We Went To Gay Conversion Therapy Camp (Part 1/3)

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Look at the outside of this man Look at his physical appearance Look into this man’s heart Look into his soul Now look more deeply… I feel this emptiness inside me every time I look into the mirror The impulse I want to do is just punch that mirror because I can see my fucking parents in the background Just staring at me and doing nothing as I’ve gone through this my entire fucking life and I want to scream ‘What the fuck is your problem!?’ ‘Where were you?!’ ‘Why did you leave me here?!’ Conversion Therapy is a set of dangerous and totally discredited practices That attempt to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person They’re often practiced by licensed mental health profesionals also sometimes unlicensed counselors, religious leaders Sometimes just in church basements and they most often target kids under 18 and these people give them what they claim is the solution. What it actually does is it supports an industry that is profiting off of the harm and, sometimes, the death of kids. And to one degree or another, conversion therapy is happening in every state in the country. What is your greatest fear this weekend? Of letting people down, and myself What is your greatest fear this weekend? My greatest fear just not being present
and not being here doing what God wants me to do What is your greatest fear this weekend? My greatest fear is that I will leave
without having touched someone else’s life What is your greatest fear this weekend? My greatest fear this weekend is letting
you down Thank you. See the next man Everyone is heterosexual the idea that some people are naturally
homosexual or naturally gay is just a social construct so when you have an individual who has
same-sex attraction we see it as something went wrong developmentally and
we try to resolve the issue and put them them back on the path toward their natural
heterosexuality that’s the philosophy of it. My name is
Joseph Nicolosi, I’m a clinical psychologist. A licensed clinical
psychologist and I’m the founder of reparative therapy. The concepts and
principles of reparative therapy they’re something I have developed over
30 years and four books and many many articles Journey Into Manhood came into
existence based upon the reparative therapy model. So the basic principles of reparative
therapy were taken and turned into a weekend experience. We’re doing a 32 man circle so
that we have the appropriate sized space to work with for our rehearsals. So we need
more here, we got six we need eight Our organization People Can Change is there for the man who voluntarily wants to experience some diminishment in his
unwanted same-sex attraction and Journey Into Manhood is a weekend program that
we offered to help build that understanding and that opportunity for,
for men who want to choose that path we have no interest in telling people who
are happy being gay that they should change or that there’s anything wrong
with them or whatever that’s not our mission that’s not what we believe but
we do believe that men who are uncomfortable with their homosexuality
should have opportunities to understand it and try to diminish it to the extent
that that’s possible for them. Okay, now this is a rehearsal. Now we’re
going to start off working through the kinks of the process itself. Thank you so much men for you’re willing
to serve. I’d like all of you to put your hands in your lap. Put your feet flat on the floor. Feel the power of the Earth coming up into your body. Close your eyes.
Take a moment to breathe. Breath in your nose and out your mouth. Yeah the staff wear a pouch of magic
seeds so it represents Jack’s, the seeds that were planted in the,
Jack story, Jack and the Beanstalk and the potential for creativity and growth
and empowerment that the seeds represent. So once the Journey-ers go through the weekend, they receive this
as a token of their experience and interestingly, as an aside, in the Jack
and the Giant Slayer movie I was pleased to see that Jack carries
his magic seeds around his neck in a little pouch which was 10 years or more
after we started doing it it’s interesting. Music queue. Good. Stop. Go back
to the beginning Music queue. Perfect! Okay go. The story of Jack and the Amazing Bean Stalk (cheering and clapping) We use a fairy tale, a myth, the
Jack and the Bean Stalk story as a kind of a metaphor for every boys growth into
manhood. I’ll give you these seeds We borrowed some of the
interpretation of it from Michael Gurian’s book The Wonder of Boys he talks about and uses it as a
model of how this boy Jack is estranged from his mother a little bit as he goes
off and experiences his masculinity Look at it: a phallic symbol. So, the beanstalk is a big penis? He is challenged and faces… -Biggest, baddest, meanest -…a giant in which represents his shadow and that he finds gold which
represents the gold in him Mythisists call this a hero’s journey so every boys growth into manhood in
some ways is a hero’s journey as he battles the shadows and embraces his
gold -Next is basically the shadow B9 shadow guy -Some of the staff we break them into specific roles to help
to bring out the different aspects of a man roles that help men sort of look in the
mirror at their own life and understand themselves in a relationship to the world of masculinity. Ok so see yourself as
Jack. Go ahead and start. See yourself as Jack running from giants. Running from the shadow. Imagining pushing
through the wall through your wall of fear and shame. -So I did my first Journey
Into Manhood weekend back in 2007. It’s
probably the most impactful weekend I’ve ever went on in my entire life. I was never what our society calls gay
or homosexual or whatever we label we put on it I am simply a man anything I would
always considered myself a heterosexual man was just with a lot of issues. Let’s start with Jeddy since he knows
this process so you guys watch watch Jeddy as he models us. You want me to do it like I’m gonna do it? -Uh huh. Okay. I feel anger and I feel this emptiness inside me
every time I look into the mirror the the impulse I want to do is just punch that
here because I can see my fucking parents in the background just staring
at me and doing nothing as I’ve gone through this my entire
fucking life. And I want to scream ‘What the fuck is your problem?!’ ‘Where were you?!’ ‘Why did you leave me here?!’ The goal of the weekend Journey Into Manhood is to find where on that Journey a step was taken off. So that you can find your way back on to it I felt so empty when I tried to live the
lifestyle it didn’t feel right I wanted to be a
husband. I wanted to be a father and I wanted to be true to that and I wanted
to be true to God. For me personally what was missing was a father figure. -Someone’s gonna be standing out there
like someone’s gonna be standing out there and then it as soon as we get big
enough groups the camp will take them up here. -Really, and who you’ve got this all set up -Yeah. Beautiful, thank you. -Rich actually
staffed my weekend and that was my first time meeting him and I looked up to him
very much because he started this organization that’s helped over 2,000
men and I hold him very highly in my mind. I have a fear that I’m not
going to become like him somebody and that’s my goal. You know it’s, it’s the same thing as
when I see a father You know I want to be a father someday
so badly and I fear that that’s not going to happen it’s the same type of thing. -Like as if your body was a sandbag and
the stresses are like sand blowing out your fingers and your toes allow yourself to see this and to feel. -31 years ago I almost killed myself
over my same-sex attractions. So everything that happened in my life
prior to that; sexual abuse, physical abuse, being bullied half to death
living in fear every day of my life. I realized what I was facing, I put a name to it and I’m probably queer and homo You really are a queer, you really are a homo but I made the decision than that that wasn’t how I
wanted to live I wanted a wife, I wanted kids, I wanted
that I wanted a normal life and I set out to go make it happen. One of the things we deal with a lot
here is individual trauma that may have existed from bullying, to more overt
acts of sexual molestation or that kinds of thing. There’s certainly have a higher
percentage of men dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction who have been sexually molested that’s that seems clear. -Today I have a job I love, I have people I love that I work with, I
have a church I love I just love every minute of life and I
feel free, completely free to be the man that I want to be and the man that I
believe God created me to be. There are many associated features of
living a gay identity that is problematic. -See the tender age at
which homosexuals prefer their conquests lesbians, sadists, masochists, and other sex deviants First of all we go back to the
fundamentals we are physically anatomically designed
for the opposite sex when you look at gay sex, very simply the
parts don’t fit. Their relationships are more short-term, there’s more depression, there’s more anxiety there’s more self defeating,
self-destructive behaviors, alcohol abuse. Gay men smoke cigarettes more than straight men as a small example. There’s a segment of the the gay world that is very much into one
night stands and you know anonymous hookups and that kind of thing
and that’s easy to to find and easy to fall into. -Group sex, anonymous sex Pretty soon they’ve got, you know, a new partner, then this partner, then that partner that they’ve had a hundred then they’ve had two
hundred and that’s typical of the gay community. Many people who experiment in the gay world say ‘I don’t want this.
I want one wife, picket fence, 2.5 kids, period. And that’s their right. So you’re a married man. -Yes. Do you have children? -Yeah I have one son. And um is he heterosexual? -Can you imagine, no of
course he’s heterosexual. He’s married he’s a psychologist and he actually
works at this clinic. What would you said if he came to you and told you that he… -I would have said, ‘What did I do wrong?’