“Am I Black or White? Am I straight or gay?

When you’re an adolescent boy growing up in middle America, it’s a bit tricky to identify with lyrics like these from the 1981 song Controversy by Prince, a petit androgynous larger-than-life man adorned in brocade boleros and stiletto winkle-pickers. Dirty Mind, one of the first albums to carry a parental warning label due to its “controversial” lyrics, was the album to have. The liberal power in the explicitness of Prince’s candor didn’t really gel back then…but almost twenty-five years on, it maintains a contemporary poignancy.

Sexuality today remains controversial. Just recently, former American evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, head of a 14,000 plus flock of parishioners, was stripped of his pastoral duties when it was revealed that he had a bit of an ‘in flagrante delicto’ trist with a local bloke. Apparently the fact that this was an extramarital affair was not such a big deal. The ‘hot bed of activity’ lay in the conjugal with a man!…Heaven’s forbid!

Like any good Christian, Haggard sought refuge in a twelve week reparative therapy program…a detox for his addiction to homosexuality. After successful completion, Ted resurfaced triumphantly chanting that he was now “completely heterosexual”! He and his wife sauntered away blissfully across Colorado state lines clearly changed forever.

Haggard’s current scandal-lite in today’s Caligulan society has minor impact on most. Morality, sin, impropriety, are terms better suited to describing ancient Babylonia than sexcapades. The idea that Mr. Haggard has changed his orientation…now that’s hot!

Reparative therapy, the treatment used on Ted Haggard utilizes debatable methods used that aim to eliminate same-sex desires and tendencies. Up until about thirty years ago techniques such as electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy) and aversion therapy were part of the Clock Work Orange spiel. When one has a sexual desire towards the same sex, images that are totally not sexual would be foisted upon that person…i.e. pictures of Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions or human feces. If that didn’t work, a shock to the genitalia usually did the trick. Most doctors and scientists eventually decided that this brutality or treatment was ineffective because the therapists were treating homosexuality as a mental disorder…and that clearly wasn’t the case.

The American Psychological Association and The American Psychiatric Association refuted reparative therapy and stated “change is not possible if you are homosexual”, but proponents of conversion therapies insisted that ones homosexuality derives from a “narcissistic injury”- the development of a strong bond with one’s father is absent, causing an injury. If no bond is formed by the time of puberty, one’s feelings towards men can turn erotic or aggressive.

Is it nature or nurture? According to extremist group Baptist Are Saving Homosexuals (BASH), there have been a few celebrity ex-gays… Ricky Martin, Kevin Spacey, Sean Hayes, and Barry Diller (TV mogul responsible for The Simpsons), who milked the gay utters when financially convenient. Coming out of the closet stories seem to be necessary rites of passage that homosexuals are compelled to recall shortly after meeting a potential new suitor, but at some point it always seems to change from being proud of being gay to becoming straight-acting. It’s so easy to change the face of who you are, your gait, your mannerisms. Is it so implausible that your sexual desires can also change?

Prince: “Was it good for you? Was it what you wanted me to be?”

Paisley Dalton