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Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement
University of California Press
July 2006
On Sale: June 27, 2006
293 pages ISBN: 0520245822 EAN: 9780520245822 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction Religion | Non-Fiction Political
Every year, hundreds of gay men and lesbians join ex-gay
ministries in an attempt to convert to non-homosexual
Christian lives. In this fascinating study of the
transnational ex-gay movement, Tanya Erzen focuses on the
everyday lives of men and women at New Hope Ministry, a
residential ex-gay program, over the course of several
years. Straight to Jesus traces the stories of people
who have renounced long-term relationships and moved from
other countries out of a conviction that the conservative
Christian beliefs of their upbringing and their own same-sex
desires are irreconcilable. Rather than definitively
changing from homosexual to heterosexual, the participants
experience a conversion that is both sexual and religious as
born-again evangelical Christians. At New Hope, they
maintain a personal relationship with Jesus and build new
forms of kinship and belonging. By becoming what they call
"new creations," these men and women testify to religious
transformation rather than changes in sexual desire or
behavior. Straight to Jesus exposes how the Christian
Right attempts to repudiate gay identity and political
rights by using the ex-gay movement as evidence that "change
is possible." Instead, Erzen reveals, the realities of the
lives she examines actually undermine this anti-gay strategy.
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