In recent weeks, Exodus International and Focus on the Family have promoted a report by Focus on the Family activist Jeff Johnston which claims that research supports the ex-gay contention that homosexuality is caused by childhood sexual abuse.
Nearly all the Focus report’s sources are antigay religious conservatives, including A. Dean Byrd, Mormon leader of the ex-gay therapy lobby NARTH.
On June 4 and again today, Exodus International cited Focus’ report as justification for antigay parents, pastors, and media to contact Exodus’ so-called “Professional Counselor Network” for advice to cure homosexuality. In fact, the counselor’s network is nothing more than Exodus’ member network of ex-gay activists — few of whom have any professional mental-health credentials.
The editors of the book have released the following statement to Truth Wins Out regarding Focus’ portrayal of their publication’s research.
We want to respond to a recent Focus on the Family characterization of scientific findings reported in our book, Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States (Oxford University Press) that misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality. The Focus on the Family description of the findings reported in Unequal Opportunity is inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature.
Most basically, the Focus on the Family characterization of the literature on childhood sexual abuse among gay men represents a misunderstanding of scientific approaches to distinguishing between correlation and causation. The book chapter in question reports that gay men are more likely to report childhood sexual abuse by men than are heterosexual men. This correlation does not mean that the reported abuse caused the adult sexual orientation. If that were the case, then the fact that some heterosexual men report sexual abuse by women means that sexual abuse by women “causes” heterosexuality in men. It is also worth noting that the argument that childhood sexual abuse causes homosexuality in gay men is undermined by the fact that the vast majority of gay men are not sexually abused as children.
One potential partial explanation for this correlation, and one that makes the most sense when you consider people of all orientations, is that some youth, particularly post-pubertal youth (who still cannot legally consent to sexual activity) have sexual experiences with males or females, depending on their pre-existing orientation. Let’ be very clear that this does not mean that these experiences are appropriate or healthy. However, it also does not mean that these experiences caused the sexual orientation of the youth. The development of a person’ sexual orientation is a complex and multifaceted process. The research into these processes has barely begun, and the development of sexuality is very difficult to study. Mischaracterizations of the scientific literature on the development of sexual orientation is not helpful to science.
Rather than mischaracterize these findings, we would like to point out the harm to health that can be caused by childhood sexual abuse among boys and girls of all sexual orientations. Childhood sexual abuse occurs to far too many young Americans and a large and growing literature supports that this abuse can cause lifelong damage to the physical and mental health and well-being of men and women of all sexual orientations. We suggest that Focus on the Family and other concerned organizations focus on how to work to ensure that all of our children remain safe from unwanted sexual experiences– whether heterosexual or homosexual.
That said, we want to state clearly that the published research does not support the claim that the development of a homosexual orientation is caused by childhood sexual abuse. Furthermore, adult homosexual orientation is no longer considered a pathology or a maladjustment. We urge those who are interested in trying to better understand some of these complex issues from a scientific perspective to read the discussions in our book, as well as the scientific literature on childhood sexual abuse, and not rely on second-hand interpretations.
While couples in Washington, D.C., seek to share in the joy of marriage, Focus on the Family is battling projecting onto those couples its own desire to put marriage — in Focus’ words — “on the chopping block.”
Instead of allowing healthy, loving, mature, and committed couples to marry, Focus on the Family wants voters to decide — through an illegal referendum — who should or shouldn’t marry, based on voters’ prejudices against sexual and religious minorities.
The effort to put civil social institutions and the private lives of Americans up for a vote reflects Focus on the Family’s disturbing contempt for individual freedom, religious liberty, family values, and national unity.
Even if one agrees that individual and religious liberty, and family values, should be damaged or destroyed in order to preserve a conservative cookie-cutter model of marriage for all, Focus’ model for marriage is unsettling.
Frank Worthen is a sexually confused man living in a largely sexless marriage with Anita, a woman whose son (from a past boyfriend) is openly gay and living with AIDS.
For more than 20 years, both Worthens have made a living from selling the home remedy of religious conversion to so-called heterosexuality, despite Frank’s ongoing sexual confusion and the failure of Anita’s ex-gay ideology to convert her son.
Anita’s attitude is that her son is broken and requires fixing: She says, “I cannot fix your kid, but I know God can.” Anita ridicules parents who affirm their gay children; she asserts that the parental closet is healthier, saying: “The thing about Love Won Out that is so profound and wonderful is that there’ so many parents in pain. You can hide among the crowd. You don’t have to go and wear a big banner that says, ‘My son’ gay.’”
Meanwhile, Frank scapegoats a pastor in his teenage years for his homosexual attractions — even though friends and family were at least vaguely aware of his sexual orientation since kindergarten. Frank tells Focus on the Family that his own inept and sometimes irresponsible choices prior to age 44 are synonymous with “the gay life,” and he falsely claims to have “left homosexuality” regardless of his attractions.
While many gay Christians and their families choose a path of sexual honesty and religious integrity, the Worthens have chosen denial and obfuscation.
The Worthens, sadly, are Focus on the Family’s role models for Love Won Out conference attendees. And it is this kind of shallow ex-gay marriage-of-convenience that Exodus and Focus say is threatened by the prospect of gay people being allowed to marry.
Without wishing for any harm to come to the platonic friendship of the Worthens, I think their “marriage” serves as a warning of the price that heterosexual Christians may pay when they deny marriage to others — and then get stuck in arranged marriages to gay partners, marriages formed out of duty to one’s religious community and not marital love.
Kevin Jennings is a former leader of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network — GLSEN — which since 1995 has been key to the formation of antibullying programs in thousands of public and private schools nationwide. Jennings was recently appointed by Secretary Arne Duncan to be Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools
This record of accomplishment angers the Family Research Council, which — in appeals here and here, has waged a smear campaign that accuses Jennings and GLSEN of promoting unsafe sexual behavior, and that equates antibullying efforts with “affirmation of homosexuality.”
Given these harsh allegations, in the spirit of fairness one might think that a benevolent FRC would give Jennings and GLSEN opportunities to disprove the allegations and defend their reputations — but that has not happened.
FRC’s supporters will not learn the truth about those who are falsely accused unless they venture on their own to sites that reportfacts about GLSEN which show religious-right critics to be distorting and fabricating key facts about GLSEN programs in order to scare conservative audiences, fuel anger and hatred toward gay students, and affirm bullying as a means of pressuring youths into fundamentalist ex-gay therapy.
In articles dated June 8 and June 11, the Family Research Council affirmed laws in foreign countries that imprison or execute gay people.
FRC is opposed to H.R. 2410, legislation that purportedly empowers the U.S. State Department to discourage foreign governments from enforcing laws that imprison or execute same-sex-attracted persons. The legislation also is said to support programs that affirm women’s right to contraception and disease prevention.
FRC unconditionally defends laws that punish homosexuality, no matter how harshly. And FRC offers just one solution for people around the world who face imprisonment for sexual honesty: Ex-gay re-education.
FRC says that if homosexual persons can change and become heterosexual, then they should be denied any rights until they do change. FRC then promotes a new 121-page document released by the antigay reparative-therapy lobby NARTH, which claims that cherry-picked factoids from 125 research studies support the myth that homosexuality is caused by bad parenting and abuse, and that anyone can change their orientation.
NARTH continues to refuse to submit its reinterpretations of mainstream research to professional peer review — and NARTH has been condemned by mainstream researchers for distorting their data and their informed conclusions.
Miss California USA announced today that it has fired Carrie Prejean for contract violations, CNN reported.
Prejean’s violations began in April when she was a no-show for numerous pageant assignments. Instead of performing her duties, Prejean appeared on Focus on the Family radio programs and in other antigay evangelical media to denounce California gay couples. Prejean claimed that her egocentric religious views were being somehow suppressed by those who expect a pageant winner to represent all Californians, not just self-important fundamentalists.
While Prejean presented herself to antigay evangelicals as a pro-family advocate, news emerged that Prejean had posed with baredbreasts for photos taken shortly before the Miss California pageant. Pleased with Prejean’s pro-family rhetoric, Focus on the Family suppressed news of the photos.
Meanwhile, pageant officials tried to contact Prejean about her absenteeism, but she refused their calls.
Outside the echo chamber of antigay evangelical media, Prejean became known — and will be remembered — as a liar. As Truth Wins Out noted in April:
Roger Neal, a San Diego public relations representative who advised Prejean, said she was untruthful. “She chose to stand up in church and in front of the media and say something that was a lie,” Neal said. “No one ever said, “You must apologize to the gay community,’ and no one ever said, “Don’t talk about your faith or your religion.’ Those two things never came out of anybody’ mouth.”
Prejean was not the pro-family advocate that she claimed to be; she was what antigay evangelicals frequently label their critics: A “false prophet.” A promoter of moral hypocrisy. A profiteer. And a poseur.
Donald Trump was wrong to excuse Prejean’s unprofessional behavior in April — and right to terminate her now.
I’m on my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan to give a presentation at Grand Valley State University on the harm caused by the “ex-gay” industry. My speech, followed by a panel discussion, is in response to Focus on the Family’s traveling road show, Love Won Out, which will be in town on Saturday. Having countered several of these conferences, I must confess, I still don’t understand what point they are trying to make.
If Focus on the Family’s goal is to convert gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people into evangelical Christians, they are doing a lousy job. It seems convincing gay people to end their relationships is a far higher priority to this ministry than having gay people develop personal relationships with Jesus Christ.
For every guilt-ridden homosexual who temporarily falls under their spell, they lose hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people who view their conversion program as intolerant. If your ministry causes many gay people to write off not just Christianity, but all religion, by what measurement can you consider your evangelizing a success?
At Love Won Out, speakers go to great lengths to profess their deep concern over the mental and physical well being of homosexuals. It turns out, however, that the anti-gay sentiment expressed at these conferences may be hazardous to the health of GLBT people.
A new Emory University study concludes that the bans on same-sex marriage pushed by Focus on the Family can be tied to a rise in the rate of HIV infection. The scientists found that a constitutional ban on marriage equality raised the rate by four cases per 100,000 people.
“We found the effects of tolerance for gays on HIV to be statistically significant and robust, they hold up under a range of empirical models,” says Hugo Mialon, an assistant professor of economics. “Intolerance is deadly,” Mialon said. “Bans on gay marriage codify intolerance, causing more gay people to shift to underground sexual behaviors that carry more risk.”
Earlier this year, a study by San Francisco State’s Caitlin Ryan concluded that “teens who experienced negative feedback (when they came out) were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”
So, if Love Won Out is truly concerned about the health of gay people, particularly teenagers, it will transform into a gay affirming ministry. To continue down their destructive path of judgmental condemnation is senseless and significantly harmful to the very GLBT people that Focus purports to want to help.
Of course, Focus on the Family will insist that they love gay people and just want to help those who are unhappy. But, isn’t it a conflict of interest when you lobby to pass anti-gay laws that make gay people miserable and then offer yourself up as the panacea to the pain? Is it not hypocritical to sponsor a conference supposedly about love, where the main speaker is Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International?
Chambers hosts a Christian television show, Pure Passion, which pollutes the airwaves by repeatedly calling gay people “sexually broken” and “perverse.” Exodus also sells “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness” a book authored by Andy Comiskey that says, “Satan delights in homosexual perversion.” Such pronouncements are often accompanied by exorcisms given by churches affiliated with ex-gay ministries. Obviously, such extreme actions are anathema to creating a welcoming church environment for GLBT people.
Focus on the Family also claims its conferences are for parents, friends, family members or ministry leaders who want to “lovingly reach out with uncompromised faith.”
Genuine love, of course, requires making the very compromises and sacrifices that Love Won Out is telling people are unnecessary. Rejecting a friend or family member’s innate sexual orientation as sinful and defective, rarely leads to a healthy relationship based on trust and mutual respect.
Finally, the investigative reporter Thomas Maier just released a groundbreaking book, “Masters of Sex.” In it, he reveals that the famed sex research team, Masters and Johnson, had fabricated claims of curing gay people in their 1979 book, “Homosexuality in Perspective.” Given this vital new information, why hasn’t Focus on the Family taken the opportunity to review and question the validity of its program? Wouldn’t that be the moral course of action to take?
The hard truth is, Focus on the Family’s leaders are only capable of loving people exactly like themselves, which explains their tremendous efforts to remake gays in their image. While their splashy road show may get high marks for good theatre, it’s ultimately futile because their transparent version of “love” rarely wins converts and succeeds only at convincing most gay people to run out of the church door.
The gross hypocrisy and outright cynicism is difficult to believe.
Focus on the Family is bringing their notorious “ex-gay” road show, Love Won Out, to Grand Rapids, Michigan this week. In response, Grand Valley State University is hosting my presentation, followed by a panel discussion on the danger of ex-gay programs.
Focus on the Family is livid and demands that the panel include anti-gay Focus on the Family speaker Michael Brown. They are urging their huge mailing list to complain and bully university officials.
“The ‘Religion and Homophobia’ panel discussion seems awfully one-sided for an event sponsored by the school’s ‘inclusion and equity’ department,” wrote Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations at Focus on the Family.
Focus on the Family might be taken seriously if they had actually extended an invitation to gay advocates and pro-gay preachers to speak at Love Won Out. I’d be more than happy to present my slide show, “Pray Away The Gay” on Saturday, at the Focus on the Family event. I’d even bring along the original photograph I took of Love Won Out’ ex-gay founder, John Paulk, (pictured) fleeing a gay bar.
Unfortunately, no such invitation was forthcoming. It seems that Focus on the Family has a double standard when it comes to inclusion and diversity. They demand representation, yet do not have the decency, manners and common courtesy to extend an invitation of their own. And, they wonder why their assertions of “love” and “morality” are deemed politically motivated and insincere.
If you are encouraged that Grand Valley is offering this program — “Religion and Homophobia: Spiritual Violence in our Community” — then let the university know: 616-331-2221.
If you are in Michigan and would like to attend the panel, please visit www.TruthWinsOut.org for more information.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire legislators have approved a measure that would make the state the sixth to allow gay marriage.
Gov. John Lynch is expected to sign the legislation Wednesday afternoon.
He had promised a veto if the law didn’t clearly spell out that churches and religious groups would not be forced to officiate at gay marriages or provide other services.
The Senate passed the measure Wednesday, and the House followed later in the day. The House vote was 198-176.
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa already allow gay marriage. Maine opponents hope to overturn that state’s law with a public vote.
Exclusive Truth Wins Out interview with Thomas Maier
For decades, anti-gay organizations have gleefully pointed to Masters & Johnson’s 1979 book, “Homosexuality in Perspective”, that claimed to cure homosexuality. Indeed, Dr. William H. Masters and Virgina E. Johnson, the husband and wife sex research team, went on Meet the Press on Sunday, April 22, 1979, to discuss their finding that homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals. The book has since been used by the so-called “ex-gay” industry to “prove” gays could go straight, if they just tried hard enough.
In his groundbreaking new book, “Masters of Sex”, author Thomas Maier discovered through investigative reporting that the results of Masters & Johnson’s study were entirely fabricated. Virginia Johnson acknowledged that the results were fake. She had actually argued in 1978 that book should never have seen the light of day – but it was already to late in the publishing process to undo the damage.
One can not overstate the importance of Maier’s findings. They undo the very underpinnings of the so-called “ex-gay” therapy movement, further showing that there is no scientific evidence or data to support the outdated idea that gay people can become heterosexual through therapy. Indeed, many people who have undergone such “treatment” claim the experience was harmful and that they were psychologically damaged. The American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.”
TWO Thanks Grand Valley State For Terrific Event Discussing The “Ex-Gay” Industry
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out thanked Grand Valley State University for hosting a top-notch event that evaluated the claims made by the “ex-gay” industry. In front of several hundred people, TWO’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, spoke about the harm done by Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conference, which will be in Grand Rapids on Saturday. Following his talk, he participated on a distinguished panel with local experts including:
• John Corvino, Wayne State University professor, author and lecturer;
‚Ä¢ Milt Ford, director of Grand Valley’ LGBT Resource Center;
• Judith Snow, Grand Rapids area forensic therapist and author;
• Doug Van Doren, pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ;
• Josh Sleutel, GVSU student, previous reparative therapy patient.
Besen will take-part in a protest response to Love Won Out on Saturday, hosted by the National Organization of Women. ( June 13 at the Calder Plaza from noon-1pm)
“We thank Grand Valley State University, the LGBT resource center – and particularly Dr. Milt Ford and Colette Seguin Beighley – for organizing an amazing event that had a community-wide impact,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “I hope people in Grand Rapids will join me at the NOW protest on Saturday, so we can help the parents and children being targeted by Focus on the Family. Our participation in such events helps people come out and even saves lives.”
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
The report’s only recent mainstream professional source is a 2008 book titled Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States, edited by Professors Richard J. Wolitski, Ron Stall, and Ronald O. Valdiserri. (Focus truncates the full title of the book to “Unequal Opportunity” and provides no link.)
Kevin Jennings is a former leader of the 
