September 28, 2007

The Torturous Truth About “Ex-Gay” “Reparative Therapy”

Or: What the Radical Right Doesn’t Want You to Know, from Box Turtle Bulletin:

Reorientation, Old School Style

Pete Price is a radio personality in the UK. The Liverpool Echo has an extract of his autobiography Pete Price is a Namedropper. Price describes some of the methods used on him to cure his homosexuality:

In the morning I was shown into a windowless room with a male nurse. A crate of Guinness arrived, and I was given a stack of dirty magazines showing body builders – not the sort of thing that would have turned me on in a million years.

. . .

Then he gave me an injection and suddenly I started feeling sick.

“I think I’m going to vomit!” I yelled out. “I need a basin.”

The doctor smiled. “Then be sick.”

“I think I’m going to go to the toilet.”

“Just do it on the bed.”

I screamed: “You’re joking.”

. . .

When it ended, I lay there sobbing, the doctor came in.

“Now you’ve got to have the electrodes … ” he said. …