ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Regina Griggs’ son announced he was gay five years ago.

Five years later, she leads an organization that works to make gays go straight.

The group, of which she’s the executive director, is Parents and Families of Ex-Gays and Gays, based in Fairfax. Its major tool is “reparative therapy” — counseling focused on converting gays to heterosexuality.

Last month, Griggs sent a letter to Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech taking issue with a March event called “Sexual Equality Awareness Week” at James Madison High School. The five-day event, part of a month-long series organized by students and teachers in a class called “Combating Intolerance,” featured many guest speakers and classes discussing homophobia and adoption rights for same-sex couples.

Griggs said the school rescinded an offer to allow PFOX-sponsored speakers share information about gays who have converted to heterosexuality. Domenech said James Madison Principal Mark Merrell offered the organization time to speak but never received a response.

To Griggs, homosexuality is a choice that gays can “overcome” with the help of organizations like PFOX. She said she believes people like her son have a right to pursue gay relationships, and frames her organization as a passive provider of resources for those who are interested.

The four-year-old group holds monthly support group meetings and an annual conference for parents. Its web site contains material about reparative therapy and promotes unconditional love for gay children.

“It gives parents an opportunity to sit down and talk to other parents and realize they’re not alone out there,” Griggs said.

While the organization does not meet the conventional definitions of homophobia, gay rights groups say the underlying premise of its mission is that homosexuality is wrong, a notion they find extremely offensive.

“It’s very interesting to me that the people who insist that you can change are those who feel you should change,” said Ron Schlittler, director of the Field and Policy Department at the Washington-based Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. “Their world does not have a place for gay people.”

Griggs said she is close with her son and his gay friends, and that they know she is “not a homophobe by any stretch of the imagination.”

“You can love someone without approving of everything they do,” Griggs said. “I don’t approve of drinking and driving, drugs and a whole lot of other things, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a relationship with them without approving of everything they do.”

Griggs and other reparative therapy advocates think homosexuality is the result of a confluence of environmental causes in childhood, from the absence of a parent to sexual molestation. They note that no scientific study has found a genetic source for sexuality and cite anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of conversion therapy.

But gay rights groups are quick to note evidence supporting reparative therapy is anecdotal and largely unscientific — since the data set predominantly includes subjects who want the therapy to work.

“You can certainly create a situation where someone who’s left-handed needs to conform to a right-handed world, but that doesn’t make them right-handed,” Schlittler said. Ex-gays “are victims of misinformation. They’re being sold a bill of goods that they truly want to believe because it makes their world work better.”

There is no evidence that same-sex attractions are biologically hard-wired or that they are a choice, said Roger Lancaster, director of the Cultural Studies program at George Mason University and author of the 2003 release Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture. He called the evidence of successful conversions offered by ex-gay ministries “very suspicious.”

“It’s not that surprising that under those intense conditions a certain number of gays could live what for all intents and purposes is a heterosexual life,” Lancaster said. “The real question is, ‘Why would you want to do that?’”