Alternative view says homosexuals can change

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

BOTHELL, Wash. — At first glance, Mary Lou Wallner, a neat, grandmotherly registered nurse in her late 50s, seems an unlikely gay-rights activist.

That is until you know that Wallner’s daughter, Anna Wakefield, committed suicide in 1997, nine years after she came out as a lesbian to her mother, who was a conservative evangelical Christian. She was 29 years old.

Today, Wallner and her husband — Bob, Wakefield’s stepfather — travel the country preaching tolerance and love for gay men and lesbians as part of their ministry in Cabot, Ark.

The Wallners were among more than 1,200 people — a standing-room-only crowd of gay men, lesbians, relatives and friends — who gathered last weekend at a Baptist church outside Seattle to find out more about the contention that homosexuality can be treated and potentially reversed. The conference, called Love Won Out, was organized by Focus on the Family, the evangelical ministry founded by Dr. James Dobson, the psychologist whose Christian broadcasts are estimated to reach more than 200 million people.

“When [her daughter] did come out, it was very difficult for both of us, but particularly for me, because I did believe that it was a sin,” Mary Lou Wallner said. “Since her death, we have been on a journey to discover what really is the truth about homosexuality.”

‘Message of hope and healing’
From what they’ve heard, the Wallners vigorously disagree with the central tenets of Love Won Out. “I think Dr. Dobson is on a campaign to destroy the homosexual community,” Bob Wallner said.

Focus on the Family says it is doing everything it can to prove him wrong. It welcomed the Wallners and other representatives of gay and lesbian rights groups into its conference and did not confront them.

Robert Hood / MSNBC.com Dr. Bill Maier, psychologist in residence for Focus on the Family, endorses both reorientation therapy and ex-gay ministry, but he acknowledges the hostility religious groups have shown gays and lesbians and says the church must ‘repent of some of its bast behavior.’

When activists “come in and hear the speakers, they are ... very surprised to hear a message of hope and healing and challenge to the church,” Dr. Bill Maier, vice president and psychologist in residence for Focus on the Family, said in an interview ahead of the conference.

But opinions are frequently dogmatic. Mike Haley, Focus on the Family’s manager of gender issues and a speaker at the conference, said some speakers had gotten death threats, a not-uncommon occurrence resulting from the three dozen events the organization has sponsored over the past decade or so.

In the end, only a handful of protesters showed up at the conference, which was held while most attention was turned toward Seattle’s annual Gay Pride Festival, and police reported no incidents.

A marriage of convenience
The idea that sexuality could be altered is one of the most controversial in modern psychology, so contested that different practitioners call it by different names, so nascent that partisans look at the same data and draw opposite conclusions.

Proponents of therapy to alter sexual orientation fall into two camps. While they share many philosophies — that homosexuality is a disorder triggered in childhood, often by damaged family relationships, and that it is not a choice but can be reversed — they have some notable differences.

The first camp, made up largely of evangelical counselors, many of whom say they have “left homosexuality,” comes at the topic from a religious stance. Guided by the Christian injunction to love the sinner but hate the sin, the ex-gay ministry preaches that the church should embrace homosexuals and guide them back to heterosexuality.

This philosophy is called “reparative therapy.” Inherent in that name is that homosexuality is something to be repaired — an idea that gay and lesbian activists consider insulting.

“Pretty is as pretty does, and actions speak louder than words,” said Harry Knox, founding director of religious and faith programs for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights organization. “They are starting from the premise that homosexuality is a disorder that needs to be cured or changed. All of the [psychological and psychiatric professional] groups come down that it is not a disorder and trying to change is dangerous.”

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