SAN RAFAEL -- After three decades in the so-called ex-gay movement, Frank Worthen will soon retire. The 78-year-old, soft-spoken man wears large, behind-the-ear hearing aids, thick bifocals and clunky Velcro-fastened shoes.

But it’s not just aging that makes the leader and founder of New Hope Ministries think of ending his spiritual work, counseling thousands of gay men and women who want to embrace Christianity and change their sexual orientation.

Today, fewer and fewer Christians attempt the therapy. Conservative Christian churches are no more accepting places for gays and lesbians today than they were 34 years ago, when Worthen had a spiritual epiphany and decided to try to change his own sexual orientation from gay to straight. But many other segments of society, including some mainstream Christian churches, now welcome gays and lesbians.

Worthen, who has no formal training in psychology or a divinity degree, once had 100 applicants each year for his residential program. Now he has none.  This fall, he couldn’t even field the 10 applicants he needed to hold a week-long, ex-gay retreat.

“I’ve started ministries all around the world, but I’m a realist. I can’t change society,” said Worthen, who is often called the father of the ex-gay movement. “If gay is good, then fine. We’re not going to change people’s minds by arguing.”

Ex-gay ministries remain popular in other parts of the world. 
Worthen's Filipino ministry is going strong. But U.S.-based programs are facing declines similar to that of New Hope Ministries.

Shawn O’Donnell, 31, of Elgin, Ill., says that wasn’t always the case. He’s a graduate of the Steps Out residential ex-gay treatment program that Worthen operated from 1977 to 2003.  O’Donnell grew up as a charismatic Pentecostal and says when he went to Steps Out in 1997, reconciling his sexual orientation with his spirituality was the defining issue of his life.

“I didn’t accept that it was OK to be gay and be Christian,” O’Donnell said.

Worthen knows that feeling. As a young man, he struggled to embrace his homosexuality and his Christian faith. Even then, some ministers, including his pastor, preached a theology that accepted gays.

But Worthen didn’t believe it. Like O’Donnell, he had a more conservative view of Jesus. He was a traveling organist, and he heard other ministers all over the Bay Area preach that homosexuality was immoral. At 22, he decided he couldn’t be gay and Christian at the same time. So, he left the church.

“I told God, ‘I’ve asked you to change me, and you didn’t do it, so goodbye,’ ” Worthen said.

Worthen spent 25 years living what he calls the gay lifestyle. It was a hedonistic time, he says, before the AIDS epidemic hit the Bay Area. He slept around. He had relationships, but they didn’t last. And in 1973, at age 44, he was deeply aware that he was getting older without any prospects for a long term, committed partner. Worthen was a successful import business owner who had two homes, a 40-foot boat and a Corvette. They didn’t bring him happiness. Instead, he felt that his life had no meaning. He was suicidal.

On May 25 that year, Worthen was heading into San Francisco to try out a new bathhouse when he heard a voice that changed his life forever. “I want you back,” the voice said.

Worthen believes he heard the voice of God. He found one of his employees whom he knew was Christian. The two of them went to a church and began to pray. Worthen wept as he asked God to forgive him for his homosexuality.

“When I left that day, things had changed. I wasn’t depressed. I had hope. I went in like black and white and I came out in Technicolor. When I came out of the church that day, I realized that it was May and everything was in bloom. It was beautiful,” Worthen said.

Worthen wasn’t sure he could leave the baths, the bars and the companionship of gay men behind to follow his religious yearning. He didn’t know how he got to be gay. He’d never heard of anybody who had left homosexuality. But that’s exactly what he did.

He went back to school at College of Marin but not to get a degree. It was to find out why he was gay. It was a groundbreaking time in the study of sexual orientation. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association revised its manual of disorders, saying that homosexuality did not meet its criteria to be recognized as one.

Instead of adopting the new definition of homosexuality, Worthen sought out research that supported his own theory that sexual orientation is environmental, that it has to do with early family relationships. Worthen blamed his homosexuality on his distant relationship with his father. His inquiries laid the groundwork for the reparative therapy movement.

In 1975 Worthen and a Christian bookstore owner named Kent Philpott published a book called “The Third Sex,” a collection of the testimonies of six gay Christian men and women who were trying to change their sexual orientation under Worthen’s counsel. Worthen  says it wasn’t a particularly good book. It was just the first one the Christian world had ever seen on the issue of homosexuality.

“We got letters from every corner of the English-speaking world. By 1977 people were arriving on our doorstep and saying, ‘You’re the only people that understand us. We want out.’ They wanted to come live with us,” Worthen said.

People kept coming. He’d find them waiting at his post-office box when he went to check the mail. So Worthen shaped his research into a 12-step program to help people “come out” of the gay lifestyle. He eventually sold his import business and many of his worldly treasures to fund his new ministry.

Worthen’s program gave conservative gay Christians a place where they felt truly understood – even though the focus of the work was bent on changing the roots of their identity.

Randy Baxter, 44, of Fullerton, began attending Worthen’s Steps Out support group in 1984 because he felt he had to choose between God and being gay.

“Frank was one of the first people to tell me that being gay was just a sin issue. It’s not the core of who you are,” Baxter said.

While many of the graduates of the program cite positive benefits of Worthen’s homegrown therapy, there are plenty of critics. The Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Counseling Association and the National Association of Social Workers have all condemned therapy that seeks to change sexual orientation, saying it’s ineffective and harmful.

“They want to declare it unethical,” Worthen said. “They think we create suicidal people.”

There is even a backlash from within the ex-gay community. So-called ex-ex-gays, including Baxter, eventually decided it was impossible to change. Shawn O’Donnell came to the same conclusion as others who call reparative therapy psychologically damaging. O’Donnell has struggled with depression and alcoholism in the years since he left Worthen’s program.

“I have trouble trusting other men,” he said.

O’Donnell was in and out of Worthen’s program for four years. He hoped that he might be more accepted by his home church when he left San Rafael to go back to Illinois. But the hours he spent in group therapy and in prayer, conditioning himself to change his sexual orientation, weren’t enough for the members of his Pentecostal church.

“They treated me like a project,” O’Donnell said.

Instead of changing their orientation, O’Donnell and Baxter have benefited from the changing views of homosexuals in the Christian world. They found other accepting groups of gay Christians and changed their concept of God.

“Now I see God may not be as rigid as I thought he was back then,” Baxter said.

Worthen isn’t surprised that reparative therapy doesn’t work for everyone.

“It’s a very tough road. There’s a lot of temptation, a lot of denial of self. I accept their decision,” Worthen said. “But I still think it’s their choice.”

He doesn’t generally follow up with graduates of his program. Instead, Worthen prefers to let them get on with their lives. Consequently there is no data showing whether his life’s work has been effective. But Worthen takes satisfaction in phone calls he gets from graduates of the ministry who are now leading straight lives.

“If it’s over, I did what I could,” Worthen said. “I wasn’t out to build an empire. I was out to help people. There’s a difference.’’

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