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**Part Two in a two-part series**KSL Newsradio's Marc Giauque reporting
It's an issue religions and religious people are struggling with today. Catholic bishops are meeting to talk about ministering to homosexuals, and about issues like reorientation therapy.
In Florida, one of the largest groups supporting such therapy is holding its annual meeting. But the conventional world sees such therapies as harmful, and the whole idea behind them as unnatural.
"The biggest lows in my life, ever, have been in the throes of reparative therapy, says Dave, a man whose feelings are in conflict with his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "And no matter how much praying we do, it doesn't change our orientation. I don't really feel changed as much as I feel that Christ has given me the tools to manage this."
In his adolescence, Dave says he had encounters with other men. But ultimately he served an LDS mission, returned and married. Nearly two decades later, though he says he never acted out, his attraction for other men hadn't changed.
"I got to the point three or four years ago, where I couldn't white knuckle life any more and I needed some help," he says.
He sought help from Jim Lewis, a therapist in Sandy. Though practitioners say no one person's experience is the same, therapy often involves participation in things like sports, on the theory many with same gender attraction didn't bond well with their fathers or with other males.
"For example in our group therapy, it gives the men a chance to be accepted and connecting," says Lewis. "We have a ropes course program, and then they have a chance to deal with me as an adult male."
For Dave, it also involved learning to think differently, and immersion in his faith.
"Those images are put in front of me unwantingly, and I have not sought them out," he says. "And it is a day too day struggle. And I have learned techniques and I have relied on the Savior to be able to remove those thoughts before they become a behavior."
But for others, that wasn't enough.
"If someone says that just because they believe God, that's not good enough, " says Lewis.
Alan Barnett, also a returned LDS missionary, says he tried all kinds of methods, including sports, and dating women. A similar experience for Clay Essig.
"I dated the most beautiful women, lo and behold, it didn't straighten me out," says Essig.
Essig says he's tried many therapies, including some unusual ones.
"Where I would put a bean in my shoe and every time I stepped on that bean, I would say 'I am attracted to women, women turn me on, I am a heterosexual,'" he says.
Essig, like many therapists, says reparative therapy simply doesn't work, and in his view it leads many to suicide. Barnett says he's also considered suicide, but eventually embraced his identity and has left his church.
"I personally don't' believe that there's an afterlife where someone's going to punish me for following what, for me, feels like the real course in life," says Barnett.
Essig believes his church will eventually change, and embrace monogamous, homosexual relationships. But Dave, thinks differently.
"And I feel for those who have chosen the lifestyle, because I believe they area settling for something less than the greatest glory God has to offer," says Dave.
The LDS church recently posted on its website, a Q and A on same gender attraction, in which church leaders say there is no official stand on such therapies. Also this week, the nation's Roman Catholic Bishops will meet to consider ministries to homosexuals. The draft states there's no moral obligation for a person to attempt reparative therapy, but to live chaste lives.
