Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper
(1954 - living) and (? - 1991) U.S.A.
Michael Bussee
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Ex- ex gay couple
Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper (not the screen actor!) became devout Christians in their late teens when both were troubled by their homosexuality. They met and became friends while working for a counseling and referral line at the Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim, Calif. Then they helped found, in 1976, Exodus International, an anti-gay group that pretends to perform orientation conversion.
Ironically, the more they worked together to "convert" gay people, the more they found themselves falling in love. Eventually, they became lovers and left Exodus in 1979.
They realized that the ministry was damaging more people than it was helping. With many people who had gone through the ministry either attempting suicide or becoming clinically depressed, Bussee and Cooper realized they had to speak out about the "ex-gay" ministries.
Michel said:
"The desires never go away. The confrontations begin and the guilt gets worse and worse."
Bussee recalls that some people who went through the Exodus program had breakdowns or committed suicide.
"One man slashed his genitals with a razor and poured Drano on his wounds." Another man impulsively underwent an incomplete sex-change operation because he believed his sexual desires might receive divine approval were he biologically a woman."
"After dealing with hundreds of people," Bussee concluded, he and his partner Cooper hadn't "met one who went from gay to straight. Even if you manage to alter someone's sexual behavior, you cannot change their true sexual orientation."
"If you got them away from the Christian limelight," he said, "and asked them, 'Honestly now, are you saying that you are no longer homosexual and you are now heterosexually oriented?'... not one person said, 'Yes, I am actually now heterosexual.'"
In 1982, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper had a marriage ceremony. Their relationship ended, twelve years after they bevacme lovers, with Cooper's death for AIDS related complications, in 1991.
In June 2002 Michel Bussee was stabbed by four queer-bashers in a parking lot. He survived the assault, but one of his friends, Owen, 40, was killed.
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