For over three decades, clinics claiming to be able to "cure" homosexuality have done more harm than good to the psyche of countless gay men and women.
The different courses include shock therapy and many other traumatizing procedures to try and "make someone straight". However, although most of these more violent methods have been phased out in these clinics, their treatments remain just as damaging.
Recently, a "Christian" organisation in the U.S claiming to be able to "liberate those bound
by sexual and relational brokenness", Desert Stream, announced it would be extending "gay cure" treatments to its branches in 10 countries worldwide, including France, Australia,
Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and all over the US.
Living in France, one of the countries threatened by these phony cure clinics, I did more research into the work Desert Stream's French branch, Torrents de Vie (Waterfalls of Life). This involved me going undercover as a gay Christian to converse with a man who has been through the clinics.
Posing as a frightened, bewildered and ashamed young Christian under a false name, I contacted Torrents de Vie to find out more about their therapies. I emailed every single one of their 17 clinics in the country and received a reply from two. This is good news. If people were honestly looking for a gay cure clinic, they'd have a hard time getting in touch with one. Access to a cure clinic is impossible to get if you aren't religious, and if they won't reply to your emails then that makes it even more reassuring to me. The number of people this can potentially affect is dramatically reduced by their incompetence when it comes to using Yahoo!'s email service.
There are 17 TDV centers in all of France; an area smaller than Texas with 3 in and around Paris alone
Out of the two replies I received, one was from one of the "success stories" of one of the three Torrents de Vie branches in Paris, named Gilles, who spilled his whole life story at me wrapped in rainbow wrapping paper with a giant sparkly bow (you get how I felt). In his reply to my plea for help, Gilles said that he also had "homosexual attractions from the age of 5" and continued in saying he spent 25 years in the gay community with dozens of same-sex relationships even though he was married to his wife who he confirms he had "no physical attraction towards". Nonetheless, his marriage to his wife produced three children. His mother, despite being a Christian, underwent five abortions and had to fight with Gilles's father in order to keep him alive. He still, to this day, blames his parents' rough relationship and his distant father as the reasons as to why he had homosexual tendencies.
Gilles said he turned to God and began to grow more attraction towards his "initial gender preference". This is strange, yet not uncommon. Many religious people see homosexuality as a deviation; a deviation which in Gilles's case, started when he was 5. It seems far-fetched to me, that a 5 year-old child could suddenly wake up one day to some horny red guy breathing fire, telling him to like guys. Scientific research has shown that your sexuality is part of who you are; it's who you were born to be, part of your identity. It's therefore something that you cannot rid of. In July, the leading organization behind these gay "cures" publicly acknowledged that they were a fraud and that homosexuality can't be cured, saying that their treatments help people to repress their natural feelings towards people of the same sex.
Frankly, the whole contact with Gilles was a bit freaky. In his first email to me, he had already said I could address him as "tu", and not as "vous" which is the formality when talking to a stranger, or someone older than you, in the French language. He also gave me his mobile number (which I didn't use) and was already asking where I lived and was all too eager to find out when we could meet up to see if I could follow a Torrents de Vie course. It's understandable when I tell you I didn't reply to his email.
Torrents de Vie have 17 clinics in France, and after a petition by AllOut.org was started up a couple of months ago and handed to the French government with over 30,000 signatures, the government launched an investigation into these phony treatments. The AllOut.org campaign was even featured on Argentinian national television with officials taking up the fight. It's a lucrative business, with the most recent Torrents de Vie brochure pricing a course at €410 per person and claiming to be able to "restore the true masculinity and femininity", restore a "healthy heterosexuality" and "healthy relationships with people of the same sex". It's strange they didn't mention a course on "how to speak out of your arse" because I'm sure they'd sell places for that course like hotcakes... Maybe they were all taken.
In November 2011, the founder of Torrents de Vie France, Pastor Werner Loertscher defended allegations of his organisation being homophobic saying "we are not homophobic in the sense that we are against homosexuals - we are for homosexuals -, but if they want to change, we will accompany them in their quest. Every human being has the right to find a solution to something wrong in their life."
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| Alan Chambers is still far too gay to be taken seriously (S) |
Torrents de Vie is part of a much larger web. It's the French branch of Desert Stream, which is in turn part of Exodus International. According to the New York Times, Alan Chambers, the head of Exodus International declared that their treatments were not only based on faulty science, but potentially harmful to the patient (or should I say victim?) David H. Pickup, a therapist in Glendale, California, who is a specialist in the field of "gay cure
treatments", said restricting it would harm people who are unhappy with
their homosexuality by "making them feel that no change is possible at
all". But surely giving no hope is better than giving false hopes?
Despite Exodus International saying what they sell is sh*t, Desert Stream aren't that bothered and are continuing to mentally damage gay Christians all over the world through sub-organizations like Torrents de Vie. As for Gilles, he claims he was magically turned straight after just 75 hours of prayer with Torrents de Vie.
AllOut.org are looking for 100,000 signatures which they will present to
governments where these clinics are to be set up, hoping to force the
politicians to take action and ban them. The total number of signatures
currently stands at around 70,000, but every signature counts and we
need to act fast because their work will start soon in your country and possibly in a town near you.
You too can sign the petition and express yourself on the matter by signing AllOut.org's online petition and sharing it on popular social networking sites.
and help cure homophobia
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