Beware of the New Ex-Gay

The ex-gay movement seemingly died in the 2010s. Exodus International (the umbrella organization of sexual orientation change effort "SOCE" ministries) closed in 2013, admitting that "99.9% of [participants] have not experienced a change in their orientation."

By the end of the 2010s, it seemed that evangelical Christians had widely accepted that people don't choose who they're attracted to, SOCEs were harmfully ineffective, and a different solution was needed.

But over the past few years, the ex-gay movement appears to be making a comeback. And if we aren't diligent to expose this new ex-gay activity early, the movement may regrow and lead to another generation of LGBT+ people losing their faith and/or committing suicide.

The first horseman of the new ex-gay is reintegrative therapy. Practitioners of this new "therapy" claim that it's meaningfully different from the SOCEs of the 90s and 00s. In reality, it's the same haunted house with a fresh coat of paint.

Instead of promising complete elimination of SSAs and development of robust OSAs, reintegrative therapy focuses on helping clients work through their barriers to entering into an opposite-sex marriage.

But similar to OG ex-gay therapy, practitioners of reintegrative therapy are still preying on their clients desire to "not be gay" and pass as straight, leading to OG results: continued hiding and shame, lack of authenticity, loneliness, depression, and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Just like OG ex-gay therapy, if the client isn't ultimately successful at a lifelong healthy mixed-orientation marriage, the client is blamed instead of the fraudulent therapy.

The second horseman of the new ex-gay movement is the concupiscence debate. The Greek word epithumia is used in the New Testament in various ways, but one subset (translated as concupiscence) describes actively choosing to lust after something in response to temptation.

However, a fringe Calvinist understanding of concupiscence ignores biblical context and argues that a person sins even when they successfully resist temptation because the temptation itself is a sin (if the person is tempted internally). Apologists then narrowly apply their fringe understanding to SSAs.

They argue merely experiencing SSAs is a sin in itself, even if the person resists every temptation. The apologists further argue (because they believe merely being tempted is a sin), that SSA Christians can only be faithful if they daily pray for orientation change, give reintegrative therapy a try, and refrain from calling themselves gay.

These Calvinist concupiscence advocates go on to doubt the salvation of any SSA Christians who identify as "gay".

Then last but not least, the third horseman of the new ex-gay is trans whataboutism. At the heart of more destructive manifestations of the ex-gay movement over the decades is a fear-based hope to eliminate queerness. They yearn for a Christian society where queerness doesn't have to be tolerated in Christian families or churches.

But now a majority of conservative evangelicals admit that people don't choose who they're attracted to and SOCEs have been harmfully ineffective. Raising these two points would seemingly demolish any credibility of the ex-gay movement.

So new ex-gay advocates merely side-step inconvenient facts and move the goalposts with, "Well, what about trans? What about the fact that 80% of gender incongruence resolves itself by adulthood? What about the trend of rapid onset gender dysphoria? What about trans athletes? What about bathroom predators? What about governments taking kids from parents if they won't consent to hormones and surgeries? What about What about What about???"

If the new ex-gay movement is forced to provide evidence for their claims and the decades-long bad fruit of their practices are highlighted, they run to trans whataboutism to shift conversation from nuance to fear-mongering. They hope that reasonable dialogue can be replaced by "trans bad trans bad trans bad".

The three horsemen of the new ex-gay—reintegrative therapy, concupiscence debate, and trans whataboutism—aren't particularly clever, but they can be extremely effective if we let them grow unnoticed.

Where have you seen these three horsemen of the new ex-gay in your church? Your denomination?