From The Advocate:

When Wayne Besen heard that President Bush had invited Alan Chambers, head of the “ex-gay” group Exodus International, to a June 2006 White House press conference in support of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, he reached into his pocket and bought a plane ticket to Washington, D.C. “That was one straw too many,” Besen says. “I rented a room at the National Press Club and flew in a kid who had been hurt by an ‘ex-gay’ camp.” Besen, 36, held his own press conference to educate people on the harmful nature of the “ex-gay” movement.

Author of the 2003 book Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth, Besen has in recent years become a powerful force against those who argue that gays are called by God to “change” their sexual orientation.

After Bush’s press event Besen launched Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit group dedicated to educating the public about LGBT lives while debunking the “ex-gay” myth and “religious-right disinformation campaigns.” He has organized protests, won support from mainstream health groups, and pressed the media to provide balanced reporting on the issue. “You can argue about Scripture until you’re blue in the face,” Besen says. “Nobody’s ever going to win that argument. But you can make a persuasive case that these ‘ex-gay’ ministries are harmful.”

By Wayne Besen

University lecturers left their classrooms this week to lecture Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to tell him he has no class. The tenured were teed off and staged a revolt because they were revolted by how Dobson had perverted their work in TIME magazine. In a guest columncriticizing Mary Cheney, Dobson justified his trashing of gay families by citing the work of renowned researchers. But instead of allowing their work to be distorted, the scholars hollered and told Dobson to stop lying for the Lord.

The first professor to profess her displeasure was Dr. Carol Gilligan, a renowned psychologist and author of In a Different Voice. Gilligan has also taught at Harvard and University of Cambridge and has more degrees than a thermometer. She is so well-respected that Dobson tried to justify his argument against same-sex families in TIME by citing her work. The devious goal of Dobson was to force reasonable people to think, “If a learned scholar likes Gilligan says gay families are harmful, maybe Focus on the Family is right.”The problem was Dobson deliberately got it wrong. I contacted Gilligan and she was “stunned” and “mortified” by the way Dobson had manipulated her research. Indeed, she wrote a letter to Dobson demanding that he “cease and desist from quoting my research in the future.”"Not only did you take my research out of context, you did so without my knowledge to support discriminatory goals that I do not agree with,” continued Gilligan in her letter and reiterated in a video airing on You Tube. “What you wrote was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again and that you apologize for twisting my work.” (Read More)

From Inside Higher Ed

When academics feel that their work has been distorted in the press, they frequently have to settle for griping to colleagues or writing a letter to the editor. But for Carol Gilligan, a prominent psychologist and author of In a Different Voice, a mere letter did not suffice. When she was alerted that James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, referenced her work in a Time magazine column, she denounced his interpretation of her research — posting her views Monday in a video on YouTube. In his magazine piece, Dobson criticized Mary Cheney’s decision to become pregnant. “[T]he majority of more than 30 years of social-science indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father,” he wrote last week. Dobson backed up his claims by citing Gilligan’s work. Gilligan is a renowned expert on gender and human development and is a professor of education and law at New York University.

“I was stunned to hear that James Dobson quoted me in Time magazine,” Gilligan says in the video. “I had no idea. I was mortified.” She says that there is nothing in her research that would lead anyone to agree with Dobson’s claim that same-gender families are unhealthy for children.

In a statement released by Focus on the Family, the organization said, “[I]n his Time essay, Dr. Dobson does not represent Professor Gilligan as supporting or opposing same-sex parenting, but only that her work shows that men and women stress different elements in moral teaching.” (Read More)

Renowned Author/Researcher, England’s Angela Phillips, Condemns Focus on the Family’s Leader For ‘Seriously Misrepresenting’ Her Work

Miami Beach, FLA. - Truth Wins Out released an exclusive video today featuring celebrated New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, PhD, who upbraided Focus on the Family leader, James C. Dobson, for misrepresenting her research in a guest column he wrote in last week’s issue of Time Magazine.Additionally, Angela Phillips, the renowned author of “The Trouble With Boys” also sent a pointed letter to Dobson today accusing him of “seriously misrepresenting” her work and asking him to publish her letter “prominently” on Focus on the Family’s website. Last week, Kyle Pruett, M.D. of the Yale School of Medicine, also expressed concerns that the Focus on the Family leader “cherry picked” his work.

“This is a revolt of serious scholars who are revolted by the way James Dobson has unethically incorporated their research to fit his political aims,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Three researchers have now come forward in just one week to take Dobson to task. The media should finally realize that Dobson lacks the academic integrity and moral authority to talk credibly on family issues.”

In the video, filmed for Truth Wins Out by videographer Lisa Darden, Dr. Gilligan expressed her extreme displeasure with Dobson and how she was “mortified” by his use of her work. (Read More)

Focus on the Family’s James Dobson has once again distorted research and “cherry-picked” quotes to support his views. This interview with one of the authors he misquoted in Time Magazine clarifies what she really said and how she feels about Dobson’s tactics.

Kyle Pruett, M.D., is Second Professor In Two Days To Challenge Dobson’s Use Of Research

guest column written by James C. Dobson in this week’s magazine after a second professor, Kyle Pruett, M.D. of the Yale School of Medicine, expressed concerns that the Focus on the Family leader “cherry picked” his work. In a letter to Time and Dobson, Dr. Pruett asked that Focus on the Family, “not quote from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission.”

Yesterday, New York University Professor Carol Gilligan, PhD, also wrote a letter to Time and Dobson saying that her research was distorted and twisted.

“Time Magazine should take Dobson’s article off the web and pledge that they will never again use his group as a source on family issues,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Focus on the Family has damaged its credibility and should stop misleading Americans by misquoting respected researchers.” (Read More)

‘I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work,’ NYU Professor Carol Gilligan Tells Focus on the Family Leader in Blistering Letter

Miami Beach, FLA. – New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, PhD, today slammed Focus on the Family leader, James C. Dobson, for “twisting” and “distorting” her research in a guest column he wrote in this week’s issue of Time Magazine. Dobson misrepresented her work in an effort to smear gay families while discussing Mary Cheney’s pregnancy. In a pointed letter to Dobson, Gilligan demanded that he apologize and “cease and desist” from quoting her work in the future.

“Dobson’s group is a fib factory that should change its name to Focus on the Fallacies,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “This organization habitually lies and shamelessly mangles research to support its anti-gay agenda. Time Magazine should immediately withdrawal Dobson’s column because it is so riddled with scientific errors that it is essentially fiction.”

In a letter to Dobson, obtained exclusively by Truth Wins Out after the group contacted Gilligan and informed her of the Time article, Gilligan expressed her dismay and demanded that the right wing leader apologize. According to the letter: (Read More)

Homophobia reached a comic new low today after WorldNetDaily published an insane ranting by columnist Jim Rutz, who claims that if you eat to much Tofu, you might become a homosexual. (Read More)

Grace Chapel takes a patient approach after the pastor’s gay admission. Others weigh fallout.

By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

Separated by a confession of sin, the Rev. Paul Barnes and leaders of his former church will reunite this week and plot the road ahead. Meanwhile, others ponder the broader implications of a second consecutive evangelical pastor toppled by a gay-sex scandal.

Barnes, 54, resigned last week from Grace Chapel in Douglas County after admitting to homosexual relations. He will meet the church’s board of elders to discuss a counseling regimen and a severance package, said Dave Palmer, associate pastor at the 2,100-member nondenominational church.

Palmer on Monday also described in greater detail Barnes’ encounters with other men. He called them “infrequent, short, passing events in his life,” nothing illegal and involving adults not affiliated with the church. (Read More)

How Many Lives Will Be Shattered, Families Destroyed and Careers Ruined Before Conservative Churches Accept Gay People For Who They Are? Asks TWO

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Truth Wins Out strongly urged conservative churches today to call off their war against homosexuals and rethink their deadly dogma after another prominent mega-church pastor was forced to step down after his sexual orientation was revealed. The Denver Post reported today that Rev. Paul Barnes, a married pastor of south Denver’s 2,100-member Grace Chapel, resigned after confessing sexual encounters with men. He was the second prominent Colorado pastor, following Rev. Ted Haggard, to step down in recent weeks because he was gay.

“After the fall of Ted Haggard and Paul Barnes, it is time for conservative churches to admit that their approach to homosexuality is an experiment that has failed,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out, a non-profit organization that monitors so-called ex-gay ministries. “How many lives will be shattered, families destroyed and careers ruined before the religious right accepts gay people for who they are?

“Instead of tired anti-gay apologetics, the evangelical church should offer apologies to the gay and lesbian community and move swiftly to change their out-of-touch anti-gay positions,” added Besen.

The Denver Post reported that the popular preacher resigned after a church administrator got an anonymous phone call from a person who claimed he overheard a conversation in which someone mentioned, “blowing the whistle” on Barnes. In a videotaped message to his congregation, a weeping Barnes spoke of how he had always known he was gay and could not change his sexual orientation despite copious prayer and three attempts at therapy.

“I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy,” Barnes said in the 32- minute video, according to the Post “…I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

This striking admission was similar to Rev. Haggard’s disclosure that he had “been warring against it for all of my adult life,” which strongly suggests that homosexuality can’t be changed. This reality contradicts the position of several prominent right wing groups, most notably Focus on the Family.

“Conservative churches have spent millions of dollars pushing the idea that if you want to be straight, then read Scripture,” said Besen. “This position has been severely undermined by living examples of spiritually gifted men, such as Haggard and Barnes, who were unable to become heterosexual, despite having everything to lose.”

Besen said he is also concerned about how such deception hurts family members who are duped into becoming props in another person’s lie. Indeed, Alan Chambers, the leader of the largest ex-gay group, Exodus International, recently claimed on NBC’s Today Show that his organization gets 160,000 calls a year from married individuals seeking to become heterosexual or their psychologically scarred spouses. Although the group keeps no reliable statistics, even if a fraction of this inflated number is true, it would mean thousands of unnecessary divorces. This means that the ex-gay message is one of the leading causes of divorce in the nation.

“So-called ex-gay groups are divorce mills that love to show the media wedding pictures, but never show them the divorce papers, which is the realistic outcome,” said Besen. “Our heart goes out to Char Barnes, who did not know her husband was a closeted homosexual until last week. It is time the right wing stops destroying families in the name of family values.”

TWO is a non-profit think tank and educational organization that counters right wing disinformation campaigns, debunks the ex-gay myth, and provides accurate information about the lives of GLBT people. Besen, the group’s founder and Executive Director, is the author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking The Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.”

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