Of all the insane things I have done in my life, most will agree that the most insane was when I sentenced myself to two years at Love in Action, a Christian residential program that attempts to change homosexuals. I was a married man and a missionary in Zambia, who also happened to be seriously turned on by other men. After years of unsuccessfully stuffing the urge, I took drastic measures. The Memphis based recovery program seemed an excellent place to straighten out my life, and at the same time do the right thing in the eyes of my Christian brothers and sisters, who loved and accepted me, "just as I am," as long as that was not gay.

Since age 15, I begged God to save me from being a pervert. 17 years of Sundays, hundreds of hours of counseling, countless trips to the altar and a stint with a Jamaican exorcist did not work their magic on me. I needed to get serious work done. My goals were simple-- 1. Get right with God. 2. Win back my wife. 3. Find favor once again with church folk. It was time to join the swelling ranks of the ex-gay army of God.

When I entered Love in Action on July 13, 1996, to my disappointment, they would not promise to make me straight. Instead they offered to help participants of the program overcome their "addiction to homosexuality and compulsive sexual behavior." I begrudgingly agreed that was the next best thing to being straight, but it sounded wimpy. The other straightening options that existe Birmingham, England to the Homo No Mo Halfway House in sweltering Memphis, TN.

Upon my arrival, as my bags were inspected for gay contraband, I learned that rules and many of them, played a critical role in the de-homosexualization offered at Love in Action. Below is a tiny sample of the scores of rules that I had to follow as a participant in the program. I conveniently include some of my parenthetical, snide remarks.

The list went on for pages. Each week the staff informed us of changes, additions and clarifications. Then there were the unwritten, temporary rules designed to protect individual clients struggling with specific fetishes that they were not allowed to discuss in the group due to the personal nature of the desire. For instance, there was a time when we were forbidden to bring bananas or cucumbers into the house. Another time, the nearby horse stables were deemed off limits.

Each Tuesday night at "Rules Rap" participants confessed to the group the rules they broke in the previous week. Sometimes the staff or even a participant questioned someone about a pattern of rule breaking. "Phil, this is the third week in a row that you confessed to not making your bed. What’s behind that?"

Every week I presented a list of various rules that I broke, but there were two I succumbed to regularly. The one stated that we had to report all false image (or F.I.) behavior. This rule constantly confused and challenged all of us. Basically, the staff wanted to weed out all behavior, dress and manner of speech that was false to our identity of healthy, celibate, ex-gay, godly, manly men. They believed that gay men hid behind certain clothing and stylized behavior to mask their shame and the inner hurt that derived from so much sinning. At any moment, a participant or staff member challenged someone about F.I. behavior or clothing. A typical challenge would go like this, "Martin, I want to challenge you," often said with more of an inflection of a question than an assertive statement. A pause of up to 15 seconds gave Martin a chance to stand up and brace himself. The challenger continued, "The way that you are always humming to yourself seems isolating. It may also be F.I. behavior. I want you to look at the possibility that you are hiding behind the unrealistic dream of being an up and coming contemporary Christian recording artist."

Guys were told that they spoke too fast or too slow or too loud or too soft. Their clothes were too bright or too muted or too tight or too ethnic. I was once told by the director that I was too European, which he thought was particularly dangerous since many gay men emulate European fashions and even "pass" as foreign hetersexuals instead of the deviant American homosexual that they are. Since we had to wait 24 hours before we were allowed to respond to an F.I. challenge, I took to heart the director’s charge and thought deeply about it. I did like Italian designer clothing. I picked up slang phrases from my time living in England. I dipped my bread in olive oil instead of slathering it with margarine like the other guys in the house. I not only knew how to correctly pronounce Real Madrid, but could tell you that they are a football team, (the proper global kind, not an American form of rugby.) I thought long and hard about the charge that I was overtly and excessively European. Finally, I concluded that since I am a second generation Italian who by that time in my life had visited Europe nine times and lived in it twice, and for 10 years lived in NYC (which is technically a suburb of Europe) that it was not false for me to wear Zegna jeans, spread Marmite on my French bread and use the word "brilliant!" instead of cool.

We had more F.I. challenges flying around that house than Mississippi Delta mosquitos. One particular challenge hit us all hard. We were prohibited from speaking like sassy Black women. This rule was laid out shortly after my arrival, and I guess I was partly responsible for it. When I first arrived in the house, the participants, out of ear shot of the staff, snapped their fingers, cocked their heads, sucked their teeth and spit out phrases like, "No you don’t!" "You go gurl!" and my personal favorite, "Talk to the hand!" of course with the palm of the hand right in someone’s face.

Having just lived and worked in England and before that Zambia where I was out of touch with this gay male obsession, I felt baffled yet strongly drawn to the sassy gurl talk. Perhaps as a gay man, often hiding in the shadows, not speaking up for myself, the idea of a take-no-shit, Aretha Franklin attitude speak appealed to me. My vocabulary changed overnight accompanied by the appropriate facial expressions and body language. I went too far though during a rap session when a participant challenged me about something, and I muttered, "Uh, Uh, No you don’t!" A few days later the staff informed us that we had to stop talking like Black women around the house and instead embrace our true, ex-gay personalities the way God meant us to be.

Then there was the hardest rule of all (the one I broke religiously since I was 10 years old) NO MASTURBATION! Okay, it was not written with all caps and in bold font, but it might as well have been. Tell me not to eat or not to talk or even to cut out all the breathing I do, and I might be able to comply, but not to masturbate. Jeez!

The worse of it happened every week in rules rap when I stood up to confess my many offenses. "This week I didn’t make my bed one time. I was late to dinner two times. I exceeded my 15-minute bathroom time six times. (out of seven) I masturbated six times. (Do you see a pattern emerging?) And I didn’t maintain a positive and thankful attitude (except of course during the six times I masturbated!) As I stood there in front of everyone feeling like a gutted fish, my brothers intoned, "I love you Peter," then I was free, unless of course someone challenged me.

Incidentally, I may have also been responsible for a procedure change at Love in Action. Either I was the most frequent masturbator in the house or the only guy crazy enough to confess the correct number of times I did it each week. Whatever the case, a few months after I arrived, the staff instructed us to refrain from confessing the sin of masturbation in front of the group and instead share our struggles privately during our one-on-one sessions with our designated staff member. Apparently some guys could not take hearing about so much masturbation happening by those around them. These participants got "triggered" by envisioning the acts which of course led to fantasy and even more masturbation.

The rules, I was told helped to build boundaries in my life, so I would not hurt myself any longer. For me they also served as the perfect distraction from the horror that I felt my life had become. During those first few months in Love in Action, I gorged myself on shame and self-recrimination for all the evil I felt I committed. I longed to be with my wife again and obsessed about her. I missed my Christian friends in NY and ached that they did not return my calls. After three months in the program, I realized that the rules the staff offered, with all their complexity and stringency, suddenly gave me an arena where I could compete with others and achieve success in the shadow of so much failure.

I filled my head with rules. I even made up some of my own. I rewarded myself for any success and bitterly punished myself for the many lapses I made. I pointed out to my brothers their own faults, and soon became the self righteous, Challenge Queen. I arrived in the house feeling like a total loser, but I realized there was a way I could claw myself out of my corruption and maybe even stand up in front of the group and proclaim, "I have nothing to confess this week. Gurl, I didn’t even mastabate!"