You can surpress your emotions, but you'll never really be happy. And potentially, one day, you'll figure out it's not worth it and leave your wife and kids for another man.

So you have to ask yourself, would you like to live that lie to the world and yourself?

If someone is religious, I can understand that wanting to be straight to satisfy your parents expectations. However, as a woman, I don't want to wake up one morning and have my husband of ten years tell me he is gay and is leaving me for another man. I'd rather have married someone sexually attracted to me.

You are who you are. My philosophy is that being gay is not a sin and that it is completely normal, just like being straight. I am a practicing Catholic, so I should follow everything the Pope says, right? Wrong. I think it is impossible to "convert" to a different orientation and I think it is perfectly acceptable to be gay because why would God put some people on this Earth, make them gay, and then feel it was a sin and deem it immoral. Being gay is a "sin" by some because man deemed it that way.

Being converted is impossible, but suppressing these gay urges is possible. Changing your sexual orientation is more impossible than changing your gender, skin color (not including getting tan/pale), and height (after puberty). :)

This is what Freud had to say to a mother that asked him to treat her son:

"I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime –and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis. By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains homosexual or gets changed."

The only "proof" these camps have on the success of "conversion" is the Masters and Johnson book called "Homosexuality in Perspective" in which they claimed to have converted 70% of the participants. That evidence has now come out to be fake. Read:

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/faked-evidence-of-gay-conversion/?hp

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=homosexuality-cure-masters-johnson

I still don't think that these camps are really operating in good faith. They may use people's Christan beliefs to sell their services, but they do so by twisting and manipulating those beliefs. So ultimately it's all about the money.

Those who really did it in good faith, soon realized what they were doing and are now spending their lives trying to stop it. Some of them have even issued apologies. Read:

http://www.beyondexgay.com/article/apology

The fact that some parents are forcing their teenage children to these places is tragic and verges on child abuse. Mainstream Christians and Churches should come forward and condemn these camps and their practices. This is religious oppression to say the least.

Imagine what the reaction would be if a clinic claimed that they can make all black people white. That black people are not in God's plan and that all black people should do all they can to rid themselves of this sin/curse. Imagine if people took themselves and their children to have their blackness bleached out so they can be white. Would we allow it? Hell no! But yet again, because these groups operate under the religious cloak, they manage to escape. We are now used to ignoring them because we kind of "expect" such lunacy to come from extremely religious people. These are not Christian groups though. These are bigoted groups that have found refuge under the Christian cloak. A bit like every other extreme religious organization really...

Finally, to end with humor, I couldn't put it better than Butters in South Park, so here it is:

"All right. All right that does it! [turns around and faces the crowd] I am sick and tired of everyone telling me I'm confused! I wasn't confused until other people started tellin' me I was! You know what I think? I think maybe you are the ones who are confused! I'm not gonna be confused anymore just because you say I should be! My name is Butters, I'm eight years old, I'm blood type O, and I'm bicurious! And even that's okay! Because if I'm bicurious, and I'm somehow made from God, then I think your GOD must be a little bicurious himself!

Suppressing the 'urge' to be gay is pretty much like suppressing the urge to be straight. It cannot be done unless you're a priest who cannot be either!!! If one speaks of homosexuality as a sin then I would guess they're not gay at all. Of course I'd have a hard time believing that they were anything else. If one goes to these 'camps' to rid themselves of the 'demons' which possess them I'd still have a difficult time believing they were anything else...but they think they're a vile sinner!

A person is what they are, nothing more and nothing less. If your desire is to be a priest then I can see that celibacy would come into play but that would interfere no matter what. So what's the big deal about praying gay away? You can pray all you wish to but that doesn't mean you can pray away the essence of your being. Yes, I think it's bullshit, clear and simple.

aaaah! hahahahahahahaha! AAAAAAAH! HAHAHAHAHA!

Holy shit,

I'm sorry, but I find nothing on earth funnier than a bunch of Christians trying to convert gay people from... gayness I guess. I know it's serious, but it's just so goddamn funny.

Like, how many gay porn movies could that be the plot for?

I just love it.

Really, there's only one kind of Christian who really cares that much about "saving" a gay person, and that's a gay Christian, who incedently hates themselves for it... I mean, who wouldn't want to be a self-hating lunatic who worships invisible beings and injures his own cock nightly as he furiously masterbates to the latest jockey underwear ad then immediately feels guilty for it? Sounds like FUN! Where do I sign up?

I'm considering finding one of these gay conversion places here in LV, there has to be one, and finding a pretty little Christian chick to "cure" my gayness in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus H. Christ. I mean you can't reason with these people, might as well have fun with it.

Hey Alterion, that should be the next movie you make, I'll write the script if you're down.

This is one of the worst things about religion. People trying to force you to act against your very nature for no other reason then some obscure passage in a fucking book.

It has been undeniably proven that sexual preference is something that we are born with. It is not a choice.

I have no doubt that people can convince gullible homosexuals that what they are feeling is wrong...make them feel guilty for feelings that are completely natural. They may even be able to make them act straight. I can't imagine that this is good for someones mental health, however, and I am sure that these feelings that are being repressed will manifest themselves in a negative way later in life.

If you are straight, imagine being forced to have sex with someone of the same gender. Does that sound repulsive to you? Well now you might understand how homosexuals who are forced to go to these kind of camps feel.

There is nothing wrong with being gay, just like there is nothing wrong with being black, blue eyed, or female. It's not a choice, and the sooner people learn to accept those who are different, the sooner we can end nonsense like this.

Why change from who you are! God is all forgiving so would forgive you for being gay anyway and hes all powerfull so he must have made gay people in the first place.

I think Jesus was gay. Praying the gay way.

Anyway, the whole thing is sort of dark age. Get over it.

If your just suppressing your gay urges, then your gay. There is nothing wrong with being gay. If God doesn't like gay people, then why'd he make people gay?

Is this even a legitament argument? I'm only asking this because if I was lesbian, I wouldn't like having a load of religionist propaganda shoved down my throat. Bein gay/lesbian/bisexual isn't a choice, it's how you were born, it's like trying to change your gender by thought alone, it can't be done! Come on, you said yourself in the description that 'ex-gays' have just learned to supress their urges and try to be straight. It's like if being gay was normal, you would have to kiss, etc, etc with the same gender as you, which wouldn't be very nice, would it?

Fuck this. You like the same sex, get over it. You can't freaking pray how you feel about someone away. I support love no matter what the gender.

It is impossible to change your sexuality..point blank, I don't believe sexuality can be changed. If it were that simple then many many people would do it. In the early stages of awakening, before they accept themselves, young homosexuals often wish to change and try very hard to. They don't succeed. If it were possible to change your sexuality there would be very few homosexuals in the world because it takes most of us a long time to fully come to terms with who we are and accept ourselves.

No you can not change who you are no matter how much "therapy" you go to.

As recently as the last century, teachers would tie a child’s left hand in a vain attempt to make them right-handed. While a left-handed person can force himself to write right-handed, just as a gay person can force himself to live a heterosexual lifestyle, that doesn’t make the leftie a rightie or the gay man straight. Some people (the ambidextrous or the bisexual) would find it relatively easy to move from one behavior to the other, but for most of us, changing our sexuality would be as impossible as learning to write as precisely or throw a ball as accurately with our non-dominant hand as with our dominant hand.

"Pray the Gay away" is just a way of saying " I have hate towards people who aren't like me". In my opinion that quote along with anyone who uses it is nothing. That's like a man saying "Pray the females away" vise versa.

If my child was born gay I wouldn't hate, I wouldn't send him off because even if he completely commits to being gay who says that he won't change? He may end up marrying a woman. Just because someone says they are gay does not mean that he/she will be gay forever. People change along with emotions, intellectuall thoughts, sexual attractions, and sexual orientation. A lot of people say " being gay is a choice" sometimes it is and sometimes it not. If you say that you are gay or lesbian at a young age, who knows for sure that you will be gay/lesbian forever?

NO ONE can determine who other people will end up loving.

This is crap. You cant change a person if he or she was born that way. How rude can you be on this. You have no heart.

Hate mongering spam debate.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________