Gay conversion therapy still has its stalwarts | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune

Culligan founded the Tampa-based New Hearts Outreach, which caters to all who are “sexually and relationally challenged,” after living as a homosexual for 20 years, he said. He says New Hearts Outreach offers the sort of counseling that helped him convert from being a homosexual about 30 years ago.

While gay conversion therapy, as it’s commonly called, has been widely discredited, including by the American Psychiatric Association, and is illegal in some states, such treatment still is practiced in a dwindling number of places throughout the country, including Florida.

The Christian organization Restored Hope Network serves as a national directory for those looking for conversion therapists and lists two psychiatrists and two religious organizations in Florida that offer the practice. One is New Hearts Outreach, the only group in the Tampa Bay area on the list.


As a child, Culligan had a strained relationship with his father, which he says led to his “addiction” to homosexuality in college.

But words like “conversion” and “reparative therapy” aren’t in New Hearts Outreach’s vernacular, he said. The group is a Christian discipleship ministry for those “looking for relief from the homosexual lifestyle,” Culligan said.

“It’s been said that folks in the lifestyle are looking for love in all the wrong places,” Culligan said. “Scriptural teaching is that homosexuality is not a part of God’s best for people. That doesn’t mean Christians are not to embrace them … but people come to us because they’ve had enough of addiction and hedonism with no lasting intimacy and meaning.”

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Keith Vennum, a licensed reparative psychiatrist in Altamonte Springs, said his work with homosexuals isn’t much different from counseling he offers to any client experiencing an “addiction or unwanted lifestyle.”

According to Vennum, “There’s scant scientific evidence that anyone is born homosexual, and there is good evidence that homosexuals can change. If a person wants to receive counseling for something they desire to change, they should be allowed to have that.”

The therapy is a sound method for those who know their homosexual feelings arise from former emotional abuse, sexual abuse and other unmet emotional needs, Vennum said. He said the focus is on improving self-esteem and repairing broken relationships that may have contributed to homosexual attractions.

Gay conversion therapy still has its stalwarts | TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune