This week, California banned programs that claim to “cure” gay minors.
I was elated. I have straddled the border between religion and homosexuality and was told by pastors, Imams and family members that I had to pick a side.
For them, the choice was easy, but it was splitting me in two.
A recent study from Israel found that 20 percent of Israeli LGBTQ youth had attempted suicide and that the highest suicide rates belonged to gays who were religious. According to Chana Bar Yosef, the study’s director, “they experience more distress when confronting their families.”
Often times, they are given an ultimatum to conform to heterosexual life or be disowned.
Many minors end up in “straight camps,” brainwashing centers that charge fees to “pray the gay away.” These programs use guilt and fear to repress same-sex attraction. These techniques follow children home where parents, who believe the souls of their children are at risk, are encouraged to speak harshly to their kids and to reject them if they do not change.
This was to be done out of love, the immortal soul is more important than this fleeting life.
At least, that was what my parents told me before they sent me to camp.
I was ushered into the back of a church. Half a dozen girls aged 14-19 sat in a circle.
The counselor began the lesson:
“A Godly woman is meek, submissive, and pious.” It was the same construction we had heard our entire lives. I wondered what each girl had done to end up here and whether it had been her choice or her parent’s to come.
“When a girl has been hurt she shies away from men. She dresses like a man to ward off their attention. She becomes loud, aggressive and masculine.”
She asked how many of us had been sexually abused and was surprised to find only one of us had. I was surprised, too. I thought I was the only exception.
She offered a possible answer, advising that a strained relationship with one’s mother could be the culprit. That didn’t work either. Up until that point, my mother and I had been best friends.
The first counselor was replaced by another. The tone changed from cautionary to wrathfully passionate.
The woman asked me to stand against the wall. She asked if I was attracted to women. “Yes,” I answered quietly. She turned to the other girls and explained that I was possessed, just as they were, by a demon of sexual impurity.
She squeezed my cheeks with one hand, pressed my head against the wall, and began to pray.
A woman restrained each of my arms in case I tried to free myself. I screamed for her to let me go. The girls gasped when she told them “that was the demon talking.” Once I began crying uncontrollably, she moved on to the next girl.
Over the years, I’ve talked to them again. Some called, drunk with shame, for sleeping with a girl. Others turned to drugs and alcohol. One killed herself.
As Ted Cox stated, straight camps create a cycle of repression, shame, guilt and repentance that many only escape through suicide.
I’ve contemplated suicide, but I’ve since decided against it. If God couldn’t love me because I loved women, it was his loss.
Reach the columnist Cmjacks7@asu.edu or follow her at @JacksonCrista
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