BBC3′s Gay to Straight: Stacey Dooley investigates Gay Conversion Therapy but stays somewhat impartial throughout
It seems that Stacey Dooley is indeed a polarising figure after a lot of you left feedback about her show last week, concerning the first all-female boot camp. There were some who applauded her lovely nature and natural response while others felt she was simpering and patronising, so probably won’t be tuning into this week’s instalment.
Stacey’s second programme centres on conversion therapy which is the controversial process that allegedly turns young gay men straight. Conversion therapy deals with Same-Sex Attraction, known as SSA for short, which works under the belief that homosexual feelings are simply a condition a lot of young men fall prey too, especially if they have a poor relationship with their parents.
Stacey’s first port-of-call is the Indiana town of Gilbert in which she meets therapist Floyd who does operate under the belief that nobody is born gay. It transpired that Floyd himself had issues with SSA, however he is now married with three kids so he feels that he has an affinity with the young men that come to see him.
One of these men is 19 year old T.J. who allows Stacey to sit in on his session with Floyd where he admits that he no longer feels an attraction to men he meets on the street but he still finds himself watching gay porn a couple of days a week. Stacey described T.J. still watching gay porn as ‘an odd one’ and wanting to know more about him, journeyed to his house to meet his family.
As she went round his family home, T.J. revealed to her that he originally came out to his mum when he was in eighth grade telling her he had feelings for men and releasing what he describes an emotional atom bomb. His mother seemed to think that T.J.’s homosexuality created a barrier between her and her son adding that it wasn’t in her plans for her family to have a gay child. If that was enough to make us dislike this woman her response to Stacey’s question about if she’d be OK with having a gay son was ‘that’s like deciding if I would be OK with my son being a terrorist.’ The documentary is insinuating that T.J.’s therapy is essentially to appease his parents however he insists that his heart’s desire is now to have a wife and children.
Someone else who has been through the conversion therapy is Danny who is already living T.J.’s dream, as he has a wife and two lovely young boys. It seems that Danny’s wife Erin does love the fact that her husband had SSA, as it still allows him to have a creative edge and it seemed that he had the biggest influence when the couple were decorating their home. Erin seems totally comfortable with Danny’s SSA telling Stacy that her husband checking out men is akin to other women’s husbands checking out other women. After a while it was obvious to me that Danny felt that he had to go through conversion therapy as in the Mormon faith being openly gay is unacceptable.
The conversion therapy would have us believe that most men who have SSA are dealing with abandonment issues with their fathers, so are drawn to other men. Stacey meets Danny’s father Bruce who believes that the fact he was a travelling salesman had a negative impact on the relationship with his son, which in turn caused him to be attracted to men. The most worrying thing is Danny telling us that if one of his sons comes out as gay then he’d wondered where he went wrong as a father.
Both Danny and T.J are a part of Floyd’s camping exercise where he takes his conversion therapy patients out into the wilderness to bond with their parents. Now if you didn’t know any better you would think a bunch of guys going into the forests and learning how to hug each other would sound a little bit gay, however this apparently is a method to cure these men of their SSA. One of the young men going on Floyd’s trip is 17 year old Skylar, someone who wishes to curb his SSA before it gets out of control. Skylar uses the trip, as most of the campers do, to get to know his father better and the two seemingly bond around the campfire which surely means that all of Skylar’s homosexual feelings have disappeared. Of all her subjects it appears that Stacey is genuinely concerned about Skylar’s welfare so goes to his house where she discovers he has a girlfriend who really isn’t aware of the feelings he’s trying to supress. If I thought T.J’s mother was bad then Skylar’s parents’ views were absolutely shocking, describing the thought of their son being gay as repulsive and unnatural. It then transpired that Skylar had tried to commit suicide and it seemed to me as if his parents had forced him to get the conversion therapy instead of talking through the feelings he was obviously confused about.
To present a balanced view Stacey travels to California to meet David a young man who had also gone through conversion therapy but had finally come to the realisation that he was born to be gay. David now lives with his boyfriend Angel and tells Stacy that the whole conversion process frustrates him but puts it down to a lot of young men not being able to reconcile their homosexuality with the scripture they had grown up reading. Finally Stacey meets Joseph Nicolosi, one of the major advocates of the therapy, who tries to explain how the process has been based on fact rather than just homophobia. Personally I feel this section with Nicolosi was frustratingly short with Stacey not really grilling him as I much as I think she should have done.
I really can see both sides of the argument when it comes to Stacey Dooley’s style and both were on show in Gay to Straight. On one hand I feel she’s a bit weak in the face of adversity not every wanting to lay into people even when they’re being completely hateful. My other issue was that neither of these documentaries have really had any definitive conclusion with Stacey not condemning the conversion therapy but simply stating that she has her doubts. On the other hand I think she is incredibly caring character and this came across in her meetings with Skylar who she could obviously see was suffering with a father who failed to see homosexuality as anything other than a sin. To me it seems that she does invest time in getting to know the people she interviews and in turn they build up a trust in her which is rare in a documentary series such as this.
Having weighed up all the evidence I feel that this conversion therapy is just another way of denying who you really are, because if T.J. is still watching gay porn doesn’t that mean he’s still gay? The documentary suggests that the majority of those going through with the therapy are trying to do so for their family or because the religion they follow tell them what they’re doing is wrong. I can’t believe anybody watching this would think that it’s at all healthy to supress your feelings and do what society believes you should do. In that sense Gay to Straight did get me quite angry however I did warm Dooley’s presenting style a little more even if she still is a bit too impartial for my liking.
What did you think? Leave your comments below….
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Governor Jerry Brown has signed into law a ban on conversion therapy in California from
January 1 2013. The law states there is clearly no scientific basis in conversion therapy
What is with this girl? She can’t decide on how to wear her hair. Every two minutes she has a different hairstyle. In previous programs she felt she had to be a constantly changing fashion show for every shot. She is definitely more bizarre than the characters she films, never mind her bizarre slovenly accented English.
“even if she still is a bit too impartial for my liking.” Of course all you gay-supporters want is a biased opinion that supports your warped and immoral views.
Jack London it’s not one long shot you know? As for the accent, I like it and thankfully it’s not an awful over pronounced Hurray Henry ya ya, now that would be a channel turner you snob.
I think part of her impartiality was so that this could be shown on BBC America, where people might would support gay conversion. She uses phrases like ‘get-go’ in her conversations as well, which might just be from picking up the local lingo, but might also be to win over an American audience. It was also unnatural for her to keep saying ‘person with SSA’ rather than ‘gay’, so that was almost certainly a producer telling her not to upset the interviewees for sure, but maybe also not to appear obviously biased to less liberal audiences.
She’s probably a naturally nice and non-confrontational person, but some of the unnatural phrasing makes it sound like she was especially prepped to be impartial.
I’ve watched this programme. I found it quite depressing seeing these misguided people reinforcing the erroneous notion that there is something wrong with being gay, expounding the gratuitous anti-family theory that parents are to “blame” for it, and offering useless “therapy” to “correct” it. Let’s see an end to this unconscionable playing of games with other people’s lives. I’m so glad that California has now made it illegal to practise this kind of abusive fraud on minors.
Godlovesyou
My point was that she didn’t come down on either side of the fence – if she’d have said ‘I totally believe conversion therapy works’ then I would’ve applauded her for at least having an opinion but the fact she stayed in partial left the programme slightly open-ended.
I think Stacey is very sweet but I have found some of her documentaries very frustrating because she obviously had zero idea of the topic & just looked ridiculous and unconvincing. Here she did a decent job, probably because she has an opinion of her own -even though she tries to hide it- so her comments and questions have more substance.
These people are trying to go against their nature because they come from very conservative families and are brought up with repressive religious ideas (yes, their families can be lovely people and at the same time be so destructive, it’s all down to education).
It is very obvious to me that these so called therapies take advantage of these feelings of shame and need of acceptance and ultimately promote repression and use the bonding exercises and activities to install a false sense of hope.
I find it repulsive and extremely dangerous. It is well known that many of these men live a double life (having “accidents” once in a while and feeling sorry for themselves, just like a cheating husband) or what is worse, the conflict and shame inside these individuals eventually take its toll and not being able to cope with the reality of being JUST GAY they turn to very dark things, including suicide.
I am an heterosexual girl and No, I’m not being onesided, it is because I am very open minded that I can say all this.
I am not warped, I am not immoral… I am a kind and loving person who I am sure
God loves because god made me… I am gay…It is not something that can or should be cured.
The world and Mother Nature brings devastation to the world
Why don’t you see the bigger picture and concentrate on things
That really matter and not if your son is gay because that’s no big deal.
It was not so long ago people were to be cured for a white and black relationship
clearly the world realised there is nothing wrong with that and so in time you
Will realise you should stop using God as an excuse to be dumb, ignorant and bigoted
Neanderthals
I think that you are who you are and you cannot change the fact that your either born gay of straight and I don’t think that GCT works as I think it is down to nature rather than nurture.
Really good documentary. I think it is a crazy idea to try to make someone less gay and become more straight. I think people are born gay and not a choice.
Americans are crazy to do this. Let a person be who they want to be. Why do crazy Americans always want to let region play a part in everyone else’s decision making process?
It’s actually upsetting, it seems from this programme that the pressures of religion have a huge impact, well maybe not religion, I think more often than not we easily blame religion for social problems like we blame big business for economic problems, but who is really to blame, us, humans for our constructs, we have this idea of perfect, 2.4 children as an example, the nuclear family even, it’s one ideal and we should be taught of different strong loving ideals that can and do develop, not just a narrow view of one, this put pressures on us all. In the case of this show, you have parents upset that their child who has come out will not live up to their expectations and forcing this upon a child who clearly came out confused and wanted guidance but just ended up feeding their parents ego by getting supposed help, when all that was needed was support.
Very interesting documentary, unfortunately at moments very upsetting…
If only Skylar could be removed from the “care” of his abusive parents. They would obviously prefer him to commit suicide than have to admit to anyone that they have raised a gay son.
I quite agree Mike. When Skylar’s father said he could cope with anything other than his son being gay, I wanted to ask him….”What, even your son’s suicide?” Sadly there are probably many more parents like him.
I really, really want to get in contact with poor Skylar from this weeks show, i have so much i wanna say! really can relate to the guy
I can’t believe these nutters and bigots are given a platform. The best advert for atheism ever.
The notion of parents being to blame especially father/son relationships is absolute poppycock.
In many cases you can identify from childhood a boy is likely to turn out gay, I have seen with my own eyes this. The nutters will twist the slightest angle with these kids and their upbringing blaming a Father for not playing sport or doing manly things with their son for example, absolute garbage.
I have two teenage sons one of whom is likely to be gay I’ve realised this from when he was about five years old it is so obvious and I am absolutely happy and comfortable with this and we have a fantastic father son relationship. My other son is a typical heterosexual kid into football and being blokey and hey guess what? I have a different but equally great relationship with him too.
They are my sons they are equally loved and they drive me equally nuts when they mess up.
As for Stacey Dooley being impartial it’s a shame she couldn’t be more dynamic and confront these morons with situations like mine and tie them up with their repressive ropes of discrimination, they were allowed way too much slack to get their distorted views across.
I feel sorry for the teenagers. Not that I believe that I was born gay, but “conversion therapy” is lame.
I think frankly Stacey is a bit of a hero. Despite the gay conversion debate – youth have always had issues over orientation & more & moreso youth identify as bi. As a ‘gay’ man, I have to say in the commercial world, images of men, prevalent in western society, is setting an example youth can achieve but the majority can’t, but then for a ‘parent’ to equate being potentially gay to being a terrorist is ridiculous. She seemed subservient to the husband, who qualified the interview by essentially, simply just by repeating he was right.
Dooley is a treasure, as she naturally encourages those she’s involved with to speak & she has encountered plenty & been in situations not many would want to be.
I’d encourage her to speak to elderly homosexuals who risked all for when homosexuality was illegal & split it with teens who have been brought up on norton & absolutely go clubbing with f.boo