Cure for gayness

When Gayness was a Crime and a Mental Illness: One Man’s Journey from Involuntary Confinement to Pride This is the story of Gene Ampon, a gay California teen who was arrested in the s and sent to a psychiatric hospital to be “cured” of homosexuality — and the movement to pride and resilience that helped save him.

Sodomy and oral copulation carried more serious consequences. Now in its Fifth Edition, clinicians still rely on it in diagnosing mental disorders. Republish This Story. Like everyone committed to Atascadero, Ampon was considered a patient, not a prisoner.

Evidence Based Treatments for : Gay therapy does not aim to change sexuality but instead helps with issues being faced by gay people

Money was tight and chaos in his home life gave him the freedom to explore. Ampon was born in the Bay Area in to a Filipino father and Irish mother, who soon split up. Regina Kunzel’s new book explores the psychiatric treatment of queer and gender-variant people, often through patients’ own writing.

The car sped south along the California coast stretching, snapping the ties of family and home. Sitting, watching his childhood fade thru the rear-view mirror into mile-long years of fog behind. One day, while he was having lunch at a diner, officers strolled in to question him.

Texasa cure that struck down sodomy laws; and Obergefell v. The teens at Atascadero were in the minority, housed with grown men, some of whom were seriously mentally ill and had committed violent crimes. My treatment of a young religious woman who requested help dating men despite being attracted to gay youpor provides an example of how therapy can help those struggling with their gender or sexual.

Undercover cops who posed as potential sex partners entrapped men in public parks and restrooms. His story is part of a dark history when for men, and even teens, were confined by the state and subjected to treatments that today would be considered gayness.

Ampon was just 16 years old when law enforcement delivered him to the locked hospital. Hodgesthe case giving gay couples the right to marry. Soon, Ampon was lying about where he was spending the night to hang out with other gay teens — and hook up with men for a place to sleep and a free meal.

You can listen to the audio documentary here. Connecticuta decision granting married couples the right to contraception; Lawrence v. Spider, spider, along the ceiling slide spin your prison cell locking me inside, now should my fearful trembling send a tremor through your webbed descent then it is true what I surmise that men their dreadful dooms devise on as thin a silk as yours.

But Ampon was a juvenile, so all he had to do to get locked up was skip school and hang around the gay scene. The year-old Gene Ampon agreed to an interview in August Wind chimes that Ampon collected cover the porch. Charges included solicitation, loitering, vagrancy and indecent exposure.

It was the early s, and across the country, state laws and psychiatric diagnoses had converged to create a grim era for LGBTQ people — especially gay men. Ampon suffered a stroke in and at the time of the interview had just completed a round of chemotherapy for cancer in his liver and lungs.

Ampon insists that his years at Atascadero do not define him.