Protest at “Lepers” conference
Protestors gathered on Friday 20 January outside of Orangefield Presbyterian Church on the Castlereagh Road, to protest against a conference discussing homosexuality and the church.
(Photo credit: David Alexander - www.davidalexphoto.com)
The conference, entitled ‘The Lepers Among us: Homosexuality and the Life of the Church,’ was organized by Core Issues, a Northern Ireland-based Christian charity that organized a similar conference at a church in Belvoir last summer.
Louise Higgins, of the Belfast Feminist Network, said the protestors, numbering around 40, were very diverse and not made up of the LGBT community alone.
“The general feeling was that it’s just ridiculous, the whole concept of homosexuality being a disease that needs to be cured – it’s antithetical to actual medical practice and fact,” Higgins said.
“People might say this is ‘voluntary’ therapy – but the American Psychiatric Association has said it’s dangerous because it’s targeting vulnerable people.”
Mike Davidson, of Core Issues, said that many different points of view were expressed at the conference, and he felt that it was a “safe environment for those who were radically opposed to Core Issues’ message to voice their concerns, and they did so with dignity.”
When asked about why gay people should or would even seek to change, Davidson said that he is not denying that there is not a great deal of prejudice in society and in the church towards homosexuality, that has to end, but that for many people, that explanation was too simplistic. As Davidson said in regards to his own experiences,
“My Christian identity was in conflict with my sexual identity, and my problem is those who tell me that my sexual identity is primary.”
Mark Brown is a counselor with GLYNI (Gay Lesbian Youth Northern Ireland). He said the idea that gay people can or should ‘convert’ is definitely an issue within young gay communities, and that he has counseled many young people that have gone through reparative or conversion therapy and come out ‘emotionally unstable.’
“It hasn’t worked, afterwards they find it difficult to socialize with other young gay people, until they are happy with their sexual orientation.”
Brown also feels that there is a connection between these therapies and instances of self-harm and suicide. He says the therapy is “being sold as ‘we can change you,’ until they realize that it isn’t working and it can’t change you. But you’ve been told by family, friends and your church that you’re diseased, sick and not right.”
As a trainee psychotherapist, Davidson says he is “ethically bound to find out why a person is in front of me – if a parent or family member has sent them, or if they were bullied at school, that is not a reason to start working with them. It has to be something that I genuinely understand to be a person’s desire.”
Davidson said he and Core Issues are concerned with the population that we don’t hear about - the population with a different point of view on homosexuality and change. He feels it is important to reflect these views as well, especially in a society based on equality.
But for Higgins, and many others at the rainy protest this morning, that ‘desire’ to change is fueled by society’s homophobia.
“Core Issues couch what they do in a language of care and support, to try and circumvent the argument that reparative and conversion therapy are not recognized medical practice, are damaging and are based on homophobia.
Creating a culture whereby you are enforcing the view that there is something wrong with being gay and we can help is an incredibly disingenuous argument. It should be about love and happiness and being who you are.”
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