They've Changed, So They Say
By ANDREW SULLIVAN

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- Who's afraid of former homosexuals?

At first blush, of course, it's easy to see why the recent newspaper advertisements promoting the "truth" about homosexuality -- that it can allegedly be changed -- might provoke a strong response from homosexuals and their allies.

The advertisements, sponsored by 15 religious-right organizations, featured Anne Paulk, a self-described "wife, mother, former lesbian," and were intended to advance the idea that homosexuality is a free and sinful "choice" and therefore unworthy of civil rights protections. This idea is marshaled by fundamentalists who, sadly, see nothing uncivil about describing another group of functioning, productive citizens as "diseased."

The campaign is clearly a desperate gambit to change the terms of the debate about homosexuality, a debate the religious right has been steadily, inexorably losing for two decades. The leaders of the far right realize that unless they can redefine homosexuality as a pathological illness, it is only a matter of time before the logic of civil rights protections embraces a group of people they find threatening.

But in its desperation, the right may well have overreached. A closer examination of "reparative therapy," the psychoanalytic treatment that allegedly turns homosexuals into heterosexuals, reveals it to be far less threatening to the argument for gay equality than first meets the eye. Indeed, in some ways, the arguments and ideas behind reparative therapy paradoxically strengthen, rather than weaken, the case for gay rights.

Take the notion of a "cure." Even the reparative therapists themselves believe it to be extremely difficult in most cases, requiring therapy five times a week often for years. They claim a "success" rate of about 30 percent, but their patient population is skewed to those most willing and desperate to make a change. A more realistic figure of a conversion rate for a representative population of gay men would be far lower.

As Freud himself argued, "In general, to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual is not much more promising than to do the reverse."

Freud was also ahead of the game in distinguishing between a psychoanalytic "conversion" and what most people think of as a cure.

He once wrote to a mother who was seeking his help to change her gay son: "In a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it."

Or, in the words of a contemporary reparative therapist, Steven Richfield, the most realistic goal of such therapy is "a satisfying heterosexual adaptation which is not jeopardized by the periodic intrusion of homosexual fantasies."

One of his patients puts it in more human terms: "I've come to accept that there is a part of me that I may never be able to get rid of. But maybe I can learn to live with it."

Then there's the notion that homosexuals "choose" their sexuality.

If the literature of reparative therapy teaches anything, it is how deep homosexuality runs in a person's identity, and how enormously difficult it is to alter. Most reparative therapists think sexual orientation is fixed in early development before the age of 18 months or, at the latest, three years.

The most prominent psychotherapist in the field, Charles Socarides (whose own son is gay), specifically denies that homosexuality is a choice. What he and other reparative therapists argue, in fact, is something very advantageous to the argument for gay equality: even if homosexuality is not genetic but environmental, it is still involuntary.

In other words, homosexuals have as much choice over their sexual orientation as they do over their race or sex.

Of course, reparative therapists would be appalled at the comparison of sexual orientation with gender or race. For them, homosexuality, while unchosen and deeply ingrained, is still a pathology or psychological disorder.

But this part of their argument is increasingly unpersuasive. As more and more gay men and women live and work openly in our society, the clearer it becomes that they are not demons, disease-carriers or psychopaths. We have our problems -- gay men in particular -- but the problems are recognizably human problems: of love, commitment, sexuality and intimacy.

Moreover, the contribution gay people make and have always made to society and civilization is hardly the mark of psychological dysfunction. I wonder whether Trent Lott, who recently compared homosexuals to compulsive thieves, has ever read Whitman or Proust or Auden. Or listened to the music of Copland, Tchaikovsky or Britten. If he does, does he think: kleptomaniacs?

There is, however, one final glimpse of hope in the rhetoric of the religious right in this matter. In its advertisements, the right admirably insists that "ex-gays" be allowed a forum, and to be free from abuse, derision or condescension.

I couldn't agree more. The kind of struggle that these people have had in their lives is a struggle that just about every gay person recognizes. It is the struggle to become who you are. If someone genuinely feels he cannot live with himself as a gay man and decides to submit to grueling therapy and join a particular sect of American Protestantism to be able to live a heterosexual life, then who am I to stand in his way? These conflicts are so deep, these choices so personal, that only the individual can resolve them.

But by the same token, doesn't the "ex-gay" owe the same tolerance to me?

Shouldn't this struggle be deemed beyond the reach of politics and coercion? If one owes it to an ex-gay not to cast aspersions on her sincerity and mental health, should one not also owe it to a lesbian?

I would not, moreover, deny someone her civil rights because she resolved this issue in a heterosexual way. I wouldn't deny her the right to marry the person she loves, nor would I deem her beneath the civic responsibility to defend her country in the military. On what principled, nonsectarian grounds, then, would she plausibly deny those same civil rights to me?

In a strange but beautiful way, then, the religious right may have finally stumbled onto the true moral ground. The more you think about it, the rights of former homosexuals are truly indistinguishable from the rights of gay men and women. Those rights include the pursuit of happiness as one sees fit, and equal protection of the laws in a republic where no single religion is privileged.

So let the leaders of the religious right continue their battle for self-determination. But let them apply that principle universally. They will discover that they have joined the gay rights movement after all.

Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at The New Republic, is the author of the forthcoming "Love Undectectable."