If you are raised as a Southern Baptist in the USA and also happen to be gay, you may despair so much about this that you pray for any kind of solution. Sadly, the solution some find is allowing themselves to be brainwashed straight by going to an ex-gay ministry.
Jallen Rix, Ed. D. didn’t turn straight, but he did have his sense of stability and self-esteem almost destroyed by this ministry. In his book, Ex-Gay No Way, he recounts his struggle with his sexuality, his experience in the ex-gay movement, and how he came out and learned to reintegrate positive sexuality with healthy spirituality.
Due to Jallen’s experiences and education, he is well versed to speak in several areas – theology, music (he was a full time musician) and sex. Yes, his Doctorate in Education is in Sexology. As a result of his education and experiences, Jallen realized this book was necessary not only to recount the horrors he and others underwent in the ex-gay movement, but also to help former ex-gays heal from the mental scars inflicted on them. Former ex-gays often discover support is hard to find; after coming out they are caught between the Christian gay-haters and the gay Christian-haters.
As an atheist and ex-Catholic, I can’t understand the logic process of Evangelical Christians. When it comes to the GBLT issue, this group cherry-picks six or seven mentions of homosexuality in the Bible and twists them in order to condemn homosexuality (never mind that some theologians have said those sections are too vague and disconnected with modern life to be truly relevant). As Scripture memorization was a large part of ex-gay treatment, Jallen explained how contradictions were dismissed.
“There would be times they would get really practical and say, see, even though these seem to create contradictions, when you look at it historically you see these are the differences and the different ways people wrote scripture.”
Not surprisingly, for those who have seen ministers contort the truth to justify their agenda, Jallen confirmed the amazing level of theological gymnastics used. These contradictions don’t matter to followers of ex-gay organizations, because they crave acceptance.
“I would turn a blind eye to so much because this (ex-gay therapy) is going to solve all my problems.”
Jallen was so afraid of being rejected by everything he held dear – family, friends, the church, god – he was going to bend over backwards to make it work. This even included accepting outdated psychological research, or other “scientific” methods contrived to serve the movement’s purpose.
Jallen believes the roots of this particularly toxic branch of Christianity go back to the Bible revival of the early 1900s. Since then, he describes American Christianity as becoming a kind of “used car” or “snake-oil” solution sold to church-goers. Many North Americans innocently want spiritual guidance with their lives; but it can’t be open-ended. They want a sense of accomplishment, of knowing that by following a prescribed set of actions, they will be rewarded in Heaven – a quick fix of sorts.
The blame isn’t just with people seeking easy answers; part of the problem is church leadership, Jallen asserts. People attend a church, and their religious leaders set themselves up as the answer man. When the answers don’t work, instead of saying “I don’t know,” or “that’s not my area of expertise,” and working with parishioners to research the right tools, they instead pass off a best-guess answer as gospel. Enter homosexuality – instead of trying to understand it, some Christian churches pound it into the minds of their followers to view homosexuality at the same level of disgust as paedophilia.
Evangelical Christians can’t even seem to rationalize that, if homosexuality was so depraved and hateful, then why doesn’t the Bible lay it out in more detail than a handful of vague passages? The bible certainly wasn’t vague about the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Jallen doesn’t understand why so many in the Christian movement can overlook this simple principle.
However, it is easy for Church leaders to use their position of power to misguide their flock – either deliberately or unintentionally. Certainly, as Jallen asserts in the book, the harmful effects of reparative therapy can result in ex-gay survivors experiencing trauma similar to what is experienced by abuse victims. He also proposes that abusive religious environments encourage their church-goers to never question the pastor’s wisdom for fear of being cast out. However, church leaders have a hard time seeing their actions as being abusive in any way – they are merely providing the guidance that is asked of them from troubled member of the flock.
With this sort of black/white, us/them dichotomy in place, Jallen’s vivid descriptions of the desperate steps gay men and lesbians take to become “ex-gay” somehow seems familiar. In fact, in extreme situations, these behaviours can create cult-like situations.
The book relays how some ex-gay ministries request people cut off contact from family and friends, blindly trust the leaders, and then tell the adherent any failure to achieve 100% heterosexuality is because the person is not trying hard enough - not because the ex-gay ministry’s techniques are fundamentally flawed. Furthermore, Jallen notes, “the ex-gay movement was not instigated by a bunch of psychological researchers or therapists basing their treatments on facts. It was mainly spearheaded (and still is) by uneducated (in sexuality) ministers and self-loathing homosexuals. Here was the foundation for this type of abusive religion...”
This abuse can even go as far as exorcism. A recent issue of Details magazine reported on how some ex-gay ministries are resorting this extreme.
Jallen wasn’t surprised. “In these extreme cultist aspects of these things, when they can’t explain why a problem is persisting, more often than not...they reduce the problem to a demon, a thing that is in you. ...Again, it gives the power to the minister...it makes the person completely exempt of responsibility, because it’s the ultimate devil made me do it.”
It baffled me to think how much stock people put in the advice of their religious leaders. It seems to me that going to your pastor for psychological help is like going to a plumber for veterinarian advice. As an ex-Catholic, this trust the priest or else you’re a pawn of satan approach was a particularly transparent attempt at control. Jallen reminds us most religions come from such a history.
“...for a number of centuries they wouldn’t even print the Bible in the vernacular because that would allow anybody...to read the information,” because it was desirable that only the clergy had direct access to, and understanding of god. While this attitude is still alive in many churches, Jallen thinks as our society progresses and the stigma of seeking a therapist for counselling issues diminish, this blind trust of church leadership will continue to decline.
Yet there are times when it appears the Christian movement is sticking their fingers in their ears to drown out the sound of their notions imploding.
Case in point: George Rekers, one of the advisers of reparative therapy advocates NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality). Rekers, a psychologist and Southern Baptist minister, had been a prominent and passionate advocate of conversion therapy for gays and lesbians, and a foe of people advocating expanded rights for the GBLT community. That was up until he got caught with a male prostitute who was hired to “handle his luggage.” This is not something new to us – on some level it is even not surprising anymore. Every time we hear some pastor heatedly blathering about the “evil homosexuals,” we suspect this individual is secretly battling against themselves - our hypotheses have been correct too many times of late.
What’s frustrating is so many Evangelical Christians are not putting two and two together. Jallen says, while it may be rattling the cages of some people, for most they rationalize it away – as he put it, “when you’re not dealing with reality you can believe anything.”
Another case in point: some organizations Rekers worked with removed his name from their website and pretended they only barely knew him. Alternately, church leadership starts the refrain of, “well, anyone can fall from sin,” and, “I’m sure he was working so hard with these poor lost souls, it’s not surprising one of them seduced him. It could happen to anybody!”
This logical disconnect is particularly frustrating and amusing at the same time. In his book, Jallen recounts a conversation he had with a Houston ex-gay minister regarding the idea of God’s unconditional love. The minister affirmed no matter what, God loved Jallen, but then proceeded to put qualifiers on God’s love (“God loves you, but...” “Wait, I thought you said God loves me no matter what?” “Yes, but...”).
As Jallen is a sexologist, Ex-Gay No Way also examines the physical side of love and how the ex-gay programming has impacted survivors.
“I feel like most of Western society functions in a sex-negative belief system,” Jallen said. “It’s far easier for us to understand our sexuality by what we’re not into rather than being able to see our sexuality as sexual potential.”
Consequently, there is some difficulty getting ex-gay survivors to re-pattern their sexuality. “If there is a tricky thing about sexual pleasure, it is that you have to want to go someplace and also be completely content with were you are at the same time...it is our beliefs about what sex should be that often drives us insane.”
If there is hope for these victims of ex-gay ministries, Jallen himself may be a source of inspiration. His patience and loving approach has swayed some of his toughest opponents – his parents. Near the end of Ex-Gay No Way, his mother and father, after years of discussion, seem like they’re starting to figure out that maybe what they learned in church wasn’t quite right when it came to homosexuality. They still don’t understand fully, but they are trying. This moment of realization is something Jallen is starting to see in evangelical Christian churches. But it’s not going as far as he would like.
However, an interesting comparison Jallen made was how long it took acceptance of the rights of African Americans to evolve. He admitted it’s an oversimplification, yet from the American Civil War to the mid-20th Century, it took almost 100 years for American society to realize the rights and equality of African Americans (and it’s still ongoing).
Ex-Gay No Way is a great read. But be warned, you will feel a great deal of fury at the tactics some churches have used in attempt to eradicate homosexuality from their members – things very destructive and un-Christian even by their own standards. I can’t say I would be able to pull off Jallen’s approach of unconditional love toward his opponents, especially after reading his stories of what I’d consider to be borderline genocide against the GBLT community. But I can say that I better understand the mentality of the ex-gay movement.
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