The Healing Lap of Christianity

Christian psychotherapist Richard Cohen, who is board president of the "ex-homosexual education and outreach organization" known as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, has been addressing criticism leveled against certain therapy techniques he uses on clients with homosexual desires.

Cohen, a former homosexual and the author of the book "Coming Out Straight" (which as an aside, is a horrible title) insists that no one is born with homosexual desires. He claims his therapy group has helped many men and women with unwanted homosexual desires achieve their goal of changing their sexual orientation and becoming heterosexual. He contends that it's not a choice to have homosexual desires, but it is a choice to act upon those desires. He says those unwanted homosexual feelings are the result of temperament, familial influence, and environmental or social conditioning, all of which can be addressed through specific therapeutic principles and practices.

Some of Cohen's controversial methods, though, have raised some questions. Most notably, he has taken sharp criticism over a May 23 appearance on CNN, in which he demonstrated a technique that involves cuddling a male client in his lap. Cohen, who refers to himself as a reorientation therapist, explained the "holding therapy" exercise as a means of using "healthy touch" on clients, who very often were "touch deprived" as children. He says this technique is one of the most effective ways to help men and women leave homosexuality.

"They're hungering for that intimacy and that bonding that they didn't experience in primary relationships with parents and/or same-gender peers," the psychotherapist asserts. "So what we have to provide then, in the Christian community, is really mentoring these men and women," he says, "and a lot of them need healthy touch -- hugging, holding, just palling around, buddying around."

Um, yeah.

Now I'm no Sigmund Freud and I'm sure there's a divergence of opinion among the experts themselves, but I'm pretty sure that stradling your gay psychotherapist is not going to "cure" or "correct" their sexual orientation. Call me a skeptic. What's the next level of reorientation therapy, an airtight?