This is harsh and unfair. Imagine a boy. A nice sweet boy. A nice sweet boy who goes to church every Sunday with his family. A boy who learns from his priest and his parents and his peers that God...
Exemplary
It never fails to amaze me how LGBT people can do things like this. The only thing I can think is that this man must be a sociopath.
This is harsh and unfair.
Imagine a boy. A nice sweet boy. A nice sweet boy who goes to church every Sunday with his family. A boy who learns from his priest and his parents and his peers that God is Good and humans are sinful. This doctrine is drummed into him from the time he’s old enough to be sent to Sunday School. It’s drummed into him all through his childhood. Like any child, he absorbs everything like a sponge, and integrates it into himself. God is Good and Humans are Bad. God is Good and Humans are Bad. God is Good and Humans are Bad.
He learns from the Bible. First, its stories are read to him, then he reads those stories himself. He learns about all the sins that humans can commit, and he learns about the eternal punishment which awaits us sinful humans. God loves us but God will punish us if we do the wrong thing.
There are such a lot of wrong things that humans can do!
Among all the wrong things open to us, one is the sin of homosexuality. This is wrong. A man lying with another man as with a woman is an abomination. These people are sinners and, like all sinners, they will face God’s eternal punishment.
But, unlike a lot of sins, these sinners are visible and they embrace their sin. They have parades. They fight for equal rights. They’re everywhere! So every adult around the boy continually says to each other and to him that these people are bad and wrong and sinful. He hears this message a lot. It sinks in. Loving other men is wrong. It’s sinful. God punishes sinners. God sends sinners to Hell. Men who love men are sinners and will go to Hell.
This message (and many others like it) are part of the boy’s upbringing. And, like the fish who doesn’t question the water it swims in, the boy doesn’t question his religion. It’s just how things are.
Then the boy reaches puberty. And he starts having feelings towards other boys. But these feelings are sinful! He knows that! He knows it as surely as he knows that the sky is blue, that water is wet, and that fire burns. These feelings are wrong. They are temptations to sin.
But he doesn’t want to sin. He wants to remain one of God’s loved people. He doesn’t want to go to Hell. He wants to be good and loved and righteous. So he fights the urge to sin. And he fights it. And he fights it. It’s hard to fight these urges, but he does it because it’s the right thing to do. Humans are tempted all the time, and they have to fight temptation so that they can be saved from eternal damnation.
He works out some strategies to fight the temptation to sin. He distracts himself. He prays. He convinces himself he really wants to be with women. He prays. He throws himself into his study or his work, and suppresses those urges. He prays. He gets by. He prays. He avoids sin, and he avoids eternal damnation.
And he grows up into a God-fearing man, continually fighting the temptation to sin.
Then he realises he’s not the only man in his situation. There are other men out there who are also trying to fight the temptation to sin, trying to avoid eternal damnation. And eternal damnation is a Very Bad Thing. Noone wants that! You don’t want it for yourself, and you don’t want it for other people. If you could help other people avoid an eternity of punishment, wouldn’t you do it? Any good and caring person would want to help another person avoid damnation. We stop people from hurting themselves in other ways: we stop children from playing with fire, we stop people from running with scissors, we stop drunk adults from driving cars. Why wouldn’t we help people from hurting themselves by bringing down eternal damnation on themselves?
So he decides to help other people by sharing the strategies he’s worked out for himself. He has strategies which are helping him not to sin, and he teaches those strategies to other people. There’s strength in numbers. They’re not just individuals trying to avoid sin, they’re a group of people supporting each other in living a good life. They pray, they support each other, they guide each other. They’re helping each other live better lives, they’re not sinning, and they’re avoiding eternal damnation.
There’s nothing sociopathic about wanting to help other people. His methods might have been wrong, and his goals might have been misinformed, but his motives were good.
I’m not defending all people who offer conversion therapy, and I’m not excusing all people who push children into conversion therapy. Far from it.
But I can at least understand how a boy who’s raised religiously can become a man who uses religion to suppress his homosexuality – and who wants to help other people do the same thing.
I suggest you try to put yourself in his shoes, rather than dismissing him as a sociopath.
You're absolutely right that we should consider this person's intentions, but this story leaves out something incredibly important - it's not just that They are also doing extremely questionable...
You're absolutely right that we should consider this person's intentions, but this story leaves out something incredibly important - it's not just that
They pray, they support each other, they guide each other. They’re helping each other live better lives, they’re not sinning, and they’re avoiding eternal damnation.
They are also doing extremely questionable things. Things which their own text tells them are morally bankrupt things to do. Modified forms of electro-therapy for example, still go on. I don't know what this particular person did at his camps, but there's enough examples of quite literal torture that I'm not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. Most of these people simply are not good Christians - at the very least they absolutely do not love thy neighbor as they are actively ostracizing queers.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it's not like he's doing this with blinders on to the rest of the world. The APA, AMA, WHO and countless other major organizations have extremely strong negative opinions of "conversion therapy" and if your goal is to set up an organization to help people, one would think you'd at the very least do the due diligence of looking into the feasibility or at least professional opinion from other organizations that do similar work.
There's simply no excuse for the "good intentions" of this individual. "I wanted to help people" is not an excuse for torture.
... you're willing to make assumptions and judge him guilty based on those assumptions. I don't know what you do in your life, but you're American and there's enough examples of Americans...
I don't know what this particular person did at his camps, but ...
... you're willing to make assumptions and judge him guilty based on those assumptions.
I don't know what you do in your life, but you're American and there's enough examples of Americans committing mass shootings that I'm not about to give you the benefit of the doubt. There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour, GW! How dare you go around shooting people!
See how that works? Guilt by association is a flawed way to judge anyone.
if your goal is to set up an organization to help people, one would think you'd at the very least do the due diligence of looking into the feasibility or at least professional opinion from other organizations that do similar work.
But God's law trumps everything. God has told this man what to do and how to do it: follow God's laws and commit his soul to God's care. Why bother with flawed human opinions when he's got a direct line to the expert in everything?
I'm continually amazed at the inability of people to put themselves in other people's shoes.
This guy started a conversion camp. These camps on their own are already morally bankrupt and damaging to individuals. I'm not jumping from the conclusion of ordinary citizen to gun rampaging...
I don't know what you do in your life, but you're American and there's enough examples of Americans committing mass shootings that I'm not about to give you the benefit of the doubt. There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour, GW! How dare you go around shooting people!
This guy started a conversion camp. These camps on their own are already morally bankrupt and damaging to individuals. I'm not jumping from the conclusion of ordinary citizen to gun rampaging individual - I'm assuming that someone which I already know is willfully psychologically damaging individuals is probably doing some seriously questionable shit.
Of all people on this website I would have assumed that you wouldn't make such an argument from bad faith (no pun intended).
I'm continually amazed at the inability of people to put themselves in other people's shoes.
Oh no I see his reasoning, but claiming "god said so" doesn't excuse morally bankrupt behavior.
That's of course ignoring the millions of arguments we could get into over faith which are a pointless exercise as we don't have any real insight into his motivations other than they were "faith based".
You have no idea what happens at the Hope for Wholeness programs, but you're judging this man based on things you assume are happening there. That's wrong. Not all conversion therapy includes...
You have no idea what happens at the Hope for Wholeness programs, but you're judging this man based on things you assume are happening there. That's wrong. Not all conversion therapy includes torture. Sometimes it's just people talking to each other. You need to produce evidence that electro-shock therapy or other torture took place at Hope for Wholeness before you start accusing Mr Game of torturing people.
And you're not giving him any sympathy for having been brainwashed into religion as a child. Don't you know how much that sort of thing can mess with a person's thinking? Have you ever met or debated with a religious person? I have. They're convinced they're right. No questions, no doubt. They know The Truth™, and there's no budging them.
Some people describe religion as child abuse. And, like any abuse, the victims sometimes go on to become abusers themselves.
But, no. You just ignore all the shades of grey and all the nuances of the situation. Someone did A Bad Thing so he's A Bad Person, full stop. Black and white. Simple. It's easier that way.
Conversion therapy is torture. Full stop. It's defined in many of the links I've already posted as being harmful to the children's mental health. Torture is defined as inflicting pain, physical or...
Conversion therapy is torture. Full stop. It's defined in many of the links I've already posted as being harmful to the children's mental health. Torture is defined as inflicting pain, physical or mental as a form of punishment or to force someone to do something.
You just ignore all the shades of grey and all the nuances of the situation
I never once ignored their background. In fact, in my first post I very explicitly outlined that it was important. However you are continuing to attack me for refusing to tolerate the behavior of a deplorable individual, so at this point I'm going to disengage. Have a wonderful day!
EDIT: lmao not conversation therapy; conversion therapy
I'm going to have to agree with @Gaywallet here. I've read all your arguments, I can put myself in his shoes and see where he and you are coming from, but it doesn't change that he's a terrible...
I'm going to have to agree with @Gaywallet here. I've read all your arguments, I can put myself in his shoes and see where he and you are coming from, but it doesn't change that he's a terrible person. Maybe he can eventually not be a terrible person and can do things to undo the insane amounts of damage he's caused, but as of now, nope. He's a terrible person and should feel bad about how terrible he was.
Let me try an analogy. You're in a car accident and you're very badly injured. You're lying in your car and you can't get out, and you're screaming for help. I happen to turn up on the scene. You...
but it doesn't change that he's a terrible person.
Let me try an analogy.
You're in a car accident and you're very badly injured. You're lying in your car and you can't get out, and you're screaming for help. I happen to turn up on the scene. You beg me to help you get out of the car because you're worried that the fuel in your car might catch fire and explode. I help you get out of the car, and I carry you a safe distance away.
Unfortunately, I'm not a medical expert, and I didn't realise you had a spinal injury. Me moving you out of the car exacerbated that injury. You end up with permanent spinal damage, and become a paraplegic.
I did a bad thing. I made you disabled. My intentions were good, but the outcome was bad.
This is a poor analogy. From the perspective of the "savior" it's the same, but not from the outsider/society standpoint. As a matter of fact, Good Samaritan laws are specifically for the...
Let me try an analogy.
This is a poor analogy. From the perspective of the "savior" it's the same, but not from the outsider/society standpoint. As a matter of fact, Good Samaritan laws are specifically for the situation you described—risking injury to save a life is a good/legally defensible thing.
Just because someone thinks they are doing the right thing doesn't protect them from acting bad. Plenty of dictators were/are like this, as many other murderous people.
You say the analogy is the same from the saviour's perspective, but you neglect to say whether it works from the victim's perspective. In both the hypothetical car accident and in Mr Game's real...
You say the analogy is the same from the saviour's perspective, but you neglect to say whether it works from the victim's perspective. In both the hypothetical car accident and in Mr Game's real conversion therapy, the victim was asking for assistance to get them away from a significant harm they feared. They got the assistance they wanted in the short term, but it ended up harming them in a different way in the long term.
@Micycle_the_Bichael has said that, if someone attempts to do good things but ends up producing bad outcomes, they are "a terrible person". There is no way we can twist Mr Game's story to imply that he was deliberately trying to hurt people with his conversion therapy. He sincerely thought he was doing good, even if his actions ended up causing harm. Is such a person "a terrible person"?
I appreciate the empathy you're bringing to the situation. Perspective taking is a hugely important skill, and I think your comments here are valuable. With that said, I don't want to strain the...
I appreciate the empathy you're bringing to the situation. Perspective taking is a hugely important skill, and I think your comments here are valuable. With that said, I don't want to strain the analogy past its breaking point, but I feel it's worth noting that in your analogy the victim is consenting to the help in the first place and the savior only appears after the initial, unrelated harm.
These are important distinctions to me, because with conversion therapy, while there are certainly some who do go on their own as consenting adults, many are going under the duress of parents, a community, or society at large. Furthermore, this pressure is partially enabled by the existence of ex-gay ministries themselves. My parents, for example, believed I could change my orientation partially because Exodus International was a longstanding pillar that reinforced anti-gay rhetoric disguised as doctrine. Exodus masked erasure as "change" and coercion as "ministry" and directly contributed to the mindsets of hatred that made growing up so oppressive for people like me. It didn't matter how squeaky clean and above-board their practices were, and it didn't matter how well-intentioned the people running their programs were, because their messaging and existence still drove communities like mine to misdiagnose my immutable sexuality as a deeply-rooted, shameful spiritual sickness in need of curing.
It's also worth noting that homosexuality and ex-gay ministries are far from agreed upon among Christians. There are huge doctrinal debates about these that have been ongoing for a long time, but just as there are Christians who feel that homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity, there are many who do not see the same friction. As such, people like Game have likely had to field criticism from not only outside their communities but from other Christians they trust as well. In fact, in their line of work, they are actually acutely primed to know the risks and potential harms of conversion therapy more than most people given the rates of recidivism and suicide that they see among their clients.
In this way, I feel like a more fair analogy would be acknowledging that the savior has had some role in the victim's predicament in the first place. Let's say the savior was on the same road, driving their car wrecklessly. Furthermore, he has continually messaged to society that wearing a seatbelt is actually more harmful than not -- advice that the victim has taken seriously and whose parents taught him from a young age. Also, the savior has also taken a controversial position against advice given by doctors and even others they know personally that says that, in the event of serious injury, a victim must be moved rather than left. It's not a choice to move any victim, but a mandate, and it's one that made in light of him being aware that doing so increases the risk of permanent spinal injuries.
As such, when the crash occurs, it's not simply some random misfire of chance -- it's partially linked to the savior's own behaviors. The savior himself has put the victim in danger that they wouldn't otherwise be in. Furthermore, they engage with the saving action of removing the victim from the car knowing that many others who have been moved in situations like this have had spinal cord injuries. In fact, they've seen it first-hand before -- some of their previous car crashes have resulted in paralyzed victims as well.
Does that make Game or people like him a monster? No. I don't believe so. I think most people, myself included, are flawed and imperfect, and I think all of us make decisions that inadvertently deal damage to others. I also think that broken adults often come from broken children or broken situations, making our societal view of "monsters" limited in a largely detrimental way. As such, intent goes a long way with me, but it doesn't go all the way. Conversion therapy centers and ex-gay ministries have done harm independent of (and certainly in concert with) their intent, and Game is someone who has been directly responsible for some of that harm. There are no doubt many parents who have been misled by his teachings and many queer youth who have suffered not only under his practices but because his practices exist in the first place.
... which is exactly the case with the man we're discussing here. He set up Hope for Wholeness for men who wanted help with their same-sex attraction. But, if even you can't find it within...
I don't want to strain the analogy past its breaking point, but I feel it's worth noting that in your analogy the victim is consenting to the help in the first place and the savior only appears after the initial, unrelated harm.
... which is exactly the case with the man we're discussing here. He set up Hope for Wholeness for men who wanted help with their same-sex attraction.
But, if even you can't find it within yourself to empathise with this man, I'm going to give up on this whole discussion. I'm obviously wasting my time.
One parting remark, though. You and others might notice that my original comment here has an Exemplary label. The anonymous person who applied that label wrote this in their note: "As someone who was formerly religious, thank you for perfectly laying out what it's like." I'm not totally wrong here.
I don't expect you to respond, as you've disengaged, and I will respect that. I will, for the purposes of everyone else reading this, push back on one point in your comment that directly applies...
I don't expect you to respond, as you've disengaged, and I will respect that.
I will, for the purposes of everyone else reading this, push back on one point in your comment that directly applies to me and my intentions. You argue that I lack empathy for Game, which is not true. I've been open here on Tildes about growing up gay and religious, so I have a strong understanding of the forces at play. This is a subject that is very close to home for me.
Empathy is understanding -- not endorsement. It is possible for me to be critical of Game while simultaneously understanding why he might have taken the actions and life path that he did. Empathy also encourages us to consider the experiences of more than just one individual, so part of my criticism for Game is also rooted in empathy for the people he hurt.
Well, the conversion therapy I was sent to was just a psychologist talking to me. No electrodes. No shocks. No torture of any kind.
Bits like "Not all conversion therapy includes torture. Sometimes it's just people talking to each other." really rubbed me the wrong way, and I think pushed into "minimization" territory.
Well, the conversion therapy I was sent to was just a psychologist talking to me. No electrodes. No shocks. No torture of any kind.
IMO, yes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ignorance is bliss but not a defense against bad outcomes. If only Mr Game did some more research into the suffering it caused, he would...
IMO, yes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ignorance is bliss but not a defense against bad outcomes. If only Mr Game did some more research into the suffering it caused, he would have had the potential to choose otherwise.
To clarify the analogy: the savior/saved have full knowledge of the risks in having your life saved (side note, they even teach this in First Aid courses and explicitly say to reduce harm but do what you have to) in the case of the car accident. In the case with the conversion therapy, savior/saved are ignorant to the evidence of suffering (though the savior more so because of their presumably greater life experience and position of authority).
The area where I live just overwhelmingly passed a ban on any sort of conversion therapy. Obviously it’s being challenged in court, but very few people came out in favor of it.
In fact, conversation therapy should be criminalized, whether it is for gay, trans, or any other group of vulnerable kids.
The area where I live just overwhelmingly passed a ban on any sort of conversion therapy. Obviously it’s being challenged in court, but very few people came out in favor of it.
This is harsh and unfair.
Imagine a boy. A nice sweet boy. A nice sweet boy who goes to church every Sunday with his family. A boy who learns from his priest and his parents and his peers that God is Good and humans are sinful. This doctrine is drummed into him from the time he’s old enough to be sent to Sunday School. It’s drummed into him all through his childhood. Like any child, he absorbs everything like a sponge, and integrates it into himself. God is Good and Humans are Bad. God is Good and Humans are Bad. God is Good and Humans are Bad.
He learns from the Bible. First, its stories are read to him, then he reads those stories himself. He learns about all the sins that humans can commit, and he learns about the eternal punishment which awaits us sinful humans. God loves us but God will punish us if we do the wrong thing.
There are such a lot of wrong things that humans can do!
Among all the wrong things open to us, one is the sin of homosexuality. This is wrong. A man lying with another man as with a woman is an abomination. These people are sinners and, like all sinners, they will face God’s eternal punishment.
But, unlike a lot of sins, these sinners are visible and they embrace their sin. They have parades. They fight for equal rights. They’re everywhere! So every adult around the boy continually says to each other and to him that these people are bad and wrong and sinful. He hears this message a lot. It sinks in. Loving other men is wrong. It’s sinful. God punishes sinners. God sends sinners to Hell. Men who love men are sinners and will go to Hell.
This message (and many others like it) are part of the boy’s upbringing. And, like the fish who doesn’t question the water it swims in, the boy doesn’t question his religion. It’s just how things are.
Then the boy reaches puberty. And he starts having feelings towards other boys. But these feelings are sinful! He knows that! He knows it as surely as he knows that the sky is blue, that water is wet, and that fire burns. These feelings are wrong. They are temptations to sin.
But he doesn’t want to sin. He wants to remain one of God’s loved people. He doesn’t want to go to Hell. He wants to be good and loved and righteous. So he fights the urge to sin. And he fights it. And he fights it. It’s hard to fight these urges, but he does it because it’s the right thing to do. Humans are tempted all the time, and they have to fight temptation so that they can be saved from eternal damnation.
He works out some strategies to fight the temptation to sin. He distracts himself. He prays. He convinces himself he really wants to be with women. He prays. He throws himself into his study or his work, and suppresses those urges. He prays. He gets by. He prays. He avoids sin, and he avoids eternal damnation.
And he grows up into a God-fearing man, continually fighting the temptation to sin.
Then he realises he’s not the only man in his situation. There are other men out there who are also trying to fight the temptation to sin, trying to avoid eternal damnation. And eternal damnation is a Very Bad Thing. Noone wants that! You don’t want it for yourself, and you don’t want it for other people. If you could help other people avoid an eternity of punishment, wouldn’t you do it? Any good and caring person would want to help another person avoid damnation. We stop people from hurting themselves in other ways: we stop children from playing with fire, we stop people from running with scissors, we stop drunk adults from driving cars. Why wouldn’t we help people from hurting themselves by bringing down eternal damnation on themselves?
So he decides to help other people by sharing the strategies he’s worked out for himself. He has strategies which are helping him not to sin, and he teaches those strategies to other people. There’s strength in numbers. They’re not just individuals trying to avoid sin, they’re a group of people supporting each other in living a good life. They pray, they support each other, they guide each other. They’re helping each other live better lives, they’re not sinning, and they’re avoiding eternal damnation.
There’s nothing sociopathic about wanting to help other people. His methods might have been wrong, and his goals might have been misinformed, but his motives were good.
I’m not defending all people who offer conversion therapy, and I’m not excusing all people who push children into conversion therapy. Far from it.
But I can at least understand how a boy who’s raised religiously can become a man who uses religion to suppress his homosexuality – and who wants to help other people do the same thing.
I suggest you try to put yourself in his shoes, rather than dismissing him as a sociopath.
EDIT: Typos.
You're absolutely right that we should consider this person's intentions, but this story leaves out something incredibly important - it's not just that
They are also doing extremely questionable things. Things which their own text tells them are morally bankrupt things to do. Modified forms of electro-therapy for example, still go on. I don't know what this particular person did at his camps, but there's enough examples of quite literal torture that I'm not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. Most of these people simply are not good Christians - at the very least they absolutely do not love thy neighbor as they are actively ostracizing queers.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it's not like he's doing this with blinders on to the rest of the world. The APA, AMA, WHO and countless other major organizations have extremely strong negative opinions of "conversion therapy" and if your goal is to set up an organization to help people, one would think you'd at the very least do the due diligence of looking into the feasibility or at least professional opinion from other organizations that do similar work.
There's simply no excuse for the "good intentions" of this individual. "I wanted to help people" is not an excuse for torture.
... you're willing to make assumptions and judge him guilty based on those assumptions.
I don't know what you do in your life, but you're American and there's enough examples of Americans committing mass shootings that I'm not about to give you the benefit of the doubt. There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour, GW! How dare you go around shooting people!
See how that works? Guilt by association is a flawed way to judge anyone.
But God's law trumps everything. God has told this man what to do and how to do it: follow God's laws and commit his soul to God's care. Why bother with flawed human opinions when he's got a direct line to the expert in everything?
I'm continually amazed at the inability of people to put themselves in other people's shoes.
This guy started a conversion camp. These camps on their own are already morally bankrupt and damaging to individuals. I'm not jumping from the conclusion of ordinary citizen to gun rampaging individual - I'm assuming that someone which I already know is willfully psychologically damaging individuals is probably doing some seriously questionable shit.
Of all people on this website I would have assumed that you wouldn't make such an argument from bad faith (no pun intended).
Oh no I see his reasoning, but claiming "god said so" doesn't excuse morally bankrupt behavior.
That's of course ignoring the millions of arguments we could get into over faith which are a pointless exercise as we don't have any real insight into his motivations other than they were "faith based".
You have no idea what happens at the Hope for Wholeness programs, but you're judging this man based on things you assume are happening there. That's wrong. Not all conversion therapy includes torture. Sometimes it's just people talking to each other. You need to produce evidence that electro-shock therapy or other torture took place at Hope for Wholeness before you start accusing Mr Game of torturing people.
And you're not giving him any sympathy for having been brainwashed into religion as a child. Don't you know how much that sort of thing can mess with a person's thinking? Have you ever met or debated with a religious person? I have. They're convinced they're right. No questions, no doubt. They know The Truth™, and there's no budging them.
Some people describe religion as child abuse. And, like any abuse, the victims sometimes go on to become abusers themselves.
But, no. You just ignore all the shades of grey and all the nuances of the situation. Someone did A Bad Thing so he's A Bad Person, full stop. Black and white. Simple. It's easier that way.
Conversion therapy is torture. Full stop. It's defined in many of the links I've already posted as being harmful to the children's mental health. Torture is defined as inflicting pain, physical or mental as a form of punishment or to force someone to do something.
I never once ignored their background. In fact, in my first post I very explicitly outlined that it was important. However you are continuing to attack me for refusing to tolerate the behavior of a deplorable individual, so at this point I'm going to disengage. Have a wonderful day!
EDIT: lmao not conversation therapy; conversion therapy
I'm going to have to agree with @Gaywallet here. I've read all your arguments, I can put myself in his shoes and see where he and you are coming from, but it doesn't change that he's a terrible person. Maybe he can eventually not be a terrible person and can do things to undo the insane amounts of damage he's caused, but as of now, nope. He's a terrible person and should feel bad about how terrible he was.
Let me try an analogy.
You're in a car accident and you're very badly injured. You're lying in your car and you can't get out, and you're screaming for help. I happen to turn up on the scene. You beg me to help you get out of the car because you're worried that the fuel in your car might catch fire and explode. I help you get out of the car, and I carry you a safe distance away.
Unfortunately, I'm not a medical expert, and I didn't realise you had a spinal injury. Me moving you out of the car exacerbated that injury. You end up with permanent spinal damage, and become a paraplegic.
I did a bad thing. I made you disabled. My intentions were good, but the outcome was bad.
Am I a terrible person?
This is a poor analogy. From the perspective of the "savior" it's the same, but not from the outsider/society standpoint. As a matter of fact, Good Samaritan laws are specifically for the situation you described—risking injury to save a life is a good/legally defensible thing.
Just because someone thinks they are doing the right thing doesn't protect them from acting bad. Plenty of dictators were/are like this, as many other murderous people.
You say the analogy is the same from the saviour's perspective, but you neglect to say whether it works from the victim's perspective. In both the hypothetical car accident and in Mr Game's real conversion therapy, the victim was asking for assistance to get them away from a significant harm they feared. They got the assistance they wanted in the short term, but it ended up harming them in a different way in the long term.
@Micycle_the_Bichael has said that, if someone attempts to do good things but ends up producing bad outcomes, they are "a terrible person". There is no way we can twist Mr Game's story to imply that he was deliberately trying to hurt people with his conversion therapy. He sincerely thought he was doing good, even if his actions ended up causing harm. Is such a person "a terrible person"?
I appreciate the empathy you're bringing to the situation. Perspective taking is a hugely important skill, and I think your comments here are valuable. With that said, I don't want to strain the analogy past its breaking point, but I feel it's worth noting that in your analogy the victim is consenting to the help in the first place and the savior only appears after the initial, unrelated harm.
These are important distinctions to me, because with conversion therapy, while there are certainly some who do go on their own as consenting adults, many are going under the duress of parents, a community, or society at large. Furthermore, this pressure is partially enabled by the existence of ex-gay ministries themselves. My parents, for example, believed I could change my orientation partially because Exodus International was a longstanding pillar that reinforced anti-gay rhetoric disguised as doctrine. Exodus masked erasure as "change" and coercion as "ministry" and directly contributed to the mindsets of hatred that made growing up so oppressive for people like me. It didn't matter how squeaky clean and above-board their practices were, and it didn't matter how well-intentioned the people running their programs were, because their messaging and existence still drove communities like mine to misdiagnose my immutable sexuality as a deeply-rooted, shameful spiritual sickness in need of curing.
It's also worth noting that homosexuality and ex-gay ministries are far from agreed upon among Christians. There are huge doctrinal debates about these that have been ongoing for a long time, but just as there are Christians who feel that homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity, there are many who do not see the same friction. As such, people like Game have likely had to field criticism from not only outside their communities but from other Christians they trust as well. In fact, in their line of work, they are actually acutely primed to know the risks and potential harms of conversion therapy more than most people given the rates of recidivism and suicide that they see among their clients.
In this way, I feel like a more fair analogy would be acknowledging that the savior has had some role in the victim's predicament in the first place. Let's say the savior was on the same road, driving their car wrecklessly. Furthermore, he has continually messaged to society that wearing a seatbelt is actually more harmful than not -- advice that the victim has taken seriously and whose parents taught him from a young age. Also, the savior has also taken a controversial position against advice given by doctors and even others they know personally that says that, in the event of serious injury, a victim must be moved rather than left. It's not a choice to move any victim, but a mandate, and it's one that made in light of him being aware that doing so increases the risk of permanent spinal injuries.
As such, when the crash occurs, it's not simply some random misfire of chance -- it's partially linked to the savior's own behaviors. The savior himself has put the victim in danger that they wouldn't otherwise be in. Furthermore, they engage with the saving action of removing the victim from the car knowing that many others who have been moved in situations like this have had spinal cord injuries. In fact, they've seen it first-hand before -- some of their previous car crashes have resulted in paralyzed victims as well.
Does that make Game or people like him a monster? No. I don't believe so. I think most people, myself included, are flawed and imperfect, and I think all of us make decisions that inadvertently deal damage to others. I also think that broken adults often come from broken children or broken situations, making our societal view of "monsters" limited in a largely detrimental way. As such, intent goes a long way with me, but it doesn't go all the way. Conversion therapy centers and ex-gay ministries have done harm independent of (and certainly in concert with) their intent, and Game is someone who has been directly responsible for some of that harm. There are no doubt many parents who have been misled by his teachings and many queer youth who have suffered not only under his practices but because his practices exist in the first place.
... which is exactly the case with the man we're discussing here. He set up Hope for Wholeness for men who wanted help with their same-sex attraction.
But, if even you can't find it within yourself to empathise with this man, I'm going to give up on this whole discussion. I'm obviously wasting my time.
One parting remark, though. You and others might notice that my original comment here has an Exemplary label. The anonymous person who applied that label wrote this in their note: "As someone who was formerly religious, thank you for perfectly laying out what it's like." I'm not totally wrong here.
And now I'm moving on. I'm done here.
I don't expect you to respond, as you've disengaged, and I will respect that.
I will, for the purposes of everyone else reading this, push back on one point in your comment that directly applies to me and my intentions. You argue that I lack empathy for Game, which is not true. I've been open here on Tildes about growing up gay and religious, so I have a strong understanding of the forces at play. This is a subject that is very close to home for me.
Empathy is understanding -- not endorsement. It is possible for me to be critical of Game while simultaneously understanding why he might have taken the actions and life path that he did. Empathy also encourages us to consider the experiences of more than just one individual, so part of my criticism for Game is also rooted in empathy for the people he hurt.
Well, the conversion therapy I was sent to was just a psychologist talking to me. No electrodes. No shocks. No torture of any kind.
IMO, yes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ignorance is bliss but not a defense against bad outcomes. If only Mr Game did some more research into the suffering it caused, he would have had the potential to choose otherwise.
To clarify the analogy: the savior/saved have full knowledge of the risks in having your life saved (side note, they even teach this in First Aid courses and explicitly say to reduce harm but do what you have to) in the case of the car accident. In the case with the conversion therapy, savior/saved are ignorant to the evidence of suffering (though the savior more so because of their presumably greater life experience and position of authority).
The area where I live just overwhelmingly passed a ban on any sort of conversion therapy. Obviously it’s being challenged in court, but very few people came out in favor of it.