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Panelists Agree Therapy Can't Change Sexual Orientation On October 20, Bishop Robert Reese, Daniel Holsinger, and Ron Schow participated in an Understanding Homosexual Attraction seminar during the Idaho Conference on Health Care at Idaho State University. What follows is an excerpt of a story that appeared October 21 on the Idaho Sate Journal. To read the whole story, go to the Idaho State Journal  .
by Elizabeth Ziegler 21 October 2004 POCATELLO - Throughout the history of the world, there have been a lot of wrong ideas, some benign and some with destructive consequences, said panelist and former LDS Bishop Robert Reese. Through his work in the Mormon Church and with homosexuals, Reese believes that one of these false ideas with destructive consequences is that sexual orientation is chosen and can be changed - that somehow gay relationships are a threat to heterosexual relationships and to civilization itself. "Mormonism is caught in an unfortunate, conservative time-warp," he said. There are many gay Mormons who struggle with their spirituality, their family relationships and place in society, he said. But homosexuality cannot be changed with reparative therapy. It is biological and immutable, said the panelists in the workshop "Understanding Homosexual Attraction: Implications to Therapy." The workshop Wednesday afternoon was one of five warm-up presentations to Idaho State University's seventeenth annual Idaho Conference on Health Care, which runs through Oct. 22. Panelists shared personal experiences with homosexual attraction and the often destructive assumption that homosexuality is a choice and therefore can be altered through therapy, a technique sometimes called reparative therapy. Reese has spent decades working with homosexual Mormons, and has heard over and over their painful stories of trying to fit in, and how they feel ostracized from their families, their faith and society, which causes profound emotional damage and often leads to suicide. Reese is a self-proclaimed religious conservative and socially liberal Mormon from Los Angeles, who served as bishop to a singles ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California from 1986 to 1991 and is director of the HeartMath Institute. "Our society has totally ruined the word liberal," Reese said. "If you look it up in the dictionary, the word liberal means open hearted and generous. In actuality, Joseph Smith was a liberal theologian and social reformer in the United States. "I find personally, that my progressive ideas and social concepts are a flowering of my understanding of the New Testament, which is a liberal and progressive document," he said. |
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