Oh No, Ross and Carrie Ross and Carrie and Claire Get Straightened Out (Part 1): Ex-Gay Therapy Edition
May 4, 2018
Claire Knowlton, a friend who attended the Living Stones 'Be My Child' conference, shares first-person reporting and reactions. She recalls awkward theatrical music, emotional storytelling, and leaders blaming parents and trauma for sexuality. The conference mixes compassionate language with calls to change, promotes pseudoscientific therapy ideas, and leaves troubling audience reactions.
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Cold Room Workshop On Causes And 'Treatment' Of Homosexuality
- Claire attended Robert Vazzo's workshop on origins and treatment of homosexuality and found the room extremely cold and the rhetoric pseudoscientific.
- Vazzo presented family-systems theories and reparative therapy techniques aimed mostly at boys.
Freudian Attachment Used As Simplified Cause Of Male Homosexuality
- Vazzo used Freudian object-relations ideas to claim early father-son attachment (18 months–3 years) shapes male sexual orientation.
- This reduced complex sexuality to simplistic developmental ‘wounds’ tied to parental behavior.
Causation Reversed To Support Reparative Claims
- Vazzo repeatedly reversed causation: treating parental response as cause of homosexuality while ignoring that parental reactions often respond to gender-nonconforming behavior.
- Carrie and Claire flagged this as confused reasoning and victim-blaming.
