Gay conversion therapy sparks culture war in N.J.

Dustin Racioppi, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press | GANNETT

ASBURY PARK, N.J. -- For 10 years Tara M. King said she was gay, but through therapy and self-determination those impulses vanished. At 48, she said, there is not a lustful thought, sexual urge or even a raised eyebrow for another woman.

And from a basement office in Brick, N.J., King, a licensed professional counselor, offers teenagers the same reparative therapy that "cured" her.

But the contentious practice is on the brink of banishment in New Jersey. A bill outlawing such therapy to those under 18 is headed to the Senate for a vote after the Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee passed it by a 7-1 vote March 18.

The legislation brings to New Jersey's forefront a much-criticized practice while exposing the schism between those who believe a person is born gay or lesbian and those who think it is a choice.

And it comes at a time when gay rights are being challenged in the Supreme Court, which last week heard two days of arguments on the issue of same-sex marriage.

In New Jersey there is even dispute over what to call the practice. Most organizations refer to the therapy as "sexual orientation change efforts," or SOCE. More common references like reparative therapy and conversion therapy are rejected by proponents as politically charged buzzwords.

Last week the issue took hold in the budding race for New Jersey's governorship. Likely Democratic contender Barbara Buono, a state Senator from Middlesex County, attacked Gov. Chris Christie for what she called his inconclusive comments on the practice.

Christie said he did not have a "hard-and-fast position" on the practice, but that it might be one of the exceptions to his conservative belief of letting parents parent. The next day a Christie spokesman said the governor does not believe in conversion therapy.

Nor, as a rule, do mainstream medical societies.

The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association are among the national organizations that either oppose or warn against reparative therapy. No major medical organization endorses the idea that being gay or lesbian is abnormal or a mental disorder that can be changed or suppressed.

Last year Dr. Robert Spitzer retracted his finding in 2001 that homosexuality could be reversed through therapy. He apologized to the gay community and said his claims of the "efficacy of reparative therapy" were unfounded. A month later the World Health Organization said the practice represents "a serious threat to the health and well-being -- even the lives -- of affected people."

New Jersey's Senate committee hearing comes four months after the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, in Jersey City, on behalf of four men who claimed to have gone through rituals to rid them of their homosexuality. The rituals included "bodywork," or being forced to undress and show their genitals to a counselor, Jewish Queer Youth co-executive director Mordechai Levovitz testified.

California passed a bill banning conversion therapy last year, but an appeals court ruled the ban violates the First Amendment.

"It's a culture war issue," said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Reparative therapy, he said, is "a niche market that really takes advantage of unhappy people."

There is even disagreement among those who claim to have gone through reparative therapy.

Former patients like King say that it helped them alter their behavior, much like an alcoholic might quit drinking after completing a 12-step program.

But Brielle Goldani of Toms River attempted suicide after the therapy.

Goldani, born a male but now a transgendered woman, was sent by her parents to a church camp in Columbus, Ohio, on the recommendation of her local pastor, who determined she was gay. During six weeks in the summer of 1997, she said she attended flirting classes and interacted with heterosexual men to mimic their behaviors. Twice a week, she said, she was connected to electrodes that shocked her hand each time an unacceptable image -- a man in an apron, two men holding hands -- was displayed.

She also attended nonphysical, face-to-face therapy at her church back home, she said.

"Their ideas were, 'I didn't have to be gay, that being gay was a choice'," Goldani, 29, said.

Opponents of the ban say being gay or lesbian is a choice, and, to some, a morally improper one.

Gregory Quinlan, the president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, said homosexuality is a "harmful and destructive lifestyle." That belief is based on his being gay for 10 years at the height of the AIDS epidemic, he said, when he saw hundreds of friends and acquaintances killed by the disease. He sought counseling.

"I decided I did not want to live as a homosexual," Quinlan, 54, said.

Quinlan said the bill is "a violent piece of legislation" because it denies human rights. He also coined it the "pro-Jerry Sandusky bill" because, he said, it denies sexually abused children the right to speak to a therapist about their sexuality. Quinlan believes that sexual abuse, among other experiences, tends to lead victims to homosexuality. "No one is born a homosexual," he said.

"If we ban this therapy we may delay somebody coming to justice who's abusing children," Quinlan said. "This ties the hands of a therapist who is really looking to help a child."

The practice does not have a high profile in medicine. Even King, who has offered mental health and addiction counseling for 13 years, does not advertise the practice, because, she said, "This is not a popular position I take."

Quinlan dismisses the positions of the major medical organizations who do not endorse reparative therapy. The American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association are political organizations, he said.

"They are no longer concerned or truly involved in true medical science," he said.

Drescher said there is nothing to bolster the successful claims made by supporters of reparative therapy.

"Normally in science you have to prove that what you do does work," Drescher said. "If the people who do it think that it works, why don't they publish something that proves it?"

Drescher added, "It's polemics. It's not science."

A common assault on the ban is that it infringes upon parental rights. But Gregory T. Angelo, the executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, which advocates for gay equality, said that argument is a distortion. He compared a ban comparable to the law against selling cigarettes to a minor.

"There's a difference between the personal belief you have in a household and allowing pseudoscience to perform a practice that's harmful, and making money on it," Angelo said.

King said she would be "greatly disappointed" if a ban were passed in New Jersey. There is still not enough research to support a ban, she said.

"I'm never going to be convinced," King said, "because I have the evidence of my own life."