“Conversion therapies” (or “reparative therapies”) are pseudo-scientific practices that promise to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through forms of psychological and sometimes even physical torture. Scientific studies have long shown that these therapies don’t just not work, but above all, they can cause serious psychological damages: from loss of self-esteem to depression, leading even to suicide. For this reason, Germany recently prohibited: subjecting minors to conversion therapies, subjecting adults to these therapies using violence and deception, and advertising these practices. For the lucrative business of preachers and pseudo-therapists promoting these pseudo-therapies, it is a hard hit but not a definitive one.
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The ex-gay movement
It all started in 1976 in the United States with the birth of Exodus, an organization that at its maximum power, was present in 17 countries. The therapies advertised by Exodus promised to teach to homosexual people how to stifle same-sex desire and, therefore, to transform them into “ex-gays.” In 2012, after years of scandals, its president Alan Chambers recognized that those “therapies” caused harm and that: “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation.” The following year Exodus shut down, but organizations with even fewer scruples immediately filled this void.
Desert Stream is among the most developed organizations. It was founded in the 1980s by Andrew Comiskey, a former Protestant pastor previously affiliated with Exodus, who converted to Catholicism in 2011. The end of Exodus was a boon for Desert Stream, which strengthened its presence in many countries (including Germany) “abandoned” by the biggest ex-gay organization.
Profits in Germany
In Germany, all began in 1990 when the ex-gay Günter Baum founded Wuestenstrom (Desert Stream in German) in Tamm, Baden-Württemberg. This evangelical organization offers conversion therapies at the modest sum of 50 euros per hour. Since the conversion period is very long (read: endless), the “patients” may en up paying tens of thousands of euros, just to feel increasingly guilty and devalued because of their homosexuality. After a few years Baum had a “relapse” in homosexuality, he discovered that he was much happier to live his sexual orientation and founded a gay-Christian association that fights for the acceptance of sexual minorities.
In the meantime, the leadership of Wuestenstrom had passed to a theologian and social worker, Markus Hoffmann, who until then had proposed do-it-yourself reparative therapies in his own “self-help group.” Hoffmann managed to strengthen Wuestenstrom and settle it in Switzerland, while he was establishing other organizations with names increasingly distant from the original, to muddy the waters a little. First, it was the Institut für dialogische und identitätsstiftende Seelsorge und Beratung (Institute of Dialogical, Identity-creation and Pastoral Counseling), then of Bruderschaft des Weges (Brotherhood of the Journey). He changed the names, never the substance.
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Assault on Switzerland
Nowadays, Bruderschaft des Weges cries scandal and censorship: claiming the ban on advertising conversion therapies would discriminate against ex-gays and even affect their mental health. The organization affirms that this law “increases stress among minorities because it is no longer possible to communicate privately or publicly the need or desire to be part of Christian groups and communities.” Bruderschaft des Weges, therefore, decided to move to Switzerland where Wuestenstrom has been operating since 2004. There are no details yet and it will be difficult to collect them because the situation in the Swiss territory is rather ambiguous.
In Switzerland, there is no law prohibiting reparative therapies and the authorities prefer to rely on the psychologists’ and psychotherapists’ code of ethics, pretending it’s sufficient and that no one is practicing these therapies in the country, even though – as we just mentioned – there is at least one organization offering them for the past 16 years. Last September, the Federal Council, while asserting that homosexuality isn’t a disease and, therefore, shouldn’t be cured, has formally refused to legislate on the matter. In short, the movement of ex-gays in Switzerland found its new Eldorado: they will discreetly move customers to a neighbouring country to continue their lucrative business.
Pier Cesare Notaro
translation by Barbara Burgio
©2020 Il Grande Colibrì
Images: elaborations from josephredfield (CC0) / from Max Pixel (CC0)
