Focus in the Family has long been truth challenged. A story on its website this week, “Psychiatric group will host ‘historic’ symposium on faith and therapy,” shows just how unethical and slippery the organization can be.

In discussing its quarterly “ex-gay” roadshow, in one sentence, the organization claims, “Love Won Out says it does not attempt to ‘fix’ gays and lesbians, a charge heard often from its critics in the APA.”

In the same paragraph, Focus claims, “We exist to help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome.”

Um, excuse me, but people with more than three brain cell recognize that “fixing” and “overcoming” homosexuality are the exact same thing. It is a shame that Focus on the Family, a group that claims to represent morals and values, has such trouble with honesty. What message do they send to children when they peddle falsehoods and twist words to suit their radical agenda?

By Jack Drescher, MD

(Reprint from AGLP Newsletter, April 2008)

The last AGLP Newsletter announced this year’s APA annual meeting would include a symposium, “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension.” AGLP has no official connection to the symposium, although our convention newsletter routinely reports APA programs that may be of interest to our members.

The symposium’s organizer wondered, “Could we ever get a group of scientists and clinicians on both sides of the religious divide to seek common ground while committed to honesty in the scientific research about homosexuality–no matter what the outcome?” This is an interesting question. Yet while the panel includes two psychiatrists and a psychologist with strong religious interests, there are no scientists. Instead there is a controversial gay Episcopal bishop and the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So what is going on here? (Read More)

By Wayne Besen

In 2002, a large gay rights organization was hosting a luncheon that featured a transgender speaker. During the Q&A, there was discussion on the merits of adding “gender identity” to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) - which, if passed, would protect people from being fired because of their sexual orientation.

In the middle of a serious debate, a new staffer, who was just hired from the bluest city in a blue state, earnestly rose to his feet. He proclaimed that he “couldn’t comprehend” anti-trans attitudes and was dumbfounded that average people still held deep-seated prejudices against such non-conforming individuals.

“Why was this out-of-touch person hired for a GLBT movement job?” I thought to myself, upon hearing his assertion. It was one thing to believe that transgender Americans deserve equality - which I do - and quite another to be “perplexed” that some conservatives are still freaked out by transgender (and, yes, gay) people.

If we are really interested in change, employees of GLBT groups should be as comfortable in the Waffle House as they are in the U.S. House of Representatives. If you can’t speak the language of the American people, then you aren’t much help to the cause.

Workers at our major GLBT organizations should be encouraged to get out of their sterile cubicles and visit places where discrimination is still a daily part of life. It is easy to lose touch with the very people we are trying to persuade, and get a false sense of security when living inside an insular world.

I know this to be true, because I live in New York City, and previously resided in Miami Beach and Washington, DC. Without frequent travel to other regions, it would be simple to confuse the echo chamber of Chelsea with the thoughts and values of Middle America.

Unfortunately, there are some activists who are living in a bubble. This was made clear to me on a liberal GLBT list serve last week when some advocates claimed that it did not matter whether Americans thought homosexuality was inborn or a choice. Nothing, of course could be further from the truth.

To mainstream America, the question of nature vs. nurture is the only one that matters. In most of the country, when a person comes out they get asked three questions:

1) When did you know you were gay?
2) Are you sure it’s not a phase?
3) Are you able to change?

Of course, the answers most often given are:

1) I’ve always known I was gay.
2) It definitely isn’t a phase.
3) I believe I was born gay and there is no way I could change.

When a person comes out to people they care about, these straightforward answers are enough to turn many people from anti-gay to pro-gay. These responses help people realize:

1) Sexual orientation is often fixed at a very young age, if not in the womb
2) A person’s coming out is not some sort of rebellion or attempt to mock religion or societal norms
3) Attempts to go straight are a waste of time and quite possibly harmful, so why try?

The rise in acceptance of GLBT people directly correlates with the understanding that sexual orientation is a natural phenomenon. A May 2007 Gallup Poll showed that 42 percent of Americans believe that homosexuality is inborn, compared with 13 percent in 1977. The number who say upbringing and environment fell from 56 percent in 1977 to 35 percent today.

Residual opposition primarily comes from those who still believe that homosexuality is a casual choice that can be altered through therapy and prayer. A November 2004 Lake, Snell, Perry and Associates poll shows that 79 percent of people who think homosexuality is inborn support civil unions or marriage equality. Among those who believe sexual orientation is a choice, only 22 percent support civil unions or marriage rights.

In a perfect world, it would not matter whether sexual orientation was a product of nature or nurture. But, this is the nation that twice elected George W. Bush. Clearly, the issue of “choice” matters and activists who deny this reality are doing so at their own peril and that of the GLBT movement.

Of course, the message should not be shame-based, such as, “we can’t help being gay.” It is perfectly fine for homosexuals to point out that they are happy and would not change if they could. We should also say that homosexuality is a natural and normal orientation - and the moral equivalent of heterosexuality. In doing so, we blunt the right wing’s pseudo-science where they claim being gay can only come from parental neglect or abuse.

Obviously, bisexuals have some choice in partners. However, they have no more choice in the fact they are bisexual than heterosexuals or homosexuals have in their uni-polar attractions.

While who we love is not a choice, we can choose to be effective activists by telling the truth about sexual orientation and not promoting bizarre ideas that are a distraction and anathema to mainstream Americans.

The cynically named “Day of Truth,” organized by the antigay Alliance Defense Fund and planned for April 28, is little more than an excuse to inject “ex-gay” propaganda and a disruptive dose of antigay prejudice in public schools.

Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales, who was inappropriately treated by famed reparative therapist Joseph Nicolosi, has released a new video that itemizes the untruths and prejudices that are promoted by the DOT. Check it out:

The Maryland pro-tolerance parent-faculty group Teach The Facts launches a thoughtful discussion of research into sexual fluidity among some women.

Various researchers, among them Dr. Lisa Diamond in Sexual Fluidity - Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, have asserted that sexual orientation in some women naturally drifts in both directions: from heterosexual to homosexual or vice versa. In other words, some women are naturally attracted to attributes other than a given person’s gender characteristics. Such fluidity appears to be extremely uncommon among men.

The TTF blog compares intelligent analysis of sexual fluidity and bisexuality with the ideological rigidity and deception of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, an advocacy group which baselessly asserts that same-gender attraction is rooted in bad parenting or abuse rather than natural impulses; that all people can change; that change occurs by choice, not nature; and that change only occurs one way — from homosexual to heterosexual.

Jason Cianciotto, executive director of Wingspan and former research director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was subjected by his parents and a “Christian lay counselor” to forced isolation, repression, and eventually abandonment when it became apparent that “change” wasn’t really possible.

Columnist Anne T. Denogean writes about Cianciotto’s difficult adolescence in an article in the Tucson Citizen:

His mother and stepfather are evangelical Christians whose attitudes on sexual orientation were honed in the pews of Southern Baptist churches.

“I was raised in the church . . . to believe that nothing else existed besides growing up and getting married to a woman and having kids,” Cianciotto said.

As he entered his pre-teen years, his friends became interested in girls. He didn’t share their excitement. When he was 13 and becoming sexually active with other boys, his parents sent him to therapy.

“My family found a Christian lay counselor, who . . . taught me I needed to go as deep in the back of the closet as I possibly could. And if I just said my prayers, went to church and told my parents what they wanted to hear, I could stop answering embarrassing questions.”

His concerned parents restricted his activities, hoping to prevent or reverse the development of a gay orientation. Cianciotto wasn’t allowed, for example, to perform in school plays or musicals.

“I could be in the marching band because I was a drummer, so maybe that was more masculine,” he said, adding, “I kind of got back at them by being a xylophone player.”

Despite dating girls for appearances, Cianciotto was gay and was sent back to counseling from age 16 to 19 by parents hoping for a conversion. At his lowest point, Cianciotto considered suicide.

“I really wanted to be what my family and what my religion told me I needed to be,” he said.

His parents threw him out, at age 19, after finding gay porn in his bedroom and learning he had attended a LGBT student support group.

“I was at work and came home and found all of my belongings in plastic bags on the front porch,” he said.

Albeit unintentionally, Cianciotto’s mother and counselor acted to crush him — his interests, his skills, his individuality — through extremist gender-role stereotypes, isolation from his peers, intentional ignorance, religious judgmentalism, and sheer bigotry. Far from redeeming Cianciotto from a destructive and suicidal lifestyle, they promoted precisely that sort of lifestyle.

Cianciotto was luckier than some GLBT throwaways; he had a tolerant father and stepmother, and was able to gain support and guidance from tolerant friends — the sort of institutional and peer support that ex-gay activists seek to deny to GLBT youths when they battle against gay-straight alliances, safe-space programs, and Days of Silence.

South African ex-gay pastor Ben Dlamini invited controversy when he sought police assistance to evict a gay couple from his house for allegedly violating house rules against same-gender affection.

Police declined to take action, finding that the matter was a personal dispute.

Lethuxolo Mafunisa and his partner, Prince McPherson, say that members of Dlamini’s congregation are still gay and that Dlamini — far from being ex-gay — is struggling with self-denial.

Hat tip: Queerty

Ex-gay survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano writes about the upcoming final performance of his one-man show, “Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House.”

The play, based on his experiences in Exodus’ ex-gay live-in program “Love In Action,” will be performed Friday, April 25, at the Tusten Theatre in Narrowsburg, N.Y.

eHarmony.com, the heterosexuals-only dating service that was once closely associated with Focus on the Family, is now being chastised by Focus’s CitizenLink newsletter and Boundless magazine after it published a nonjudgmental article about one-night stands which emphasized safety tips to avoid getting hurt.

Comments to the Boundless blog are mixed: Some are offended by eHarmony’s perceived affirmation of sexual self-gratification, some by eHarmony’s support for non-evangelical and non-Christian couples, and some by Focus on the Family’s apparent rush to judgment.

Teach The Facts, a group of Montgomery County, Maryland, parents and educators, offers a run-down on PFOX ex-gay literature that was distributed last week to local high-school students. TTF’s main points:

• The PFOX literature falsely claims that PFOX promotes tolerance, but PFOX’s web site is loaded with literature opposing tolerance.
• The PFOX literature illogically asserts that ex-gay self-denial, self-deception, and failure serve as proof that GLBT youth can and should seek help from unlicensed ex-gay therapists and political groups.
• The PFOX literature falsely insinuates that ex-gay activists who seek to silence and suppress gay students support self-determination, while advocates for academic freedom, tolerance, learning, and nonviolence oppose self-determination and happiness.