Reparative therapy is the idea that homosexuality and transgenderism can and should be “cured.” There are plenty of such therapies out there, of course; none of them work, and even the guiding idea is, needless to say, based on pure, unsupportable bigotry, but that has, once again needless to say, not stopped several fundamentalist bigots from setting up reparative therapy “camps” where parents can send their children to be abused.
Raymond Bell is a pastor of the Cowboy Church of Virginia (yes!), and has his own version of reparative therapy: “Equine Assisted Psychotherapy” (EAP). Yup, Bell thinks gay kids can be turned straight by hanging around with horses (presumably not ponies). How it is supposed to work is a bit unclear, but according to Bell “homosexuality is actually a type of addiction. It is not ‘curable’ as a disease because it is a ‘choice driven’ by the person,” and EAP to identify how a person got “involved” in homosexuality to begin with; for example, because of rape, abandonment, lacking a male role model, abuse, and having low self-esteem. Then they ride and stroke horses and turn straight, apparently. So there.
Diagnosis: One cannot help but suspect a poe. On the other hand, Bell thinks he can “cure” gay men by inviting them over to stroke horses … we really don’t know.