According to the Rev. Brett Harris's website, Faulkner's family has threatened to take away their support of his college education and nearly everything else if he doesn't get "cured."(WARNING: You may want to turn the volume down on your computer, the Rev. Harris has lots of sounds on his site when you arrive)
Bryce Faulkner is a bright young pre-med student who, like many in college, was totally dependent upon his parents for survival. His car, his cell phone, his education, even his job was all connected to his parents purse strings. Bryce was making plans to come out to his parents, but before he had the opportunity to carry out these plans, his mother found his email password and discovered communications between he and his lover Travis Of Green Bay, Wisconsin. As any person from the south, especially those whom have a conservative fundamentalist family and has come out of the closet knows, the family can become quite volatile in their reaction to the news. Bryce is no exception to this. In order to manipulate Bryce into accepting "treatment" for his homosexuality, they took away everything and left him the choice of becoming homeless and destitute or going into therapy. As anyone can imagine, this wasn't much of a choice. Being in the closet in a small town left him no one to speak to or to seek help to get him through the transition from the closet and into the light of day. His family took away every resource he had and left him with no phone to call for help, a car to drive to any help that might be out there and no money to even take a bus to Wisconsin to be with his lover. The program he is going into is a 14 month program, one of the most severe and intense of these kinds of programs.
Bryce and Travis love one another deeply. The very reason Bryce was going to come out of the closet was in order to move closer to Travis because they wish to spend the rest of their lives together. Anyone who loves another can understand the turmoil and deep pain Travis is feeling right now. Having someone you love manipulated into pretending the love you share is an affront to God and unacceptable. Being manipulated into being cloistered away for over a year of intense brain washing techniques that tell you your homosexuality is a choice, your love is unnatural and you will sent to a place of fire and brimstone unless you submit to their philosophical interpretation of theology. Anyone one who has even the slightest knowledge of programs like those offered by Exodus International (a group that believes homosexuality is a choice and can be changed through prayer and counseling) can be spiritually demoralizing, psychologically destructive and emotionally devastating. As a person who has had someone close to them go through this kind of treatment, I make it my mission to help anyone who is forced to go into this kind of misguided and ill-informed rehabilitation programs.
Harris doesn't indicate where this deprogramming is going to take place, but the site has gotten a lot of notice and has spawned a FaceBook group as well as a Twitter account. According to the FaceBook page, the Faulkner's have threatened Harris with litigation saying they're being slandered. So far it's all a good deal of they said vs. they said, but none-the-less compelling stuff.
Many of us are or know folks who have family like this: deeply religious to the point they've decided it's their job to do God's judgment. All I can say is if parents attempted to stop their child from being left-handed or brown-eyed they'd be the ones being carted off to some form of deprogramming. Being gay, lesbian, queer, bi or trans-gendered is a TRAIT. It isn't something we choose. It isn't a lifestyle "choice." It's WHO WE ARE. GET USED TO IT. WE AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE.
Ahem. Stepping off the soap box now.
Frankly, if there are mental health professionals performing any sort of deprogramming they ought to have their license revoked for participating in junk science. My guess is that, more likely, poor Bryce has been sent to some religious institution that will "deprogram" him straight into a lifetime of self-destructive behavior.
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