Anaheim Evangelist Called ‘Dangerous’ to Gays

A gay couple who say they participated in a therapy program designed to “cure” homosexuality denounced the Rev. Louis Sheldon on Thursday as “a dangerous man” whose support of such techniques could heighten psychological problems among gays.

The men spoke out against the Anaheim-based evangelist on the eve of his daylong conference in Washington entitled “The National Summit on Homosexuality: Healing and Public Policy Implications.”

The conference at the Sheraton-Washington Hotel is, according to Sheldon, to plan a national strategy for countering the belief that homosexuality is normal and should be protected under civil rights. Sheldon and his associates at the Traditional Values Coalition dispute the view that homosexuality is genetically determined and actively promote use of “reparative therapy” to make gays adopt a heterosexual life style.

Michael Bussee, 36, of Huntington Beach and his 37-year-old live-in partner, who asked to be identified only as Gary, said they both subscribed to Sheldon’s belief in reparative therapy during the 1970s and eventually began counseling gays against homosexuality at the Melodyland Christian Center’s Hotline Help Center. Later, they founded Exodus, an international coalition of Christian ministries “to help people come out of homosexuality.”

“We were ex-homosexuals at that time, or at least we thought we were,” Bussee said at a press conference in the law office of John Duran, an Orange County gay rights activist. “It sort of surprised us when we fell in love.

“We really firmly believed we had stopped being gay. We were both married; we both had children. We weren’t acting on our homosexual desires any longer, even though the desire was still there. For all intents and purposes, I was leading a heterosexual life style.”

Both men said they wrote off homosexual urges as “temptation.” But Gary said that when he continued to find it difficult to suppress the urges, psychiatrists at a Melodyland clinic prescribed heavy doses of Thorazine, an anti-psychotic medication, and Dalmane, a tranquilizer, in an effort to “calm the anxiety.” The clinic no longer exists, and representatives of the Hotline Help Center, which now operates as an entity apart from Melodyland, could not be reached for comment.

Even after two months of the prescribed drug use, Gary said he could no longer deny his homosexuality, and Bussee said he became convinced that homosexuality is not “a changeable sort of thing.”

Dr. Richard Ammond, a clinical psychologist who joined Bussee and Gary at the press conference, said that while sexual behavior can be changed, sexual orientation cannot. He added that “people like Sheldon who advocate reparative therapy are inflicting an enormous amount of damage on people.”

“You can change sexual behavior fairly easily--a lot of gay men do occasionally have sex with women,” Ammond said. “That does not make them heterosexual. The Sheldons of this world totally ignore innate psychosexual development in human beings.”

Sheldon, reached at O’Hare Airport in Chicago where he was awaiting a flight to Washington, said he agreed that homosexual orientation--which he said is caused by “a number of factors” in the home and surrounding environment in childhood--”is possibly always there,” but added that he considers homosexuality to be a deviant disorder that should be suppressed, much like alcoholism.

“The recovering homosexual is no different from the recovering alcoholic,” Sheldon said. “The homosexual orientation may always be with you, but you can come back to the views of heterosexuality that you gave up.” He also described Bussee and Gary as two individuals who have “just chosen not to believe in the recovery process.”

“There are clearly those who were damaged and traumatized so seriously as children that when they do attempt to come out (of homosexuality), they don’t make it,” Sheldon said. “I would be the first to admit that. I know we’re not talking about 100% recovery.”