More on APA and Reparative Therapy

Rich Wyler has posted his take on the APA Report on the People Can Change blog. I especially like the points he makes under "What the APA Report Doesn't Say." (link)

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Other matters. Have a tight deadline coming up. Will not be posting or responding to comments for at least two weeks.

American Psychological Association's Declaration on Reparative Therapy

I wanted to share my reply to Carleton1958's recent blog post entitled: My faith vs. the APA's declaration on reparative therapy

Here is the article from the Associated Press: Psychologists repudiate gay-to-straight therapy.

And my response to Carleton1958 (in quotes):

"Like you, I too exist, and I can say that my same-sex sexual attractions have diminished so significantly and my opposite-sex attractions increased that I would say that my orientation itself has changed. And this, due to what can be called "reparative intervention" although not formalized.

Nicolosi said that he and Jones and Yarhouse tried to get a representative into that small task-force in APA, but were not allowed (link). As a response, they created this document and insisted that the APA respond to it: www.narth.com/docs/journalsummary.html

There is so much variation in sexuality and the article (and APA itself) failed to point out that the polarization of gay vs. straight is mostly political. Many fall under variations that if help for their unwanted same-sex desires were sought, could decide on nuanced paths that were more consistent with their faith beliefs. Clearly, the APA is still politically (morally?) biased, not scientific, if they dare to be really honest about it."

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Warren Throckmorton has also issued a response (link). I have not had time to read it in detail, but from what I have read (and all of my knowledge on SSA so far), questions begin to come to mind:

• What is sexual orientation, and how does it differ from sexual identity?
• Is there a monolithic approach to reparative therapy?
• Is reparative therapy about re-orientation or identity development?
• Who defines what is straight and what is gay? By what criteria? According to behavior? To identity?
• What happened to me? Was it intervention on my reparative needs? Was it identity shifting? Was it the deep meeting of my male-attachment needs? Was it "all of the above" but reductionistic thinking wants to isolate it to one main thing?
  

The APA. Just a bunch of people trying their best to help people, but at a level that doesn't address my experience. Research is always limited, and hardly iron-clad. Social research, especially, is always morphing and emerging. So much depends on how things are defined, operationalized, measured, number-crunched, reported, and so on and so forth. What is statistically relevant in a population study means very little when it comes to a single individual's experience.

My advice to all of my friends who read my blog: submit yourselves to God and then let your experience--not institutional declarations--show you the next steps to take. Neither the APA, nor NARTH, nor Throckmorton, nor I ( O . O ), have all the answers. Instead, let's gather together and share what God is doing in our lives so that we can learn from each others' experiences.

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Edit: This just in. The Wall Street Journal also published an article on the topic (link). Haven't read it yet, but the byline reads: "Psychological Association Revises Treatment Guidelines to Allow Counselors to Help Clients Reject Their Same-Sex Attractions."

Really?

I need to find an actual statement from the APA and decide for myself what they said. Secondary sources. Meh.

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Final Edit: Here we go. The actual release summary by APA (link), and the actual report, all 138 pages of it (link)!

Exodus Reflections (II)

[Exodus Reflections I: link]







Three things happened to me at the conference. One, I received new and helpful information on SSA. Two, I had some significant interactions with people and with God that helped me better understand where I am in my journey. Three, I left with a solidifying sense of purpose and calling going into the future.

1. New and Helpful Information

(a) Is Exodus Interested in Change?

In the opening talk, Alan Chambers asserted that the primary purpose of Exodus is not to change people from homosexuality to heterosexuality, but to holiness.

For a while, I had been frustrated when people fed me that same line whenever I told them about my change experience (that is, change in same-sex sexual desires). I felt that they were saying "we just want Christ, becoming heterosexual is not really possible anyway."

What's the point of Exodus if it is not focusing on change in SSA? I can find God and grow deeply in my spiritual walk through other ministries (and I have). Isn't getting rid of my unwanted same-sex sexual desires something that makes a ministry like Exodus what it is? If so, then why water it down?

When I asked Randy Thomas in a face-to-face why Alan Chambers would not consider sexual desire change to be important, he felt that I had taken Alan's words too far. He said that Exodus sees same-sex sexual desire change as a by-product of the pursuit of holiness, and what mental health professionals are doing to help sexual desire change is "complementary" to Exodus' goals.

As the conference went on, it became very obvious through the workshops, testimonies, books, etc. that Exodus is very much pro-change, pro-freedom-from-homosexuality, whatever you want to call it. But in their official stance, holiness is primary, not heterosexuality.

In the large worship hall where I saw close to a thousand people at various stages of their change experience all worshiping Jesus, it finally dawned on me that focus on sexual desire change should not be the main message. Holiness is the message. It turns our eyes to the author and healer of our souls: Jesus. I had assumed, as a follow of Christ, that my change comes from God, but not everyone in the auditorium did, and not everyone in the media watching Exodus' work does. The testimony of Exodus ought not to be about change in sexual orientation (although that is what Exodus is about: they prefer to call it "freedom from homosexuality"), it ought to be about Jesus. I learned something new and important about rhetoric in ministry and organizational leadership.

(b) Other New and Helpful Information on SSA

• Iron-clad biblical theology asserting heterosexuality as God's design and homosexuality as sin by Dr. Robert Gagnon (link)

• Randy Thomas' argument that we are now in a post-gay era, and the gay versus ex-gay dichotomy is just not a good reflection of what is really going on in people's experience and conceptualizations of themselves (link).

• Hearing a panel of speakers answer a question as to why despite years of freedom from homosexuality, some people still have "gay affectations." The answer from one very straight-acting panelist was that he had realized that he stuck with his effeminate behavior as a defense against fully embracing masculinity. When he finally confronted himself, then he was able to enter into masculinity in its fullness, affectations and all. Later, when I recounted the story to another attendee and told him that I am at the place where I actually really want to be a jock, his immediate response was: "Eew!"

• A bold document has been published by NARTH to hold the American Psychological Association accountable to research-backed statements which counter their early unsubstantiated statement that sexual orientation cannot be changed, it is harmful to try to change it, and there is no greater psychological dysfunction in the homosexual population. These are NARTH's opposing claims, with the document given to the APA: (1) There is substantial evidence that sexual orientation may be changed through reorientation therapy; (2) Efforts to change sexual orientation have not been shown to be consistently harmful or to regularly lead to greater self-hatred, depression, and other self-destructive behaviors; (3) There is significantly greater medical, psychological, and relational pathology in the homosexual population than the general population (link). Currently, the APA has set up a task-force to re-evaluate their earlier statement. NARTH researchers tried to get a representative onto the task-force, but APA did not allow it. It currently comprises only pro-gay activists. The task force will share their deliberation in the upcoming month or so.

• Hearing Nicolosi talk, I gained new insights about reparative therapy. His ideas are based on the latest empirically-supported understanding of psychotherapy interventions. I was impressed. One idea is that shame leads to homosexual enactment. So to help people overcome SSA, helping them overcome their shame response and cycle is crucial. I will be reading more about Nicolosi for sure. (Nicolosi: link)
  

(To be continued: 2. Significant Interactions with People)

Sports, Physical Pain, and Masculinity

People tell me that I'm really strong. I am. And I am not.

Emotionally, I've survived through all kinds of hell. But physically, I'm a wimp. Break my heart and I'll compose a most brilliant piece of work. Stub my toe and I become a pathetic baby.

Or stub my thumb... my right thumb, to be precise.

I'm going out to play a game of real basketball with real players.

:manly woo hoo:

I discovered two things. (1) Jogging at one's own pace is not the same as sprinting up and down the courts. I was breathless after 10 minutes. (2) I can hardly function without my opposable right thumb. (I told you I'm a wimp! Cut me slack already.)

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My experience today brought back childhood memories.

Football, we call it. Where fast balls slam into your gut or hard shoes smash against your shins while you're breathless and coughing and sweaty and itchy and dying. Add to that a strong, fast, sporty elder brother who is yelling at some useless, fat-assed faggot for missing a ball, or running too slowly.

Who? Me? pant... pant...

No wonder I went into music instead. And also hanging around girls, drawing pictures of princesses with them.

IT BLOODY HURTS TO PLAY TEAM SPORTS!

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Scholarly question #1: How many men with SSA grew up with gender identity disorder?
Answer: Many [ref 1,2].

Scholarly question #2: How many boys with gender identity struggles did not play sports with other boys because they were very sensitive to physical pain?
Answer: ____

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While icing my thumb joint, I seriously contemplated quitting.

Brother B called. (Don't remember him? He's one of my straight friends who knows about my struggle and is teaching me to play basketball. Here and here.)

"Hey, so did you enjoy basketball today?"

"Well... yeah. I found out that I'm either allergic to something in the air or I'm asthmatic. Also, I injured my thumb a couple of times." And then I forced myself to get out of my self-pity thumb-pain funk and eeked out a "but overall, I enjoyed myself."

Because, damn it, I did! I just wish I didn't have this asthma/allergy thing, and learned how to handle a basketball better so that I wouldn't hurt my thumb.

"I saw you. You did pretty well. I mean, you went in there and did some good moves."

"Hmm. Hum. Well. Yeah."

Thanks, brother B, point guard extraordinaire. I guess I didn't do too badly given that it was my second time playing basketball. After all, these guys really did know what they were doing.

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I think part of embracing maleness is to embrace physical pain. I don't know why I am so sensitive to it. I see it in my son. He is so afraid of getting himself hurt, while the other boys around him take all kinds of physical risks. And he is also, at the same time, incredibly emotionally sensitive--a gifted artist, for sure.

There is something to this. I need to think more on it.

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In the meantime, it's confession time. I did it again. Looked at pornography. This time, I even masturbated to it. Heterosexual porn, though. Seeing men's goodies alone just don't cut it for me anymore. I need to see naked women and hear their moans. This is the third time it's happened. But the heterosexual porn does not feel as emotionally charged as I remember the gay porn felt. It's lonely being a heterosexual man. I can't quite explain it. It's a lot more lonely somehow.

Note: I am not sanctioning looking at porn or masturbating to it. The above is a *confession*. I see it as sin and I have repented of it, and told my wife about it (I also confess to her *every time* I fall with porn or masturbation). I am processing authentically with the hope that it will lead to greater transparency and healing... somehow.

90-Day Fast from Porn & Masturbation

I was recently invited to join a Facebook group for men dealing with SSA. One of the topics is fasting from porn and masturbation. I decided to join. This is part of what I wrote on the topic:

Today (April 7) is Day 2.

One of the things that I have found challenging in counting abstinence days is the demotivation that comes from falling over and over again. I'd like to encourage us not to give up, and point us to John Piper's excellent article on this entitled "Gutsy Guilt: Don't Let Shame Over Sexual Sin Destroy You" [link]

I am doing this not so much to rack up "day-points," but for the discipline. I am focusing not so much on the number of times I fall, but the changes in the number of days between each fall over time. I have found that the periods of abstinence increases with time, practice, and accountability. The fruit is not so much the number of days abstinent, but the refining of my heart, the renewal of my mind, and the purifying of my relationships. And I want to allow each fall to draw me closer into holy relationship with God and with my fellow brothers.

In additional to personal experience, I like to integrate science and social science with good theology (i.e. not surfacey, literalist approaches to understanding Scripture) to inform my growth into manhood. So I really appreciated reading one of the comments on the Facebook page that talked about emerging evidence from neuroscience research that ∆FosB, a neuropetide associated with stress and reward, is believed to act as a molecular "switch" that maintains addictive behavior (including masturbation and orgasm).

The commenter wrote: "The scary thing is that once ∆FosB is released in the brain, it stays there for AT LEAST A MONTH OR TWO after withdrawal before breaking down. So there's a neurochemical basis for this 90 day thing, or at least a 30 - 60 day fast. It takes at least that long to even begin working on 'breaking the habit' with something of a clean slate."

I am looking forward blogging more about my progress here, under the label: "90-day fast."

Today, April 8, is Day 3.