased all
(36:19):
the books at the book table. So when I told
my dad that this special session with my therapist could
be a major breakthrough for my healing, the key that
unlocked everything, he booked a plane ticket right away. I
felt nervous and excited. This was my chance to heal
my father wounds and get one step closer towards my goal.
(36:41):
On the day of our appointment, we walked up to
the building together, pushed the heavy metal doors, and went inside. Okay,
mister Fung, thank you for coming, my therapist said, So,
I'd like for Simon to start off by expressing how
he feels about your relationship when he was a child.
I was prepared. My therapist and I had worked for
(37:02):
weeks on my father wounds. So I told my dad
what was on my mind. How he never supported me
in the ways I needed when I was bullied at school,
how abandoned i'd felt in the swimming pool, how I
often felt caught in the middle when he and mom
would fight. It was hard and several times I saw
my dad WinCE. Then my therapist invited him to respond.
(37:24):
My dad had his head down and was thoughtful for
a few seconds, and then he spoke in a way
I'd never heard before. He was precise and direct and gentle.
He said that he knows that he did so many
things wrong, that there were more mistakes that I hadn't mentioned.
He said he felt so sorry and so bad and
(37:46):
had no excuses for any of the pain I went through.
He said he was working on all of this, working
on himself.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I looked at my therapist to facilitate the rest of
the conversation. Was there more to dig up? Maybe I
could do a verbal judo match with my dad or
have my inner child speak to him. But my therapist
had his jaw open, and when he turned to me,
he said, Wow, I'm floored. In all my years of counseling,
(38:15):
I've never seen such humility, honesty, and courage. He said
he could only pray for some of these qualities in himself.
He said, I had an amazing dad. We ended that
session and my therapist said that further father son appointments
wouldn't be necessary. As I sent my dad off to
(38:36):
catch his flight. I was grateful for his honesty and remorse,
but I was also kind of disappointed. I thought that
there would be more to our sessions, that there would
be more to process about our relationship. After what I'd
hoped would be a breakthrough, I didn't feel any different,
but a cure still had to be possible. If this
didn't work, what was I going to do? How would
(38:59):
I follow god vocation for me? How would I cope?
I was determined to be a conversion therapy success story,
to not be gay, to be fixed, and over the
next five years, I would seek out even more kinds
of conversion therapy, from a camp in central Virginia where
we re enacted scenes from my schoolyard in order to
help me process my childhood bullying, to group therapy where
(39:22):
we deconstructed our sexual fantasies. There wasn't anything I wasn't
willing to try in order to find that silver bullet.
Alana was also willing to try anything. From her records,
we know that she belonged to a Catholic support group
for people with SSA. I remember hearing about this group
growing up. They'd meet regularly in church basements and Somehow
(39:44):
the timing never worked out for me to go to
their meetings, which were structured around treating homosexuality as an addiction,
another popular theory. As the stigma around homosexuality began to
fade after the APA's decision, Catholic psychologists started professional groups
like NARTH, and Catholic clergy started ministries. Father John Harvey,
(40:05):
a moral theyologian who was teaching in DC at the time,
founded what would become the largest and only Vatican approved
Catholic ministry for the same sex attracted, a ministry known
as Courage International.
Speaker 11 (40:18):
It's an organization for the purpose of helping people those
same sex attractions to lead chase lives. And we use
these tall steps of AA with permission of them. So
it's the same kind of program as the dynamics is
the same.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
On the Saint Thom's community bookshelf, the two books about
homosexuality are by Father John Harvey. In his interviews, Father
Harvey insists that his group Courage is not therapy, it's
a ministry. It's the Church ministering to the individual. But
the more I listened to him talk about his books,
like in this interview a year before his death on
(40:54):
the EWTN Bookmark talk show. The more I'm not so sure.
Speaker 11 (40:58):
That wonderful chatter on one of the greatest psychologists in
this subject. Her name is Elizabeth Moberly. He's been quoted
all over the place by Protestants, Catholic Jews. So I
got hold of that and I the even visited her
over in England. She knew every word I put down,
and every word here is her words. You know, I'm
(41:20):
just summarizing her thinking.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
His books contain Moberly's theories essentially verbatim. He rhymes off
her theories.
Speaker 11 (41:29):
Relationships for parents, teenage, relationships with peers, you know, an
overweening mother. These are all very important factors.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The host asks him whether people can truly be cured
from same sex attraction?
Speaker 11 (41:45):
Well, must they live with it for the rest of
their lives?
Speaker 7 (41:48):
And what about we've heard about this, I think Nickelosi
usually with reparative therapy.
Speaker 11 (41:54):
Reparative therapy is a good thing. It really flows out
the teaching of Elizabeth Moberley. That's the idea that if
something's wrong, you can repair it, and what it was
wrong is an attachment to the sex of same sex attraction.
You can work your way out of it.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
You know, I can work my way out of this.
I told myself I had to. How else would I
become a priest. That guy's not hot. He's just a
reflection of my underdeveloped masculinity. And it's just a temptation anyways,
something I can learn to disassociate from. Or is it
more like a disease or maybe an addiction like gambling
(42:32):
or alcohol. I was holding all of this in at once,
and I think Alana must have felt this way too
sophomore year.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
The reason I thought out therapy is because I need
to get this under control. If I want to be
a nun or a wife, a lesbian relationship is not
an option for me.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
On September twenty ninth, twenty sixteen, right as Alana starting
her senior year year of college, a police car shows
up at the chenhouse. Alana's upstairs and Sophia, her younger sister,
here's the door.
Speaker 12 (43:08):
I answered the door. I see a cop, Alana's friend
at the time, and a nun, and I was like,
what is going on?
Speaker 13 (43:20):
And they were like, we're really worried about your sister.
Speaker 10 (43:24):
We need you to go get her right now. And
I was like, what could possibly be going on. I
was like, this is such a random group of people.
I had no idea. I was like, this is so weird.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
She goes upstairs to get Alana.
Speaker 13 (43:38):
Her eyes are so red and I'm clearly crying, and
I brought her down and I was like, they're like,
we need to take you to the hospital now.
Speaker 10 (43:46):
She kept saying over and over, She's like, I don't
want to leave you.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I don't want to leave you. Just hours before this,
Alana had told her friend some disturbing news. She had
planned to kill her herself in the adoration chapel at
Saint Thom's. The police rush her immediately to the hospital.
Speaker 5 (44:07):
I will follow you, follow you wherever you might go.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Next time on Dear Alana, it was like a.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Big deal at the channel House that she was going
on the state and he picked her up and like
we had all met him.
Speaker 12 (44:25):
He's super nice, he's handsome.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
How Alana's college community deepens her convictions.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
I will follow you ever since you touched my hand.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Dear Alana was created, hosted, and written by me Simon
Kentfong and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association
with a Slept Audio and the Center for Independent Documentary.
It was produced by Laurie Puliski, who also composed the music.
Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Our
supervising producer is Tracy leeds Kaplan. Additional music by Makeup
(45:06):
and Vanity Set sales and distribution by iHeartMedia. Our voice
actor is Alana Rabor and our credit song I Will
Follow You is Bye to Loose. Show notes and resources
can be found on our website Dearlana dot com. If
you enjoyed this episode, please take time to follow the show,
rate and review various.
Speaker 5 (45:26):
Notion toud Monton So High, Keep Me Away, Away.
Speaker 12 (45:37):
From the Long.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Dear Alana is an eight part series released weekly. If
you can't wait until next week, subscribe to tenderfoot Plus
so you can binge the entire series right now, ad free.
Head to Apple Podcasts or tenorfoot plus dot com to
subscribe now
Dear Alana is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to binge the whole season right now,
subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on
Apple Podcasts. You also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
For more information, check out the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or
someone you know is in need of help, please contact
the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
After father Dave is reassigned, Alana gets even more involved
with her church, Saint Thom's. As Joyce remembers it, the
church invites a licensed therapist, a woman named Kate, to
offer low cost therapy to students. Alana, who's nineteen, eagerly
signs up.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
When I first met Kate, I was shaking. I was desperate.
I was nervous. She stared at me blankly, yet attentively.
I couldn't speak. I'm sorry, I'm so nervous. Don't be sorry.
I know it's hard. I'm a stranger. But she wasn't
(01:19):
a stranger. She had the aura of a mother, my mother.
I wanted her to help catch my tears and collect them,
keep them tucked away deep into her bosom. I felt
deep shame. I could barely get the words out I
(01:39):
struggle with same sex attraction. She asked, if God could
take away your same sex attraction, would you ask him to?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
From Tenderfoot TV, I'm Simon kent Fong and this is
Dear Alana, Part four Judo. I moved to New York
City after college to work at a Catholic media company
and Internet, a faith based NGO that lobbied at the
(02:14):
un Looking back, I was such a different person then,
but in some ways I haven't changed at all. I
was trying to find work that would help bring the
world closer to God. But the other reason I headed
to the Big Apple, the one I didn't say out loud,
was to find a therapist who could help me with
my same sex attractions. Unlike Alana, whose therapists kind of
(02:36):
fell into her lap through Saint Thom's, I had to
look a little harder. On the note that Father William
gave me when he told me these people will quote
fix you. He wrote down the name of a website.
That website was narth dot com. Which stood for the
National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. It was
(02:57):
the leading organization in the nineties and mid odts promoted
sexual orientation change efforts, what we now call conversion therapy.
What Father William didn't know was that I'd already been
to narth's website a thousand times before, I'd read every page.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We believe that homosexuality is a symptom of early childhood trauma.
We get the client to address those traumas and they
will experience a diminishment in their same sex attraction.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's Joseph Nicolosi, one of the founders of NARTH, who
I'll talk about later. Before I go any further, I
want to make it clear that all of my experiences
with this kind of therapy were self initiated. Not even
my parents pressured me to do it. And while obviously
I was influenced by my church, by the time Father
William told me to get help, I'd already gone through
(03:49):
dozens of websites and books on the subject on my own.
He merely confirmed what I was already determined to do
to be fixed, because now my vocation depended on it.
You see, I couldn't be a priest if I kept
having these tendencies. In two thousand and five, the Vatican
published its guidelines on seminary admissions. In it, they emphatically
(04:13):
said that those with deep seated homosexual tendencies should not
be admitted. Only if you grew out of this quote
transitory problem. Could you join in practice? Many gay men
lie and become priests anyways, But I didn't want to cheat.
I wanted to follow the Vatican guidelines and get over
this quote transitory problem. How is that going to happen?
(04:37):
Thankfully there was a solution. Conversion therapy. Conversion therapy refers
to the controversial practice of trying to change or convert
one's sexual orientation to go from gata strait or gay
to less gay. It can look like many different things, psychotherapy, healing, prayer,
even twelve steps, and it's not always blatantly.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
We're allowing people to be who they want to be.
We're not imposing, we're not forcing people to change. We're
just exploring.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Again, Joseph Nicolosi, using a free will argument to defend
the practice. When some people hear the term conversion therapy,
they may think of forced, gruesome practices like electroshock and lobotomies.
Those practices certainly existed, but conversion therapy today looks a
lot different, and both Alana and I pursued it to
(05:30):
follow what we felt was God's will.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
The reason I thought out therapy is because I need
to get this under control if I want to be
a nun or a wife.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Conversion therapy today is also a lot more common than
you'd think. An estimated seventy thousand youth in the US
will go through some form of conversion therapy before they
turn eighteen, And a big reason why it's still happening
is because, as you'll see for Alana and me, it
can be compelling to a young person who's desperate to change.
(06:03):
So it's two thousand and eight and I'm in New
York City. It's the middle of the Great Recession, and
I'd just saved up enough money to be able to
afford to see a therapist for the first time. But
who could help me? I couldn't just walk into any
therapist's office. I wanted to be fixed, not encouraged, and
I knew that most therapists would be affirming of my
(06:24):
sexual orientation and wouldn't agree to help me change it.
So I was kind of scared, what if a therapist
tried to steer me in a direction that went against
my faith? Luckily I found someone. He was the go
to Catholic therapist for conservative Catholics in the Tri State area.
Even Mother Teresa sent her nuns to see him. On
(06:45):
his website, he explicitly embraced the teachings of the Catholic
Church and also talked about the work of Narth in
one of his interviews. So he passed my litmus test.
I eagerly scheduled an appointment. In our first session, I
(07:05):
sat across from him in a worn leather armchair in
his dim Manhattan office. He was heavy set and in
his mid forties and spoke with a kind of Jersey confidence.
My palms were sweating. He asked me about my relationship
with my father. If I'd grown up with a strong
role model who rough housed with me and told me
I had what it took to be a man. No,
(07:28):
I said, my dad was your typical Asian dad, kind
of distant and strict, non confrontational, always busy with work.
He nodded. He asked me if I ever felt distant
around other boys growing up. Yes, I said, I'd been
bullied and didn't have many friends, boys or girls. He
(07:50):
asked me about my body and if I felt disconnected
from it in any way. Well, yeah, there were many
things I hated about my body. He then asked me
what I wanted. I don't want to have same sex
attraction anymore. Is this something you can help me with?
Speaker 5 (08:09):
He nodded.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The idea of treating homosexuality goes back well over one
hundred years. The original term homosexual was defined squarely as
a disease, and this idea that gay people were sick
in some way dominated the public consciousness well into the sixties.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
What Jimmy didn't know was that Ralph was sick, a
sickness that was not visible, like smallpox, but no less
dangerous and contagious, A sickness of the mind. You see,
Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate
relationship with members of their own sex.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
A dangerous and contagious sickness. With this fear in the air,
it's no surprise that in nineteen fifty two, the American
Psychiatrics so Uociation or the APA, listed homosexuality as well
a mental disorder. And what do you do with a
mental disorder, a sickness, a disease, you try to cure it.
(09:12):
So what am I supposed to do now? I'm so
d are you?
Speaker 7 (09:14):
You start masturbating with your homosexual image there, but at
that point of inevitability switch over to the female picture.
I mean, maybe nothing will happen, maybe you won't have
a climax, but you probably will, and I want.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
To know about it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Gay people became guinea pigs. Scientists experimented with everything from
shock and hormone therapies to testicular transplants, hysterectomies, and institutionalization.
Behavioral psychologists gave clients nausea inducing drugs while playing audio
of gay sex. They tried all kinds of things, but
the biggest influence on conversion therapy came at the turn
(09:52):
of the century from Sigmund Freud. In short, his theory
was that our psyches were shaped by our childhoods and
our parents, and his contemporaries were fascinated by the prospect
of using his psychoanalytic techniques to uncover how childhood traumas
and parenting patterns might hold the key to curing this disease.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
I do not believe that it is possible to produce
a homosexual if the father is a constructive father to
his son.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's Irving Bieber. Together with other New York psychotherapists like
Charles Sockerati's, he posited that homosexuality was caused by a
distant father and what he called a close binding mother.
Here he is in a nineteen sixty eight CBS News documentary.
Speaker 8 (10:37):
Doctor Charles Soccerreats is a New York psychoanalyst a clinical
assistant professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. Here,
lecturing to a group of resident psychiatrists on homosexuality.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
I was wondering if you think that there any quotes
happy homosexuals. The fact that somebody is homosexual automatically rules
out the possibility that he will remain happy for long.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
In my opinion, the belief that homosexuality was a kind
of illness, compulsion, or parenting disaster dominated the public.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality.
The CBS News survey shows that two out of three
Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear. One
out of ten says hatred. A vast majority believe that
homosexuality is an illness, and this.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
View had a real impact on society. If you were
found out to be gay, you'd be fired from your job,
face interrogation and jail time, and denied entry into the
United States.
Speaker 8 (11:36):
The dilemma of the homosexual by the law, that is,
a criminal, shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society, a
displaced person.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
The cracks were beginning to form. By the late forties.
Research showed that homosexuality was far more common than previously thought,
and as the gay rights movement began to take off
alongside the growing consciousness of gay people in society, the
APA eventually removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders,
first partially in nineteen seventy four and then completely in
(12:10):
nineteen eighty seven, a few years after I was born.
For a deeper dive into the fascinating string of events
that led to this landmark decision, I recommend the documentary Cured,
as well as the episode titled eighty one Words from
This American Life. But conversion therapy wasn't just going to
go away soon. A new wave of conversion therapy research
(12:32):
and practice would begin a wave that would eventually come
for me. Alana's journals inspired me to dig up my
own notebooks. I'm looking at my notes from my therapy sessions.
I remember being such an A plus student that I
(12:54):
transcribed every session, sometimes sitting in the stairwell after my
appointment to write it all down so that I could
study it later. I begin my notebook with a prayer,
Dear Lord, this is my new workbook to work on
my SSA and the healing and recovery of my underlying issues.
(13:15):
SSA same sex attraction. It sounds very clinical, but that's
the point. For many Catholics and conservative Christians, same sex
attraction is the preferred word for homosexuality because other words
like gay are seen as reductive political labels used by
radical activists to hijack our identities. Instead, same sex attraction
(13:39):
describes a condition like psoriasis or depression, something a person
struggles with but doesn't fully identify as. When I first
heard the term SSA, I remember feeling relieved. These attractions
I was starting to have towards the same sex didn't
mean I was gay like those people on the news
who were underwear dancing at the Prime.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
I parayed.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Those people scared me. I wasn't gay like them, but
struggling with same sex attraction that fit better. A lot
of my early notes document my therapist's thoughts on the
importance of developmental milestones. Every boy needs to go through
certain stages when he's young, first looking up to a
(14:21):
strong and loving father and being told by that father
that he has what it takes to be a boy,
to be a friend, to play sports, etc. Then to fight,
to train, to test, to lead, then beauty and attraction
eventually to a woman, and lastly to be a wise
(14:44):
counselor what steps you missed out on you can't skip.
We must go back and experience those things. And my
relationship with my father played a central role in our sessions.
He asked me to think about the father I I
wished I had as a boy, that little boy inside
of me who longs for his dad. He's still there. Together,
(15:08):
my therapist and I will go and find that boy
and heal him. There was a lot I wished was
different about my dad. He was gruff and emotionally distant.
I was sensitive. We butted heads. I criticized him a lot.
He once locked me in the garage when I wouldn't
finish my supper. He was always working or sleeping. When
(15:30):
my therapist asked me if there was a moment growing
up when I felt the least connected to my dad,
one memory stuck out. When I was five or six,
my dad was obsessed with teaching me how to swim.
We signed up for parent child swim classes at the
community center, but I didn't want to go. It was cold,
it was one ore time, The change room smelled and
(15:52):
I would cry as we drove to the pool. When
it was time for the class to begin, I freaked out.
My dad commanded me to get into the water with him,
but I shook with fear and cried bitterly. I can't,
I want to go home. The more I cried, the
angrier he got his eyes burned with fire, and he'd
pull me into the pool. All I remember as I
(16:14):
entered the water was this primal fear, the sense that
I was going to die. I gripped onto my dad,
who pushed me away so that I could get used
to floating, but the panic took over, and I don't
know how long this went on for. When it was
all over and we were getting changed, my eyes raw
from tears and chlorine. My dad wouldn't talk to me.
(16:36):
His silence conveyed both embarrassment and frustration, and I dreaded
the following week when this would happen all over again.
You needed him to protect and encourage you, my therapist said,
but he didn't. This was a father wound, a wound
we must heal. It felt so good to be able
(16:58):
to talk about my childhood with some one, and all
of these ideas for my therapist connecting trauma to my
sexuality were really compelling to me. They weren't your typical
pray the gay away approaches, though many people still encounter those,
nor were they premised on the outdated idea that being
gay was a choice. Instead, these theories seemed really psychological
(17:21):
and appeared to map directly to my life. The person
most responsible for bringing a level of sophistication to conversion
therapy was this woman named Elizabeth Moberly. In the seventies,
while all the drama at the apadlisting homosexuality was going on, Moberly,
(17:43):
a quiet, bookish woman who had just graduated from Oxford,
decided to do some research on homosexuality. A lot of
her friends in the theology department were gay and she
wanted to better understand them. Here she is speaking at
a nineteen ninety eight conference organized by Fishnet Ministries.
Speaker 9 (18:01):
I believe that homosexuality derives not from genetic or hormonal causes.
I believe it is linked with difficulties in the early
relationship with the same sex parents. The parental identification is
(18:22):
particularly conspicuous in a lesbian relationship. Typically there is a
search for a mother figure, even if this is unconscious,
so really the lesbian partnership has the character of a
mother daughter relationship.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Moberly cites this unresolved attachment to mom and dad as
the underlying need that the homosexual is subconsciously trying to
resolve those unmet love needs. She thinks get transferred to
a same sex partner that the child will seek out
later in adulthood. The way my therapist described it to
me was that at puberty, my need for my dad
(18:59):
got a writis sized, but she goes further.
Speaker 9 (19:02):
Same sex love is not a deviation from normality, but
an attempt to resume and continue the normal developmental process.
It's not an abnormal sexual drive, it's a normal developmental drive.
A reparative drive, a reparative attempt to make good developmental deficits.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
She theorizes that by finding a same sex lover, the
homosexual person is subconsciously repairing a deficit in same sex
love that they never got from their parent, like a
body trying to heal itself. Her remember being drawn to
Moberly's reparative theory because she seemed to be suggesting that
my attractions weren't bad. In fact, Moberly spends a good
(19:51):
part of her talk scolding religious people for demonizing same
sex attractions that she says are at their root perfectly valid,
and then she's as something counterintuitive.
Speaker 9 (20:02):
Same sex love is not the problem, but the solution.
Not the problem, but the solution. I really do think
it's essential to get that person into therapy where they
can get a more intensified and focused experience of same
sex relating with somebody who is already fulfilled and secure
(20:25):
in their own same sex heterosexual identity.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Moberly's belief is that the way to heal the same
sex love deficit is through same sex connection, the non
Eurotic kind like when we were kids. By working with
a straight therapist of the same sex. The homosexual can
be healed of these mother or father wounds, have their
childhood needs met, and naturally become straight. At the time,
(20:53):
this all sounded plausible to me. Her theory seemed to
explain so much of my childhood. I didn't have a
great relationship with my dad, and others who since extended
Moberly's work have brought in the childhood trauma theory to
include not just the role of parents, but also peers.
Given that I was bullied for so long on the
schoolyard that totally checked out too. I never questioned whether
(21:16):
maybe my experiences were actually quite common for a lot
of kids. I was just happy to have an explanation
for my SSA, and by working with my therapist, I
was determined to heal these wounds and resume my developmental
journey towards heterosexuality. At the end of Elizabeth Moberly's talk,
she takes questions from the audience.
Speaker 7 (21:38):
My question is granted that I really believe the whole
framework and the whole everything you've been telling us. This
makes such sense psychologically, But I want to know what
are the bottom line results. How many people can you
give us? Percentages? Can you give us figures. Can you
give us some kind of hope? But no matter.
Speaker 9 (22:01):
I can give you a hope, but I can't give
you a head count.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Sorry, I'm loving for I love the idea, but I
need the results.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
You see, I'm screaming for g Bill.
Speaker 9 (22:12):
You go out and use these principles, and you come
back and you give me your headcount.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
The reason Moberley can't answer this question is because she
was never a clinical practitioner. She had never tested out
her reparative theory on actual patients, but others soon would.
In the late eighties, once homosexuality was no longer officially
(22:45):
considered a mental disorder, practitioners who'd spent their careers trying
to treat homosexuality were outraged. They called the APA's decision
a quote destructive and blind pursuit of political correctness, and
so Charles Charides, a Catholic, and his colleagues Joseph Nicolosi,
also Catholic, who you heard at the beginning of this episode,
(23:07):
and Benjamin Kaufman, who was Jewish. The three of them
got together and started NARTH, the National Association for Research
and Therapy of Homosexuality. They published their own research and
started to bring Moberly's ideas into clinical practice. The establishment
of NARTH injected new life into the conversion therapy movement.
(23:28):
Joseph Nicolosi would appear on news shows and Doctor Phil
Partner with Focus on the Family and advise Catholic and
Christian ministries on all things gay coming up.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
He claims he's reversed homosexual tendencies and hundreds of his
patients through therapy. I have the belief that all people
are heterosexual in their nature, and that the particular trauma
creates the homosexual condition.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
And they came up with a term that described their techniques.
They called it reparative therapy. You can see now where
that comes from. In fact, Elizabeth Moberly would later claim
that Joseph Nicolosi took credit for her ideas and they
publicly feuded over it. In the literature from the nineties onwards,
it was this kind of reparative therapy that captivated many
(24:13):
religious therapists like mine, eager to combine church teaching with psychology.
Since I had SSA, I clearly missed out on the
rights of passage that fathers normally give their sons, the
sorts of interactions that secured a sense of masculinity, so
(24:35):
my therapists would be stepping in to play that role.
He would become a sort of surrogate father to me.
He said, I'm intelligent, articulate, blessed with many artistic gifts,
and these are good, but we need to work on
my masculinity. For the next year, my therapist would teach
(24:56):
me about how men move their bodies and take up space,
how men insalt each other. As a way of bonding.
We practiced what he called verbal judo so that I
could learn how to spar with words and insult other men.
We role played situations from my childhood where I was
bullied and he had me fight back and tell my
bullies off. It wasn't easy, and honestly it felt a
(25:17):
little awkward at times, but I took it all very seriously.
There was no shortcut to growth. Looks like we had
a few months focused on inner child healing and this
is a letter I wrote to myself as my inner child.
Dear big Simon, I want to tell you about a
(25:37):
big hurt. For the longest time, I felt insecure and
not confident. Playing red ass at recess. That's a game
we used to play in elementary school where we'd have
to throw a tennis ball against a wall, and if
you missed, you'd get a letter until it's spelt red ass,
at which point you'd lose and have a ball whipped
at your ass. I always dreaded throwing the ball from
(25:58):
far away because I can't throw that. I remember running
to the wall to not get a letter, and then
I slipped on a patch of ice and smashed my
face against the brick wall. My glasses were destroyed and
I was bleeding for weeks. I had a nasty scab
on the right side of my face, and the other
boys teased me even more. I remember feeling so alone
(26:21):
and sad and so numb. No one cared. I wanted
to hide at home. I think this was the last
straw that made me give up on ever fitting in.
From now on, I just have to figure it out
by myself. To repair some of these same sex masculinity
(26:43):
wounds around sports, my therapist encouraged me to take up
a sport. I chose judo, maybe because of all the
verbal judo we were practicing, but also because I thought
it looked cool, so I gave it a shot. I
showed up at the dojo, and they paired me up
with some went at my skill level, which for me
meant the eleven year old boy or the middle aged woman.
(27:04):
Those were my options. Week after week, I'd get thrown
on the mat, get up, and get thrown again. It's
something you have to get used to in judo. One
time I dislocated my toe. Some days I'd throw up
from nerves. And the guys there, they were like comically attractive,
Like why are all the men in judo so good looking?
(27:26):
So he says, when the attraction comes, don't fight it,
accept it. There's something behind it. Take a pause, and
instead of freaking out, ask yourself why. What are the
hidden immediate thoughts that come to mind? How do I
feel about myself? What do I believe about this person?
Do I feel small and weak? Do I think he
(27:48):
has a better body. My therapist called this the exotic
becomes erotic theory. Because I was so cut off from
my masculinity, I saw men as the other and he said,
contributed to their eroticization since we're naturally attracted to opposites.
So I had to demystify these men by confronting them platonically,
(28:09):
especially the ones I felt attracted to. Remember, same sex
love is the solution, not the problem. There was this
one guy, Patrick, probably in his thirties, who I felt
extremely attracted to. This is an entry about Patrick. It
took a risk, but I started talking with Patrick, asking
him where he lives. He offered me a ride. I accepted.
(28:35):
Once we started talking, it broke the ice, and what
I thought that he thinks I'm a loser just didn't
seem true. In the car, he said he was into
computers as a kid, but didn't stay in it and
regrets it. He doesn't even know how to download pictures.
He's the leader of his police squad, climbing towers, etc.
He wants to retire in five years then open a
(28:57):
bar or a hot dog stand. So now the mystique
is broken. He's a man trying to live just like me,
and he seems to like me too. He called me
brother as I was leaving, Lord, thank you for arranging this.
I excitedly told my therapist about all of this, and
(29:17):
he was overjoyed. He said that this guy wouldn't affirm
me as a brother if he didn't see masculinity in me.
The therapy was working with time. I believed my attractions
would go away. September eighteenth, two thousand and eight, I
asked my therapist how am I progressing. He said, you
(29:40):
have a high probability to change between one and five years.
Your ssay is a symptom of a deeper problem. You
are a heterosexual man with a homosexual problem. He told
the story of one of his clients who began therapy
five years ago. Today he's dating. The idea of dating
women made me light headed and kind of nauseous. I'd
(30:05):
asked women out before earlier in college, when I was
trying to see if maybe I could make it work.
Usually we started out as friends, but whenever we'd get
too close or I felt like she was falling for me,
I'd back out. At the time, in the Catholic circles
I ran in, this was seen as virtuous behavior, a
sign of sexual purity. Restraint was holy. All that would
(30:29):
be required for me to change within one to five
years would be to grow into my masculinity. So I
returned every week, hopeful that my day of healing would come.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Kate said that my thoughts and attractions were not bad,
but if I acted on them, my soul would start
to wither away. They said I was making too big
a deal out of it, that it wasn't my true identity.
It was only a small part of me. It was
just a disorder. I was so confused.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I'm with Joyce flipping through Alana's journals. It's uncanny how
Alana is reiterating the same conversion therapy talking points that
I got from my therapist. I ask Joyce if she
knew about Alana's therapist, Kate, and what was going on.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
I remember I went to I met Kate.
Speaker 10 (31:22):
I went to the student center where all these kids
would meet with Kate and sign up and they paid
very short amount, but they paid.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
You know you did.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, she's Catholic therapist. Went to Institute for Psychological Sciences,
which is this Catholic psychology program that is run by
it started by a religious supporter. About the Legionarias of.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
Christ and their anti ka I mean, they're.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
They're part of this like cluster of many different institutions
and organizations that are faithful to the teachings of the Church.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, their training and their how they are told to
counsel people will be within those frameworks. It's hard for
me to answer her with a definitive yes. Here because
the Catholic Church doesn't see itself as anti gay people.
It sees itself as anti gay sex, which it considers
an elective choice, a sin, something separate from the person.
(32:28):
Hate the sin, not the sinner. This is why so
much of the guidance I got in the church was
framed as protecting me from going to Hell, in the
same way that a parent would see denying their child
candy for breakfast as the most loving thing to do.
But as I see the confusion that this kind of
council had on Alana, I begin to wonder if maybe
(32:50):
she was right to feel like this didn't add up,
that compartmentalizing our sexuality in this way might be what's
actually wrong. When Joyce first met Alana's therapist, Kate, she
remembers Kate reiterating that as a therapist, she stands by
every teaching of the Catholic Church. But Joyce clearly had
(33:11):
no idea what that implied and didn't know about the
messages Alana was getting in therapy. When I was looking
for a therapist, I knew that faithful to the teachings
of the Catholic Church was code for a conservative therapist
who would support my efforts to change my sexuality. It
was a dog whistle that signaled that they'd likely be
open to conversion therapy theories. In the summer of twenty ten,
(33:41):
I went home to visit my family. We did the
usual family barbecues with my grandma and cousins. My younger cousin, Vivian,
was home from college for the summer, and we took
a car ride just me and her to pick something
up from the store. We were always close and joked around.
She was the comedian of the family, but that day
in the car, she was unusually quiet and kind of sullen.
(34:04):
I looked over from the steering wheel and asked her,
what was up. Nothing, She said, come on, tell me
what's going on. We pulled into the driveway, and that's
when something happened that I was not expecting. She came
out to me. I stopped in my tracks. Although her
news wasn't a huge surprise to me, I knew I
(34:26):
needed to say something, but how I had the opportunity
to be vulnerable with her in that moment, to share
with her my own struggle, but I was too ashamed
to admit it. I had worked so hard to get
to where I was with my therapy. I was so
close to being fixed that the thought of me opening
up to her and coming out was not on the table.
(34:48):
I chose my words carefully. Vivian, you do know that
you don't have to be gay, right She looked at
me and tears began to fall down her cheeks. Vivian,
there are resources out there. From what I've read, homosexuality
is a developmental delay caused by some sort of childhood trauma.
(35:10):
You don't have to go down the route that the
gay activists want you to go down. There are other
options like therapy. Vivian turned to look out the window.
She wiped her face, and then she said something I'll
never forget. You will never understand what it's like to
(35:31):
be me. You can go get married and have kids
and live your normal life, but I can never have that,
and you'll never know what that's like. She got out
of the car and slammed the door. Everything I'd been
(35:58):
working on with my therapy culminated in him suggesting one
day that I bring my dad in for a joint session.
My parents have always been supportive of me when I
first came out to them. I brought them to a
weekend conference organized by Exodus International, the largest Christian umbrella
network for conversion therapy. We attended lectures and purchased all
(36:19):
the books at the book table. So when I told
my dad that this special session with my therapist could
be a major breakthrough for my healing, the key that
unlocked everything, he booked a plane ticket right away. I
felt nervous and excited. This was my chance to heal
my father wounds and get one step closer towards my goal.
(36:41):
On the day of our appointment, we walked up to
the building together, pushed the heavy metal doors, and went inside. Okay,
mister Fung, thank you for coming, my therapist said, So,
I'd like for Simon to start off by expressing how
he feels about your relationship when he was a child.
I was prepared. My therapist and I had worked for
(37:02):
weeks on my father wounds. So I told my dad
what was on my mind. How he never supported me
in the ways I needed when I was bullied at school,
how abandoned i'd felt in the swimming pool, how I
often felt caught in the middle when he and mom
would fight. It was hard and several times I saw
my dad WinCE. Then my therapist invited him to respond.
(37:24):
My dad had his head down and was thoughtful for
a few seconds, and then he spoke in a way
I'd never heard before. He was precise and direct and gentle.
He said that he knows that he did so many
things wrong, that there were more mistakes that I hadn't mentioned.
He said he felt so sorry and so bad and
(37:46):
had no excuses for any of the pain I went through.
He said he was working on all of this, working
on himself.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
I looked at my therapist to facilitate the rest of
the conversation. Was there more to dig up? Maybe I
could do a verbal judo match with my dad or
have my inner child speak to him. But my therapist
had his jaw open, and when he turned to me,
he said, Wow, I'm floored. In all my years of counseling,
(38:15):
I've never seen such humility, honesty, and courage. He said
he could only pray for some of these qualities in himself.
He said, I had an amazing dad. We ended that
session and my therapist said that further father son appointments
wouldn't be necessary. As I sent my dad off to
(38:36):
catch his flight. I was grateful for his honesty and remorse,
but I was also kind of disappointed. I thought that
there would be more to our sessions, that there would
be more to process about our relationship. After what I'd
hoped would be a breakthrough, I didn't feel any different,
but a cure still had to be possible. If this
didn't work, what was I going to do? How would
(38:59):
I follow god vocation for me? How would I cope?
I was determined to be a conversion therapy success story,
to not be gay, to be fixed, and over the
next five years, I would seek out even more kinds
of conversion therapy, from a camp in central Virginia where
we re enacted scenes from my schoolyard in order to
help me process my childhood bullying, to group therapy where
(39:22):
we deconstructed our sexual fantasies. There wasn't anything I wasn't
willing to try in order to find that silver bullet.
Alana was also willing to try anything. From her records,
we know that she belonged to a Catholic support group
for people with SSA. I remember hearing about this group
growing up. They'd meet regularly in church basements and Somehow
(39:44):
the timing never worked out for me to go to
their meetings, which were structured around treating homosexuality as an addiction,
another popular theory. As the stigma around homosexuality began to
fade after the APA's decision, Catholic psychologists started professional groups
like NARTH, and Catholic clergy started ministries. Father John Harvey,
(40:05):
a moral theyologian who was teaching in DC at the time,
founded what would become the largest and only Vatican approved
Catholic ministry for the same sex attracted, a ministry known
as Courage International.
Speaker 11 (40:18):
It's an organization for the purpose of helping people those
same sex attractions to lead chase lives. And we use
these tall steps of AA with permission of them. So
it's the same kind of program as the dynamics is
the same.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
On the Saint Thom's community bookshelf, the two books about
homosexuality are by Father John Harvey. In his interviews, Father
Harvey insists that his group Courage is not therapy, it's
a ministry. It's the Church ministering to the individual. But
the more I listened to him talk about his books,
like in this interview a year before his death on
(40:54):
the EWTN Bookmark talk show. The more I'm not so sure.
Speaker 11 (40:58):
That wonderful chatter on one of the greatest psychologists in
this subject. Her name is Elizabeth Moberly. He's been quoted
all over the place by Protestants, Catholic Jews. So I
got hold of that and I the even visited her
over in England. She knew every word I put down,
and every word here is her words. You know, I'm
(41:20):
just summarizing her thinking.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
His books contain Moberly's theories essentially verbatim. He rhymes off
her theories.
Speaker 11 (41:29):
Relationships for parents, teenage, relationships with peers, you know, an
overweening mother. These are all very important factors.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The host asks him whether people can truly be cured
from same sex attraction?
Speaker 11 (41:45):
Well, must they live with it for the rest of
their lives?
Speaker 7 (41:48):
And what about we've heard about this, I think Nickelosi
usually with reparative therapy.
Speaker 11 (41:54):
Reparative therapy is a good thing. It really flows out
the teaching of Elizabeth Moberley. That's the idea that if
something's wrong, you can repair it, and what it was
wrong is an attachment to the sex of same sex attraction.
You can work your way out of it.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
You know, I can work my way out of this.
I told myself I had to. How else would I
become a priest. That guy's not hot. He's just a
reflection of my underdeveloped masculinity. And it's just a temptation anyways,
something I can learn to disassociate from. Or is it
more like a disease or maybe an addiction like gambling
(42:32):
or alcohol. I was holding all of this in at once,
and I think Alana must have felt this way too
sophomore year.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
The reason I thought out therapy is because I need
to get this under control. If I want to be
a nun or a wife, a lesbian relationship is not
an option for me.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
On September twenty ninth, twenty sixteen, right as Alana starting
her senior year year of college, a police car shows
up at the chenhouse. Alana's upstairs and Sophia, her younger sister,
here's the door.
Speaker 12 (43:08):
I answered the door. I see a cop, Alana's friend
at the time, and a nun, and I was like,
what is going on?
Speaker 13 (43:20):
And they were like, we're really worried about your sister.
Speaker 10 (43:24):
We need you to go get her right now. And
I was like, what could possibly be going on. I
was like, this is such a random group of people.
I had no idea. I was like, this is so weird.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
She goes upstairs to get Alana.
Speaker 13 (43:38):
Her eyes are so red and I'm clearly crying, and
I brought her down and I was like, they're like,
we need to take you to the hospital now.
Speaker 10 (43:46):
She kept saying over and over, She's like, I don't
want to leave you.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I don't want to leave you. Just hours before this,
Alana had told her friend some disturbing news. She had
planned to kill her herself in the adoration chapel at
Saint Thom's. The police rush her immediately to the hospital.
Speaker 5 (44:07):
I will follow you, follow you wherever you might go.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Next time on Dear Alana, it was like a.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Big deal at the channel House that she was going
on the state and he picked her up and like
we had all met him.
Speaker 12 (44:25):
He's super nice, he's handsome.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
How Alana's college community deepens her convictions.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
I will follow you ever since you touched my hand.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Dear Alana was created, hosted, and written by me Simon
Kentfong and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association
with a Slept Audio and the Center for Independent Documentary.
It was produced by Laurie Puliski, who also composed the music.
Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Our
supervising producer is Tracy leeds Kaplan. Additional music by Makeup
(45:06):
and Vanity Set sales and distribution by iHeartMedia. Our voice
actor is Alana Rabor and our credit song I Will
Follow You is Bye to Loose. Show notes and resources
can be found on our website Dearlana dot com. If
you enjoyed this episode, please take time to follow the show,
rate and review various.
Speaker 5 (45:26):
Notion toud Monton So High, Keep Me Away, Away.
Speaker 12 (45:37):
From the Long.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Dear Alana is an eight part series released weekly. If
you can't wait until next week, subscribe to tenderfoot Plus
so you can binge the entire series right now, ad free.
Head to Apple Podcasts or tenorfoot plus dot com to
subscribe now
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