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06/05/2012
The exorbitant cost of 'change'
It needs to be repeated time and time again. When it comes to the so-called "ex-gay" movement, failure can pose almost as much harm as the movement's underlying goals:
"I have really never seen anyone truly change their orientation and what I’ve experienced there has been great shame, great depression, and others feeling hopelessness, having suicidal tendencies, heightened fear, all these things not because they’re trying to work the process but because the process did not work for them."
—"Ex-gay" survivor Jallen Rix, denouncing the work of professional "former lesbian" Janet Boynes
The people who push this wholly unscientific idea are not just proving cover for all of the groups who advocate against us in public policy. That would be bad enough. However, for impressionable children and their misled parents, the attempt to obtain the unobtainable can cause heartbreak, separation, anguish, and, sadly, much worse.
Janet Boynes is one of the same three or four people who purport to put a public face to an unrepresented many. In truth, she is giving a face to a very dangerous form of snake oil. It's time to drain the lamp that has already misguided far too many.