Gay conversion therapy is harmful, hateful, and doesn't work

05:00, Feb 19 2021
It’s high time for a ban on conversion therapy, writes Edd Coomber.
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It’s high time for a ban on conversion therapy, writes Edd Coomber.

OPINION: Growing up gay in the Assembly of God (Pentecostal) church, with a grandfather as the pastor, just about everything was sinful. Smoking, any alcohol, a huge range of films, TV and music. Homosexuality was never even discussed.

I didn’t know what gay was until I found one of the topical pages in the back of my high school Bible on homosexuality, which pointed to the well-worn handful of scriptures telling me how bad I was. This led me to bury these feelings deep inside.

Spending your teenage years with this secret is hard. You learn to watch your words and actions to not let slip what you are. The first person I told was a youth pastor, who told me to “pray the gay away”, and followed with a story about their goldfish dying from not being fed when they were away and that, if I didn’t feed these feelings, they too would die.

Fast-forward to my early 20s, post-earthquake and in need of answers, I returned to the church. I was baptised to help “kill” this part of me. I was told to read certain books, and moved to Auckland to join a large church and train to join the ministry. All an attempt to push one part of me out with another.

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This meant a lot of prayer, receiving prayer, speaking to a well-known ex-gay pastor, courses, more books, more prayer and deliverance ministry – which is essentially exorcism under a different name. The belief being that my homosexuality was a demon or evil spirit to be cast out.

This is what “conversion therapy” mostly looks like in New Zealand.

Labour list MP Marja Lubeck, centre, accepts a petition to end conversion therapy from Tabby Besley, of rainbow youth group InsideOUT.
Supplied
Labour list MP Marja Lubeck, centre, accepts a petition to end conversion therapy from Tabby Besley, of rainbow youth group InsideOUT.

I eventually stood down from my young adults pastor role, started dating guys, and came to the realisation that, if God wanted people to be straight, conversion therapy would work. It doesn’t.

Even Alan Chambers, from Exodus International, possibly once the largest ex-gay Christian organisation, renounced the therapy in January 2012.

So why does it matter? I was told regularly that I couldn’t be gay and Christian. Not directly, but the message is always there in nearly all Christian churches. When I arrived in Auckland in 2013, the church pastor was pushing from the pulpit his opposition to same-sex marriage legislation, and we were given leaflets to hand out to promote this agenda. I handed mine out – into the bin.

Elizabeth Kerekere, Greens spokesperson for rainbow communities, launched the party’s petition calling for a ban on conversion therapy to be prioritised. “There is no place for conversion therapy in Aotearoa,” she said at the Big Gay Out in Auckland last weekend.
ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff
Elizabeth Kerekere, Greens spokesperson for rainbow communities, launched the party’s petition calling for a ban on conversion therapy to be prioritised. “There is no place for conversion therapy in Aotearoa,” she said at the Big Gay Out in Auckland last weekend.

We are regularly told homosexuality is a sin and immoral, that God can heal us, and that Christians hate the sin but not the sinner. This kind of low-level conversion therapy instils the belief that who you are is wrong, and this belief is what makes you fall into the conversion therapy trap. It’s like any addict wanting help for rehabilitation. You want to get your life fixed, because the culture you’re in says you’re broken.

This is extremely harmful to young people, torn between who they are, and trying to do what is right in the eyes of their church. When they fail each time, like I did, they feel immense guilt. Some feel that ending their lives is the only way out, because they cannot win.

The church will tell you opposition to homosexuality is in the Bible, and thus part of Christian beliefs. Not letting women speak in public, slavery, and the prohibition of divorced women remarrying is also in the Bible, but Christian beliefs on these topics have changed. So what is different? It would seem to be, at its core, homophobia.

Presently, the Green Party is collecting signatures for a petition to impose an immediate ban on conversion therapy. Labour had a ban as an election promise, and Judith Collins went from not knowing what it was, to asking why it wasn’t banned already.

It’s high time for a ban. Conversion therapy is not only extremely harmful, but also another hurdle for LGBTQI+ equality and acceptance.

I’m calling on the Government to not only ban the therapy, but to ban all anti-gay messages in churches and organised religions to reduce the high number of rainbow youth attempting suicide because they are told they must change something they simply can’t.