Cure me, I'm gay!

I've just read a great piece of news from a fellow blogger that the American Psychological Association announced in Toronto yesterday that practitioners will no longer tell their clients that they can change their sexual orientation from gay to straight! A long time coming, but it's progress.

It reminded me of years gone by, about 15 to be exact, when I started to realize that I was gay. Now bear in mind the only gay person I knew was Julian Clary from Channel 4 fame (picture above) and I knew I was definitely not like him.

I had dial up internet and started to look for a cure, and you can just imagine how long it took to find that cure using dial up. While waiting on the pages loading up I was able to iron a t-shirt, make tea, go for a pee and sometimes even a poo! Some of the web pages I came across offered deprogramming, 'Yipee' I thought. I could be deprogrammed no need for a cure! I sent of emails, rang The States and even thought I could save up enough money to make the trip to be deprogrammed. At one point I even thought could I become a deprogrammer as these services were not being offered in Ireland at the time or at least Irish deprogrammers weren't offering their services on the net.

Needless to say, I was never deprogrammed. Coming out was a long and slow process but it taught me many life lessons which I cherish. I feel that many gays have similar stories and this is just a piece of antedotal evidence that shows sexual and family diversity should be taught by our schools, youth clubs, and peer development programmes.

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