'Ex-gay' who 'turned straight' comes out again, launches attack on Rick Perry

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ick-Perry.html

Gay man who was 'turned straight' comes out again: Nineties poster boy for 'ex-gay' movement who left his wife and returned to homosexuality hits out at Rick Perry

- John Paulk was once America's leading advocate of gay conversion therapy
- He hit out at Texas governor after he compared homosexuality to alcoholism
- Paulk became straight in 1990s, married a former lesbian and had 3 children
- But last year he revealed he was gay after all and had left the movement

The former poster boy of America's so-called 'ex-gay' movement who last year left his wife to return to homosexuality has launched a scathing attack on Rick Perry, declaring: 'You don’t understand this issue at all'.

John Paulk - once the nation's leading advocate of so-called gay conversion therapy - issued the verbal assault after the Texas governor compared homosexuality to alcoholism in an interview earlier this month.

Perry was forced to apologise after he suggested that a gay person in a same-sex relationship is no different to an alcoholic who chooses to drink.

You don't get it: John Paulk (left) - once America's leading advocate of so-called gay conversion therapy - launched the attack after Texas governor Rick Perry (right) compared homosexuality to alcoholism earlier this month

'Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,' Perry told The San Francisco Chronicle. 'I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.'

Now Paulk, from Portland, Oregon, hit out at the politician in a comment feature for Politico Magazine.

'This wasn’t just some political mistake,' writes Paulk. 'What worries me more is the ignorance betrayed by Perry’s comments - an ignorance that I believe is still widespread among conservatives in the straight world - about what being gay means.'

Sparking controversy: Perry's original comments came during a conversation about 'reparative therapy' that Texas Republicans formally endorsed in their party platform this week.

Perry’s original comments came during a conversation about 'reparative therapy' that Texas Republicans formally endorsed in their party platform this week.

Practitioners of the controversial treatment - also called 'gay conversion therapy' - claim to be able to turn homosexuals straight with a variety of techniques that critics argue are both psychologically damaging and ineffective.

Techniques include electric shock therapy, inducing nausea while being exposed to homoerotic material, praying, exorcism, trips to brothels to have sex with women and hypnosis.

But Paulk has now completely abandoned the movement, vowing instead to fight the 'widespread misunderstanding in the straight world' that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.

'I do not want young gay women and men today to go through what I went through,' he writes. 'I want to tell them - and Rick Perry: We are not broken, damaged, inferior or throwaways. We are created in the image of God - just like everyone else.'

Of his own past, he writes: 'I was in denial. It wasn’t in fact true, any of it. Worse than being wrong, it was harmful to many people - and caused me years of pain in my own life. Which is why I have this to say to the Rick Perrys of the world: You don’t understand this issue. At all.'

During the 1990s, Paulk became the most visible proponent of 'reparative therapy' claiming it had 'healed' him, allowing him to marry Anne and have three children.

He became such a well-known figure in the 'ex-gay movement' that he even appeared on the front cover of Newsweek magazine in 1998 alongside wife Ann.

But last year, he revealed that he was in fact gay after all and had left the movement.

'My beliefs have changed,’ he told PQ Monthly, which stands for Proud Queer. 'Today, I do not consider myself “ex-gay” and I no longer support or promote the movement.'

It was a huge departure from Paulk’s prime ex-gay days, when he founded and ran a ministry called Love Won Out based on ‘reparative therapy.’

Paulk also penned two books on the subject: Not Afraid To Change: The Remarkable Story Of How One Man Overcame Homosexuality and Love Won Out, which he wrote with his wife, who also claimed to have rid herself of her own homosexuality.

He wrote the piece after the Texas Republican party revealed they are now endorsing so called restorative therapy to 'cure' homosexuality.

'Reparative therapy is, by definition, based on the notion that something is “broken” in one’s identity, needing repair,' he writes. 'You are meant to feel like damaged goods, and the therapy is designed to fix that.'

He goes on: 'In a nutshell, gay conversion advocates argue that boys who grow up to be gay over-identify with their mothers and remain detached from uninvolved, weak, passive, disinterested fathers.'

'I was told by my Christian mentor that one thing I needed to do to increase my sense of masculinity was to quit my job as a chocolatier because I was surrounded by too many women,' he writes. 'My mentor suggested I get a job in the business world where there were more men.'

He remained at the forefront of the ex-gay movement until September of 2000, when he was photographed in a Washington DC gay bar.

By 2012 he could not live the lie any longer.

'I deeply loved my wife, Anne, who still believed in the movement, and I knew it would be extremely scandalous to embrace homosexuality after the career I’d had,' he writes. 'But it was more and more apparent to me that I was what I always had been: gay.'

In the end he decided to abandon his old life and 'come out' for a second time.

'Today, for the first time since I was a young man, I’m not living a double life - a life that is a lie, day in and day out. I have no more secrets than the next person,' he adds.

Paulk now supports himself in the food service industry, running a catering company in Portland, Oregon called Mezzaluna Catering, and says he no longer profits from his former job.

At their annual conference in Fort Worth on Saturday, the Texan Republican party adopted the policy of 'reparative therapy', which tea party groups had advocated.

One particularly influential group, the Texas Eagle Forum, had urged the party to support the psychological treatments, which claim to try and turn homosexuals straight.

President of the conservative group, Texas Values Jonathan Saenz welcomed the decision saying it comes as no surprise.

He explained: 'The platform reflects what the people in the Republican Party have asked for, and that should be no surprise: family values, protection of marriage between one man and one woman and everything that goes along with that.'

But adopting the policy has sparked controversy even amongst members of the Republican party, some of whom had been lined up to speak out against endorsing such therapy.

They never got the chance to address delegates, because a parliamentary motion to approve the full platform was called first.

Rudy Oeftering, vice president of the gay conservative group Metroplex Republicans, who was due to speak said: 'There's a very, very small group of people who want to keep the party in the past. We were here today to try to pull the party into the future.

'The only way the party can go into the future is to start listening to young people, to start listening to people who have gay family members.'

Hmm, this is an interesting one on the reparative therapy debate that is ongoing in America at the moment.

You know, whilst I think reparative therapy has been proven to be bunk simply by the sheer number of men who are later caught with their pants down in a men's toilet despite being 'ex-gay' I would also say that there's a danger now in America that civil liberties are being attacked by efforts of LBGTXYZ groups to outlaw reparative therapy. If you ask me, if a gay person wishes to attempt to cure themselves - no matter how impossible the rest of us may think that may be - and there's somebody offering such a service then that isn't the business of the state.

I don't understand the attack on Rick Perry though, the equation with alcoholism/desires by Perry seems pretty straight forward to me. Humans are built with natural desires, and whether or not somebody should act upon those desires is entirely within the power of that person.

Thoughts?