“Homosexual tendencies (are) one of many conditions that beset fallen humanity.”
According to Exodus International’s policy statements, those who embrace “homosexual behaviours” have lives that are “sinful” and “destructive”.
Rather than simply condemn non-heterosexual desire, Exodus International (A Christian organisation that condemns homosexuality) adopts what they refer to as a ‘redemptive’ approach – seeking to ‘reorient’ the ‘fallen’.
Now accessing such ‘therapy’ is just a click away. Apple has caused enormous furor by permitting Exodus International to promote its work with a new application that encourages same-sex attracted people to abstain from their ‘moral sickness’ and ‘heal’ themselves by becoming heterosexual.
Rather than engaging in the polemical debates about banning the application, we ought to be asking a much broader question: Does the “ex-gay” reparative politics preached by groups such as Exodus International have any social currency in our world today?
Framing homosexuality as a moral defect is neither new, nor an idea confined to religion. Since the late 19th century, the threat of homosexuality emerged as a specific political identity. Not only did punitive laws define same-sex relationships as criminal, the psychiatric profession came out to diagnose all non-heterosexual desires as symptomatic of a mental illness.
Although legal and psychiatric disciplines in Australia no longer advocate such politics, the legacy of policing moral conduct remains. Major medical and psychological associations, including the American Medical Association, have rejected the use of reparative therapies.
Reparative therapies identify same-sex attraction as a developmental social defect that ought to be corrected. Such therapies rely on coercive techniques aimed at controlling the body. This includes encouraging abstinence, disciplining physical comportment (how you walk, talk etc) and providing peer-support networks to enforce the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ interaction between people of the same and opposite sex.
“Reorienting” desires, or transforming from gay to straight, becomes possible by using gender as the vehicle for discipline. Put simply, in order to be “straight”, men must be masculine and women must be feminine.
Gendered logic is not a unique feature of the reparative therapies used by faith-based ‘ex-gay’ groups. How often are same-sex attracted men accused of being “fairies” and told to “man up”? How often are women chastised as being ‘too butch’ for choosing to play sports instead of obsessing over dolls and fashion? Strict adherence to a prescribed or fixed gender role is seen as instrumental to maintaining heterosexuality.
Despite the increased visibility of fluid sexual and gender expressions – prejudice still inheres. We only need to look to our schools for a stark snapshot of this. ‘Writing Themselves In 3’, a 2010 national study about the sexuality, health and wellbeing of same-sex attracted and gender questioning young people, reported that over 60 per cent had experienced some form of physical or verbal abuse.
What is particularly concerning is that the empirical research diverges from the political rhetoric that often romanticises the idea that “things are getting better”. The study notes that there was a gradual increase in abuse in schools over the past decade and, correspondingly, 80 percent of all harassment, discrimination and abuse, happened in educational settings.
So why do we continue to pay lip service to social inclusion, multiculturalism and political correctness when we are still unwilling to end systemic discrimination?
In many states across Australia, faith-based organisations receive broad exemptions to anti-discrimination law. Legal consequences aside, such laws provide moral justifications to bar sexual and gender minorities from claiming equality. For example, a young person at school may be shamed into managing the visibility of their sexual or gender identity, or else they may be expelled.
While we may wish to distance ourselves from organisations that encourage invasive reparative or conversion therapy, our own Australian laws allow some children to be expelled because of their sexuality, making us complicit with a similar, though less visible, logic of bigotry.
By marking out people’s differences and subsequently shaming them for it, whether in a private “ex-gay” therapy group or a public schoolyard, it is hardly a surprise that suicidal ideation and suicide is an endemic problem amongst same-sex attracted and gender diverse people.
Homophobia is not just confined to Australia. Information sharing in the globalising digital age has transformed the way homophobia manifests across disparate communities and geographies. Uganda serves as a stark reminder of the dangers of homophobic zealotry when it is exported as part of a “civilising mission”.
In 2009, sermons from notorious US evangelical ministers in Uganda asserted that homosexuality threatened to undermine the “cohesion of African families”.
By exploiting colonial anxieties about the moral degeneration that comes with non-heterosexual behaviour, an Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced. When being gay becomes an offence punishable by death, we cannot ignore the devastating effects of saturating people’s imaginations with fear and stigma of sexual differences.
In light of these circumstances, how can we joke about “ex-gay” therapies, like that encouraged by Exodus International, as idiosyncrasies of the past?
Prejudices against non-heterosexual people are not confined to pulpits or sermons, they pervade our most basic social interactions, and now they come to us with the ease of a download.
Regardless of whether the app is banned or not, we need to think more carefully about how to change the phobias that enabled it to exist in the first place. After all, Exodus International is not alone in hoping that we can all just ‘pray away the gay’.
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
It's a Sydney thing, but 95.3FM... Why? It used to be all Bohemian Rhapsody and Walk this Way; now it's Father to Son and Country Road. Wah.
@pryorlisa There's a column in this... turning into something you thought you'd never be... I crossed the threshold with a soccer mum car!
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
We don’t deserve this huge, exciting scientific project
I’d like to be able to say that sharing the world’s largest radio telescope with South Africa…
Mining money talks the loudest in Australian politics
When North Queensland Liberal MP George Christensen got the idea of launching a new political organisation…
Please enter your password
Help! I’ve succumbed to a crippling modern illness that can strike at any moment. Symptoms include:…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented