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News -
Australian News
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Written by Anthony Venn-Brown
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Wednesday, 17 February 2010 04:16 |
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EX-GAY SURVIVORS TO MARCH IN MARDI GRAS PARADE FOR THE FIRST TIME
The annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade is always colourful, outrageous and political but it is also often peppered with touching stories of courage and coming out. For the first time this year’s parade will include a group who call themselves ‘ex-gay’ survivors.
‘Ex-gay’ survivors are people who had been led to believe that their homosexuality was evil or an illness and had attempted to change their sexual orientation or ‘cure’ it through counseling, Church-led ‘ex-gay’ support groups or marriage. Sexual reorientation or conversion therapies are considered highly controversial and are not encouraged by mental health professionals due to the harmful effects experienced by participants including severe depression and suicide.
The American Psychiatric Association ceased practices such as aversion therapy and removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. It was at this time that Christian Churches and ministries saw it as their role to ‘heal’ people of their ‘sickness’ and ‘ex-gay’ ministries were launched. Exodus was formed in 1976 and has become the global umbrella organization for these ministries.
Some would find it hard to believe that in Australia, in 2010, ‘ex-gay’ ministries are still able to attract people with the message that homosexuality is a choice or dysfunction and can be changed. Founder of ‘ex-gay’ survivor support group Freedom 2 b[e], Anthony Venn-Brown says that their existence demonstrates the enormous amount of ignorance that still surrounds the issue of sexual orientation, particularly in some religious churches.
Venn-Brown, himself an ‘ex-gay’ survivor and once a leader of the Assemblies of God church details his experiences with the ’ex-gay’ movement in his autobiography ‘A Life of Unlearning’ a moving and personal account of the various treatments used including a sixteen-year marriage.
‘Since the release of my book, I’ve received thousands of emails from readers that begin with the same words “your story is my story”. My inbox has become a microscope into a previously hidden world’, says Venn-Brown. ‘After leaving the programs, participants have deep feelings of failure and shame believing it was their fault they couldn’t succeed. Many are left with mental health issues that can take years to heal.’
‘Navigating through this maze of self-loathing and ignorance to finally come out as a proud gay man or lesbian can be a hazardous journey, and tragically not everyone makes it through. So this year Freedom 2 b[e] is celebrating the survivor’s journeys by encouraging them to march with us in the parade. We are the true survivors, no longer pretending, living in denial or wallowing in a prison of self hatred.’
Joining this year’s Parade will not only be a historical moment of empowerment for those involved, but it will also send a positive message to people still struggling to resolve the perceived conflict between their faith and their sexuality.
Further information can be found on the Freedom 2 b[e] website www.freedom2b.org or email
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More media information available from:
Anthony Venn-Brown
Author and Co-founder of Freedom 2 b[e]
Voted one the 25 Most Influential Gay and Lesbian Australians 2007 and 2009
E:
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M: +61 416 015 231 |
