James Dobson's powerful lobby, Focus on the Family, claims that "thousands" of gays and lesbians have been changed. But statistics are hard to come by, and change is hard to measure. Many of those who have been enrolled in the ministries say conversion programs are emotionally destructive and destined to fail.

Writer, actor and comedian Peterson Toscano did a two-year stint at Love in Action in an effort to cure his homosexuality. "I felt like I was in a biblically induced coma," he says. Toscano, Christian, struggled with his homosexuality as a young man and even considered throwing himself in front of a train. It was only after leaving Love in Action that he gained peace of mind and accepted his sexuality. He says that even if the reparative programs do convince gays and lesbians that they are cured, "It is a ruse because they have to give up their sexuality.

Wayne R. Besen, author of "Anything but Straight, which tracks scandals inside conversion groups, says much of the close coordination between ex-gay groups and the religious right started in 1998, when a conglomeration of 15 religious right organizations sought new traction in the culture war, launching $600,000 in ads in major U.S. newspapers, touting the achievements of the ex-gay ministries, complete with a photo of a crowd of beaming ex-gays. Besen quotes Robert Knight, then with the Family Research Council, who called the ad campaign the "Normandy landing in the larger cultural wars."

During a flurry of media coverage that followed the ad blitz, Newsweek put the ex-gay issue on its cover, along with a picture of Exodus International chair John Paulk and his wife, Anne, who had both allegedly left homosexuality behind. In his book, Besen photographed John Paulk cruising in a Washington, D.C., gay bar while he was still chair at Exodus and worked for Focus on the Family. Besen tracks down a dizzying array of former ex-gay leaders who later came out of the closet for good, including the two founders of Exodus.

Besen also pegs current PFOX president Richard Cohen, who is leading the charge against liberal sex ed in Montgomery County. He writes that Cohen is a former Moonie and an acolyte of the Wesleyan Christian Community Church on Vashon Island near Seattle. According to Besen, citing a 1977 Associated Press report, the group was exiled from an Illinois church for allegedly practicing therapy sessions where men, women and children breast-fed on women stripped to the waist. Cohen responds that he did get therapy from the Wesleyan church but witnessed no such activity. "I have no idea of such nonsense," he says. I have not a clue what [Besen] is talking about. I got counseling from a religious organization that he tried to call a cult. Wayne is a little boy whose main cult is character assassination."

Besen says the religious right is pushing the ex-gay philosophy particularly hard right now to buttress its aggressive agenda on gay marriage. "They are really getting behind this, he says. Exodus spokesman Randy Thomas responds that his group aims to help people and not to serve as a political foil to advance the policy positions of the religious right. "I know a lot of people think that we are pawns of the religious right, but we are not," Thomas says. (The Exodus Web site does include some reports on policy issues, like opposing hate-crimes legislation. "The hate experienced, in the majority of hate crimes, is not necessarily coming from those who disparage others as much as it is from the victim toward himself," one report reads.)

Gay rights groups are not buying it. Ex-gay ministries, and the religious right, are "distorting the truth and the scientific and medical evidence to move their political agenda forward," says Steven Fisher, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay rights organization.

It is not just gay rights activists who say that efforts to change gays and lesbians are voodoo therapy. The nation's two mainstream psychiatric and psychological associations, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, deny reparative therapy's very premise. Along with the National Association of Social Workers, these groups say homosexuality simply is not a mental disorder. Being gay by itself is not a problem, they point out; rather, the negative mental health consequences of discrimination have been well established and cited as a factor in higher suicide rates among gays. Therapy to change homosexuality may simply telegraph to patients they are sick when they are not, that they can fundamentally change their sexual orientation when they cannot. If so, failed efforts to change could prove disastrous, particularly for deeply religious gays.

"The mental health professions in this country do not value or credit conversion therapy at all. And we are increasingly aware of the potential harms of this misguided treatment," says Haldeman, of the Association of Practicing Psychologists. "There are a substantial number of people who go through this who are harmed for some period. This is just a dressing up of old, old theories that have never been proven."

The American Psychiatric Association has asked ethical psychiatrists to refrain from reparative therapy. "We are finding that the numbers of people claiming to be harmed by reparative therapy are increasing," says Dr. Jack Drescher, chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues. "I don't know about the suicides because it is hard to determine why somebody killed themselves afterward. But the harm is increasing." The legislative body of Drescher's APA approved a statement this past spring that endorsed gay marriage to help reverse gay stigma. They also cite evidence that stable, monogamous relationships are beneficial for mental health, whether gay or straight.

It was the rejection of homosexuality as a mental disorder that launched the "ex-gay" movement in the first place. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But a relatively small group of mental health professionals rejected that move, arguing that the APA caved in to aggressive political pressure from the gay rights movement, as opposed to science.

"That opinion is a political and not a scientific position," says Nicolosi from NARTH. "These major mental health associations have been hijacked by small political interest groups." That's nonsense, says Drescher. However, Drescher says the mental health profession does agree with the reparative therapy crowd about one thing: No one knows for sure what guides sexual orientation, gay or straight, but mounting evidence suggests a biological component. "We do know there is a very good likelihood that [homosexuality] is biologically related. We do have some studies that indicate a biological component," he says. That homosexuality may be innate, Drescher says, bolsters the argument for gay rights. "And that's what the religious right is fighting against," he says.

But Drescher says that whether you take the nature or nurture side of the argument doesn't matter when it comes to protecting the health and civil rights of gays and lesbians. "Even if homosexuality is not innate, you could still argue for civil rights."

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Tomorrow: "It is not what the body is for" -- my private session in reparative therapy.

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