(Bizarre Camp Leader Justin Lookadoo)

A Group That Repossesses ‘Gay Underwear’ and Teaches That Gay People Are ‘Sexually Broken’ Has No Place Around 11-Year Old Children, Says TWO

MIAMI BEACH – Truth Wins Out expressed its concern over the launch of a new summer camp that spreads the dangerous “ex-gay” message to children as young as eleven years old.  The Ignite Student Outreach youth camps will kick-off Monday in Bradenton, Fla., before migrating to three additional southern states. Exodus International, an organization that teaches gay men to play football and repossesses their underwear if they are deemed too gay, will run the “ex-gay” component of the camp.

“Camp should be about fun and games, not fundamentalist mind games aimed at brainwashing youth,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It is deeply troubling that conservatives who would never take their children to an R-rated movie, will enroll their kids in a summer camp that is fixated on homosexuality. Even more disturbing is that this camp will poison the minds of impressionable young children with outdated stereotypes, faulty science and distortions about gay life.” (Read More)

(Weekly Column)

Only a day before “ex-gay” leader Alan Chambers admitted that praying away the gay doesn’t work, the Southern Baptist Convention was working to expand its ex-gay ministry program. The once slavery-loving church, hired Texas pastor Bob Stith as its National Strategist for Gender Issues, with the goal of promoting ex-gay programs within the denomination.

A church spokesperson told the Associated Baptist Press that the grandiose sounding strategist role “has been a culmination of many years of planning and praying.” Well, as we are often reminded, God works in mysterious ways. The SBC press release barely cleared the media fax machines when Exodus International’s President Alan Chambers told the Los Angeles Times, that he still, at times, (like when he’s awake or dreams) has attractions to men and “by no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete.”

This acknowledgment mirrored his infamous quote in my book, Anything But Straight: “Put me in a bathhouse,” said Chambers, “Would I find people attractive or would it stir me? It probably would.”

If Exodus doesn’t actually turn gay people straight, then what’s the point of the organization? How do they justify their million-dollar budget and staff of twelve when the church money might be better spent on helping the poor?

At its root, the “ex-gay” ministries are support groups designed to offer strategies to keep people out of gay establishments or relationships that they desperately want to be in. In the old days, this was simply called being in the closet. But Exodus figured out that misery likes company and that they could profit by creating a communal closet where self-loathing and sexually frustrated homosexuals could whine to each other about their unhappiness. (Read More)

“Ex-gay” group Exodus International swears they love gay people when in front of the mainstream media. When talking to their right wing base or Christian media, however, they don’t sound quite so loving.

Truth Wins Out’s latest video, “The Two-Faced Love of Exodus International” shows a series of mean-spirited clips from Exodus International’s TV show “Pure Passion.”

Within the first fifteen minutes of the show, the hosts repeatedly denigrate the lives and families of GLBT people - referring to them as perverse or sexually broken. Exodus may talk a good game, but the truth is, their disdain for openly gay people does not lie far below their surface professions of love. In essence, when they say they “love” gay people, they are bearing false witness.

“Ex-Gay” group Exodus International swears they LOVE gay people when in front of the mainstream media. When talking to their right wing base or Christian media, however, they don’t sound quite so loving. 

Parents and Friends of “Ex-Gays” (PFOX) has always been somewhat of a oddity. It was founded by the eccentric Anthony Falzarano (Roy Cohn’s former houseboy), who fronted the group for the Family Research Council - which funneled PFOX tens of thousands of dollars. After Falzarano ratted out the right, saying they did not truly support “ex-gay” ministries (just ad campaigns to pass anti-gay laws) the right wing drove him out of Washington.

The organization was then taken over by Regina Griggs, a mother who was embittered because she had an openly gay son. To help her with the operation, Griggs enlisted discredited therapist Richard Cohen, who was booted from the American Counseling Association. Like Falzarano, he was also chased away by the Religious Right in 2007, after a series of humiliating television performances.

Now, Griggs is on her own and clearly hasn’t done her homework. The blog, Good As You, discovered that in a radio and print interview supporting Surgeon General nominee James Holsinger for One News Now, a Christian media outlet, Griggs blatantly (or ignorantly) twisted the policy of the American Psychiatric Association to fit her anti-gay agenda. According to Griggs:

“The official position of all medical and mental health organizations and the American Psychiatric Association is that there is no biological or genetic cause or replicated study for homosexuality,” she declares. “So, why as a doctor should he not be allowed to interpret and support the fact that change is possible? That’s what medical science says.”

The truth is,the APA has no official position on the causes of homosexuality. The APA, however, has made many policy decisions which would support the view that the scientific studies of homosexuality do, in fact, support that there is some biological component to homosexuality.

“Griggs flat out lied to this Christian news outlet, disrespecting its audience and the members of her own organization,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Distorting science and medicine in defense of a Surgeon General nomination, certainly is not going to help James Holsinger’s case for confirmation.”

(Dr. Warren Throckmorton, Left)

Exodus Puffs Up Numbers, In Article, To Conceal Lack of Growth, Says TWO

MIAMI BEACH – In a puff piece in today’s Chicago Tribune, conversion therapist Dr. Warren Throckmorton used an anonymous source to tout his therapeutic success. This turn toward concealing sources comes after Throckmorton pulled his “ex-gay” video “I Do Exist” from the marketplace after it was revealed that his poster boy, Noe Gutierrez, was having second thoughts on what he called the “divisive message of the ex-gay ministries.”

The Tribune article says that Throckmorton has worked with “about 250 patients,” yet the only one to come forward was “Jeff”, an anonymous source. It appears from the article, that this man had just recently “succeeded,” offering no evidence that Throckmorton’s therapy has any longevity.

“I am still waiting for Warren Throckmorton to show long-term success stories, rather than trotting out freshly indoctrinated anonymous sources,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “He claims he has counseled 250 patients, so I find it suspicious and troubling that he can’t find a handful of success stories to go on record with a major newspaper. Unlike Throckmorton, I can always find victims of such therapies to openly discuss how they were harmed by such therapeutic practices.”
(Read More)

Senator Obama (D-IL) released the following statement Thursday morning.

“America’s top doctor should be a doctor for all Americans, and so I have serious reservations about nominating someone who would inject his own anti-gay ideology into critical decisions about the health and well-being of our nation.”

“As with other nominees, I will listen to the testimony of Dr. James Holsinger, but this Administration must know that the United States Surgeon General’s office is no place for bigotry or ideology that would trump sound science and good judgment,” Obama’s statement continued. (Read More)

- Dr.Discrimination, Left -

By Wayne Besen

With an approval rating hovering at Nixonian levels and Rush Limbaugh firing spitballs from the right over immigration, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to guess that George W. Bush would try to appease conservatives by nominating a Neanderthal for Surgeon General.

Out from the cave ambled James W. Holsinger, the most homophobic doctor since Isaiah Washington - the Grey’s Anatomy’s star - had to go to rehab for dropping F-bombs. But Washington was a make believe doctor, while Holzinger is very real and has the potential to inflict great harm on the GLBT community.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Holsinger started Hope Springs Community Church in Kentucky. Rev. David Calhoun, the pastor of the big aluminum trailer church said that Hope Springs has an “ex-gay” ministry.

“We see that as an issue not of orientation but a lifestyle,” Calhoun said. “We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.” (Read More)