10 Ridiculous People Who've Tried to Cure Homosexuality

10 Mike Haley

Mike Haley was a gay man for 12 years, but managed to crawl his way out of the lifestyle with the help of God and Jeff Konrad, whom he met in 1985 at a gay gym. Mike, according to this book's foreword, followed a man out to the parking lot, only for him to shut Mike down by saying he wasn't a homosexual anymore. He claimed he was cured by this Jeff Konrad -- who, speak of the devil, walked up to them at that very moment!

Think of the odds! Two formerly gay men and one soon-to-be-formerly gay man running into each other in the parking lot of a gay gym, and all they do is discuss the glory of God's majesty. Why, if honesty wasn't such a valued principle among Christian anti-gay activists, I'd almost say the story was made up and they actually spent the afternoon just soaking in the interior of Jeff's pet grooming van.

In 2004, Mike published 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality, which debunks the gay lifestyle with the smugness of a debate nerd and the shriveled myopic perspective of the 4chan account that nerd uses to agree with himself. For 200 pages, Mike sets himself up with easy questions and then annihilates himself in the debate. For instance, he might "ask" something like, Um, I heard God destroyed Sodom for inhospitality, not homosexuality? Then he will dunk that dipshit. You see, in Hebrew (um, heard of it?), the word yada has two meanings, both of which, based on your foolish question, are too complicated for your puny brain. Mike seems like the kind of guy who tells himself he's not gay because the Aramaic word for penis can also mean "totally allowed toothbrush."

Mike is clearly most comfortable when he's making himself look like a moron, but not all of the questions are contentious. Sometimes he'll just ask himself things like "What's the deal with lesbians?" and make some guesses. The book really demonstrates the problem with a collection of entirely hypothetical questions. There's no follow-up discussion to anything. You never know if he's right. What I mean is, he never asks himself, "Hey, I tried your answer to the last question and God didn't take my gay away. Why is that, Mike? Are you and God, and forgive me for putting this so bluntly, dumb as shit?"

101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality is a classic example of bad-faith arguments made by a disingenuous dickhead asking things without genuinely seeking answers. Which makes it hilarious that the only other thing I found written by Mike was a letter to the show Will And Grace complaining how they didn't portray "former gays" as "honest men and women seeking help." Mike has the same external sense of self as an anime avatar listing 50 relationship deal-breakers on their Pornhub profile.

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9 Jeff Konrad

You might remember Jeff Konrad from earlier, when he was summoned by two "former" gays speaking his name in a gay parking lot. In 1987, he published a book based on letters he wrote to his friend Mike -- presumably the Mike from the previous entry, who sucks. It is an exhausting look inside a below-average but tormented mind as it tries to intellectualize away same-sex attraction. He called it You Don't Have To Be Gay: Hope And Freedom For Males Struggling With Homosexuality Or For Those Who Know of Someone Who Is, making it the perfect joke gift for any of your more problematic bros.

Jeff believes you can overcome your sinful urges once you truly understand the hugless childhood that led to them, but he's as terrible at writing as he was at homosexuality. It's obviously written for a very specific audience, and you have to take that into consideration when judging it. That said, 300 pages of dull correspondence between two guys talking each other down from anal truck stop encounters isn't good by any standard of anything. Without exaggeration, You Don't Have To Be Gay is so bad at its job that if you read it for too long, you'll be magically transported into its very pages and tenderly fucked on the back of a Luckdragon.

Related: 6 Absurdly Pathetic Last-Ditch Protests Against Gay Marriage

8 Joseph Nicolosi

Joseph Nicolosi was one of the most well-known names in gay conversion, despite being a walking charades clue for "Elton John." Of course there's nothing wrong with Joseph living operatically and sometimes going to town on a pair of balls, but he thought there was. This was a man trying to cure homosexuality, and he spent ten hours a day pursing his lips at dick bulges and turning to camera with a wink. If he ingested a Miller High Life, his body naturally broke it down into Grenache Rose and semen. Getting advice from Joseph Nicolosi on how to be heterosexual was like asking Michael Jackson how to connect with your new wife's kids.

I've talked about Joseph before, ironically in an article about deranged people writing about the same thing over and over, and I reviewed his masterpiece, A Parent's Guide To Preventing Homosexuality, along with his hilarious collection of self-owns, Healing Homosexuality: Case Stories Of Reparative Therapy. It contains stories of Joseph's "most" "successful" "cures," and even with his own spin on things, it's clear he never did anything more than get a few gay guys to gag their way through sexless dates with the world's unluckiest ladies.

If you could still maintain a boner on the same day you talked to a female florist, Joseph would declare you 98 percent gay-free. Seriously, if a patient walked into Joseph's gay therapy office with dicks in each hand, Joseph would consider it a victory for heterosexuality if he handed one over because his therapist shrieked, "Yum!" It's easy to say you know how to turn someone straight when your clinical standard for that is "Patient (Face: 8, Body: 7) is not currently inside me. The two-hour penis-gazing sessions are having positive results."

I don't think Joseph really wanted to cure anyone. He probably became a gay conversion therapist because he didn't know how to meet dudes and had a self-loathing fetish. Ha ha, in your face, you dead bigot. I guess my point is, nobody really thinks this crazy gay conversion shit works, but Nicolosi accidentally proved it didn't.

Related: 5 Realities As A Gay Person Forced To Stay In The Closet

7 Bob Davies

Bob Davies discovered he was gay at the age of 14, when he self-diagnosed himself with a sex-ed book. This was bad news for Bob, who "didn't feel like one of the guys," and was unlucky enough to "worship a God that hates homos." He prayed for a cure, but the best God could do was send him a wife with forgiving standards. Bob doesn't talk about her much, but she's very religious and didn't mind marrying a tortured homosexual, so I think it's safe to assume she can get it. I was legitimately curious about their sex life, so I generated this word cloud about their lovemaking using the scarce information provided:

I can't say their relationship was a farce, but most healthy marriages don't involve the husband going off to write three different books about being gay with three different women. Bob published Coming Out Of Homosexuality with Lori Rentzel, Someone I Love Is Gay with Anita Worthen, and Portraits Of Freedom: 14 People Who Came Out Of Homosexuality with Lela Gilbert. And these women aren't former lesbians offering their own personal insights on these issues; they're just ladies who knew how to type, because Bob knows enough about his urges to never let himself be in a room without women. It's also within the realm of possibility his backwater, bigoted book publisher gave disability tax credits for hiring a female co-writer.

The point is, this bitch and the women he worked with wrote garbage books for shitty people, and their God should be ashamed of Himself for allowing it. Bob knows he's gay, but the dumbass has built a life where he's surrounded with women who think they were sent by the Lord to cure his homosex- hold on a second. What if Bob isn't a stupid gay man, but a completely genius straight one? Oh, Bob. Oh, you cunning slut.

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6 Mason A. Clark

Mason A. Clark was a retired engineer with a curious mind. In the late '70s, one thing his mind became curious about was why there were suddenly so many gays around. Was it food additives? Birth control pills? Advances in butt taste? The Love Boat? Most of his intellectual peers would have simply shouted their theories to the other people getting bagels before the free timeshare presentation, but Mason decided to really get to the bottom of it. He studied psychology, genealogy, animal behavior, love boat ... wherever the gay research led him. In 1978, he condensed all human knowledge and history into a 120-page book called Nation Of Gay Babies.

Nation Of Gay Babies is a barely organized collection of thoughts and charts copied from library books that in no way uncovers any gay origins or cures. Mason opens the book by asserting that he's smarter than all physicians and assuring you, the reader, that you'll soon be better informed than "the experts." Then it's mostly seventh-grade biology lessons illustrated with aggressively random science clip art.

In the middle of explaining what chromosomes are, he'll throw in an unlabeled carbon chain or a brain gland diagram. He illustrated his academic book the same way a three-year-old girl might decorate a cake, only gayer than I'm making it sound. It's like it was designed to look like a real science book in the background of a University of Phoenix commercial, and not to actually educate anyone. It's so goddamn stupid. If this man wrote a book on how to not die from eating denture cream solvent, the entire thing would be "Step 1: Appl aufd s f."

To give you an example of Mason's writing style, there's an entire chapter on tests you can give yourself to see if you're a homosexual, and it is 13 pages of rambling on what those might be and zero tests you can give yourself to see if you're a homosexual. This is disappointing both to any possible surprise gays reading and to comedy writers looking for hilarious excerpts. This book is an unquotable trash dump of gibberish, and Mason himself would probably agree. In his "About the Author" section, he admits, " inspired months of library research and the angry writing of this book. I have neither the time, the patience, nor the ability to edit it into a literary masterpiece." That's more of a fuck you than an apology, but also more self-awareness than you'd expect from a former electrician writing Baby's First Bigoted Manifesto.

Mason seemed to know he wasn't going to win any awards for his unproven theories on "how come drag queens," but he figured he'd throw all this shit into a pile and let future scholars make sense of it. When they never did, he went back himself 40 years later and republished Nation Of Gay Babies as Homosexuality: Causes And Cures. It was still a rambling list of unrelated guesses, only now it included the fact-checking powers of an 85-year-old with an internet connection and a politically charged hunch. Unlike most gay conversion authors, Mason seems to have no personal experience as a homosexual, probably because his first gay date would have been several decades of non-peer-reviewed penis research, followed by more of a fuck you than an apology.

Related: 5 Dangers Of Coming Out To Your Family (You Never See On TV)

5 Stephen J. Sansweet

Stephen J. Sansweet made a long career out of collecting and writing about Star Wars toys, but two years before the first movie was released, he published The Punishment Cure. It was a grim book studying how aversion therapy had been used to eliminate smoking, obesity, and of course, homosexuality. Like most books about electrocuting fat people until they fear cookies, it was dark. His chapter on punishing the homosexuality out of you was called "The Gayest Slide Show On Earth," and if you're anything like me, you just pulled out a box of dog costumes and sang, "I smell a chaaaaaaaallenge!"

For 20 pages, Stephen describes all the horrific ways gay men tried to torture themselves straight. Some received electric shocks if they looked at pictures of naked men for too long. Others poisoned themselves in front of a TV so it would feel like gay porn was making them puke. If a baby crawled out of my toilet to show me a smile full of spiders and then died, this book would still be the darkest thing in my home.

And to make matters worse, all of these nightmares were pointless. Hundreds of gay people subjected themselves to unethical, soul-shattering torture, and according to Stephen's data, almost none of them turned straight. Or to put a more positive spin on things, "T-t-t-t-thanks for the ARRGGH!!! f-free penis pictures, science idiots! Ha ha AHHAAAG-G-GHHG-GG-GBLBGGG!!!"

Related: 5 Terrible Excuses For Homophobia (That People Keep Using)

4 Julie Harren Hamilton

Julie Harren Hamilton, PhD is a rare female gay converter who proves ladies can do anything, including cramming hate and failure together and calling it a life's work. She edited the Handbook Of Therapy For UNWANTED Homosexual Attractions, which collected advice from decades of unsuccessful therapists trying hundreds of fruitless, mean-spirited things.

It's exhaustive. Julie never says in one sentence what she can say in 8,500 words of academic rambling with 17 cited contributors. This lady is still explaining the basic concept of gay well into page 60, and if this slow-paced monstrosity ever gets made into a Netflix show, it will be episode 11 before anyone sucks a single dick.

The handbook is organized mainly by the bizarre techniques used to treat homosexuality, so it's not great for quick access to practical solutions. For example, if you're faced with a hot tub full of men, you don't search the index for "wet temptation emergency." You instead decide on which long and unproven therapeutic course you'd like to enter to gradually reduce the symptoms of your arousal. Religious Sanctification Coaching? Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing? Electric Sho- oh no, hurry! Their swimming trunks are coming off!

Related: Here's What Life Is Like When You're Gay But Marry Hetero

3 Carman

Carman is a Christian singer, which means he does square impersonations of popular songs several years after they're popular. But in 1997, he took a break from turning old top 40 trends into diarrhea to tell an auditorium of bored teens how gayness goes against God's preordained plan for the Natural Order. The "high-energy experience" was released on a VHS cassette called Time 2 Club: Homosexuality: Confused Affections, and it won't surprise you to learn it's a fucking disaster. It's the kind of production that would make even a Christian film critic say, "My ... my URGES have returned! How can this be!? Carman defeated you! One and a half stars!"

The highlight of the show comes 15 minutes in, when Carman invites former homosexual Wayne Andre onto the stage. Wayne is amazing. He has the rugged personality of a cartoon woman discovering a mouse, and he looks at Carman like a starving man opening a pack of edible panties. Carman seems to be feeling it too, since the first question he asks Wayne about homosexuality is "how somebody gets into it." They never bang, but it's definitely more erotically charged than you'd expect from an anti-gay video for children.

Nine minutes into their talk, Wayne lays out exactly how straight he has become. He tells Carman, "Right now, I can look at a man, I guess totally nude if necessary, and it does not affect me." Maybe that's true, but Carman, the coward, doesn't take the dare and remains fully clothed. Take it out of your $1,800 pants, Carman. What are you afraid of? He said he won't even do anything to it!

Related: 5 Realities Of Being Gay In A Country Where It's Illegal

2 Charles W. Socarides

Charles W. Socarides was a psychoanalyst who wrote his first book about curing homosexuality in 1968, right about the time his gay son turned 14. When his son remained gay, Charles tried again. And again, and again. Socarides kept trying right up until the moment he died.

He wrote Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far, Homosexuality: Psychoanalytic Therapy, The Homosexualities: Reality, Fantasy, And The Arts, The Homosexualities And The Therapeutic Process, Sexual Politics And Scientific Logic: The Issue Of Homosexuality, The Overt Homosexual, and so many more. Charles W. Socarides was like a comic book villain who dedicated his life to creating a machine to defeat Superman until finally Superman smashed it to pieces while having sex with a man, completely unaware it ever existed.

They say that if you work hard enough, you will achieve your dream, but that's not always true. Corey Feldman has dedicated his life to music for 40 years, and Charles W. Socarides mastered every psychological discipline, became the leading expert in his field of study, published dozens of books, and all he ever did was make seven or eight sad gay people a tiny bit sadder.

Related: 6 Outdated Myths Everyone Still Believes About Homosexuality

1 Anthony O. Akerele

To their credit, a lot of these gay converters are coming from a good place. They are therapists or religious leaders or academics who simply have antiquated views on sexuality and want to give people the option to be straight. Anthony O. Akerele is not any of those things. He is a geologist and a full-on crazy person. In 2011, he wrote Healing And Deliverance PRAYERS For Gays And Lesbians @ The Midnight Gate, and it is 178 pages of him screaming directly at Jesus. He'll make demands like "Blood of Jesus punish me for my sinful desire!" or "Scatter the evil rituals that enforce gay/lesbian lifestyle!" He calls these things PRAYERS, but that's like calling a murdered waitress a "restaurant review."

Anthony has some unique theories. He speculates that a barren womb might invite demons into you, who could then force you to adopt homosexuality. He talks about blood and flesh a lot, and unrelated to the reader's homosexuality, he seems weirdly concerned they might be summoning the dead. The cover of his book shouts, "HOMOSEXUALS: PEOPLE PAYING FOR WHAT THEY DID NOT BUY!" and nowhere inside does it explain what the fuck that might mean.

Without a doubt, Anthony O. Akerele holds a mirror up to his confused genitals and curses them to sleep every night, and no one will ever be fully safe so long as he lives. But in a way, he's a breath of fresh air. He's the only one of these gay conversion people who seem to know this shit is insane.

After reading 27 books on curing homosexuality and hearing the testimony of dozens of "cured" homosexuals, I feel confident in saying you should relax and enjoy your gayness. There's no cure, and everyone who cares that you're gay will be dead by the end of this season of NCIS. Even if any of their therapy, witchcraft, or electro torture reliably worked, no pussy is worth reading a Joseph Nicolosi book. Ha ha, in your face again, you dead asshole.

Seanbaby invented being funny on the internet. Follow him on Twitter, or play his critically acclaimed mobile game Calculords.

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