Series posted by Michael Kline (MKLINE@VDH), early 1993.

Understanding Homosexuality and Experiencing Genuine Change. John Ankerberg / Barry Pintar Show 3, Part 1

John: Welcome. This is the third week in our series in which we're listening to men and women who all of their lives had only experienced homosexual attraction. Yet one day they turned away from it and they experienced read change.

Now this week they're going to share with us why they no longer wanted to be gay, and why they decided to leave the homosexual lifestyle. We'll also find out the steps that they took to change.

(intro to Joe Dallas from Exodus International.)

Welcome Joe, in a moment we're going to listen to these men and women tell why they were dissatisfied with their homosexual orientation and why they wanted to change. But what should we be listening for that will help us to understand what homosexuality is?

Joe: Listen for their dissatisfaction, John. Listen to them talk about the emptiness of the relationships they had with members of the same sex, and especially listen to their statements about deficit, void, and emotional need, because you'll find time and again they'll be telling you that they were trying to get a certain thing met through homosexual relating, and not only was the homosexual relating wrong and immoral according to their own belief systems, but just as important it wasn't working, it wasn't meeting the need.

You know, nobody asked to be homosexual. It's a condition that comes about because of many early childhood or pre-adolescent conflicts that eventually gel into a sexualized need for contact or affirmation with and from the same sex. When that need is acted on sexually, it's reenforced and you have what people call the homosexual orientation.

But many people who are involved in that lifestyle come to a point where they realize they want something more, and that's what this series is all about, to help all of us understand what homosexuality is so that we can being to deal with it because you know, nobody who is listening to this program is exempt from the issue of homosexuality.

It is being promoted as a normal lifestyle in our educational system. The media certainly supports most of the programs and the policies of the gay rights movement. We're being inundated today, more than ever with the notion that heterosexuality and homosexuality are on an equal level of normalcy. What we're trying to do in this program is not to bash gays or teach people to hate homosexuals, but to compassionately and intelli- gently take the Biblical stand against homosexuality while offering hope for change for those who want to change.

John: Now let's listen to these men and women tell why they were dissatisfied with their homosexual orientation and wanted to change.

Jonathan: I couldn't got to ANYBODY. There was so much shame, as you said, the pain of it, and the confusion, like "I didn't chose this. I mean, where's this coming from?" It's coming from deep down. And nobody wants to listen. Then, "Well, I'm going to go where I get affirmation. I'm going to go to the gay bars. That must be who I am. Oh." And that's what happened to me, I thought. I finally to the point, nobody gave me a good answer, I wasn't a Christian yet, and nobody offered any help, and I though, "Well, fine. I've tried walking out heterosexuality, and I still got these feelings, and these feelings are powerful, and they're going to explode. I'm just going to go with that. I mean I must be GAY!"

Barry: Did one day did you wake up and I'm being very blunt here, but just to get the point, did you wake up and say, "I want sex with a woman. I'm attracted to women." Where did it come from?

Linda Cortez: When I was younger, I remember being attracted to like, to my teachers. I remember being attracted to a peer, in Junior High School, and I thought "What is going on here? What is wrong? Linda, you are weird. Something's going on here." And then it wasn't until high school that I acted it out. But I felt very early on like I just didn't fit in with my peers.

Diane Eller-Boyko: I knew that I needed something, from these rela- tionships. I didn't know what it was, and I wasn't getting it, so I would be depressed a lot of my adolescent years. I was depressed.

Barry Pintar: Diane didn't act on her feelings until she was in her mid-twenties, but remember, we're dealing with individuals with very different lives. Linda had the same kinds of feelings as Diane, but she acted on hers much earlier.

Linda: I didn't wake up one morning and say, "I think I'm going to have sex with a woman." I just felt comfortable. I felt comfortable and..

Barry: What does it mean, you "felt comfortable"? That's were you felt you belonged?

Linda: That's where I felt that I felt in.

Barry: At that time, and through out adolescence, was there a sad- ness, a aching. Were you aware of your difference?

Greg Dickson: Yea, I think that, I think that's the key to all of it, and it wasn't so much being different. It's not the sexuality. This was so pre-sex. It was that I am different, and that I'm unacceptable. And again, the concept, the sexuality, hadn't come into play yet. It's that "What's wrong with me? Why can't I feel good about myself? Why can't I do this?"

I wanted to kill myself, the first time when I was eight. It had nothing to do with sex, I didn't (breaks down..) It was... Life was just so chaotic and I just felt so, so.. different.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understanding Homosexuality and Experiencing Genuine Change. John Ankerberg / Barry Pintar Show 3, Part 2

John: Now Joe, when people pour out their heart to you in your office and they tell you that all of their life they felt nothing but pain, con- fusion and shame at somehow being different. What causes people to feel this way and leads them to seek out members of their own sex to find some kind of emotional satisfaction?

Joe: We are all born with a set of emotional needs that have to be satisfied in a legitimate way or else they will seek satisfaction in illegitimate ways. They won't just go away. From infancy

We need emotional support from our peers, of the same sex, early in life. You'll notice the little boys and little girls tend to congregate together, before they begin to move on into adolescence and begin to interact via heterosexual relationships. Those normal needs for bonding early in life have often not been met in the lives of homosexual men and women.

Most of them, including those in the tapes we are looking at, were all feeling very cut off from members of their own sex early in life, and longing for some interaction with people of their own sex. That longing became stronger and stronger, and as they entered into the preadolescence phase, as their sexual feelings were developing, it seems as though the two became crossed, and what was once an emotional longing, has now become a sexual AND emotional longing, and that is the beginning of the homosexual condition.

John: Now Joe, Explain a little bit more about what we're going to see next.

Joe: Now we've heard stories from men and women so far, who've described the problem of homosexuality, how it came about. Now they're going to be talking to us about the resolution and how they found it in their own lives.

John: They actually did change? Joe: They did change. John: Well, let's hear their happy stories here.

Barry: Many, many men and women have made the journey out of what they call "unhealthy, homosexual lifestyles" and into what they would call "healthy, heterosexual lives." Now you can bet many critics question their switch. They say pro-gay activists taunt them often saying they're fooling themselves and denying feelings that will always be there.

Linda: When I first said, "I'm going to leave this lifestyle." Like I said earlier, I thought I would become a Christian and it would all van- ish. I didn't realize that my journey would be tough, because it WASN'T easy. It was a LONG, HARD ROAD.

Barry: Greg has come a long way from his tearful days of wanting to kill himself, and the horrors he felt with his homosexual feelings. Greg is dating, and in LOVE. Actually, Greg is more than dating, he is ENGAGED, to Cheryl. They're GETTING MARRIED next month.

Five years ago, if you would have told Greg he'd be in love with a woman and desiring her with the strongest of heterosexual feelings, he would have probably laughed, turned around, and walked the other way. BUT, it's reality.

Diane is about 2 years ahead of Greg. She said "I DO." two years ago, and is NOW MARRIED and building her dream house with her husband. Their new son's hand prints will mark the historic occasion. But long before this building started, Diane had some rebuilding of her own to do.

How does somebody change? For what ever, aside from the motivation of why a woman decides to go out of the lesbian lifestyle, how does she do that?

Diane: First of all she has to believe that it's not right for her. Okay? That has to be the spring board or the foundation for any kind of change. She has to be convicted, that this is not good for you.

Barry: So what did you do? Let's say step 1. Step 1 is saying "This is not for me." What is step 2? Diane: Step 2 was saying, "Okay, change means I have to do something behaviorally as if.. as if I AM heterosexual."

Barry: It sounds a lot like you were squeezing yourself into under a hole that you didn't want to go into. Diane: Oh yea, it's "unnatural". It was unnatural. You know. I had been in the lifestyle for 15 years, that's what was natural for me. Not being with a guy....

Barry: When did the change happen, because if we stop here it sounds like you were fooling yourself. Do you understand? So where did it hap- pen that "Okay, I don't like this, I'm just doing this 'cause it's the right thing to do." and where does that actual reality set in that you really want now to be fulfilled. Diane: Cause it made sense to me...

Maks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understanding Homosexuality and Experiencing Genuine Change. John Ankerberg / Barry Pintar Show 3, Part 3

John: Next, when I visited Joe Dallas at his clinic in California, I asked him if psychiatrists and psychologists really think it's possible for homosexuals to change. Here's what he said.

Joe: You would think today, that there's no such thing as a homosex- ual who is dissatisfied with his homosexuality. The media tends to por- tray EVEN THE NOTION of a homosexual trying to change as being archaic, as being as ridicules as a black or a Jew wanting to change their race or identity. BUT THE FACT REMAINS that there are many people who are homo- sexual and ARE DISSATISFIED with their orientation, and for those people what change, help is available.

Now that is not just one man's opinion here, we know that from the writings of Masters and Johnson, Charles Separates, Irving Beaver, Dr. Elizabeth Moberly, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Dr. Lawrence Hadder, just to name a few. We know even from the latest Kinsey report that there are people who experience a change in their sexual orientation later in life.

Now I've spoken on this subject extensively via newspaper interviews, radio and television interviews and people are constantly amazed to learn, that #1, there are many people who are homosexually oriented who want OUT of both the homosexual orientation, and lifestyle, and that there are people available like myself, like many other therapists across the country who are available to help them if change is what they want and absolutely, change is possible.

John: All right. Now let's listen to these folks tell what it was like to begin to change.

Jonathan: If you're also talking about healing or changing where there is absolutely no temptation what so ever, I think that's unrealis- tic, I don't think it's Biblical. Christ was tempted. We may have temp- tations that one would say "Well, see, if you're tempted towards another man," in my case, "then you really haven't changed." but that's no true. The fact is that I now, through my relationship with Jesus, and in the healing process, the sanctification process over the years. I'm able to look at a man now, not erotically, and love that person for the cre- ation God made him, and for a woman as my compliment. Now you see before, I never saw it that way. I saw her as another choice in relationship, you know, next to a man and quite frankly I still have an emotional draw to a man. But now I begin to see them, men and women as God does. As a woman as my compliment, she's not the same. She's going to draw out a part of my masculinity that a man never could, cause he's the same.

Joe: I know of nobody who has just made a decision to leave homosex- ual behavior behind, made a conscience decision to change, then boom, completely changed. We're talking about a process here.

Greg: It's not a light switch. You're not trading in sex with... the whole thing is so far removed from genital stimulation that it's not funny. You're not trading in sex with a man for sex with a woman. You're coming to terms with who you are as a person, and the conflict of human relationships, connecting with human beings. Sex was never intended to be the basis of a relationship, sexual activity. Sex is the cap stone of intimacy, however you're going to have it.

Barry: Dr. Joe Nicolosi specializes in working with male homosexuals.

Dr. Joe Nicolosi: Therefore the process of repair is exactly the opposite of what they do, namely, you encourage the male client to develop non-sexual intimacy with other men. It's non-sexual intimacy with other men, which is emotional disclosure, being vulnerable to them, being a part of male company, feeling a part of the male world, but not the sexualize. And to ride through the sexual attractions.

Barry: Okay. That's it. That's a simple question, but is that the BIG, the big one? Just have normal relations with other men?

Dr. Joe: You can measure this to the big one. I would say, to sum- marize it in one sentence what you're doing is, you're transforming what was initially a sexual object and turning that sexual object into a friend. And when you turn that man into a friend, the sexual attraction diminishes.

Barry: That sounds so simple, so.. My cynical reaction would be "Oh, I just have to go make some friends that are guys and I'll no longer have homosexual feelings. That sounds very simple.

Joe: Well, you know why it's simple? That's because you're hetero- sexual. (Barry: Okay...) But for a homosexual, for a homosexually oriented man, making friends with other straight men is a monumental challenge. It's a very difficult challenge.

Maks.