The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family recently staged a reparative therapy conference in the Detroit area. I eagerly read everything the local gay newspaper, Between The Lines, had to say about the event.

Now I can deny it no longer: I hope one of these “Love Won Out” conferences comes to my city, because I want to experience a reparative therapy gathering for myself.

It’s not that I think highly of the objective of converting gay people into straights — quite the opposite. I want to go and suggest to these folks that if they feel such a compelling need to repair things, they should repair something that’s actually broken. TVs, say. Dishwashers. Vacuum cleaners. Legs. There’s no end of broken items in the world they could repair. They certainly don’t need to claim that an entire group of people needs fixing just to keep themselves busy. That seems like the height of selfishness.

Another reason I want to go is to inquire whether the ex-gay movement has room for a person like myself with wimpy religious convictions. These conferences are run by and attract attendees with strong religious views. I can understand the complete turmoil a person raised to believe in a fundamentalist God undergoes when he realizes he’s gay. The folks behind “Love Won Out” offer a way out of that turmoil.

But they can’t prey, or pray, on my need, because it doesn’t exist. I feel left out.

Perhaps they could tailor some conferences to agnostics. Instead of promising eternal hellfire for being gay, the minister at the dais could declare: “I’m reasonably confident that you who practice homosexuality are headed for a sort of limbo, where you are doomed to stand forever at an airport luggage carousel. And ladies and gentlemen, your bags never arrive!”

He would have converts in droves.

The final reason I hope to attend a workshop that aims to cure me of my queerness, heal me of my homo-ness, is I want to see if I can pick out the moles. Besides protesters outside the building, I bet each of these conferences is beset by gay-positive people, looking to infiltrate the event out of curiosity, to call the leaders on their facts, or to spread the Good Word to the hurting that gay and godly are not mutually exclusive.

I admit to a small fear that I’ll attend a conference only to find everyone in the place is a mole.

I could be in a whole row of undercover gay journalists. Interviewing each other wouldn’t be terribly helpful. And what if all the young people in the row ahead of me turned out to be nervous not because their parents forced them to attend, but because they can’t remember which slogan they agreed to chant at last night’s college Lambda meeting?

Between The Lines published the account of a PFLAG couple who went to the Michigan conference. Gently, they spread heresy, their velvety touch perhaps a representation of the velvety fur of a mole.

In another account a PFLAG father admitted his approach wasn’t too gentle. Working this conference was John Paulk, poster boy of the ex-gay movement who three years ago was spotted patronizing a gay bar. Paulk and the PFLAG dad had a mild confrontation when the dad upped the ante by pronouncing, “You bar queen.”

Lordy, I must get myself to one of these conferences. I can’t be missing out on scenes like that!

Eventually the father was literally dragged out of the hall, after loudly calling Paulk a “big fraud,” and throwing water in a security guard’s face. I want to know where that dad is going next. I’ll be there.