Ex-gay spokesman John Paulk left his wife and three sons after more than 20 years of marriage and rejoined the gay community. He has renounced his former married life to a woman and is now discouraging others from attempting change.

Long ago, John emerged from a very troubled past. Prior to his Christian conversion, he assumed an identity as “Candi,” a cross-dressing and drug-using prostitute, immersing himself in the wilder and more anti-social aspects of the gay world. But his Christian conversion led him into a stark change: marriage with Anne, a former lesbian and a committed Christian woman dedicated to an orthodox understanding of family and sexuality, with whom he raised three sons, now teenagers. He also had a key position with Focus on the Family, where he became a well-known media figure testifying to his commitment to heterosexual family life and the traditional, Biblical understanding of sexuality, which holds that a gay identity is a false construct, not part of our human design. But now, all that life has crumbled.

As a reparative therapist who has worked with thousands of homosexually oriented men seeking change, I believe I am in a unique position to speculate on these recent events.

First, John’s story is a cautionary tale about ex-gay celebrity. There is an inherent risk in the ex-gay movement’s reliance on any public spokesperson.

Second, in his testimony, John advises against Reparative Therapy, but he himself has never been in Reparative psychotherapy. Rather, his sexual-identity change evolved as a result of his Christian conversion.

As John tells his own story, he is a man who always felt unloved and who always searched for identity and belonging. I will not speculate about his own interior processes, because I do not know them. I will, however, speak of psychological patterns I have seen in other SSA (same-sex attracted) men who have gone from “ex-gay” back to “gay” in their lifestyles.

For many SSA men, the deepest problem they must wrestle with is not sexual identity, but core identity. The original source of this struggle is not the more obvious problem in bonding with the father, but a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. For these men, their deepest-level problem is not about sexual orientation but about something more fundamental: identity, attachment and belonging. Gender-identity conflict and attraction to men are only surface symptoms. This is the problem that the media chooses to ignore, and which both sides of the debate fail to acknowledge.

As such a man’s identity evolves, there will be an excited “discovery of my True Self,” followed by disillusionment, then a new “real discovery of my True Self,” and then again, disillusionment. At the base of this desperate search is the anguished grasp for a stable personhood, a profound emptiness and beneath it, a self-hatred. That self-hatred is often expressed in deconstructing and condemning every previous aspect of the person’s own former life, including the influence of persons most near to him.

Radical shifts in “the discovery of my True Self” are associated, in some such people, with Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and gender confusion, since gender identity is built upon an earlier foundation of self-identity. A fragile self-identity makes the later structuring of gender identity particularly perilous.

The restlessness such people feel is shown in a chronic state of dissatisfaction; in the narcissistic expectation that “if others really love me, they must take this pain away from me; and they [or what they stand for] are responsible for my pain.” When others fail to do this, there is a deep sense of betrayal; betrayal that these individuals failed to take away the core emptiness, and so the person in conflict may become angry at the people that participated in his former life. The pain of an identity search and the need for escape from the ordinariness of life can be alleviated for awhile by adulation. The narcissistic inflation found in celebrity, for example, can be an intoxicating balm.

This periodic disillusionment leaves behind devastated individuals who have invested deeply in the person; in John’s case, Anne, his wife of 20 years.

The gay community wants to frame changes from ex-gay back to gay as proof that people who experience SSA were simply designed and created for homosexuality, but we would be deceived if we believed this simplistic paradigm.

Where core identity is the foundational problem, we suspect a breach in the primary attachment with the mother. From my clinical experience, there is a particular kind of client who, although he is deeply dissatisfied with gay life and does succeed in developing good heterosexual functioning, will, over time, struggle to muster the self-discipline and maturity to put in a hard day’s work, come home to wife and family, help the children with the homework, have dinner and settle down to a good conversation with his wife, and go to bed. Such a life of day-to-day investment in one’s loved ones seems too confining: it is boring, lusterless, unexciting, “just not enough.” Underneath the boredom and restlessness remains this deep, chronic dissatisfaction.

It’s not just about needing to find a partner of a different gender; it’s about getting attention, flirting, being made to feel special, distracting oneself from one’s chronic dissatisfaction with life through parties and other high-animation activities, such as the gay community offers on its well-known, drug-saturated party circuits. I suspect that “excitement” was what John was looking for when he went to the gay bar in Washington, D.C. many years ago, just after speaking at a Love Won Out conference, when he created a public-relations crisis while working for the ministry Focus on the Family. I don’t believe John was there looking for sex. I suspect he was bored with the Christian community and its expectations – I believe he sought diversion, flirtation, adventure, and – a favored word in gay politics- “transgression.”

Of course, every shift the person makes from “I thought I was such-and-such…” to “Now I really know who I am,” will always have its cheering admirers.

Who is the “real me” — the ex-gay, or the gay man? Each man will decide for himself.

Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Joseph Nicolosi, Sr.

An Interview with Linda Nicolosi

by Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D.
Fresno, California

Reprinted from the 2020 issue of the Journal of Human Sexuality

Linda Nicolosi is the widow of Joseph Nicolosi, Sr., and served faithfully alongside him for 39 years of marriage before his untimely death in 2017. She is currently republishing all four of Dr. Nicolosi’s books under her own imprint, Liberal Mind Publishers. The books are available through josephnicolosi.com, where many of her late husband’s articles also remain available. In this interview, she shares her recollections of her husband, their involvement in the early years of NARTH (now the Alliance), and her observations about the current state of the mental health field for those providing care for persons with unwanted same-sex attractions.

Linda, I want to thank you for consenting to this interview, which I’m sure the journal’s readership will find enlightening. I want to start in the beginning. Could you tell us about your personal background (birthplace, childhood family, formative experiences as a youth, etc.)?

I was born in New York and grew up in a Christian family with traditional values. I was educated at a private Christian girls’ boarding school started by D. L. Moody, a well-known evangelist, who first opened the boarding school as a girls’ seminary. Today, the school has become exactly the opposite—militantly pro-LGBT-agenda and anti-biblical.

During those years at the school in the early ’60s, I got to see firsthand how the culture was changing. As a student, I was beginning to experience the pressure of political correctness and to feel constrained and angry that common sense views of the world were becoming unfashionable and verboten. I felt a sense of nostalgia, even then, that D. L. Moody’s Christian vision was slipping away and that the people around me were simply not noticing or caring what was happening.

There is one incident that stays in my mind. I was a senior, soon to go off to college, and the school had invited Rev. William Sloan Coffin, a very popular minister, to give a speech to us girls. He told us that he believed the Bible didn’t forbid unchastity for unmarried people, as long as they loved each other. The other girls swooned—here was this handsome minister encouraging us to do exactly what we wanted to do and giving us biblical justification!

I remember thinking at the time, “Something is wrong with this picture, when adult authority figures are not strengthening our self-control by their teaching and example, but instead are encouraging us to do what we want and to live as we want.” That incident planted a seed in my mind that something was radically changing—not just among the younger generation, which is always, of course, a rebellious one—but among the adult authority figures who should be protecting us from our own passions. After all, I had grown up watching The Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro and The Beverly Hillbillies when I came home from school. It was a simple, sweet world where teachers could still get away with rapping your knuckles if you were disrespectful! And it was rapidly becoming something else.

How did you come to meet Joe? How did you come know he was “the one” for you?

We met at a psychology conference in Long Beach, CA, when I was starting out in a master’s in psychology, a career which I later decided to abandon. I immediately appreciated Joe’s intelligence, humor, inquisitiveness, strong family values, and his iconoclastic nature. He was funny, irreverent and “out there.” Yet he had a strong “center” and values that he did not compromise on, especially in terms of his sense of duty towards family.

What are your recollections about how Joe became interested in the psychological care of those with unwanted same-sex attractions? How did you feel about this as his wife?

At first I was not sure about accepting his view of the SSA issue, because I had been educated to see it from a liberal perspective. But even then, I had an uneasiness about what I was learning in school. Something about it didn’t match up with reality, and I felt annoyed that I had to spout back the “right” philosophy to get an A from my psychology professors at Cal State Long Beach. I indeed got the A’s, but I had to regurgitate their agenda. This was true in Gender Studies and Feminist Studies especially.

Joe got interested in the subject because he had several clients with SSA and he saw how closely they fit the classic family pattern, but because he hadn’t been taught about the subject in grad school, he had to learn about it on his own. He became curious about why he hadn’t been taught about the rich clinical observations in the psychodynamic literature and he began to suspect a politically motivated “forgetting” within his profession. How right he was!

How did NARTH get started? Many Alliance members know that NARTH was founded in 1992 by Benjamin Kaufman, Charles Socarides, and Joe, but among these three giants of free inquiry, who approached whom? How long did it take to birth the organization?

I believe it was Ben Kaufman who first approached Joe. Ben related how he had acted as a Good Samaritan in giving mouth- to-mouth resuscitation to an accident victim, but then when he wanted to know the man’s HIV-status, so he could protect himself if necessary, the hospital refused to tell Ben because of the special privacy protections given to patients in response to lobbying efforts from the gay community. That was yet another incidence of common sense yielding to political correctness. Ben, Charles, and Joe knew they needed to rally the mental-health community to protect their rights to offer treatment, as the gay lobby’s power grew and slowly began a professional and cultural stranglehold.

What were the organizations’ main challenges during the early years?

Money—NARTH was broke. Joe, myself, and our son Joe Jr. folded and stuffed the NARTH Bulletins on our kitchen table. I wrote the articles. But we had a sense of mission that it had to be done.

You were very involved in NARTH’s early years as well. Tell us a bit about your role in supporting Joe and the organization.

I had always wanted to do something of value in my life, something to promote the truth. Just “making a living” would have never satisfied that need. My mother’s family had been missionaries and ministers, and I think their spirit came into my spirit and drove me to pursue this work. So, I did virtually all the writing and editing for NARTH.

We all have a designed and created nature, and when we conform ourselves to that truth, we live our lives most fully. Because the world was losing its ability to perceive this truth, I felt driven to write about it and to help Joe in his work. He had a remarkable clinical astuteness, as well as great patience with people and empathy for them. Over and over he would tell me, “I love my work.” Sometimes he would cry when he would tell me how some of his clients had been neglected and abused as children.

What are some of your more memorable experiences?

I worked extensively with Robert Spitzer to get the Spitzer study prepared for publication and published. That was considered a landmark study at the time, though Spitzer later became concerned that his interview subjects might not have all been frank with him, and, as he was under strong pressure from the gay community—which greatly disliked the results—Spitzer later asked the journal’s editor to withdraw the study. The editor wisely refused to do that. I wrote an analysis of my time working with Spitzer, which was published at The Bob Spitzer I Knew—Crisis Magazine (https://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/thebob- spitzer-i-knew). Spitzer, many people like to forget, was the same person who was the driving force to remove homosexuality from the diagnostic manual, and also the person who told me, for publication, years afterward, “In homosexuality, something’s not working.”

Joe would also want me to mention a little “coup” I had while I was studying the professional journals for material for the NARTH Bulletin on homosexuality. I was the source of what The National Psychologist called a “public relations nightmare” for the American Psychological Association. Not a bad thing to be able to do!

I had alerted talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlesinger about an article published in an APA journal entitled, “A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.” After I exposed it, the study drew the attention of Congress, which called for an investigation.

The outrage focused on the authors’ conclusion, based on their analysis of child- molestation studies, that “the negative effects [of sexual abuse] were neither pervasive nor typically intense.” One of the study’s authors, Robert Bauserman, was openly associated with the pedophilia movement. As The National Psychologist reported, according to the study, sexual relationships between adults and children are not as harmful as once believed, and not all childhood victims of sexual abuse necessarily suffer mental illness as a result. . . . The uproar which followed could be seen in U.S. media and from Berlin to Bangkok. But poor Dr. Laura paid dearly for that uproar. The gay movement turned on her with a vengeance, and before long, her talk-show career was over.

Another thing I learned during my NARTH years was that there is a ripple effect in society when homosexuality goes from being compassionately tolerated—i.e., as an unfortunate situation for which we have sympathy and understanding—to being “celebrated” as a positive good.

As one example: same-sex attraction, particularly in men, threatens friendship—the natural and beautiful bond of camaraderie that should always be free of eroticism and even the suspicion of eroticism. Thus, SSA begins to break down the social order and push society into pansexuality. Any relationship, particularly a healthy, innocent mentorship, can now be suspected of being erotic, because sex now can “legitimately” occur between people of the same gender.

During my years with NARTH, I also came to a greater appreciation of why Jewish tradition has required separation and division—the separation of male from female, good from evil, sacred from profane, life from death. Without those fundamental separations, civilization begins a slow slide into barbarism. We see that today in society’s denial of gender differences, and in the sexualization of children who aren’t left alone by adults to be children, while adults themselves are acting like kids! I think of Sen. Elizabeth Warren telling a transgender child on TV that “if I get to be president, I’ll come and ask for your personal approval before I nominate an education secretary.” What happened to respect for the wisdom of adults? Not to mention, of course, that a nine-year-old boy can hardly be trusted to decide that he “is” a girl, and thus set himself on a lifelong course of sterility, surgical mangling of his body, and hormone treatments.

As my aged mother-in-law used to say, “It’s a crazy world.”

How did Joe’s Catholic faith influence his life’s work of helping men with unwanted same-sex attractions?

He saw the world as designed, and God—not man—was the designer. He knew we cannot escape our human natures, which are inevitably gendered.

I twice had the pleasure of having lunch with you and Joe at your home in SoCal. One of my main recollections of our time together was how the Joe at home was such a gentle soul, with a particular interest in painting and growing his garden. This was a different Joe than I had typically seen in his sometimes-outspoken public presentations and certainly unrecognizable from the Joe that was being demonized by the gay activists. What can you share about this side of your husband?

Because Joe had many interests that were not typically masculine—he loved art, opera, and cooking—he knew firsthand that a man can be gender-atypical in some ways (that is, esthetically oriented) and still fully embrace his masculine nature. His father gave him that gift, because although his father was tough, he delighted in Joe and would have given his life for him. So Joe had an interesting combination of masculine strength and Alpha-like dominance, but yet another side of feminine tender-heartedness and great affection, especially for children and animals.

I recall Dean Byrd often asking APA folk, “Is there a place for someone like me in the APA?” In this regard, was Joe hopeful or pessimistic about the future of organized psychology? Did he have a belief about where the field of psychology was heading and what was going to happen to clinicians doing this work?

Joe saw that in the short term, things were going to get ugly, and they have. But he believed that reality ultimately comes back to our awareness, and that the truth will reassert itself at some point.

Would the recent explosion in trans activism within psychology and medicine have surprised Joe?

Joe wouldn’t have done well with what’s happening now, because he had little patience for hiding, mincing words, compromising on the truth, and playing nice with falsity. He would have probably gone on TV and said something, in response to a provocative question, that would have gotten him kicked out of his profession. He was rather Trumpian in his tendency to just say what he thought and let the chips fall where they may. In fact, it was me, throughout his career, always trying to soften his bluntness and the potential for abrasiveness that came with his speaking very forthrightly.

It has now been a few years since Joe’s sudden passing, and his loss is still felt by all who knew and cared about him. Could you tell us about your experience being with him during his illness and how you are doing now?

His illness was only for a couple of days, as he died of a virulent strain of the flu. Up to that time he had been going to the gym and working his usual long hours. He died with his boots on, as they say. In some ways that suited his nature as he had little patience with illness or any restriction on his Type-A personality.

I am doing well enough, although a day does not go by that I don’t think of my husband. We were together about 40 years.

Although some have distanced themselves from Joe’s innovative efforts in providing professional therapeutic care for unwanted same-sex attractions, what do you anticipate will be his ultimate legacy?

I think his main legacy will be that he told the truth about the causes and nature of homosexuality.

What are your current interests and involvements?

I am republishing Joe’s books, which were banned by Amazon even though they had been selling very well. A gay activist complained about them, and Amazon caved in and dropped them. I am working on a final book, “The Best of Joe Nicolosi.” I’m maintaining Joe’s website, josephnicolosi. com.

Is there anything else you would like to say to clinicians and other Alliance members doing work in this arena?

Yes. As I reflect on what’s happened to the mental-health profession, I lament the loss of those precious psychoanalytic insights in the now-forgotten clinical literature—the brilliance of the old analysts and their advancement of our understanding of human nature. Unfortunately, a lot of their brilliance is buried under dense technical language and is not accessible to the layman, or even today’s clinician. I’ve tried to wade through it myself and frequently given up in frustration.

I think this shift in the profession all started in the ’60s with the mantra, “I’m OK, you’re OK.” It was the anti-authoritarian demand to be labeled normal just because a person believed he was normal. The “I’m OK, you’re OK” trend was an outgrowth of the demons inherent in democracy—that ugly leveling effect of the democratic spirit. We now dare any person outside of ourselves to make value judgments of any kind about our chosen identity. “Who is someone else— especially an authority figure—to tell me that my wish to be the opposite sex is not beautiful and good, simply because I say it is?”

As a result, most psychologists have turned the henhouse over to the foxes. The profession has become an empty shell of shallow behavioral studies without attempt at insight. There are endless, grievance-based studies that demand the affirmation of alternative lifestyles. The latest (coming from gay psychologists) is the push for social affirmation of “consensual non-monogamy.” They want psychologists to remove the stigma from promiscuity.

Besides debasing social norms and shaming psychologists of traditional values, the profession is giving up on the search to grasp the totality of our human nature. What a loss!

For those who still seek the truth, I’d say, “Keep the flame burning.”

Christopher H. Rosik is a licensed California psychologist who works at the Link Care Center in Fresno, California. He is also a clinical faculty member at Fresno Pacific University.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

Homosexual behavior is an attempt to “repair” the wound that left the boy alienated from his own innate masculinity.

See article here:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/traumatic-foundation-male-homosexuality

Client Choice Under Attack:

Interview with David Pickup, LMFT

by Linda Ames Nicolosi

1.  David, you have testified before several State Legislatures about the proposed therapy bans.  These laws seek to stop any psychotherapy that might reduce same-sex attractions in minors. What’s your thinking on this?

These bans are, in effect, child abuse.

All of our therapy clients believe that their homosexual feelings were caused by emotional and/or sexual abuse. To address this abuse, I use a program called Reintegrative Therapy, which focuses on childhood traumas. As a byproduct of this therapy, when the trauma is revisited, homosexual feelings are often reduced or eliminated.  To deny a child their right to heal these underlying wounds would do nothing but further abuse the child.

Can you imagine a child or his parent walking into our offices who wants therapy for homosexual feelings that are associated with their sexual abuse, and having to tell them that overcoming this trauma might change their sexual attractions— and that any change of homosexual feelings would be illegal? This is nothing short of more abuse.

2. If Joe Nicolosi Sr. were alive today, what would be his thoughts on this situation?

If Joe were here, he would be fighting right alongside the rest of us with his characteristic expressions of scientific integrity, passionate belief in what truly works therapeutically, and expressions of healthy, sarcastic wit.  He wouldn’t put up with psychological nonsense.

3.  Could you tell us about Sam Brinton, who has been paid by gay-activist groups to go around the country testifying in favor of these anti-therapy bills?

Brinton has given false testimony of the supposed Reparative Therapy he received some years ago as a minor. His parents, who would have been the ones who sent him to therapy, refute his story.  Brinton says he was harmed by this therapy but he refuses to state, or “can’t remember,” any of the key details—at what age he went to therapy, the name of the counselor, whether it was a religious or licensed counselor (his story has changed over the years), or the location of his experience.

He now believes he has achieved the “freedom” to be who he really is. [Editor’s note: Brinton, who says he is non-binary, was subsequently charged with three occasions of luggage theft of women’s clothes from airport carousels, and then was fired from his U.S. government job managing nuclear waste.] Brinton is someone who engages in degrading animal-fantasy sex, bizarre cross-dressing, sado-masochistic bondage sex, and even the abuse of women in some ways.

And our lawmakers fell, over and over, for Brinton’s story.  No lawmaker attempted to verify his claims, even though we told them they were easily shown to be false. Based on this man’s testimony, state lawmakers voted over and over to ban change-allowing therapy for minors.

4. Why are these therapy bans so dangerous?

A client’s right to therapy that benefits him or her should be upheld by all the major psychological institutions in the world. Instead, it is under siege.

Besides, there is a legal issue at stake—the US Constitutional right to free speech. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently gave the opinion (coming out of another case regarding free speech) that banning specific types of therapy was a violation of free speech.  In contrast, the 9th Circuit court ruled differently some years ago. As this issue continues to work its way through the legal system, we expect other Federal Courts and the Supreme Court to rule in our favor.

5. How do these bans threaten clients’ rights?

To ban therapy because it doesn’t fit a contemporary political or psychological movement will interfere with client dignity and self-determination. The first ethical goal of all medical or mental health professions is, after all, to do no harm, and these bans will harm clients’ rights to self-determination.

Clients’ rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation will no doubt increase, if such therapy is banned throughout the country. The anti-therapy movement will also lead to the breakdown of scientific authority of the mental health profession and public respect for its research, as the layman begins to recognize that politics, not science, is actually driving their agendas.

6. The LGBT movement is demanding that transgender therapy be available to a preschool child.  That child is seen as perfectly capable of making his own decisions about who he is, if he seeks to identify as the opposite sex. And yet a teenager with homosexual feelings is seen as not capable of choosing his own identity if it leads him away from a gay lifestyle. Isn’t this intellectually incoherent?

You have just articulated the exact and gross irony of this situation. This incoherence makes it obvious that  the LGBT movement to ban therapy is political, self-serving,  and not really directed toward the mental health of children. Children are being used for the irrational and biased agendas of adults. They seek to upend our understanding of gender and sexuality and guide it toward a worldview which ignores our biological design. This has happened in history many times before.

7. Why is it so important to the gay community to stop people from leaving homosexuality?

There are two main reasons for the gay community’s resistance. First, testimony such as my own tends to crack the foundation of the LGBT world view, which would require them to face the traumatic underlying causes of the homosexual condition.

Second, people with same-sex attraction usually hold onto unresolved anger from having been shamed or bullied by family, friends and society from many years past.   It would be emotionally unsettling if they weren’t able to transfer these unresolved anger issues onto other people in the present. In short, they need to “pay back” the hurt that was done to them.

This maltreatment for having had homosexual feelings is actually why I have so much compassion for the LGBT community. They deserve our compassion, but that doesn’t mean that clients’ rights should be taken away.

8. What other false testimonies have you seen in government deliberations over the therapy bans?

I testified in Denver in March 2019 where two of the most notorious LGBT activists spread their falsehoods in the senate committee.  Yet despite my efforts, that committee passed the therapy ban!

One notorious figure is, as mentioned above, Sam Brinton.  The other is Matthew Shurka. I’ve testified in around 20 states over seven years.  It’s always the same stories from the gay activists. Every one of these testimonies reports horrendous things like electroshock to testicles, shame-based therapies, and coercive techniques.  But these activists never report “who, what, where and when” these alleged acts were committed against them. And the committee members never ask them for corroboration.

If these terrible therapies had actually taken place, don’t you think those men would have sued their therapists? Wouldn’t they have reported them to their licensing boards? Yet none of them have done so.

On the other hand, our own testimonies of the existence of safe and effective therapy can establish actual dates, doctors’ names, and places where clients received effective, professional treatment.

9. Where do you think this is all going to lead?

If the Supreme Court still exists as an honorable, wise and unbiased institution, I believe that it will uphold a client’s right to professional therapy.

But if they do not, the U.S. could be hit by a metaphorical iceberg like the Titanic that sunk long ago. It will be an age of something like fascism.

On the other hand, if our rights are upheld in the courts, I believe a new era of professional therapy will emerge  in our country that informs everyone that no one has to be LGBT.

10. The Democrats have been unified in favor of the anti-therapy bills.  In fact, didn’t Hillary Clinton say she hoped to ban therapy for adults as well? 

Yes, Clinton indeed pushed for the therapy bans, even for adults. But in many states there is immense pushback from truth-seeking Republicans. However, in almost every one of the 15 states that have banned therapy, they’ve only succeeded because they are the most liberal states in the Union. From this point forward, it’s going to be very hard for LGBT activists to take hold in many more states to ban therapy.

11. Do you think the legislators you speak to, are actually interested in the truth?

Yes, the conservative ones are, for the most part, but the liberal ones probably couldn’t care less. In my opinion, there is a national dumbing-down of reason, and a blindness to truth.

The Left tries desperately to convey compassion for all diverse peoples. However, compassion without truth degenerates into mindless sentimentality. In fact, compassion just becomes “sentimental niceness” whenever it is not grounded in the truth.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

No one wants to be the bearer of bad news about a group that has suffered discrimination.

But because homosexuality is rooted in a gender wound, the dark side of gay life keeps stubbornly emerging, in spite of public-relations efforts to submerge it.

Statistics tell us that gay sex is often tied to substance abuse, promiscuity and unsafe sex practices. A significant minority of gay men also participate in sadomasochism, public sex in bathhouses and group sex.

Many people, both gay and straight, become curious about this “dark side of life” and briefly dabble in it. Soon, however– those who are psychologically and spiritually healthier– come to reject such things as degrading, destructive of their integrity as human beings, and “not who I am.” But why, then, do some gay men—in fact, so many of the gay population— continue to engage in soul-destroying obsessions and behaviors?

This phenomenon is not restricted to a fringe of the gay subculture. Even Andrew Sullivan—who identifies himself as a Catholic (despite his obvious rejection of foundational Catholic beliefs), and is a well-known conservative in the gay movement–defends what he calls the “the beauty and mystery and spirituality of sex, even anonymous sex” in his book Love Undetectable.

And in a speech to a gathering of college students, the Rev. Mel White was also reported by Pastoral Care Ministries Newsletter (Spring 2000) to have said that he does not “struggle” with pornography, but uses it. The reverend is the leader of Soulforce, a gay group that pickets Protestant denominational meetings to push for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Writers Gabriel Rotello (author of Sexual Ecology) and Michelangelo Signorile (Life Outside) are both conservatives in the sense that they have spoken out strongly about the dangers of irresponsible sex and sexually transmitted diseases, and have taken rancorous criticism from the gay community’s more radical faction.

Yet when Signorile speaks of the “rauchy, impersonal atmosphere” of sex in public parks and bathrooms, he is careful to note that he, himself, would never judge it:

“There’s nothing morally wrong with this–and I say that as someone who has certainly had my share of hot public sex, beginning when I was a teenager and well into my adulthood.” (1)

Similarly, Gabriel Rotello says he has been maligned for his role as a so-called “moralistic crusader” against unsafe sex. Yet he explains:

“Let me simply say that I have no moral objection to promiscuity, provided it doesn’t lead to massive epidemics of fatal diseases. I enjoyed the ’70’s, I didn’t think there was anything morally wrong with the lifestyle of the baths. I believe that for many people, promiscuity can be meaningful, liberating and fun.” (2)

Taking a Closer Look

When NARTH’s literature describes the dark side of the gay movement, this is not done for the purpose of gay bashing. Our primary purpose is to identify and understand a psychological pattern.

Mainstream psychologists are usually too conflicted (or simply uninformed) to acknowledge any pattern or assign any significance to this sexual radicalism.

Indeed, much of the language of psychologists has been purged of evaluative judgment that could explain the meaning and significance of a particular behavior. A 1975 Dictionary of Psychology states that “fetishism, homosexuality, exhibitionism, sadism and masochism are the most common types of perversion.” Now, 25 years later, the word “perversion” is never used for any of those conditions; they are known as “deviations” or “variations.”

Emotional Deficits Become Sexual Fixations

But because homosexuality is deficit-based, the dark side of gay life–characterized by sexual addictions and fixations–keeps stubbornly emerging, in spite of public-relations efforts to submerge it.

Culture Facts, an online publication of Family Research Council, recently reported on a street fair that illustrates this paradox. The fair was sponsored in part by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF)–two very prominent groups committed to mainstreaming and normalizing homosexuality.

Yet that event featured public whippings, body piercing, public sex, sado-masochism, and public nakedness by parade marchers. Fair booths sold bumper stickers that said, “God masturbates,” and “I Worship Satan,” and merchants peddled studded dog collars and leather whips (not for their dogs). On the sidelines of the public fair, a man dressed as a Catholic nun was strapped to a cross with his buttocks exposed, and onlookers were invited to whip him for a two-dollar donation.

How long can psychologists be in denial about the significance of the dark side, and ignore what it implies about the homosexual condition?

And there’s a matter of even greater concern. How long will psychologists eagerly throw open the door to gay life for every sexually confused teenager?

Endnotes

(1) “Nostalgia Trip,” by Michaelangelo Signorile, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Spring 1998, Volume Five, No. 2, p. 27.

(2) “This is Sexual Ecology,” by Gabriel Rotello, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Spring 1998, Volume Five, No. 2, p. 24.

Mother-Son Boundary Violations as Blocks to Heterosexual Feelings

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

During the course of therapy with same-sex attracted men, when the client is working on increasing his attraction to women, we sometimes encounter a block to the development of heterosexual intimacy which traces back to the boy’s childhood experience with an intrusive and over-intimate mother. The following are some examples.

A client and I were doing Body Work on an attractive female image. As he gazed at the photo, he felt himself slowly developing warm, close feelings. But just as he was beginning to enjoy the pleasant sensations in his body, he hit a sudden block. He felt a rigidity in his chest (i.e., fear). When we analyzed the problem, a jolting memory came up of his mother “playfully treating me like baby” by taking her breast out and putting it to his mouth.  He was 10 years old—a preteen at the time—and the incident, which was supposed to be a joke, had brought up alarming, incestuous feelings at that time which he had felt an anxious need to suppress. In fact, he had “forgotten” those feelings until this moment.

Another mother who was a midwife in a small town, was called to help with a birth, and she took her 7-year-old son (now my adult client) along with her. The mother allowed her son to watch the delivery, and to this day, my client recalls the vivid image of the pregnant woman’s bloody vaginal area and of her terrified screaming. This early, and (to him) horrifying experience of a woman’s body created an association that he was unable to erase. From that time forward, he felt a sense of revulsion regarding the female body.

Another client told me of an incident when he was about 13. He was talking to his mother about his anxieties regarding having a girlfriend, and his inexperience about what to do or say.  The mother suggested that the two of them— mother and son—practice kissing together. This client did not need to read Freud to see the connection between that incident and his feelings of apprehension toward women. His mother’s total disregard for normal mother-son boundaries had formed a barrier which prevented the client from developing normal heterosexual feelings. By default, he turned to the “safety” of homosexuality.

Many clients tell me that they and their mothers showered together.  The mothers thought such an experience would make their sons feel relaxed about the human body, but instead, they produced the opposite effect. Other clients remember disturbing memories of their mothers walking around the house naked, an image which left them with defensive feelings of abhorrence.  Some mothers also insisted on frequent cuddling and hugging, even as their sons got older. 

In such situations, the feminine body becomes not a mysterious attraction, as it does for heterosexual men,  but rather it becomes an object of dread. For the man who develops homosexually, the male body, in contrast, has no negative childhood associations of boundary violations and therefore, it represents a “safe haven” from the intrusive feminine.   

Mothers who are flirtatious with their sons in an erotic manner are seeking to meet their own needs, to the neglect of their sons’. Their motivations could range from mere careless naiveté, to desire for narcissistic gratification, thus turning the son into a sort of plaything and failing to acknowledge his masculine dignity. 

Mothers must always be sensitive to the healthy physical and emotional boundaries that are required by the young boy to develop heterosexually. To the male, the feminine must always be mysterious and “other than me,” rather than intrusive, controlling, over-familiar, and suggestive of the threat of incestuous attraction, as so many of our homosexual clients report from their childhoods.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The primary focus of reparative therapy for men is always on the healing of same-sex relationships. A reparative therapist strongly encourages the establishment of healthy, non-erotic friendships with men.

There comes a time, however, when some clients evolve to a point of readiness to enter an intimate relationship with a woman. This readiness must be expressed by the client himself, and cannot be encouraged by the therapist in the same way we would urge a client to seek out male friendships.

Any success with women will not endure without the continuation of the client’s ongoing, satisfying male relationships.

To understand the particular challenges of the homosexually oriented man in his relationship to women, we must first begin by understanding the classic triadic relationship which is seen so predictably in the history of our clients. This triadic relationship throws the boy on the side of the mother, with father isolated from his wife and son. This misalignment gives the boy a distorted perspective of himself in relationship to the masculine and the feminine. The boy’s father remains a mystery, and his mother is all too well known.

In life, men and women are always challenged to try to understand each other. Straight men are often accused of failing to meet this challenge, and it is said that they are typically insensitive to women. Paradoxically, however, it is the same insensitivity which allows the heterosexual man to develop an intimate relationship with the woman. He is not so attuned to females that he overreacts and loses himself in response to their needs.

To the straight man, women are mysteries, but this is the price the straight man must pay for the development of his heterosexuality.

If the straight man can be faulted for insensitivity, the homosexual man can be faulted for being too sensitive to women and emotionally over-involved with them. Said one homosexual client as he reviewed his failed female relationships, “I have learned to be too open to women in an unhealthy way.” Growing up, he had been too intensely tied in to his mother’s emotions.

Mothers want a compliant, well-behaved, good little boy. The prehomosexual boy offers this appealing image of the good boy to please his mother–behind which, however, he hides his true self in self-protection. He becomes the good little boy on the outside, but on the inside, he remains intensely confused about his needs and his identity.

As the client approaches the challenge of an intimate adult relationship with a woman, this drama of the early relationship with the mother will be re-enacted.

The Challenge

For the man with a homosexual background, the challenge is to enter into a relationship with a woman while maintaining a sense of self-possession. The job of the therapist is to monitor the client’s internal sense of self as he approaches the woman. The therapist keeps the client honest with himself and prevents him from falling into the false self, which he will easily do as he did in relationship with mother. While there may be numerous versions, the typical false selves that emerge in a relationship with a woman are:

1. The passive-compliant.
2. The theatrical entertainer.
3. The empathic counselor.

The therapist is watching for the client’s tendency to abandon himself and slip into one of those false selves when he is with her. By becoming too sensitive to the woman’s expectations for him, he abandons all of his needs and wants and desires for her needs, thus losing his self-reference.

Trust

The successful shift to heterosexual marriage is all about trust:

“Can I trust this woman with my feelings? Will she manipulate and confuse me? Will she fail to see me for who I am, and smother me with her expectations? Will she act like she cares for me but really use me or try to control me? Will I be able to be myself?“

The role of the therapist is to listen for the man’s compromises of selfhood.

The Ongoing Need for Male Friendships

No matter how successful his relationship with his wife, the man with the homosexual background will always need to have good male friendships. Many wives–even those wives who did not know that their husbands had a homosexual problem–have told me that when their husbands spend time with their male friends, they are happier and more attentive at home, and more emotionally available to them and the children. When their husbands shrink from men and fail to maintain male friendships, they become withdrawn, moody and emotionally unavailable to them and the children.

The married man with a homosexual background may find conjugal relations with his wife to be less intense. However, he is left with a sense of rightness, contentment and well-being. Rather than feeling left depleted by sex (as he felt with men) he is renewed and feels satisfied and good about himself, as he experiences himself to be more fully a participant in the gendered world.

Some Thoughts on the Boy Scouts

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

The problem is not about admitting homosexual boys; it’s about the transmission of an Ideology. 

Should homosexually oriented boys be admitted into the Boy Scouts?  ”Yes,” I’ve often said, because boys with same-sex attractions could benefit greatly from male bonding experiences.

Then what is the source of the conflict?

Youth groups provide an important rite of passage for boys growing into manhood.  In fact, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) never did exclude same-sex attracted members—  their policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell,” like the policy once held by the military.

That worked well until gay activists insisted that boys should enter the Scouts with a “gay is who I am” mentality.  

Gay activists successfully played it to the press that the BSA was discriminating against homosexual boys—  that they didn’t want them.

But the BSA should have fought for what they really stood for: that all boys are welcome, but that the BSA will continue to promote the Judeo-Christian understanding of human identity and biological design.

People with a worldview rooted in traditional faith see homosexuality as a superficial layer of personal identity. Same-sex orientation is seen by them as evidence of trauma..as a problematic attraction…as a chosen identity that is disconnected from biological reality. A person’s truest and deepest identity is ultimately heterosexual, which will put him in harmony with his design. This is the worldview shared by traditional Christians, traditional Jews, Muslims, and Ba’hai, among other faiths.  Their worldview cannot simply be discounted as “prejudice” rooted in “animus.”

But gay activists believe that a gay identity must be accepted by everyone as that particular person’s nature.  Yet people of traditional faith are confident that on a deeper, truer level, these boys were created for something greater.

That’s not an easy concept to argue, in an age where every individual is said to be free to choose his own identity—  male, female, non-binary gender, “questioning,” bisexual, gay or straight. In today’s world, it seems like a slap in the face to tell someone, ‘This can’t be who you really are.’”

The Problem of Gay Scout Leaders

What’s going to happen with the new Scout policy of accepting gay-identified Scout leaders?  What will you say when you see a gay leader encouraging the boys to “discover who they are” with the idea that they, too may be gay?” Because this will inevitably happen.

One could argue that the Boy Scouts are a-sexual.  They don’t talk about sex.  They’re not allowed to.

But this issue is not about sex— it’s about the transmission of an ideology.  When gay activists get into positions of Scout leadership, they will, naturally, want to serve as role models. They will be on a mission to insist that homosexuality is the same as heterosexuality.  They’ll talk about their belief that children don’t need two married biological parents.  They’ll introduce the boys to their partner or ‘husband.’ They will present their lives as examples, and themselves as role models.  

That approach will teach not just that this particular, individual Scout leader has qualities to emulate (which no doubt is true; the gay Scout leader may have many good character qualities), but it mixes up the example of his personal character with his homosexuality, and sends the message that homosexuality itself is good.

People have caved in on this issue; in our schools, our youth organizations, the media, movies, government— the psychological and medical professions…everywhere; the accepted view is that the traditional understanding of human identity is “hatred.” Almost no one is left to speak the truth about human design and purpose.

For people of traditional faith, new Scouting alternatives are being created. One good alternative to look into is Trail Life USA.

by Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D.

This is the paradox of Reparative Therapy®: it is successful only if the client first faces and accepts his unwanted feelings.

The more the person sees the thing inside himself that he rejects, and sees it in the light of truth, the more it dissipates. The task is not to look away from the feelings, but to look through them.

When we use the “Triangle of Containment” in therapy, the client is asked to focus directly on a homosexual thought or fantasy. At the same time, he should actively attend to his bodily sensations. While doing this, he is asked to stay connected to the therapist. When the client is holding on to the homoerotic image, he will usually experience a simultaneous bodily arousal. (Some men describe it as a genital surge, a rush or a “zap.”) If he can accept his bodily homoerotic experience while staying connected to the therapist, the sexual feeling soon transforms into something else: the recognition of deeper, pain-generated emotional needs which have nothing to do with sexuality.

Re-experiencing the feelings in the presence of an accepting therapist helps remove that shame; the client is then better able to see his same-sex desire for what it is. One man described his liberation from shame by looking deeper the homoerotic illusion. “Looking at it in the light of day,” he said, “takes the ‘leprosy’ out of it.”

When we push the shame aside–facing the feared fantasies directly–we see the true nature of the man’s homoerotic attraction, which is about attachment loss. When the man looks past that erotically charged male symbol -the icon of a missing part of his identity—he can begin to fulfill the same-sex attachment needs that are truly at the core of his deepest longings.

Homosexuality is not fixed and unchangeable, as these public figures reveal. Some of them celebrate their sexual fluidity as a good thing; others believe that the only true expression of sexuality is heterosexuality, since it is consistent with our biological design.  

But the message is the same from all of them — people can change.

Anne Heche

Anne (born May 25, 1969) was an American actress who died in 2022. Her film credits include Six Days Seven Nights, Return to Paradise, I Know What You Did Last Summer, John Q and Volcano. She also starred in the television series Men in Trees, Hung, and, most recently, in Save Me, Dig and Quantico.

Heche and DeGeneres started dating in 1997, and at one point, said they would get a civil union if such became legal in Vermont. They broke up in August 2000.

Reporters asked “what the walls would say” if their $3.5 million L.A. pad could talk, more than three years after their going public with their relationship. “They’d be saying that we are very excited and we’re very happy and in love three years later,” DeGeneres said.

“Yeah,” Heche agreed. “We’re very lucky women, that we get to have what we have.”

“It’s a celebration every single day,” DeGeneres continued. “It’s kind of disgusting and crazy that we’re like … Oh, we’re so lucky.”

“Yeah,” Heche agreed. “We’re lucky, we’re so lucky.”[1]

Here statement about not being gay any more:
Anne then left Ellen DeGeneres to marry James Tupper.

From an interview:

[the interviewer] said “You were gay for a bit… you have an open mind.” Anne said “I have yes – had an open mind. But then I make decisions, ‘I have an open mind, but then ‘I’ve learned about that….fantastic’… I have an open mind, I can change my mind…There’s a door, we can close that door. We can go to another door.”[2]

Jessica Ellen Cornish (Jessie J)

Jessie J is an English singer and songwriter. She is the first British female artist to have six top ten singles from a studio album. The release of her third album Sweet Talker (2014) was preceded by the single “Bang Bang” which debuted at number one in the UK and went multi-platinum worldwide. As of January 2015, Jessie J had sold over 20 million singles and 3 million albums worldwide.

Her statement when she was gay:

She said in an interview:

If I meet someone and I like them, I don’t care if they’re a boy or a girl.

Her statement about not being gay any more:

From an interview about her previous lesbian attractions:

Passing comments [were] made into ‘facts’ that can never change. Guess what? They can change. As they should. And I have changed and grown up ALOT, and that’s allowed. And I feel more comfortable in my own skin now than ever before. We all are on a journey and I refuse to feel boxed and judged because of how I felt once! A long-ass time ago. Vegetarians eat meat sometimes. Get it? People change.[3]

Bob Dixon

Sen. Bob Dixon is an American Republican politician currently serving the Missouri State Senate who. Dixon was first elected to the house in 2002 and served four terms. Between 2004 and 2008 he served as Majority Caucus Chairman and chaired the House Transportation committee.

Statement about not being gay any more: 
Missouri State Sen. Bob Dixon claims that childhood abuse and teenage confusion caused him to engage in gay relationships for a few years.

Dixon’s campaign issued a statement touting his faith in God and support for traditional marriage, while condemning any opponents who try to use his past against him.

“Through the years, I have publicly spoken about being abused as a child and the confusion this caused me as a teenager,” said Dixon in the statement. “There are literally thousands of Missourians who will understand how heartbreaking childhood abuse can be — though few might be willing to acknowledge it.

“I have put the childhood abuse, and the teenage confusion behind me,” said Dixon, who has a wife and three children. “What others intended for harm has resulted in untold good. I have overcome, and will not allow evil to win.”[4]

Julie Cypher

Julie Cypher is a film director who is best known as the former partner of Melissa Etheridge, a singer-songwriter, musician, and activist. Known for being one-half of one of the first “out” lesbian celebrity couples, Cypher advocated for gay rights. She and Etheridge then split and Cypher married Matthew Hale.

Her statement when she was gay:

Well, I was straight. I was married to Lou Diamond Phillips. I’d known lesbians as friends in college, but I’d never met a woman that I was attracted to, so lesbianism had never occurred to me—until I met Melissa. Then it occurred very strongly.[5]

From an interview with Cypher and Etheridge…

“Do you now consider yourself a lesbian?”
Cypher: “I absolutely do.”
“Would you be with a man again?”
Cypher: “I doubt it. I would look for the person, for the soul, but I just feel that the female psyche is where I find my satisfaction with relationships.”

Her statement about not being gay: 

In 1999, she said, “You know, I’ve tried and I’ve tried these last couple of years, and I’m just not gay.”

Gillian Anderson

Gillian Leigh Anderson (born 1968) is an American-British film, television and theatre actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in The House of Mirth (2000), and Lady Dedlock in the successful BBC production of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.

In an interview with Out magazine, she described a lesbian relationship with a woman who had recently died.[7]

Her statement about not being in a gay lifestyle any more:

Anderson now identifies as heterosexual and has been twice married to men.

I am an actively heterosexual woman who celebrates however people want to express their sexuality. [8]

She is currently single, but looking to start a new relationship with a man.

Sheryl Swoopes

Sheryl Swoopes (born 1971) is a retired American professional basketball player and the head coach of the women’s basketball team of Loyola University, Chicago. She is frequently referred to as the “female Michael Jordan.”

Her statement when she was gay:

“I’m not bisexual,” she said. “I don’t think I was born [gay]. Again, it was a choice. As I got older, once I got divorced, it wasn’t like I was looking for another relationship, man or woman. I just got feelings for another woman. I didn’t understand it at the time, because I had never had those feelings before.”

One reporter at Out Sports explains the situation:

“Sheryl is just more proof that no one is born gay, it is a learned behavior brought on by experiences and circumstances in one’s life. I am very happy for Sheryl…”

Statement about not being gay any more:

From an interview when Swoopes was asked if she was “born gay”:

Swoopes: “No and that’s probably confusing to some, because I know a lot of people believe that you are.”[9]

Swoopes now has been twice married to men.

David Kyle Foster

David Kyle Foster is an author, professor, television producer, and the director and founder of Mastering Life Ministries. He has spoken on five continents about the healing of sexual brokenness, and has appeared on The 700 Club, The Dr. Phil Show, The Coral Ridge Hour, The Abundant Life, Cope, His Place, Home Life, and has been the host of Covenant Award winning “Mastering Life” on the Focus on the Family Radio Network.

What he said about having been gay:

“Because of my fear of mature women, I chose to see them as sexless ‘Snow White’ figures. My favorite actresses were Julie Andrews and Hayley Mills. When I became sexually active in my late teens, it quickly became far less stressful to go with males. Besides, most of the ones who came after me were older men who didn’t expect reciprocation or commitment on my part. Deep inside, I was still looking for ‘Father Knows Best”,’ and when older men gave me the time and attention that I craved, the results were almost inevitable.”[10]

What he says today:

Excerpts from David Kyle Foster’s testimony on the PFOX website: …

“Perhaps my personal witness to change can be of some help. I have been changed in many and varied ways over the past 32 years after seeking the Lord at the age of 29 to deliver me from a bondage to homosexuality, pornography and other sexually addictive behaviors. After 10 years of active involvement in the ‘anything but gay’ homosexual lifestyle, Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me and has set me free from what statistics show to be a death-style lain upon the foundations of profound brokenness….My identity has been completely transformed and I see myself as the heterosexual male that God had always created me to be.”[11]

Donald Andrew McClurkin (Donnie McClurkin)

Donald Andrew “Donnie” McClurkin, Jr. (born 1959) is an American gospel singer and minister. He has won three Grammy awards, and is one of the top selling Gospel music artists, selling over 10 million albums worldwide.

Statement about when he was gay:

McClurkin, in 2002, told a Christian website that, due to the sexual abuse of his earlier years, he had struggled with homosexuality.

Statement about not being gay anymore:

“I’ve been through this and have experienced God’s power to change my lifestyle. I am delivered and I know God can deliver others, too.”[13]

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando was an American actor, film director, and activist. He was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century.

Statement about hisinvolvement in homosexuality:

In 1976 he told a French journalist

“I too have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed. I’d never paid much attention to what people think about me. Deep down I feel a bit ambiguous.”[14]

On living a straight lifestyle:

Brando ended up having several marriages with women—  Anna Kashfi (m. 1957; div. 1959), Movita Castaneda (m. 1960; div. 1962), Tarita Teriipaia (m. 1962; div. 1972).

Dennis Jernigan

Dennis Jernigan is a singer and songwriter of contemporary Christian music. He is native to Oklahoma, and headquarters a music-based Christian ministry from there.

Statement about not being gay anymore:

From a blog by Dennis Jernigan…

“This statement will probably produce a lot of controversy, but this is how I think of myself: I do not consider myself a recovering/former/ex gay. I consider myself a new creation. The slate of my mind is being erased and the old thoughts are being replaced with new thinking. What I have discovered in the process is that when I change my thoughts, my attitudes change. When I change my attitudes, my behaviors change. When I change my behaviors, my perspectives change. When my perspectives change, I see life from a vantage point that homosexuality NEVER afforded me.”[15]

Dennis Jernigan lives with his wife Melinda (pictured together at left), in Oklahoma on the farm where they raised their nine children.

Chirlane McCray

Chirlane I. McCray (born 1954) is a writer, editor, and has worked in politics as a speechwriter. She is married to former New York City Mayor Bill del Blasio, and was the “First Lady” of New York City.

Statement when she was gay:

“I survived the tears, the isolation and the feeling that something was terribly wrong with me for loving another woman… coming to terms with my life as a lesbian has been easier for me than it has been for many.”[15]

Asked how she had left a lesbian lifestyle to marry a man, she explained it this way:

“By putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in. By letting myself be as free as I felt when I went natural.”[16]

Jan Clausen

Jan Clausen is the author of a dozen books in a range of genres. Clausen’s poetry and creative prose are widely published in journals and anthologies.

When she was in a gay lifestyle:

“After 12 years in a lesbian marriage, Jan Clausen fell in love with a man. Since her identities as writer and lesbian were intertwined, all hell broke loose. Clausen’s books are yanked off college reading lists. She loses friends, community, and status.”[17]

When she left the gay lifestyle: 

Seeking to contradict the idea that people are born gay, she said,

“What’s got to stop is the rigging of history to make the ‘either/or’ look permanent and universal.”[18]

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie is one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actress as well as one of the most influential people in the American entertainment industry.

Statement when she was living as a lesbian:

In a 1997 interview with Girlfriends magazine:

“I fell in love with her the first second I saw her. ‘I would probably have married Jenny if I hadn’t married my [first] husband.’”[19]

Statement about not being in a lesbian lifestyle anymore:

Jolie spoke to Us Weekly soon after marrying Brad Pitt, saying,

“It’s been an amazing year. I married my love.”[20]

Michael Glatze

Michael Glatze was the co-founder of the group “Young Gay America” and a former writer/editor and passionate advocate for gay rights. Later, he received media coverage for publicly announcing that he no longer identified as a homosexual, and that he believed that a gay identity is not in harmony with our created design.

Statement about when he was gay:

“I was always a theoretical thinker, and I got into Queer Theory and I analyzed all the different facets of sexual identity, and I identified as queer.”[23]

Statement about not being gay anymore:

“Homosexuality, delivered to young minds, is by its very nature pornographic. It destroys impressionable minds and confuses their developing sexuality; I did not realize this, however, until I was 30 years old,”

Glatze wrote in an article in WorldNetDaily.

“It became clear to me, as I really thought about it – and really prayed about it – that homosexuality prevents us from finding our true self within. We cannot see the truth when we’re blinded by homosexuality.”[24]

“Best friends for 25 years, mother and father are both very excited about the upcoming birth and look forward to co-parenting the child together. The pair have been planning this baby for years and have been trying for the last two.”[26]