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stella41b -> RE: What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp (4/28/2010 2:43:53 PM)
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Thanks for posting this. I found the article fascinating and quite surprising in places.
I'm actually still studying the article and doing some research. I run theatre workshops and projects with the opposite objective - to promote and encourage acceptance of self, whoever or whatever that self is. I've been working with people such as the homeless and mentally ill for a few years - people who are almost completely shut out of society, or as I privately refer to them, the 'invisible people' in society. My work focusses on working against and working to eliminate the effects of social stigma and the charity I'm working to set up is the first of its kind in the world (so I'm told).
This has so far required me to completely rethink the entire concept of charity. I guess the common concept of charity is a body of people who gathers resources and finances with the objective of helping other people. I'm working with almost all the major homeless charities in the UK who help people who are affected by homelessness, which is a lengthy process marked by failure and also a great deal of emotional and psychological trauma. Charity along traditional lines works - these people receive help to find somewhere to sleep, and are also helped to find places in hostels and new accommodation, and are thus resettled. End of the problem?
Not quite. Traditional charity doesn't help people who have been adversely affected by social stigma. You can give these people money, you can accommodate them in luxury, give them decent jobs, but you will never take away those negative effects of social stigma. And it is these negative effects of how they dealt with social stigma - a universal social issue which in some way affects everyone, you, me and everyone else - which is probably instrumental behind their reasons for becoming homeless in the first place, and it's also a major influence which determines the success (or lack of it) of their entire resettlement process and return to society.
The other problem is, is that there's no way of knowing who is affected adversely by social stigma and who isn't. Unlike homelessness and mental illness, there's no visible signs where you can look at someone and determine that they are affected adversely by social stigma in a way which seriously affects how they function in their own community or society. The problem exists in the least visible place - inside someone's mind and its causes almost invariably exist in someone's past. Even if you closely observe someone and examine what they project outwards through their communication and behaviour you still won't be able to identify any definite signs.
It's actually quite difficult to try and help someone who is adversely affected by social stigma without further stigmatizing them. The most reliable way is to rely almost entirely on self-analysis and self-evaluation.
This leads to a new concept of charity which doesn't depend on giving something to someone, but in supporting them through their own efforts to help themselves. Only the solution is known, and that's complete and total acceptance of oneself as a person. Most people assume, quite wrongly, that all this requires is a change in the thinking of that person over how they see themselves. What is actually needed is to go through the entire process of forming and developing a relationship with someone whilst simultaneously to go through another process of forming and developing a new relationship with oneself. Two years of highly successful pilot projects have established this fact.
This of course to me explains the success of these Christian Gay to Straight Conversion Camps - of course the methods are secret and rightly so because they would all depend on removing social stigma by replacing it with different stigma. The objective would of course be to give these people better social acceptance at the expense of acceptance of self. The methods used to achieve this are no different from my own methods of working with affected people, through role play, drama and by working with someone's past and feelings about themselves.
The fact that this sort of thing goes on, and is allowed to go on unchecked says not only quite a bit about those who take part in such camps, it says considerably more about the church but the biggest statement it makes isn't just about gays, or about the church, but about people in general and the sort of society we live in.
How would we feel, for example, if things were modified a little and the objective reversed. Let's replace the church with politics and just to make it very authentic we could have Soviet Union style Straight to Gay Conversion Camps. The world is over-populated anyway, Let's stop people having babies. Also, think of how much more tolerant people will be towards each other when we remove that social privilege that many people feel because not only are they able to breed, not only do they enjoy doing so, but they feel entitled to and as a result are 'normal'. Acceptable to you?
But you know if this really was an article on a Communist Straiught to Gay Conversaion Camp - or I can use the simpler term of 'brainwashing' if you prefer - I somehow think there'd be many more pages to this thread and it certainly wouldn't have struggled to reach the second page.
The simple fact of the matter is, is that brainwashing done by the church - in exactly the same way as totalitarian communist regimes - is perfectly socially acceptable because it is the church and secondly the brainwashing is happening to other people. This is also understandable. Most people live their lives in terms of their own self-interests. While most people feel or think that they want a better society and they might even say that they want a better society to make themselves look good, most people don't actually start becoming proactive or want to do something about social changes unless there's a direct relationship or connection with them, which either threatens their lifestyle or offers them a lot of benefits.
This in itself is an irony, because religion as a whole is by far the biggest single motivator getting people in society to get up and do something to work towards..., erm.. social change. Religious organizations back and support almost every charitable cause you can think of.
It's just too bad that religious institutions themselves don't work for the common good of everyone in society - people, but are more selective about what people they do support and what people they don't. It's also too bad that the vast majority of people don't stick to the fundamental principle of religious teaching - love one another - but instead seem more willing to give up control of their minds and thinking simply for the sake of external validation and being 'right'. This is in itself the leading cause of social stigma in society, not to mention lots of other social issues and problems from sexual infidelity right up to wars between countries and even continents.
The biggest social problem of all - one in which it would appear that we have yet to find a solution - is to find a way of acting in the best interests of people as a whole, everyone in society, without it becoming about power or creating conflicts between people. Indeed, it would appear that religion hasn't solved this problem, nor has politics, nor indeed has charity. All three are about power, all three serve to create conflicts between people, and all three thus fail to act in the interests of everyone.
The article illustrates this perfectly clear. I'm not sure how many of you have read the article, or how many of you are parents - but don't you find it disturbing that these people confuse the boundaries between sexual relationships and relationships with your immediate family? isn't this also ironic coming from a religious institution headed by a figure (the Pope) who claims that there is a direct relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia?
It's also worth considering exactly how dangerous all this really is, especially when it's replacing acceptance of the self with acceptance and validation from other people through the creation of new stigma and 'brainwashing'.
A dominant factor in almost every single suicide that takes place is social stigma and the inability to cope with stigma from other people.
Dealing with suicidal people is stressful and difficult enough, not to mention risky - there's no way of knowing if someone was serious for sure until they have actually committed suicide. We hardly need to be creating further opportunities for more people to become suicidal.
Statistics on suicide are sketchy enough as it is. However we know enough to be able to form statistics concerning post-op transsexuals which, depending on where you get your statistics from varies between 15% and 30%. From that percentage, you can argue over what ratio are those who have committed suicide over regretting having surgery, but I would suggest that the vast majority take their own lives because they cannot adequately deal with the enormous amount of stigma placed on them by the rest of society.
But the biggest thing that I took from the article is that the church can no longer have it both ways. Either it sticks to the gospel and teachings of Jesus Christ who taught that matters of spirituality and morality are individual, and that people are to 'love one another' - irrespective of who they are - and stick to its principles which founded it, accepting people for who they are. Or it decides to 'confess' and tell the truth that the church isn't about people but about power and money and will only accept those people who fit in and conform to its modern teachings.
And making this choice would be a lot better than messing with people's heads and their lives.
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