Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Bryce Faulkner
July 21st, 2009
Stories are going around the web about Bryce Faulkner, a 23-year-old pre-med student who has been allegedly forced into an ex-gay program by his parents. According to an extremely annoying web site with cheezy exploding sound effects (PLEASE PEOPLE! Stop doing that! Some of us are at work.), Faulkner was “economically bullied” into entering an ex-gay facility after he revealed his sexual orientation to his parents.
Faulkner’s parents are reportedly threatening to sue over the web site. While I think having noisy sound affects which can’t be disabled should be grounds for a lawsuit, I don’t think that’s what they’re upset over. I’m not sure what other grounds they have for suing, unless they can prove his allegations are false.
There are many angles to discuss in this case. Someone brought this to me a few weeks ago, and my first reaction was the sheer stupidity of forcing anyone into any sort of therapy whatsoever. An unwilling patient makes for an absolute guarantee for failure. Furthermore, the leadership of Exodus International has claimed to be against treating anyone against their will, but they refuse to put that statement into an official policy. Again, clarity in exactly where they stand would be helpful, but we’ve learned long ago that if there’s anything Exodus is known for, it’s obfuscation over clarity.
According to Faulkner’s boyfriend, Faulkner is being held incommunicado against his will. That’s a difficult statement to confirm, but knowing what we know about many ex-gay programs, it’s not difficult to believe it regardless of whether it’s factual or not. Programs like Love In Action, the centerpiece live-in program of the Exodus network, actively enforces isolation from outside influences. Others demand that participants break contacts with gay friends and loved ones. And others still make no such demands at all. Without knowing where Faulkner is, it’s hard to know what conditions he’s under.
But there’s something else here that bears discussion, and that’s this: Faulkner is 23 years old. He’s an adult, which is why I wanted to wait before commenting. While I’m sure he’s dependent on his parents for financial support in order to complete his studies, he does have the option of taking some time off to investigate what it would take to break his financial links to his parents and going his own way. The downside, of course, is that it is much easier said than done, and it may not even be practically possible. But when parents are behaving in an equally impractical matter — by believing that therapy can successfully be imposed upon him against his will — then someone needs to step in and engage in some rational thinking. Since Faulkner is now an adult — and has been for five years, technically — he needs to be the one to do this. No one is entitled to a career as a doctor, but everyone is entitled to live on their own terms.
The problem, of course, is that in Faulkner’s case, living as the gay man that he is comes at an exceptionally high price, and I’m not even talking about the price of school expenses or possibly giving up his dream in the medical profession, steep as that is. The price that he’s being made to pay is the cost of his relationships with his friends and boyfriends, his relationship with his parents, and his own autonomy as an adult.
Many of these things he no longer has control over, but one thing he does: He is an adult. His autonomy is his own, as long as he’s willing and capable of paying the price to exercise it. The tragedy is that many aren’t capable of doing so. Risking a disruption in your relationship with your family is overwhelming for many people. Sometimes being an adult in age just isn’t enough to make the hardest decision of all as an adult. This, I know from personal experience, as do many others. There will likely come a time when Bryce comes to that breaking point — it often comes to a breaking point in these things — if his parents don’t relent first. Whichever the case may be, let’s hope that time comes sooner rather than later. Bryce has a long life ahead of him. He deserves every moment of it spent in pursuing his own dreams and aspirations, not in chasing down other people’s demons.
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