While some of the worse physical abuse attributes (torture might not be a bad description) of the "ex-gay" ministries and "therapies" may be largely a thing of the past, the psychological and emotional abuses continue to this day with the Mormon Church, the Roman Catholic Church and certainly the Southern Baptist Convention regularly sending a message to often fragile youths that being gay is akin to murder and that being gay makes one "inherently disordered." Of course those who are evil and inherently disordered are those preaching the anti-gay message, but to many youths and even many adults fail to figure this out. Instead, their lives are plagued with self-loathing and all to often that the best solution is suicide since that's the only fool proof way to make one "ex-gay." ABC News has coverage on just how cruel such "cure" programs can be. The subject of the report is a Mormon program, but the sick and brutal practices were hardly confined to Mormon affiliated groups. And again, the psychological damage being inflicted on LGBT youth continues unabated not withstanding disingenuous statements such as those put out by the Vatican that LGBT individuals should be "treated with dignity." Here are some report highlights:*
John Cameron said he was a naive and devout Mormon who felt "out of sync" with the world, when he volunteered to be part of a study of "electric aversion therapy" in 1976 at Utah's Brigham Young University.
*
Twice a week for six months, he jolted himself with painful shocks to the penis to rid himself of his attraction to men. "I kept trying to fight it, praying and fasting and abstaining and being the best person I could," said Cameron, now a 59-year-old playwright and head of the acting program at the University of Iowa.
*
"I was never actively gay, never had any encounters with men -- never had moments when I failed and actually had sex with other men," he said. But his undercurrent of feelings put him in direct conflict with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) and its principles.
*
"As teens we were taught that homosexuality was second only to murder in the eyes of God," he said.
*
A mercury-filled tube was placed around the base of the penis and the students were shown alternating slides of men and women in various stages of undress. When participants responded to images of men with an erection, the closed electric circuit was broken and they received three-second electrical shocks at 10-second intervals. Each session lasted an hour. Participants set their own pain levels.
*
Homosexuals were seen as a "prurient, expendable population," according to Cameron. "To admit homosexuality in 1976 was the kiss of death. You could be targeted, lose your job, lose your income, lose everything."
*
And those weren't the only attempted cures that were used in that era. Others allege they were given chemical compounds, which were administered through an IV and caused subjects to vomit when they were stimulated. Psychologists confirm those harsh experiments were used in a variety of medical settings by scientists of all faiths.
*
"They thought they were doing something to help me," he said of the experiment. "I can't fault them for that. But now that they are educated, now we know homosexuality is not a choice, people are born this way. The church doesn't still have to be threatened by homosexuality.
*
Connell O'Donovan, who now works at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ABCNews.com he was sent to BYU in 1976 for vomit therapy, but couldn't go through with it. BYU said its counseling services never conducted such treatment, but O'Donovan counters that he was evaluated by Joseph Smith Family Living Center, another service on campus.
*
In 1986, he said he volunteered for "extremely debilitating hypnotherapy" through another Utah counseling center, He said a Mormon intern hypnotized him, splitting him into "Gay Connell" and "Straight Connell."
*
"He then had me visualize Jesus coming down through the ceiling and utterly destroying Gay Connell to dust and then 'a mighty wind' blowing all the dust away," said O'Donovan. "This is the single most emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually crippling experience of my entire life." "Some 18 years later I am still healing from that traumatic "therapeutic" experience," he writes in a 2004 essay on his journey.
*
Charles Silverstein, a clinical psychologist with New York City's Institute for Human Identity, said every psychiatric and mental health organization opposes aversion therapy.
*
Silverstein was recently given the American Psychological Association Lifetime-Achievement Award for helping to remove "homosexuality" from the list of illnesses in psychiatry's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" in 1973.
"There is no treatment for homosexuality today in the professional community," said Silverstein. "All of them are on the record as saying that homosexuality is within the normal range of human behavior."
*
Of his clinical patients over the years, he said those who were Mormon "suffered the most." David Melson, president of the advocacy group Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons, said anecdotal information suggests suicide rates among gay Mormons may be higher than in the general population.
*
"It is very hard to track this sort of thing because family members, the church and well-intentioned hospital staffs will often tend to not report a death as a suicide," Melson said.
*
It is obscene to me that so much torment and cruelty continue to be the hallmarks of many denominations' treatment of LGBT individuals. So much evil and all done in the name of God. It is beyond disgusting.
John Cameron said he was a naive and devout Mormon who felt "out of sync" with the world, when he volunteered to be part of a study of "electric aversion therapy" in 1976 at Utah's Brigham Young University.
*
Twice a week for six months, he jolted himself with painful shocks to the penis to rid himself of his attraction to men. "I kept trying to fight it, praying and fasting and abstaining and being the best person I could," said Cameron, now a 59-year-old playwright and head of the acting program at the University of Iowa.
*
"I was never actively gay, never had any encounters with men -- never had moments when I failed and actually had sex with other men," he said. But his undercurrent of feelings put him in direct conflict with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) and its principles.
*
"As teens we were taught that homosexuality was second only to murder in the eyes of God," he said.
*
A mercury-filled tube was placed around the base of the penis and the students were shown alternating slides of men and women in various stages of undress. When participants responded to images of men with an erection, the closed electric circuit was broken and they received three-second electrical shocks at 10-second intervals. Each session lasted an hour. Participants set their own pain levels.
*
Homosexuals were seen as a "prurient, expendable population," according to Cameron. "To admit homosexuality in 1976 was the kiss of death. You could be targeted, lose your job, lose your income, lose everything."
*
And those weren't the only attempted cures that were used in that era. Others allege they were given chemical compounds, which were administered through an IV and caused subjects to vomit when they were stimulated. Psychologists confirm those harsh experiments were used in a variety of medical settings by scientists of all faiths.
*
"They thought they were doing something to help me," he said of the experiment. "I can't fault them for that. But now that they are educated, now we know homosexuality is not a choice, people are born this way. The church doesn't still have to be threatened by homosexuality.
*
Connell O'Donovan, who now works at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told ABCNews.com he was sent to BYU in 1976 for vomit therapy, but couldn't go through with it. BYU said its counseling services never conducted such treatment, but O'Donovan counters that he was evaluated by Joseph Smith Family Living Center, another service on campus.
*
In 1986, he said he volunteered for "extremely debilitating hypnotherapy" through another Utah counseling center, He said a Mormon intern hypnotized him, splitting him into "Gay Connell" and "Straight Connell."
*
"He then had me visualize Jesus coming down through the ceiling and utterly destroying Gay Connell to dust and then 'a mighty wind' blowing all the dust away," said O'Donovan. "This is the single most emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually crippling experience of my entire life." "Some 18 years later I am still healing from that traumatic "therapeutic" experience," he writes in a 2004 essay on his journey.
*
Charles Silverstein, a clinical psychologist with New York City's Institute for Human Identity, said every psychiatric and mental health organization opposes aversion therapy.
*
Silverstein was recently given the American Psychological Association Lifetime-Achievement Award for helping to remove "homosexuality" from the list of illnesses in psychiatry's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" in 1973.
"There is no treatment for homosexuality today in the professional community," said Silverstein. "All of them are on the record as saying that homosexuality is within the normal range of human behavior."
*
Of his clinical patients over the years, he said those who were Mormon "suffered the most." David Melson, president of the advocacy group Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons, said anecdotal information suggests suicide rates among gay Mormons may be higher than in the general population.
*
"It is very hard to track this sort of thing because family members, the church and well-intentioned hospital staffs will often tend to not report a death as a suicide," Melson said.
*
It is obscene to me that so much torment and cruelty continue to be the hallmarks of many denominations' treatment of LGBT individuals. So much evil and all done in the name of God. It is beyond disgusting.
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