A Different Graduation
Disciples Only, the home of which Wilkerson wrote, was directed by Roger Grindstaff in Saugerties, NY. Grindstaff has produced a cassette tape set, “Deliverance From Homosexuality,” which sells for $19.95. According to a promotional order form, “proceeds from the sale of the set will go to this ministry to homosexuals.”
Teen Challenge, in Chicago, said that they do not counsel homosexuals any longer and tell all those requesting help to go to Saugerties. “Once we heard about this program, it's so much easier to send people there if they really want help.” (24) For local counseling in the Chicago area, they suggested Jesus People, U.S.A., who had originally suggested Teen Challenge.
An interview with Mrs. Grindstaff revealed that Disciples Only is no longer in existence and will probably not be restarted. In the program's six years of existence, Grindstaff said 26 people “graduated.” She claims twenty of them have not fallen back into homosexuality, however she admitted, “some of them were what we call bisexual, I suppose.” She also admitted that some of them had been married or had girlfriends, but insisted that this was only a cover-up for their homosexuality prior to counseling. Despite her acknowledgment of this fact, she uses marriage as an indication of successful cure for a few Disciples Only graduates.
When asked how recent her figures were concerning the twenty whom she claimed are now heterosexual, Grindstaff replied: “I don't hear from them all, all the time. I'd have to write each one of them and say 'Have you ever fallen since you graduated?' The ones who graduated five years ago, we don't have a raving correspondence with.” Grindstaff also admitted that five times as many people have come to the Center for short periods of time, but left uncured.
Grindstaff took the stance that the condition of homosexuality itself is a sin and that only by being reoriented to heterosexuality does a person become “ex-gay.” Celibacy is not enough because: “We said it, not repression or abstinence; that's just repressing your desires, abstaining; that sooner or later, it's going to come out.” (25)
During the interview, she admitted that Disciples Only believed a person could not be a homosexual and a Christian at the same time. When asked if heterosexuality were a prerequisite to, or an outcome of, salvation, Grindstaff calmly replied: “outcome.”
No psychologist worked on the Disciples Only staff. According to Grindstaff, her husband is qualified enough because of “the authority given him by God, his knowledge of people, and his own deliverance.” (Mr. Grindstaff supposedly is a “cured” homosexual.) Her own qualifications, she said, are: “I had formal training as an English teacher.”
Grindstaff explained that “cured” homosexuals “gave us evidence (of their 'cures') by their confession of faith and by a feeling which you had, a spiritual intuition, if you want to call it that, that they were ready to graduate
