A breakaway group of Christian and secular therapists claims to be able to convert homosexual into heterosexuals--if they'll just get with the program. So what exactly is the program? And does it work?
It's a Sunday morning in Lecanto, Florida, and Faith Chapel is filled with the Holy Spirit. Tambourines shaking, guitar jamming, the storefront church is awash in praise. "Dance with all your might," sing Pentecostal Christians in khakis and lightweight dresses. "The time's drawing near." Church members filter down the aisles, and knots of people form, hands touching shoulders, hands touching faces. A woman faints and is covered by a white blanket. Another lifts her arms as her fellow worshippers crowd around her, encouraging her ecstasy until she, too, faints. "Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus," people intone, while the pianist plays a running melody.
Steve Simmons is in his element. A pale-eyed 38-year-old with cowboy boots and a goatee, he runs here and there, his long curly hair slicked back and cascading past his collar. He sings in the ensemble, prays with people, lays on hands. His wife Shawn is never far away.
Simmons' old life, by contrast, seems very far away. Earlier in his marriage, he was a closeted homosexual, sneaking off on lunch breaks to find quick release with other men at a lakefront park. "Any chance I could get to get away from the house, I was out," he says. He eventually settled into a relationship with a coworker, and the two men planned to move in together as soon as Simmons could ditch Shawn and their two-year-old daughter.
It took him most of an evening to break the news to Shawn. He brought her to a restaurant but couldn't tell her there; at home, he fumbled for a half-hour before blurting out that he was gay. "What can I do to help?" Shawn asked her husband. Taken aback by his wife's good will and dogged by his religious beliefs, Simmons realized he couldn't leave his marriage. "I know about this ministry," he told her. "I'm willing to go through it if you're willing to stick it out."
She was. So Simmons split up with his male partner and started attending the Orlando-based Eleutheros, one of more than 100 Christian organizations in the United States dedicated to helping people forego gay sex.
There, at a ministry that believes homosexuality stems from family dysfunction, Simmons talked about growing up with a father who was a military medic and would disappear for six-month tours aboard a Coast Guard cutter. He discussed his "domineering and controlling" mother. And he recalled the male teenage cousin who lured him, at nine years old, into unreciprocated sexual service. "I remember feeling that I had made him happy," Simmons now recalls. "I could please a guy, and maybe in some respects, I was trying to please my father." With the help of Eleutheros, Simmons came to believe that his same-sex urges were an unhealthy mutation of a natural desire to receive the affirmation of other men.
At the same time, he started learning how to avoid temptation. The key was an "accountability group," six to eight men to whom he was required to report every homosexual contact, every same-sex fantasy, every trip to a gay bar. "All of a sudden, it was like, 'Do I really want to do this?' To be honest with these guys, that means I've got to stop. And it's not easy."
Though Simmons no longer was sexually intimate with men, he remained attracted to them. "There were times when driving down the road and just looking at a guy in the next car was enough to keep my fantasy life going," he says. "And I could keep myself going on fantasy for a long time."
Other would-be converts dropped out of the ministry, but Simmons persisted, attending meetings up to three times a week. Eventually, he began thinking of homosexuality as an addiction, something he could never get rid of but could keep in check. "The accountability groups give you a chance to sober up," he says. "They give you the time to get away from the sex long enough to start thinking a little more clearly. That was a big part of the recovery process for me, because I finally had a chance to stop and see exactly what my actions were doing, who I was hurting."
Now, four years after leaving Eleutheros, Simmons considers himself one of the ministry's successes. He and his wife have worked on their relationship, and he feels more physically engaged with her. "She still probably wants more sex than we have," he says. "But it's nothing like it was before. Before, we'd have sex maybe once a month. Now it's six to eight times a month. We've come a long way in that respect." Simmons occasionally finds other women attractive, too. "I work outside delivering mail, and I see women, and I think, 'Wow, that looks good.' But I wouldn't say I'm all the way there."
"I don't feel like a stereotypical straight guy, the beerdrinking 'Hey buddy, let's shoot some deer,'" Simmons adds. But neither does he feel consumed by his same-sex desires. "There's still some attraction to men. But it doesn't set off the same bells and whistles it used to. Now I'm a little freer; I can say, 'Wow, that's a very attractive-looking man' and leave it at that. If a guy looked at me and winked, there might be a little sexual flush. But if he's just sitting there, and I look over and he's very handsome--it's not a big deal."
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