Señor, or Señorita? In Spain, it's the thought that counts

It's so weird that pro-gay forces will allow for this but then be completely against those of us who want to overcome homosexuality and not identify as gay and pursue sexual orientation change.

Randy: Those programs have an extremally low success rate, most of those will revert after a few years or so, and some of the failed attempts can be badly damaged. If you do a little googling, you will see that many professional associations have publicly condemned them. I do not have the time to look those up myself now, but if someone here requests I would be happy to find them. I think there is a list on Wikipedia.

Deliberate orientation change is not impossible. It is merely very, very difficult - and potentially dangerous. There have been quite a few cases of such programs causing suicides.

Alan Turing comes to mind. One of the most brillient thinkers ever to have lived, his work significently shortened the second world war and lead the the theories which underlay much of computer science. But when his homosexuality become publicly know, homosexual behavour was a criminal offense - the court-ordered 'treatent' drove him to suicide.

Just those few decades ago, homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness which must be corrected - with or without the cooperation of the sufferer. The emphesis was not on producing well-adjusted people, but heterosexual people, and a lot of harm was done in the attempt to do just that. Homosexual groups remember those times well enough to fear being labeled as 'defective' and forced - by legal means, social pressure, threats of unemployment or any other method - to undergo corrective therepy which will in almost all cases fail, and will often result in an individual with serious problems.

The reason these programs are viewed as a threat is that their very existance - dispite the condemnation and rejection of all reputable medical organisations in that field of any related - gives the false impression that homosexuality can be escaped easily with just a few weeks of therepy and prayer. This gives homosexuals false hope, and provides those who oppose homosexual rights a ready excuse - its must easier to oppose rights for a group identified as a 'choice' than one identified by an inherent property such as race or sexual orientation.

The programs also serve as a sort of sexuality laundering system, which makes their actual success very hard to judge - homosexuals go in, claim to have been miraculously cured, and come out pretending to be heterosexual. Sometimes, convincing themselves too. But the effect is very frequently temporary, and the 'cured' revert to homosexuality some weeks or years later. The most high-profile case was a member of the board of directors for one of these ex-gay organisations, who was himself caught flirting at a gay nightclub.

Dispite being caught drink-in-hand chatting up another man, he claimed he had gotten lost and gone to the wrong club :>

I know an ex-gay personally; He is happy to be where he is now, which is celibate. He is still attracted to men and still finds a woman's touch creepy, but he believes that his attraction to men is his cross to bear, and that celibacy is the solution.

I disagree that he is ex-gay, but he is happy this way.