How Is This "Repairing" Anybody ???

Since the "religious right wing" in this country (and the United States) likes to keep trotting out the same talking points all the time, I figure any opportunity to point out the complete intellectual dishonesty of these claims is worth the time.

Recently Nigel Hannaford and Tristan Emmanuel both trotted out the case of Chris Kempling as an example of "Christian" free speech being "suppressed". I'm going to take this a little further and make a few more harsh claims about Kempling.

As I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, Kempling's case is not so simple as even that of Stephen Boissoin. Kempling did not "merely" write a letter defending "traditional marriage", but rather he wrote a series of letters deeply critical of what he supposed to be the "gay lifestyle":

Kempling had been employed as a teacher and counsellor at a high school in Quesnel, British Columbia since 1990. In 1997 he began to write a series of letters to the editor of a local newspaper, the Quesnel Cariboo Observer, expressing concern over the presentation of homosexuality in school curricula. Among other things, Kempling's letters objected to the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF), the union that represents teachers in British Columbia, distributing teaching-aid literature which had been produced by the Gay and Lesbian Educators of BC, and which in his view was erroneous. He also cited various studies that he interprets as showing harm caused by what he described as the "homosexual lifestyle". Kempling, an advocate of reparative therapy, wrote:

"Sexual orientations can be changed and the success rate for those who seek help is high. My hope is students who are confused over their sexual orientation will come to see me." [1]

Now, clearly, Kempling's actions go much, much further than simply "writing a letter". (If anyone has the text of Kempling's letters at hand, let me know, I'd be interested in reading them)

Kempling is an advocate of something often referred to as Reparative Therapy, a questionable, and arguably damaging "therapy" intended to make someone be "not gay".

To give some idea just how damaging "reparative therapy" can be, I refer readers to this case in Manitoba:

A minister and former Christian college instructor has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a young man who sought counselling after he feared he was homosexual.
...
In earlier testimony, the alleged victim, now 29, told court he started meeting Lewis for counselling sessions in early 2000 after his parents caught him viewing gay pornography on the family computer.

Lewis — a family friend and minister — confided he had his own sexual identity issues and the two embarked on weekly counselling sessions designed to “assist me to be straight and to live a straight life,” the man said.

The man said Lewis started a program of “touch therapy,” which included the two kissing and fondling each other and engaging in sexual roleplaying.

This is far, far from being the first serious problem with so-called conversion therapies. From many perspectives, "reparative therapy" runs at odds with a lot of good, solid science. Psychologists have long ago realized that sexual identity as a rule is not responsive to therapy techniques intended to "change" them. You might be able to persuade someone to adopt a different political viewpoint, but in general, it's unlikely that you will change their sexual or gender identity meaningfully through any known therapy technique.

This most recent incident in Manitoba is an example of someone in a position of trust exploiting the patient.

While I do not claim that Kempling would engage in the same tactics, we have to view with skepticism and caution the "therapy" that he is advocating for. The simple fact is that there is little, or no, peer reviewed literature that substantiates the claims that are wrapped around the therapy that Kempling advocates, and plenty of evidence of abuse being wrapped in the cloak of "therapy" instead.