Revisit ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ in Honor of Texas GOP’s Gay Therapy Platform

Jamie Babbit’s “But I’m a Cheerleader” (1999), starring RuPaul, Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black), Bud Cort, Michelle Williams, Mink Stole, Clea DuVall and Cathy Moriarty (as the homophobic camp director)  is the perfect film to rent, buy or stream in honor of the GOP’s latest platform declaration.

“Cheerleader” is a hysterical send-up of a “sexual redirection” camp, where young people are schooled in how to act, think and most importantly, feel straight, and coincides nicely with the vote by the Texas GOP to support psychological treatments (that have a near-100% failure rate) to turn gay people straight. Last fall New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, signed a law banning reparative therapies on minors. California has a similar law.

The Associated Press reported that Rudy Oeftering, VP of gay conservatives, didn’t get the chance in Texas to speak against the therapy language, although he insisted, “The only way the party can go into the future is to start listening to young people, to start listening to people who have gay family members.”

The parliamentary motion to approve the full platform was called before Oeftering got the chance to voice his opinion. So now, according to AP, the Texas GOP officially recognizes “the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle.”