“During my time in (ex-gay therapy group) Courage, my attitudes towards myself, my family and others became very bad. The more I avoided intimacy, the more I hungered for intimacy.  By spring of my first year, I was already masturbating every day and crying bitterly after I ejaculated.  I was punishing myself if I dared to look at any pornography.  I was hungering to be loved, but not allowing myself to experience love. I eventually started working with an ex-gay therapist and even a spiritual director. In both cases, the more I attempted to flee being gay, the more being gay smacked me in the face.”

Until recently, I thought awful stories like the one above only took place in the US Bible Belt or the dark recesses of the past.  Unfortunately, I was very wrong.  As I learnt from Patrick Strudwick’s excellent article in last week’s Independent – which you can read here – therapists who seek to “cure” their patients’ homosexuality through counseling are depressingly widespread in Britain.  According to a 2009 study by the British Medical Council Psychiatry Journal, a shocking 1 in 6 UK psychiatrists and psychologists have attempted to change their patients’ sexual orientation.  To make things worse, wealthy, powerful American evangelical organisations are now promoting conversion therapy in Britain –  “ex-gay” US minister Mario Bergner (who even claims that the holy spirit cured him of being HIV+) is due to host a conference promoting the therapy next weekend in Northern Ireland.

This isn’t just a case of a few god-botherers making the usual homophobic mumblings – it is a question of large, powerful organizations targeting the vulnerable and unhappy and pressuring them to see their sexual orientation as corrupted and degrading.  Sexual conversion therapy ruins lives, telling its victims that their desires are a sickness and that they must never allow themselves to experience love on their own terms.  Given that this is a training in self-loathing, is it any wonder that so many people subjected to it turn to self-harm and even suicide?

We can and must do something to prevent this systematic abuse from continuing in Britain.  For a start, please join SCOTT (Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce) on Facebook, a very new but fast-growing organization that aims to eradicate conversion therapy.  One of SCOTT’s initial aims is to find out exactly who in the UK is offering conversion therapy – as most survivors of the therapy tend to blame themselves rather than their therapists for a failure to change orientation, complaints have so far been scant.

If you have ever been offered conversion therapy, or know someone who has who might be prepared to talk to us, please get in touch.  We need to find out who these people are so that we can demand that they are struck off by the professional bodies they belong to.  In addition, we would also like to create a dossier of survivors’ testimonials to help promote public awareness – SCOTT realizes, however, that reliving the experience might be painful and wants to put no pressure on anyone to share anything they don’t feel comfortable with.  Counselling bodies in this country are generally becoming more aware of issues surrounding sexual minorities – many of those 1 in 6 therapists were possibly more ignorant than malicious – but without pressure from us to change, we still face years more of people being psychologically tortured for something that needs to be cherished, not changed.

You can join and message SCOTT here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=284213565804&ref=mf

If you have undergone, or feel pressured to undergo conversion therapy, here are some organizations that support and counsel sexual minorities who you can contact:

PACE on 02077001323.  http://www.pacehealth.org.uk

A charity promoting LGBT mental health and emotional wellbeing

Pink Therapy: http://www.pinktherapy.co.ukAn independent therapy organization whose website also includes a directory of LGBT affirmative UK therapists

The testimonial at the beginning of this piece comes from an ex-gay therapy survivor writing on the website below. I strongly recommend you have a look!

http://www.beyondexgay.com/

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