Some schools in Australia are preaching the message that students can ‘overcome’ their same-sex attraction.

Densely populated and slightly old-fashioned, the suburb of Toongabbie sits right in the middle of Sydney’s western suburban mass.

At Toongabbie Christian School, faith is taken very seriously. When the school surveyed parents, most (61 per cent) cited “The Christian values and teachings” as “the ultimate deciding factor” in sending their child to study there, followed by “I want my child to learn about God” (47 per cent) and “to develop a relationship with God” (40 per cent).

On its website, the school notes that it meets the New South Wales curriculum requirements, but adds: “Our curriculum is prepared and presented from a Biblical foundation and the students are encouraged to view all that they learn from a Christian perspective.”

This school’s particular Christian perspective is clear in its statement of faith: “That the Scriptures, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, are the infallible Word of God.

They were written by holy people of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and have supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.”

In recent years, the school has also shared a spiritual kinship with a young pastor named Haydn Sennitt. He declined an interview for this story, but in other media appearances and on his website he seems a friendly, articulate man in his late 20s, with bright orange hair and even brighter blue eyes. Sennitt tells his remarkable life story on the website of an international group for formerly gay men, called Exodus Global Alliance, where he serves as vice chairman of the Asia-Pacific chapter. As a teen with an attraction to men, he was shunned by his father and bullied at the Christian high school he attended; other students called him “seedy faggot”. He became depressed and suicidal. At 18, as he tells it, he joined Sydney’s inner-city gay party scene.

He has since renounced his homosexuality; he now describes his desire for other males as a temptation sent by Satan.

Sennitt writes that a friend re-introduced him to the Bible, and that he “trained [himself] to take an interest in things that other men were interested in, like sport, and surprisingly became passionate about them!” He is frank about his faltering along the way, but Sennitt says he came to believe that society had taken the wrong path by accepting homosexuality and that every gay man had the capacity to change.

He writes: “No one can be a gay Christian because God has made us for heterosexual sexual unity. Jesus, His Father, and the Holy Spirit can heal and change people and it's not just me. There's no excuse for failing to trust God because He does transform.”

Sennitt is now married, studying at Bible college and, until recently, was working part-time for Liberty Christian Ministries Inc, one of a half-dozen or so Christian ministries in Australia which attempt to assist people who experience unwanted same-sex attraction. Others such ministries include Living Waters, Beyond Egypt and Homosexuals Anonymous.

These organisations, often referred to as ‘ex-gay’ ministries, offer support groups, individual counselling, and prayer meetings – either to overcome a person’s unwanted same-sex attraction, increase their attraction to the opposite sex, or help them abstain from acting on their feelings.

In June, the most prominent global organisation claiming to offer a “cure” for homosexuality, Exodus International, announced plans to shut down after four decades in operation; its leader, Alan Chambers, likewise married and frank about his attraction to men, apologised for the hurt, shame, anxiety and trauma his group and its judgments had caused.

'Ex-Gay' Counselling: It's Happening In Australian Schools