To those struggling with same-sex attraction, I would encourage developing their prayer life; their relationship with God. They need to spend much time in prayer, going to daily Mass, and making a weekly Confession.
They also need to have a very good confessor and/or spiritual director.
Instead of acting out on those desires, whether that involves sexual activity with another person or by viewing pornography, they need to excavate their feelings and memories, in order to discover why they have these homosexual desires. This is a very difficult and painful process, but it must be accomplished. Here, they must completely strip themselves of their false pride and stand completely unashamed before the Lord. Because, without exception, every gay man and woman that I ever knew, reluctantly at times, could trace their homosexuality back to some childhood experience.”
— Former amateur gay porn star Joseph Sciambra discussing how he overcame the “terrifying homosexual lifestyle” in an interview with Life Site News
the other Greg
Maybe it’s all those pictures in churches of that cute Jewish hippie dude with the beard. A lot of those pictures are kind of hot.
Mike
So live a lie for the rest of your life. What difference would it make if you could trace it back to your childhood. You are what you are. There is no need to change.
Bear Aspirin
“This is a very difficult and painful process, but it must be accomplished. Here, they must completely strip themselves of their false pride and stand completely unashamed before the Lord.”
Never heard of him…then I realized I don’t really watch S&M/B&D porn.
richybruce
Those pancakes I had for breakfast were so good and now I just threw them up. What an asshole.
Chris-MI
I remember this guy–no one is sure what porn he actually did but it was supposedly S&M/B&D fetish.
Anyhow everyone–even the straight people–has had childhood experiences. These guys always find something, be it a traumatic experience that somehow codes hetero, or any experience that somehow codes homo. But the objective lens of research tells us that there’s no correlations between orientation and the severity, number, or type of childhood trauma–except for the fact that gay children are often victimized and made vulnerable by homophobia. I don’t think that’s what he meant by childhood trauma though.
mighty
I wish the religious right would quit trying to screw with our heads. We have enough issues without them adding to them.
Maybe we should start a group that gets people out of the horrors of the fundamentalist nutjobs of the Christian faith.
grero
Grero’s Guide to being an Insufferable Busybody:
1. Do activity X (drinking, sex, etc) to the extreme.
2. Crash and burn.
3. Yell about how terrible X is, conflating and projecting small/moderate amounts of X to your insane amount of X.
Dxley
He wants the D.
MK Ultra
The best argument against “ex-gay”? – the supposed ex-gays themselves!
2eo
Develop a relationship with god, because it always turns out so well doesn’t it. Find me a sane person who would say they are in a relationship with god and I’ll show you a suicide bomber.
DarkZephyr
He isn’t advocating being an “ex-gay”, he is advocating chastity and “not acting on it”, but I still consider him a douche no better than the ex-gay douches. Ugh.
TheNewEnergyDude
Oh no. Poor thing. Who brainwashed him. I feel sorry for him really.
nature boy
I went to the actual article…. and what a twisted site and commenters, I must say. Basically the crux of the story to me is that at one point he started hearing voices. So he is dealing with onset of mental illness and schizophrenia in his 20’s… which is when it usually happens. Unfortunately he chooses to blame this on being gay and Satan, who was apparently on the other side of a glory hole he frequented. I kid you not.
Hopefully he will realize being gay can also be a beautiful part of a whole healthy lifestyle and not keep making himself crazy with denial. And get real mental health support in addition to the support he gets from church.
I tried to leave a comment at the story’s site and not sure if they will post it or not. Basically what I tried to say what I say to any straight person who is freaked out by stuff they’ve seen in the gay community… that yes there is some extreme behavior you may not personally agree with but it’s not just the gays… it’s a HUMAN issue… for every gay doing extreme sex acts you can just go online and see 100 straight people doing the exact same things…. for every twisted behavior in the gay community it’s equally represented in the straight community x100… it’s a human issue not a gay/straight issue. At least the world of internet porn has made this clear. I AM shocked at some of the stuff I see heterosexual people doing online!
For those of you who are so quick to disparage any religion or Christianity, you are selling yourself short. People around the world and throughout time have had questions and feel certain spiritual issues beyond their day to day life… any world religion is an attempt at its core to answer these very basic human needs. There are many paths to answer them, of which Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and others can all be valid choices when approached with intelligence and in the company of other smart people. Don’t automatically deny the validity of all religion. They’re like anything… in the hand of man and woman they can be powerfully good ….as well as creating suffering when used with ignorance.
The subjects own website is here http://www.josephsciambra.com/
Kenover
Never even heard of him. I’d say you’re using the term “porn star” rather loosely.
hf2hvit
Why don’t self-loathing freaks like that just kill themselves???
Cam
I love it when people who have crashed and burned, becoming drug addicted prostitutes, bottom of the barrel porn extras etc… who blame homosexuality for the bucket of shit that their life became.
No snookums, you did that all on your own.
Stache1
@Mike: Why not. If your going to believe a lie ie the bible why not just make up whatever BS you want.
Stache1
@nature boy: That was a very rational response but I seriously doubt there going to allow it to be posted and even if they do after listening to the the average commenter over there I doubt your going to get though to any of them. They all seem to be deep in the same craziness. It’s akin to having a philosophy debate at a mental asylum. Same outcome that is.
Errol Semple
He is too old to be a gay porn star. Who asked him for his advice??
GayAtheistLH
I guess he got tired of getting f*cked up the ass.
Eiswirth
So his Catholic guilt has gotten the best of him. I’ve never heard of or seen this guy, and I’ve been into gay porn for 40 years, so describing him as a “gay porn star” is quite an overstatement. There is no credible scientific or psychiatric study that would support this falsehood. He’s drunk the Marcus Bachmann Koolaid and thinks he can pray away the gay. Ain’t gonna happen: never has, never will. He’s going to be utterly miserable for the rest of his life for denying his true nature. Sad…
litper
So can I watch his porn while reading this? Something tells me he must be hungriest bottom in the world!
KaranRoche
my bf’s cousin just got an almost new red Volkswagen Eos Convertible just by part time work online… site link,,, gkurl.us/ln7x8
Chris-MI
@litper: There is some speculation that he may be Dallas Taylor. If you can track it down feel free to do the analysis. Apologies to Mr. Taylor though if it ain’t him.
the other Greg
@nature boy: “Satan, who was apparently on the other side of a glory hole he frequented. I kid you not.”
I clicked on the linked you provided. Sciambra’s book is titled “Swallowed By Satan” – damn, I always just assumed that Satan would spit it out. No wonder he’s so popular, right?
I noticed that with his fairly recent BA in art history and unspecified MA – let me guess, something with “Counseling” in the title? – he may have a laser-beam career focus on being an “ex-gay” “therapist”? Indeed, he may be unemployable as anything else.
Because I didn’t grow up Catholic, much of the site is unintelligible gibberish to me, but the main other thing that jumps out at me is his total SHOCK that a prostitute/hustler might occasionally have sex for FREE! He actually thinks that’s more “depraved” than selling it! Dude, that’s called normal sex. (Something he’s apparently never going to have again.)
jwrappaport
@DarkZephyr: There is no meaningful difference between advocating reorientation and advocating lifelong chastity. That is the same casuistry as “hate the sin, love the sinner,” and I would argue it is far more insidious.
Kieran
Pray the gay away! What a novel idea! Why didn’t anybody ever think of it before? Sounds like a great way for gay people to set themselves up as never ever being able to measure up in the eyes of God.
the other Greg
@jwrappaport: “There is no meaningful difference between advocating reorientation and advocating lifelong chastity.”
Sure there is. A lot of “ex-gays” make pathetic attempts to establish sexual relationships with women, which is arguably worse (for the women!) than advocating chastity.
jwrappaport
@the other Greg: I should have written less ambiguously. I mean to say that both positions are equally objectionable in that they stem from the same false premise, viz., that we are morally disordered. The chastity position is even more insidious, as it seeks to disguise the bigotry and superstition that are instantly apparent in the ex-gay position. Their practical implications are arguably different, but they are two sides of the same kopek.
samwise343
God, the Universe, Nature, or blind luck made a choice of whatever sexual orientation or gender you are. You didn’t choose it.
What you DO choose is how you respond to whatever that choice was.
the other Greg
@jwrappaport: I’m not sure I understand your point. But for instance, we see a significant number of gay men who accept their orientation, but are celibate for decades solely out of extreme, irrational anxiety about past relationships (i.e. essentially the belief that most gay men are liars who can’t be trusted, etc.) or extreme, irrational fear of HIV (i.e. essentially the belief that most gay men are diseased liars who can’t be trusted, etc.), and so on. They post here on Queerty often! Is this kind of celibacy really so much better than the religious kind? It’s rooted in self-hating homophobia also, even if the person is openly gay. I’m not saying celibacy, per se, is always bad or indicative of an emotional problem, but are you saying that?
And what is your objection to the “practical” implications? It seems better to me that Sciambra is at least refraining from messing up some poor woman’s life, and would rather emulate 4th-century hermits, crazy as that is.
jwrappaport
@the other Greg: I’m not sure how I can speak more plainly. I also am not sure what you tried to argue in your meandering response. I’ll try one more time: My point is that the whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” mantra is more insidious than traditional bible-based homophobia because it masquerades as compassion and tolerance.
There is nothing acceptable about Sciambra’s position (or at least the one you ascribe to him – I found no such justification in the quote from the article). He is telling us that we are morally disordered and that we should suppress our most powerful natural urges. I don’t care that he’s sparing an unsuspecting woman or that there’s less “collateral damage”: he’s perpetuating the same nasty, dangerous lie that continues to destroy people’s lives. I take some consolation from the fact that he is undoubtedly living in his own hell.
RSun
@jwrappaport: I understand your point and agree completely.
Will L
I’m certainly glad it works for him. He obviously had some serious issues besides being gay.
Ronbo
“Without exception, every gay man and woman that I ever knew, reluctantly at times, could trace their homosexuality back to some childhood experience.”
Dude, you can say the same about every straight man and woman. We’ve all had childhoods. Now go back to creepin the park.
gaym50ish
By “childhood experience” I assume he means molestation. The “abuse excuse” is often used by guys like Rev. Ted Haggard, who don’t want to admit they were simply born that way. The abuse may indeed have occurred and may have caused some mental anguish, but I don’t believe it is responsible for making anyone gay.
Peterson Toscano, author of “Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” wrote on his blog site, “Instead of searching for the elusive root causes of same-sex attraction, I wish they would ask themselves, ‘Why do our (reparative therapy) programs attract same-gender-loving people who have also been sexually abused?’”
The homophobes contradict themselves when they blame child sex abuse for kids becoming gay. For instance, they will suggest that girls who are abused or raped by men become lesbian man-haters. If that were true, they why boys who suffer abuse by men would become ATTRACTED to men as a consequence of? It’s just one of the many lies contradictions in this whole discredited, pseudoscientific field of reparative therapy for gays.
the other Greg
@jwrappaport: As I admitted earlier in the thread – fortunately, I didn’t grow up Catholic, so I guess I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about!
the other Greg
@gaym50ish: Interesting point. If you click on Sciambra’s site you will see that he grew up in a “loving home” yadda yadda yadda… and yet, mysteriously, he still blames his homosexuality (and former hustler/porn life) on exactly the “factors” you describe. So was his father abusive, or not?
the other Greg
@gaym50ish: and as someone who actually DID have an abusive father, I’m really offended by Sciambra’s attitude (aside from my not being Catholic and otherwise having no idea what the fuck he’s talking about). I somehow managed to figure out the basics of what was happening when I was like 11.
So as I say maybe too often on this site – GROW THE FUCK UP.
Grow the fuck up, Sciambra, grow the fuck up!
the other Greg
It’s apparent from Sciambra’s site that he DOES read Queerty, he mentions this site by name, and he probably reads the comments.
So if you have anything directly to say to him, say it.
My personal message to him is, GROW THE FUCK UP!
Vegas Tearoom
OK, so he claims to have been a gay porn star. Me too, me too. And I can provide just as much porn as this claim to famer. What a cooptation of the LGBT community. Drop a house on it and be done.
Cam
Actually there is a good point.
These evangelicals are all about lying, they want to paint what in their minds is the worst picture possible. Since everything is accessible on the internet, why is anybody calling this guy a former porn star when nobody has provided any proof?
This guy was too weak to handle his life so he needs to run back to some organization crying that “The Gayness Made Him Do It!”
Sad, so many of these evangelicals are just unfinished people. If God his up there he must be so disappointed in how so many of them waste their lives.
drivendervish
I feel sorry for this guy that he has decided to live a lie. I am sure he is sad and miserable and when you feel sad and miserable you are often advised to seek a stronger relationship with God. It may in fact help some people deal with the overwhelming depression that comes from denying who you are. I question the wisdom of reprinting the article on this site because I am sure that many young guys who are questioning their sexuality will come across this article and may decide that they too should bury their attraction to other guys with a big dose of God. But when that doesn’t work they will feel like failures which can lead to suicide. We should do everything in our power to keep morons like this from spreading their evil message because unfortunately a lot of people believe this crap.
rcblue73
Just another example of self brainwashing.
Stefano
Another witch for the witch hunt.
duramax24
I bet if you looked at his browser history you will find gay porn.
Turbobttm
He’s right about one thing… I can trace my homosexuality to a childhood experience. I was born!