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eye WEEKLY                                             February 9 1995
Toronto's arts newspaper                      .....free every Thursday
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COVERSTORY                                                  COVERSTORY

                         FORMERLY KNOWN AS GAY
         Organizations like New Direction for Life Ministries
         seek to "cure" homosexuals and lead them back to the 
   promised land of straight Christian values  -- what's behind the
           struggle by some individuals to become "ex-gay"?

                                  by
                           JESSICA M. PEGIS


We came to talk makeovers but nobody brought the lipstick.

Here's the story: A decade ago, 30-year-old Rob Goetze of London, Ont.,
was gay. He had "no sexual thoughts for women at all." Now, two
therapists later, he's "about a 1 on the Kinsey scale" -- a married
heterosexual and father of one.

What happened to Goetze is the subject of rancorous debate among
scientists and church leaders. Can homosexuals be made straight through
counselling?

The Toronto-based group that now employs Goetze as a paid staff worker
says they can. New Direction for Life Ministries turned 10 this year. A
referral agency for Exodus International, a worldwide network of
Christian organizations, it labels all homosexual activity sinful and
destructive. According to the 1994 PBS documentary One Nation Under
God, Exodus claims to have treated hundreds of thousands of homosexuals
and boasts a success rate of 71.6 per cent.

But Exodus keeps no follow-up records or statistics to validate the
claim "although it's something we ought to be doing," admitted a
spokesperson on the phone from their California office. "People are
always asking us for numbers."

Their mission is underscored by a small group of therapists in Canada
and the U.S. who believe that homosexuality is a treatable scourge.

Just what they're treating -- and changing -- is a little nebulous.
Goetze, for example, never had a gay sexual relationship, only strong
feelings of attraction to other men.

                          BLAME YOUR PARENTS

Even when sexually active gay men and lesbians stop having sex,
fantasies usually persist, says an article on homosexuality in the
October 1994 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Moreover, it
declared the data on studies of changes in sexual orientation to be
wholly inadequate.

That doesn't dissuade Joseph Nicolosi, an American psychiatrist and one
of the founders of the National Association for Research and Therapy
for Homosexuality. "We all have our little fantasies," he says. "We are
all meant to be heterosexual."

Elizabeth Moberly, a U.S. therapist and Donahue and Shirley veteran,
says the new Christian tolerance toward gay sexuality is "contrary to
psychological good sense as well as spiritual good sense." Moberly,
with a doctorate in theology from Oxford University, has a unique
theory that compares gay men and lesbians to "little boy[s] . . .and
girl[s]" looking for the love of their same-sex parent.

Pointing a finger at mummy or daddy will make "gay men become more
comfortable in their masculinity and lesbians become more comfortable
in their femininity." The eventual goal: looking, acting and being
straight.

Goezte assures me it works: "The stuff with my father follows classic
Moberly." (Indeed, one of Moberly's books, Homosexuality: A New
Christian Perspective, is required reading at ND support groups.)

"My father loved me very much, but because he was away at work a lot,
and I didn't know that, I felt rejected or forgotten and I wasn't
affirmed in my masculinity," says Goetze. He came to that conclusion
after reading Moberly's book. So much for the science behind the
makeover.

"These are all post hoc explanations which are substantiated by a
circular process," explains Donald Meen, a Vancouver-based clinical
psychologist who served on the Anglican Task Force on Homosexuality.
"If you look at the research thoroughly, you'll see that there is no
substantiation for any particular pattern of parent-child relationship
or any other factor."

And Meen says there's no reason to cure people of something that isn't
pathological in the first place: "The research is very consistent that
gays and lesbians, especially self-affirming gays and lesbians, are as
psychologically healthy as any other group. There's a wealth of
literature there and a very strong consistency of finding."

Besides, insists Meen, it probably doesn't work: "Any evidence for
change [of sexual orientation] is anecdotal and descriptive. There has
never been any scientifically controlled, experimental evidence -- it
just isn't there."

"Well yeah, obviously, I have certain beliefs about homosexuality in my
life," counters Goetze when I mention that if homosexuality is
intrinsically change- worthy, like alcoholism, then surely change
should be everyone's goal.

"Look, we're very upfront about our beliefs about homosexuality, that
we believe change is possible, and that it's a process. Obviously, if
someone comes and all they want to do is have arguments with everyone,
that's not really appropriate and it's not the place to do it. It's not
productive for them or anyone else."

But what do you do with the evidence -- the millions of apparently
well-adjusted gays and lesbians in North America whose lives are
otherwise unremarkable?

"My only response to that is that our ministry is here for people who
are not happy," says Goetze.

                       FEELINGS OF REJECTION

I ask Marion, a tall, reedy woman in her 30s who felt her first sexual
attraction to women at age 13, the same question.

"For people who don't want to change, it's probably true that they
could have an all right life, but I don't think it's God's best," she
observes. The curious phrase, "God's best," will surface several times
during our interview. Apparently homos are the exception to the glory
of the created world.

Around Marion's dining-room table in her compact basement apartment, we
talk for nearly two hours. Marion used to work in a health food store
but now she temps -- sometimes for New Direction, occasionally for 100
Huntley Street, the Christian television show.

In the '80s, she'd had a relationship with another woman that lasted
eight years. Then an eye operation and making "a personal commitment to
Jesus Christ changed my life. A few months later, I felt he was telling
me to leave the lifestyle and the relationship."

She joined the Toronto-area New Direction for Life support group in
1991 and "just loved it."

"The wonderful thing about it was that I was in this room with all
these people, more guys than girls, and I thought, this is wonderful. I
never thought I'd want to deal with the hurts in my life and here we
were, sitting there, talking about the hurts in our childhood ... We
had gone through the homosexual lifestyle and now we desired freedom."

She then articulates the New Direction for Life philosophy, perhaps
best summarized in this passage from a handout to group members:
"Everyone has experienced rejection in one form or another, at one time
or another. Rejection is part and parcel of the homosexual condition.
Part of the reason why we develop homosexual patterns is because of the
rejection we experienced as children."

Confides Marion, "I was verbally abused most of my life, as a young
kid, mostly by peers. I was told I was ugly by one guy I really liked.
It just crushed me. I mean, I didn't know it then at 13 but I put a
wall up.

"I started to sexualize my needs, the need for affirmation, attention,
and I started to sexualize it with women because I had a pretty good
relationship with my mother, my sisters -- that was where the comfort
was."

"So you don't follow Moberly?" I ask, pissed off about the schoolyard
bully, but wondering if rejection by the family cat will be mentioned
next.

She clarifies: "Elizabeth Moberly's theory kind of holds true in my
case because my mother and I -- we had a great relationship -- but
there was a separation when I was very young. I was in the hospital and
we were separated for a few weeks. That can be traumatic when you see
your parents leaving."

It may not be scientific, but no one can quarrel with conviction, and
Rob Goetze and Marion wholeheartedly believe -- they know -- they are
straight. In Marion's case, the transition seemed, if not exactly
painless, then surely fearless. Even the eight-year relationship proved
"not really difficult" to break off.

"That sounds very cold, but I think God had really done a work in my
heart," she offers, folding her arms quietly. A few minutes later she
retrieves her bible from the bookshelf and reads me several passages
from the New Testament.

All the sections on homosexuality are underlined in angry red ink.


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SIDE BAR                                                      SIDE BAR

                   THE GROWTH OF EX-GAY MINISTRIES


Twenty-five years after Stonewall, counselling homosexuals to "go
straight" is as popular as ever. "It's a growing trend," says Barry
Lee, who runs the U.S.-based Living Waters program for "the sexually
broken" -- including homosexuals -- out of Evangel Temple on Yonge St.
Lee says he has a waiting list for each 25-week program cycle.

Last year, New Direction for Life Ministries launched a new Winnipeg
office. It now holds support groups in Toronto, Ottawa, London,
Kitchener and the Niagara Region, and provides one-on-one counselling
and Christian resources on various aspects of homosexuality through its
head offices.

Support groups -- the most popular venue for those seeking counselling
-- combine prayer, discussion of theories of homosexuality and
discussion of childhood and family issues, and are led by lay
counsellors.

Last year also saw the opening of Edmonton's Flight Ministries. Its
coordinator, Pentecostal minister Norm Layton, told the Western Report
that being gay is "an addictive behavior, a source of pain that seeks
sex for relief while sinking further into death."

Layton says most of the folks in his current support group of 20-plus
are gay, but some have problems with sex abuse and sex addiction. He
too has a waiting list for each 25-week cycle.

The oldest ex-gay group in Canada is run by the Burnaby Christian
Fellowship in Burnaby, B.C. Its founder, Frank Shears, died of AIDS in
February, 1994, after he admitted his 18-year struggle to be ex-gay had
failed miserably.

                               
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