Christian charity claims God can ‘change’ your sexuality
Footage released by ITV News shows the national co-leader of a UK Christian charity saying that God can “change” a person’s sexuality.
In the video, Paul Beadle, the national co-leader of Journey UK, can be heard explaining that the purpose of the charity isn’t to alter a person’s sexuality.
“We don’t come here and say we try and change anyone or heal anyone whatever their attraction is,” he told the undercover reporter.
Paul Beadle, national co-leader of Journey UK, tells an ITV undercover reporter that God can “change” a person’s sexuality. (ITV News secret filming)
However, Beadle added that some people attending Journey UK’s classes, which include those addressing same-sex attraction, have reported that God had stopped their homosexual urges.
God can “change” sexuality
He told the undercover journalist: “As people start to find, look into their relationship with their mother or relationship with their father, those key relationships and where there’s been gaps where there’s been wounding where it’s really impacted us… as God starts to heal and restore those gaps, people find that the attractions start to shift or lessen or change.”
Beadle went on to offer case studies of men and women “who’ve moved on” from their same-sex attraction.
“A woman, who’s been dealing with same sex attraction who came to us about seven years ago and then became part of our team has found, as she’s been able to accept her own womanhood and femininity and feel more solidity in that, as that’s been restored, then the need to connect with women in an unhealthy way has lessened and diminished,” he said.
The ITV News investigation is the second installation in a three-part series on gay conversion therapy in the UK.
ITV News political correspondent Paul Brand spent six months investigating gay conversion therapy in UK churches.
Journey UK textbook compares homosexuality to paedophilia
The investigation also revealed that Journey UK recommended a text book, called Falling Forward, which listed homosexuality alongside child molestation as an addiction that can be cured.
REVEALED: In part 2 of our conversion therapy investigation we uncover a Christian Charity which says people can change their sexuality & uses manuals which:
– Compare homosexuality to paedophilia
– Say being gay is caused by child abuse
Journey UK is now reviewing its materials pic.twitter.com/y6SXng4Zxy
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) November 13, 2018
“Many male survivors abused by other men fear homosexuality or, conversely, become homosexual,” the book reads.
One chapter also notes: “The homosexual neurosis is an example of an attempt to take-in the masculine traits of other men in order to complete one’s personal sense of deficiency.”
Responding to ITV’s investigation, Journey UK said it would review its materials and had removed Falling Forward from its website.
On Monday (November 12), the ITV News investigation exposed gay conversion therapy taking place in UK Pentecostal churches, with one pastor comparing society’s acceptance of LGBT+ people to Nazi propaganda.
In July, the government vowed to ban gay “cure” therapy, after its national LGBT+ survey revealed that thousands of people reporting having undergone gay conversion therapy in the UK.
