Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Bows Out After Racist Ideology Discovered On Website

Miami Beach, Fla. – Truth Wins Out expressed satisfaction today in learning that Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, President of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has stepped down amid a cloud of controversy stemming from a polemic justifying slavery found on the group’s website. NARTH had also taken heat in recent months for advocating child abuse against gender variant children.

“NARTH was a sinking ship and they had no choice but to throw their captain overboard,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The group was quickly becoming the Mel Gibson of the ‘ex-gay’ world and this move was NARTH’s desperate way of saying, ‘timeout, we are going to rehab.’ However, it may be too late, as no spin can erase their racist and anti-gay sin.”

Trouble began mounting for Nicolosi after Canadian doctor Joseph Berger, who serves on NARTH’s “Scientific Advisory Board” wrote on the organization’s website that gender variant children should be sent to school in opposite-sex clothing so they can be “ridiculed” into conforming.

But criticism of NARTH reached a crescendo after “Scientific Advisory Board” member, Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf, penned a polemic on the group’s website that seemed to justify slavery and said that African-Americans taken away in chains on slave ships “were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa.”

The National Black Justice Coalition quickly called on NARTH to apologize and The Southern Poverty Law Center also turned up the heat by writing an illuminating article on the brouhaha. As a result, some NARTH members and supporters defected to protect their professional reputations. Dr. Warren Throckmorton canceled his appearance at NARTH’s annual conference in November and former committee member David Blakeslee resigned.

Meanwhile, NARTH tried to dodge the controversy by remaining silent. When the organization finally addressed the situation, it blamed gay activists by calling the self-inflicted mess “political correctness gone amok.”

When this strategy didn’t fly, NARTH attempted a strained apology that only made matters worse as they seemed to shift the blame for the incident to readers by saying, the comments made by Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf about slavery “have been misconstrued by some of our readers.”

“How can one misconstrue a diatribe that justifies slavery?” Asked TWO’s Besen. “Dr. Nicolosi showed a stunning incompetence in the realm of public relations and for this he paid dearly. He kept digging a hole and failed to see that this mushrooming catastrophe would soon reach the national stage.”

Indeed, the crisis exploded on October 15 after the Los Angeles Times published an article under the headline: “Ex-Gay Group Draws Fire From Allies.” The sub headline screamed: “Backers raise concerns about online postings. One advocated ridicule of nonconforming children; the other seemed to justify slavery.”

“NARTH had always operated on the fringes of the mental health community,” said Besen, “but now the façade of respectability had completely crumbled and the entire nation saw NARTH as a radical group with peculiar theories on race and homosexuality.”

On November 11, NARTH’s annual meeting was held at the Renaissance hotel in Orlando. Truth Wins Out organized a protest against NARTH where participants wore duck suits and chanted “Quack, Quack, Quacks, Stop The Attacks” and “Slavery Is Never Justified.”

“It remains unclear what occurred inside the hotel because NARTH has refused to discuss the details,” said Besen. “However, when the participants emerged, Nicolosi had passed the torch and was no longer President. This is a significant development that no one would have predicted six months ago.”

Dr. A. Dean Byrd, who is affiliated with the LDS church, was named president-elect. From Byrd’s comments at the Orlando conference, there is no indication the organization is altering its extreme ideological approach to science.

“It’s time for NARTH members to emerge from their places of safety in the academy and in the public sphere and proclaim the truth about homosexuality - homosexuality is neither innate nor is it immutable,” proclaimed Byrd.

Nicolosi co-founded NARTH in 1992 and has served as the organization’s leader since its inception. From the beginning, the group combined a combatively homophobic agenda with bizarre pseudoscientific theories. For example, Dr. Nicolosi has said factors in the causation of homosexuality include “fear of tall bridges” a “phobia of the phone” and once claimed that gay men are more likely to be “pee shy.”

He has encouraged his clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and calling friends “dude.” The doctor also applauded a patient in one of his books as making progress toward heterosexuality after he didn’t give a man his phone number at a bathhouse after they already had sex. Even more ludicrous is Nicolosi’s notion that, “non-homosexual men who experience defeat and failure may also experience homosexual fantasies or dreams.”

NARTH does not keep track of its failure rate. When asked by a Newsweek reporter why he kept no statistics, Nicolosi claimed, “I don’t have time.” More troubling is that Nicolosi does have the time to analyze children as young as three, telling the Advocate magazine that, “It’s my job to increase the possibility of a heterosexual future for these effeminate boys.”

NARTH member Dr. Jeffrey Satinover once reported that Prozac might be a cure for homosexuality. Another major NARTH contributor is Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika, a book that partially blamed gay people for the Holocaust. “The Pink Swastika will show that there was far more brutality, torture, and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi deviants and homosexuals than there ever was against homosexuals,” wrote co-author Kevin E. Abrams in the preface describing the book.

The organization’s methods are so eccentric and bizarre that the American Psychological Association specifically condemned NARTH by name at the APA’s annual convention in August.

“For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APA’s concern about the position’s espoused by the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and so-called conversion therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”

While Nicolosi will no longer be the front man for NARTH, sources tell Truth Wins Out that he will continue to play an active behind-the-scenes role with the group after he steps down in 2007.

Truth Wins Out 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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‘These Extremists Would Flunk My Class,’ Says Professor

SAN DIEGO – A constitutional law professor assailed the American Family Association and right wing columnist Dennis Prager today for their attacks on Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who has said that he wants to take his Congressional oath with his hand on the Koran instead of the Bible.

“These extreme voices have clearly never read the U.S. Constitution and they would surely flunk my constitutional law class,” Bryan H. Wildenthal, a constitutional law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, told Truth Wins Out.

In response to Rep. Ellison’s request, the AFA urged supporters to “take action” by bullying members of Congress to “pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.

Right wing columnist Dennis Prager went even further on the AFA’s website by ranting that Ellison’s use of the Koran “undermines American civilization.” Prager continued by saying that only one holy book represents America.

“Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is,” wrote Prager. “Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

The problem with these right wing diatribes is that they are patently untrue and unconstitutional. Professor Wildenthal says the U.S. Constitution is clear on this issue when it says in Article VI, Clause 3:

“The Senators and Representatives . . . shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

The professor says three key points right wing ideologues should take away are:

(1) The Constitution does not require that one swear by any oath at all. Quakers, among others, have religious objections to swearing oaths, and the founding fathers in the late 1700s (unlike our modern day religious right) were quite sensitive to this, and so provided the alternative of simply and solemnly “affirming” that one will support the Constitution and otherwise fulfill the duties of office.

(2) Neither “oath” nor “affirmation” needs to be sworn with one’s hand on any book whatsoever, much less any particular religious text. By the way, nor does the Constitution make any mention anywhere (not in Art. VI, nor in the similar presidential “oath” or “affirmation” in Art. II) of the customary but purely optional phrase, “so help me God.” All the Constitution requires is that you affirm that you will support the Constitution and faithfully fulfill the duties of office.

(3) Any requirement to “swear” or “affirm” using any religious book (or to be forced to include language like “so help me God”) would clearly be an unconstitutional “religious test.”

“Combating right wing lies is a bit like catching snowflakes in a blizzard,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Win Out. “No matter how many you get, there is a another snow job coming. However, sometimes the dishonesty is so outrageous, such as the AFA’s desecration of the U.S. Constitution, we have no choice but to respond.”

Advocate Jim Burroway did some stellar work by analyzing an Amicus Brief that the Family Research Council submitted to the Maryland Court of Appeals for Conaway v. Deane. This case will decide whether marriage equality for gays and lesbians will be granted in that state.

Burroway found that the Family Research Council’s brief was filled with outdated research, serial exaggerations of scholarly work and outright lies. In a powerful point-by-point analysis, Burrowway dismembers the distortions and rights the wrongs disseminated by this hate group.

Matt Hill Comer, a student at UNC Greensboro, wrote a great column today discussing how a stealthy “ex-gay” camp, Ignite Student Outreach, recruited him and other North Carolinians with a slick brochure.

“After first going public with Ignite’s promotional invite, I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only gay North Carolinian to receive it,” wrote Comer. “Pam Spaulding, a nationally respected l lesbian blogger who lives in Durham, also received the invite. Ignite’s targeted e-mail campaign toward gay youth and activists is telling of an active attempt to recruit gay youth in the South.” (Read More)

(Scott Davis - Alan Chambers Right Hand Man)

(Wayne Besen’s Weekly Column)

I am frequently asked if the big screen comedy depicting a wacky ex-gay camp, “But I’m a Cheerleader,” accurately reflects these conversion groups. People are surprised to learn that the hilarity and hijinx portrayed in the movie, starring drag diva RuPaul, is not farfetched from reality. Sometimes it is hard to tell if the zany movie is art imitating life or the other way around.

For example, this week we have learned that Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization, has partnered with a Christian group, Ignite Student Outreach, to produce the campiest ex-gay camp America has ever seen. The featured speaker at the summer retreat is Justin Lookadoo, a peroxide blond who looks like punk rocker Billy Idol on crack.

If you click on Lookadoo’s webpage, he poses bent over while grabbing his tush. He lists among his favorite singers “Ricky Martin, when he was still Latino and Michael Jackson, when he was still black.”

Lookadoo and other “wholesome” figures will lead four summer camps this summer in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Ostensibly, they cater to all Christian youth, but if you delve below the surface, it appears to be a thinly-veiled front for ex-gay recruitment and the indoctrination of young Christian leaders. (Read More)