Exodus Global Alliance Is Selling False Hope and Faulty Science To Vulnerable and Desperate People, Says TWO
NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org denounced a so-called “ex-gay” religious symposium near Toronto that will peddle anti-gay stereotypes, twist legitimate science and promote discrimination. The event, hosted by Exodus Global Alliance, is part of a multi-million dollar worldwide effort to deceive people into believing homosexuality is a casual choice that can be cured through therapy and prayer. The goal is to shift public opinion, so a majority of voters will oppose legal equality for GLBT people.
“Exodus Global Alliance is selling false hope that will ultimately shatter families and ruin lives,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of New York City-based TruthWinsOut.org. “It is important that people realize that attempts to change sexual orientation can be dangerous and are rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health association in the world.”
The right wing symposium will take place at Morningstar Church in Scarborough, ON, May 8-10. It will feature several so-called “experts” who will misinform people about GLBT life and distort science to conform to their religious theories.
Exodus Global Alliance is the international component of a movement founded in the United States in 1973 to convince people that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation. Exodus International, based in Orlando, FL has a $1 million dollar budget and thirteen staff members. The organization works closely with Colorado-based Focus on the Family. Exodus Global Alliance has endorsed the criminalization of homosexuality in foreign countries and actively works to support anti-gay laws.
Nada Stotland, a Chicago psychiatrist and president-elect of APA, appeared at a meeting of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. In her presentation, she supported the cancellation of a controversial symposium, “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension.” The event would have featured notorious “ex-gay” therapist Warren Throckmorton who claims to cure gays by making them more assertive.
Stotland told the Bay Area Reporter’s Bob Roehr that, “Sessions are withdrawn at every meeting. Period. Because all it will do is stir up more controversy…This is not going to be of interest to the press four days from now.”
She reminded those in attendance, “Immediately after the board of trustees of the APA voted to support same-sex adoption, I was on the phone to the press.” She later was on Bill O’Reilly’s program supporting marriage equality. She pledged, “I will be there to defend science and people’s rights and people’s well-being.”
“Science depends on what questions are posed, what methods are used to answer the questions, and who answers them,” Stotland said in discussing the controversy. “Secondly, if you are going to pick on a group, it is incumbent on the pickers to make their case and not the pickees. If we are not quite positive on anything, then we err on the side of doing no harm to people.”
“It is incumbent on people who want to deny someone a right, to have utter convincing evidence that that is the right thing to do. Until that time, we do not do that.”
“We applaud Stotland’s strong commitment to defending science and her recognition that ‘ex-gay’ therapy can often do harm,” said Wayne Besen, TruthWinsOut.org’s Executive Director. “It is clear that Stotland cares about the mental health of GLBT people and will not back down from bullies on the right who try to distort our lives for political gain.”
Dr. Gary Remafedi Says Conservative Group Guilty of “Gross Misrepresentation” And Questions If Focus Actually Read His Article Before Misquoting It
NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org published a letter today from a researcher who claims Focus on the Family twisted his work. In the letter, Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, asked Focus on the Family’s leader James Dobson to stop misrepresenting his findings from a key 1992 study.
“I want to draw your attention to a gross misrepresentation of our research at the website of Focus on the Family,” Remafedi wrote in his letter to Dobson. “More important, had the authors of “Myths and Facts” actually read the article, they would have found no support for their contention that ‘many children experience a period of sexual-identity confusion when they can be influenced in either direction.’”
(Full Text of Letter Below)
Remafedi’s report was published in Pediatrics in 1992. The study explored patterns of sexual orientation in a representative sample of more than 34,000 Minnesota students in grades 7 to 12. Focus on the Family distorted his findings to make the case that young people should not learn about homosexuality because they were sexually confused, and could thus be influenced by educational material.
“Focus on the Family has engaged in a disturbing pattern of misrepresenting the work of legitimate researchers to further their anti-gay agenda,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of TruthWinsOut.org. “We call on Focus on the Family to immediately expunge all falsehoods and fallacies presented as‘facts’ from their past and present literature.” (Read More)
“Dr. Sacasta is giving a platform to spread backwards and outdated views that have nothing to do with science and everything to do with marketing and public relations.”
By CHRIS JOHNSON
A controversial symposium to address the relationship between religion and homosexuality is causing consternation among some psychiatrists and some gays, who argue that holding such a dialogue will legitimize homophobic views.
Controversy surrounding the event prompted a gay religious figure who was scheduled to speak at the event to cancel.
Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop by the Episcopal Church, had planned to voice his opinion at the forum, but has since pulled out. (Read More)
Sources have told TruthWinsOut.org today that Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson has pulled out of a controversial symposium featuring an infamous “ex-gay” therapist. The May 5 symposium, at the APA’s 2008 convention in Washington, was dealt a major blow with the news of Robinson’s decision. TruthWinsOut.org opposed the panel because it featured Dr. Warren Throckmorton, an unlicensed psychologist who compares “leaving” homosexuality to quitting smoking.
“We are pleased that Bishop Robinson has not lent his credibility to a political right wing platform disguised as a scientific symposium,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The debate over whether homosexuality is a curable metal illness was settled decades ago and is not debatable. This forum is nothing more than an underhanded way for anti-gay activists to make their outdated and intolerant views look respectable.”
In a disgraceful example of journalistic malpractice, the college newspaper The Daily Mississippian printed right wing talking points - while calling it an op-ed.
“Homosexuality is unhealthy,” writes Zack Williams, “Not in the way that cigarettes and booze are unhealthy, but in the way that drinking a shot of turpentine every Wednesday afternoon while perusing real estate catalogues for houses near nuclear waste dumps is unhealthy.”
TWO responded with a letter to the editor:
Dear Editor:
I read the anti-gay rant by Zack Williams with a mix of horror and amazement. How could a real newspaper allow such transparent lies to find their way into print? His error-laced article is not only profoundly immoral, but statistically and scientifically inaccurate.
For example, Williams cites that the life-span of gay men is 20 years less than heterosexuals. This lie came directly from Dr. Paul Cameron, a discredited psychologist who was kicked out of the American Psychological Association and Nebraska Psychological Association for distorting statistics about gay men. One would think that the Mississippian would fact check before it prints a hateful article that defames an entire population by citing a debunked researcher. Clearly, you have shoddy journalistic standards. Shame on you. (Read More)
On May 5, at APA’s 2008 convention in Washington, the group will host a symposium, at which one of the two mental health practitioner-panelists is Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a psychologist without state board certification and an advocate for “Sexual Identity Therapy,” which he says he has successfully applied to help patients “alter homosexual feelings or behaviors” and live their lives “heterosexually” with “only very few weak instances of homosexual attraction.”
The symposium, moderated by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Peteet, who chairs APA’s Corresponding Committee on Psychiatry, Religion and Spirituality, is titled “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension.” Indeed, the panel includes two prominent religious figures from radically different perspectives - New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and the Reverend Dr. Albert Mohler. Robinson came to nationwide attention in 2003 when he became the first non-celibate, out gay person elected an American Episcopal Church bishop, for the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, a nationally syndicated radio host, and a board member of James Dobson’s stridently anti-gay Focus on the Family. The symposium’s primary booster has noted that Mohler has distinguished himself among Christian right evangelicals in acknowledging that homosexuality may not be a choice. Left unmentioned, however, was Mohler’s statement that “if a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use.”
Robinson’s wisdom in appearing with Mohler - and the broader debate about LGBT advocates engaging those on the other side - are not what make this story intriguing, and indeed troubling. Instead it is the embrace by a scientifically-based organization, APA, of an unlicensed practitioner who espouses controversial professional opinions about homosexuality but can point to no peer-reviewed findings that his clinical approach has merit.
Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that the same defender of the symposium who credited Mohler with some degree of enlightenment on gay issues, Dr. David Scasta - a former president and newsletter editor of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists (AGLP) - has circulated a press release for the event dubbing it “a ‘balanced’ discussion,” the sort of characterization one might expect from intelligent design proponents demanding a seat on a panel of evolution experts.
Watch the video: Truth Wins Out and local GLBT equality advocates protested against Focus on the Family’s ex-gay roadshow in Mountain View, California, on April 12, 2008.
Truth Wins Out, a representative of the Metropolitan Community Church, a former “ex-gay,” and local GLBT groups conducted a prayer vigil, protest and discussion forum in conjunction with Focus on the Family’s ex-gay road show, titled “Love Won Out,” in San Jose, Calif.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that 700 people attended the ex-gay event. About 25 people protested outside.
Sadly, some attendees of “Love Won Out” sought to learn about gay people, not from actual gay people who stood peacefully nearby, but from Focus on the Family speakers who wage political and cultural warfare against a so-called gay “lifestyle”:
Anthony Jones, a church minister from the Pearly Grove Baptist Church in Fresno, said he came to learn to improve his ministry.
“I’m hoping to learn approaches on how to minister to homosexuals,” he said, “to know and understand what their lifestyle is.”
“We’re not saying you’re going to hell for being a homosexual,” he said. “We want to embrace them and love them but understand the sin of same-sex attraction.”
Buffy of The Gaytheist Agenda provides a detailed first-hand account and pictures of the protest and discussion forum. Joe.My.God has an overview with reader comments.
Truth Wins Out will air video from the events later this week.
UPDATE: Truth Wins Out posted the following video from the event:
Ex-Gay Watch Founder Michael Airhart To Blog Daily On Site
NEW YORK – TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) launched its innovative new website today, enhancing its ability to fight the ex-gay myth and right wing propaganda. The site will be a leading educational resource and an all-encompassing look at the dangerous world of conversion therapy. For years, the ex-gay industry had dominated the flow of information on this topic. With this site, our movement has finally surpassed our opponents and we now have the means to counter ex-gay lies and reach vulnerable people with messages of truth and hope.
“TruthWinsOut.org is a one-stop-shop for information on the ex-gay myth and an action center for those who want to fight back against this insidious industry,” said TWO’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We believe this site will help people come out, keep families together and even save lives. This is a great day for those who have long wanted to stop the spread of ex-gay misinformation and help people escape the ex-gay trap.”
Michael Airhart, who founded Ex-Gay Watch in 2002, will publish daily on TWO’s blog, offering his penetrating insights and a deep understanding of this topic. Airhart formerly worked as senior business editor for McClatchy-Tribune news wires in Washington. In 2005 he became a director for a leading blog syndication company. He also co-founded Men Can Stop Rape in 1997. (Read More)
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."
Exodus Global Alliance Is Selling False Hope and Faulty Science To Vulnerable and Desperate People, Says TWO
Nada Stotland, a Chicago psychiatrist and president-elect of APA, appeared at a meeting of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists. In her presentation, she supported the cancellation of a controversial symposium, “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension.” The event would have featured notorious “ex-gay” therapist Warren Throckmorton who claims to cure gays by making them more assertive.
