VANCOUVER, BC—A small group of ex-gay Anglicans are in the process of forming a new support group called Zacchaeus, which they hope will finally give them a voice in the current controversy over homosexuality.
“Not everybody who experiences same-sex attraction wants to have their feelings affirmed by the church,” says co-founder Dawn McDonald, the rector of Holy Cross Japanese Anglican Church in Vancouver.
Named after the social outcast in Luke 19 who in the presence of Christ became a transformed person, the group comprises to date only about 12 members across Canada. But McDonald believes there are many more who are struggling alone and in silence with their sexual identity.
“They’re afraid of being condemned; they’re afraid of being condoned,” she says. “When you listen to them, their main beef is that there’s nobody to walk with them and it’s a lonely, lonely path.”
Last June, delegates to the Anglican General Synod in St. Catharines, Ontario, voted to amend a motion involving same-sex blessings to include a consultation on the experiences of gay and lesbian people. But a further proposed amendment to also include “ex-gays and lesbians” was defeated.
Yukon Bishop Terry Buckle, chaplain to Zacchaeus, says the group’s basic desire is to go into churches and testify to the hope they found in Christ to leave the homosexual life, or at least to become celibate.
“What these people are saying is, ‘That’s where I was, and I wanted to leave that.’ These people who are celibate are celibate by choice and out of conscience, . . . and I think we need to hear that,” he says.
Yet homosexuals within the Anglican Church question whether members of Zacchaeus will have anything worthwhile to offer.
Don Mean, past president of the Vancouver chapter of Integrity, an international support group for gay and lesbian Anglicans, says he is “puzzled” that they feel the church is ignoring them.
“I’ve been involved in a couple of initiatives, one at the national church level and then here locally, and in each case, there was an ex-gay person present who spoke at virtually every place that a gay person spoke,” he says.
Mean suspects their real issue may be they cannot accept that times have changed and “that people just aren’t agreeing with the basic premise of the ex-gay point of view.”
In his opinion, the premise that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation is false. Mean, who is also a psychologist, says there is simply no scientific evidence to back up that claim.
It is a conviction held by many homosexual activists and health-care professionals.
The Canadian Psychological Association rejects the “ex-gay” concept, as do professional organizations representing much of America’s medical community. One U.S. gay-rights activist recently dismissed ex-gay ministries as “the hokiest of hoaxes.”
However, not everyone shares that view.
“Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behaviour could be resisted, but sexual orientation could not be changed. I now believe that’s untrue—some people can and do change,” writes Dr. Robert Spitzer in an article published by the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. In the early 1970s Spitzer helped lead the charge in removing the description of homosexuality from the “mental disorders” category in the APA (American Psychological Association) handbook.
After an encounter with a group of ex-gays, Spitzer decided to find out if homosexuality might indeed be changeable. He interviewed 200 people (men and women) who left the homosexual lifestyle for a heterosexual lifestyle. The results surprised him.
“Contrary to conventional wisdom,” he concluded, “some highly motivated individuals, using a variety of change efforts, can make substantial change in multiple indicators of sexual orientation, and achieve good heterosexual functioning.”
But Mean says his “biggest concern” is for homosexuals “who hear the promise [of becoming heterosexual] and discover that it will not be fulfilled for them. And then what is their response to that?
“We do have lots of anecdotal information about people who just felt so demeaned and brutalized [and] coming to the point of saying, ‘I can’t make this change,’ and then feeling as though it’s their fault—that they have somehow not believed deeply enough, or said the right prayers, or whatever.”
Support needed
“On the contrary, ” says McDonald, “I think it’s hurtful not to respond to those who are wanting out of this lifestyle.
“The process of change is always painful, because it involves digging up stuff and really coming face-to-face and grappling with the demons in you. But even through that pain, the pain is well worth it.”
Says Buckle, “We need to understand homosexuality and understand that well. But at the same time, if there’s hope in the gospel for those who want it, then we need to be aware of that and we need to be able to deal with that.”
