Reparative therapy, which seeks to “cure” homosexuality, is a destructive form of consumer fraud, where avaricious practitioners try to profit off their victims by instilling a deep sense of shame and guilt. There is not one shard of evidence supporting such efforts, while there is a long trail of blood and tears from the human casualties who bought into the lie that they were abnormal and needed to be converted into heterosexuals.
Traditionally, efforts to curtail this scam have focused on decreasing demand. Vividly highlighting the shattered lives and crushing heartbreak that results when people try to live a lie has helped keep some gay people out of such clinics. This is important because reparative therapists not only hurt their clients but they often upend the lives of spouses. These unfortunate individuals marry so-called “ex-gays” who mistakenly think they have been converted – but later find that their “progress” was a mirage brought on by wishful thinking and pressure from their therapist. This form of therapy also encourages clients to blame their parents for allegedly causing their homosexuality, leading to resentment, broken bonds, and the disintegration of previously close families.
With overwhelming evidence that reparative therapy is a fraud, legal organizations and legislative bodies are finally beginning to focus on cutting off the supply. In California, Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) introduced a bill that would prohibit children under 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts.” The measure would also require adults seeking such treatment to sign informed-consent forms indicating that they comprehend the possible dangers inherent with this kind of therapy, including depression and suicide.
Furthermore, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sent a complaint last week to two professional psychiatric associations urging them to investigate the unethical use of conversion therapy by a Portland psychiatrist. The complaint was sent to the Oregon Psychiatric Association (OPA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) charging that the Portland psychiatrist unethically subjected Max Hirsh, a 22-year-old University of Oregon student, to conversion therapy.
It is difficult to understand why such quackery is still legal. The American Psychiatric Association claims, “The potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self hatred already experienced by the patient.”
Yet, despite the warnings, a handful of opportunistic therapists are still profiting from their clients’ pain and enriching themselves by trafficking in junk science. It is a pockmark on modern psychiatry and a disgrace to the medical profession that these quacks are allowed to operate in the 21st Century.
Reparative therapists should be stripped of their college degrees, expelled from professional associations, and banned from practicing. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness. So how does the American Psychiatric Association or the American Counseling Association or the American Psychological Association justify the existence of a rogue cottage industry that promises to heal people who are not sick and fix clients who are not broken?
At its core, reparative therapy is about making money off desperate and vulnerable people and confirming the religious worldview of the therapist, instead of helping the client. This was made clear by Charles Socarides, the late co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), who once told the Washington Post: “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it. It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.”
Does this man sound like a serious practitioner that cares about his clients?
In lieu of respected doctors with scientific backgrounds, most reparative therapists are aggressive entrepreneurs with products to sell. Exhibit A is David Pickup, who until recently ran a counseling website that offered a $250 a month program called The Workout. Pickup described his con as “a unique program that helps a man who is dealing with homosexual issues to go deep and to understand that below the homosexual issues lies a lack of his own inherent masculinity.” Pickup now represents NARTH as an outspoken foe of the California bill. He said it would prevent therapeutic help to young rape victims with sexuality questions.
Pickup should be disbarred for wrongly conflating homosexuality with sexual abuse, deliberately confusing stereotypes with science, and falsely advertising that he has the ability to influence a client’s sexual orientation.
Psychological organizations need to stop trying to have it both ways. On one hand they claim that homosexuality is not a mental illness, while on the other hand they give a green light to ideological charlatans who treat gays as if they are pathological. This is an irrational and incoherent position that is not based on evidence, but cowardice. The mental health establishment’s leaders appear terrified that Rush Limbaugh or Focus on the Family might call them names if they ban this obvious form of malpractice. However, it is their solemn duty to “do no harm” and the false practice of reparative therapy is harm by definition.
The ex-gay think tank NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) reacted Monday to news of a California bill that would prohibit antigay therapist professionals from mistreating underage youths, and that would require all adult ex-gay clients of such professionals to sign an informed consent form — a form that NARTH and ex-gay “ministry” network Exodus International have opposed for decades.
NARTH said the California bill would “threaten the right of individuals with unwanted homosexual attractions to receive therapy.” NARTH has long made this contention that patients have a “right” to demand that medical professionals mistreat them. This is akin to a hypochondriac patient demanding the anticancer quack therapy laetrile (cyanide), or perhaps more appropriately, a Christian doctor insisting that she has a “right” to prescribe asbestos and nicotine to treat “unwanted Judaism and Islam” in her patients.
NARTH warns, “While this is a direct assault on everyone’s freedom it is also a not so subtle attack on religious liberty.”
The California legislation IS about medical malpractice, and it IS about liberties — specifically, the right to be informed and the freedom of religious and sexual minorities not to be defamed and abused by NARTH’s antigay and largely fundamentalist member therapists. As Truth Wins Out and others have documented, NARTH leaders have supported bullying, justified slavery, and abused legitimate researchers’ work.
NARTH seeks freedom from professional accountability, not religious freedom.
A California Senate committee today advanced SB 1172, a bill that would help protect citizens from harmful, ineffective ex-gay therapy. The law does not outright ban all ex-gay therapy, but it does prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from undergoing sexual orientation change efforts. It also requires that any prospective patient sign an informed consent form.
Incredibly, one of the witnesses at today’s hearing speaking on behalf of NARTH actually had the gall to quote the disavowed Robert Spitzer study. (Talk about incompetence!
Here is some background on NARTH for those fighting the bill:
Here are 13 Key Facts to know about NARTH:
1) Dr. George Rekers is on NARTH’s Board of Directors. He is the author of numerous books including, “Shaping Your Child’s Sexual Identity” and “Growing Up Straight: What Every Family Should Know About Homosexuality.” A major anti-gay figure that used to work at University of South Carolina, Rekers is also a founder of the Family Research Council and testified as an expert witness in favor of gay adoption bans in both Arkansas and Florida.
On May 5, 2010, Miami New Times reporters Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp discovered that he had vacationed with a male escort in Europe that he had met on RentBoy.com. When the anti-gay doctor and his hooker arrived at Miami International Airport, reporters photographed them with a little pink camera. Confronted with the evidence, Rekers said he learned that his companion was a prostitute only midway through their vacation.
“I had surgery,” Rekers told the New Times, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.”
2) Arthur Abba Goldberg was a prominent member of NARTH’s Board of Directors. He is also the co-founder of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). On February 15, 2010, a Truth Wins Out (TWO) and South Florida Gay News (SFGN) investigation revealed that Goldberg was a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope”. Goldberg was sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes and served six months in prison. Upon completing his parole, he secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people. As a result of this investigation, Goldberg was removed from NARTH’s Board of Directors in March 2010.
3) In 2006, Gerald Schoenwolf, PhD, also a member of NARTH’ “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a polemic on the group’ website that seemed to justify slavery: “With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,” wrote Schoenwolf. “It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.”
4) In 2006, NARTH psychiatrist Joseph Berger, MD, a member of its “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a paper encouraging students to “ridicule” gender variant children. “I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex–but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings,” Dr. Berger wrote on NARTH’ website. “On the contrary, don’t interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.”
5) NARTH associates with known extremists. At one NARTH convention, Richard Cohen served as a therapy trainer. Cohen once belonged to a cult that practiced nude therapy and was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2003 for malpractice. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a NARTH therapist, has written that Prozac may cure gayness. Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, has been a frequent contributor to NARTH’ website. Lively’ book, “The Pink Swastika” blames the holocaust on gay people. NARTH therapist Christopher Austin, who taught seminars for NARTH, was convicted for sexually abusing his clients.
6) NARTH habitually distorts research. In 2008, Dr. Lisa Diamond, University of Utah, publicly rebuked NARTH in a Truth Wins Out YouTube video. Diamond claimed that Dr. Nicolosi deliberately twisted her work for political gain. NARTH also uses outdated studies from up to 100 years ago and repackages these invalid studies as new.
7) NARTH recommends “treating” males as young as three years old, referring to them as “pre-homosexual boys.” In our view, this is consumer fraud since parents are unlikely to see results, despite expensive therapy sessions. We also believe forcing children to undergo traumatic, shame inducing “therapy” is child abuse that may cause lasting psychological scars.
8) Reparative therapy is not considered a legitimate and accepted form of psychological care. It is soundly rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America. The American Psychological Association says attempts to change sexual orientation can cause, “anxiety, depression and self destructive behavior. In August 2009, the American Psychological Association produced a landmark report that said, there was “no evidence” that ex-gay therapy was effective, and many cases it was linked to harm. There are survivor organizations to help the victims of such therapy, as well as support groups for spouses who married a gay partner who could not change sexual orientations.
9) The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.
10) NARTH believes that heterosexuality is quite malleable. The group’ founder, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, claims that if a straight male suffers “defeat or failure” he could become vulnerable to homosexuality.
11) NARTH is not a secular organization, as it often claims. For many years, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi served as a spokesperson for the far right Christian organization Focus on the Family. On CNN’ 360 Degrees with Anderson Cooper, (April 14, 2007), Nicolosi said, “We, as citizens, need to articulate God’ intent for human sexuality.” At the Feb. 10, 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix, the “secular” therapist told the audience, “When we live our God-given integrity and our human dignity, there is no space for sex with a guy.”
12) Upon co-founding NARTH, its co-founder, Dr. Charles Socarides, who has a gay son that once served as President Bill Clinton’ gay liaison, told The Washington Post, “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it. It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.”
13) NARTH’s co-founder, Joesph Nicolosi encourages male clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and referring to friends as “dude”. NARTH therapists have been known to practice rubber band therapy, where a gay client is made to wear a rubber band and snap it on his wrist when sexually stimulated. It is a mild form of aversion therapy meant to “snap” the client out of the moment of attraction. NARTH members have also been known to practice “touch therapy”, where a client sits in the therapist’ lap for up to an hour, while the therapist caresses him.
I thought I had seen it all in terms of grotesque lies from “ex-gay” activists.
But today, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and International Healing Foundation charlatan Christopher Doyle surprised me by launching the most cynical and dishonest “ex-gay” effort to date. Not only is he engaging in stealth evangelism of the most degrading and dehumanizing kind, he is targeting vulnerable LGBT youth with a special brand of quack-therapy. And he is concealing his true goal — converting these kids to heterosexuality through prayer and therapy.
On the Day of Silence, which is a campaign to counter anti-LGBT bullying, Doyle writes an insincere op-ed in the Christian Post, that makes him appear sympathetic to LGBT youth and an opponent of bullying. At the end of his trashy piece, he directs readers to a new website he created called Acception. According to Doyle:
Acception is a new groundbreaking, national campaign featuring a solutions-based educational film and classroom curriculum. Our mission is to help educators provide solutions to the nation’s bullying epidemic while empowering students to become change agents so they can step up and “Be A Hero” in their own schools to prevent bullying.
Wow, it sounds like this “ex-gay” culture warrior has turned over a new leaf.
That is until you read the copious “ex-gay” links on his ostensibly LGBT anti-bullying page. It takes you to a whose-who of the “ex-gay” industry’s mad men, where quacks routinely scar the minds of youth if their parents are willing to cough up the hefty fee for ineffective and detrimental therapy. The most cynical part, is that other parts of the site hide links to notorious “ex-gay” organizations in between good links of pro-gay groups that legitimately help youth. The result is that Doyle is assisting kids get into the clutches of discredited hucksters such as the International Healing Foundation’s Richard Cohen. Do loving parents really want their teenagers going to “therapy” with this clown? Because that is where Doyle is sending them.
To fool parents, educators, and youth, Doyle even has a slick new video. Stealing a page from Invisible Children, another stealth evangelical outfit, Doyle has an online store that sells a cool “Be a Hero” bracelet.
When a creep like this makes his living by exploiting children, he is the worst of the worst, the dregs of society and a stomach turning slime ball. Quite frankly, I prefer Fred Phelps, the Kansas preacher who holds up “God Hates Fags” signs. At least he is honest about where he is coming from and tells you exactly how he feels. It takes a special kind of snake, one with no morals or scruples, to lure kids who are getting beat up in school into “ex-gay” therapy by setting up a fake program that looks like a “safe space” but is instead a potentially life-destroying trap.
Make no mistake about it, Doyle is a committed, hardcore NARTH guy. In Nov. 2010, I joined Joe Jervis to protest the NARTH convention in Philadelphia. Joe took his camera and got right up in Doyle’s face, capturing this shot of him slithering away from the conference:
I am writing this blog post in the hopes that every LGBT organization that deals with youth will read it. Don’t be fooled by this bogus campaign and Trojan Horse website. Far from opposing school violence, Doyle’s work and that of his friends is significantly worse than school bullying — because they are adults who should know better. And the scars created by so-called reparative therapy can last a lifetime.
On a final note, this is not the first fake attempt of “ex-gay” therapists to rebrand themselves hoping to tap into new markets. Recently, Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation, which Doyle works with, also softened its rhetoric.
Don’t be foolish and buy their poison. Stay away at all costs. The techniques used by this unsavory crowd of self-loathing reprobates is harmful and outright dangerous.
Today, Dr. Robert Spitzer repudiated his much-criticized 2001 study that claimed some “highly motivated” homosexuals could go from gay to straight.
Now it is up to anti-gay and so-called “ex-gay” organizations to show some dignity and class by expeditiously removing all citations of Dr. Robert Spitzer’s study from their web pages. This is nothing short of a major integrity test to show which groups are honest and decent enough to do the right thing.
PFOX should be the first to act. This group has relentlessly and shamelessly flogged Spitzer’s study, even when he first began to inch away from the findings and upbraid right wing groups for distorting and exaggerating his findings. Here is a video TWO shot of Spitzer in 2007 urging such groups to stop twisting his work.
Here are a few more examples of how Spitzer’s work is being used to harm LGBT people. We hope these groups will act quickly. The world is watching:
Stanton L. Jones and mark A. Yarhouse (Pg. 89)
“Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation”
“Perhaps the highly publicized recent study in which participants reported successful change of sexual orientation was authored by research psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer. Spitzer could be construed to be the most qualified person in the world to conduct this sort of research; in addition to a distinguished research career, he was the lead scientist responsible for revision of the DSM of the APA.”
In a move that serves as a significant blow to “ex-gay” programs and anti-gay organizations, Dr. Robert Spitzer repudiated his much-criticized 2001 study that claimed some “highly motivated” homosexuals could go from gay to straight. His retraction occurred in an American Prospect magazine article that hit newsstands today. Spitzer’s rejection of his own research, which was originally published in the prestigious Archives of Sexual Behavior, is a devastating blow to “ex-gay” organizations because it decisively eliminates their most potent claim that homosexuality can be reversed through therapy and prayer.
Dr. Spitzer’s repudiation of his 2001 study is an earthquake that severely undermines the validity of ‘ex-gay’ programs. Spitzer just kicked out the final leg from the stool on which the proponents of ‘ex-gay’ therapy based their already shaky claims of success.
Spitzer’s 2001 study was a surprise and created a media firestorm because he had previously led the charge in 1972-73 to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. At the time, this was a shocking story that captured the nation’s attention. Dr. Spitzer was the last person in America one would have expected to produce a study bolstering the claims of ‘ex-gay’ activists.
According to today’s American Prospect article:
“In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques [of my study] are largely correct,” Dr. Spitzer told the American Prospect in an article by Gabriel Arana titled, My So Called Ex-Gay Life. “The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.”
He said he spoke with the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior about writing a retraction, but the editor declined. (Repeated attempts to contact the journal went unanswered.)
Spitzer said that he was proud of having been instrumental in removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. Now 80 and retired, he was afraid that the 2001 study would tarnish his legacy and perhaps hurt others. He said that failed attempts to rid oneself of homosexual attractions “can be quite harmful.” He has, though, no doubts about the 1973 fight over the classification of homosexuality.
“Had there been no Bob Spitzer, homosexuality would still have eventually been removed from the list of psychiatric disorders,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have happened in 1973.”
Spitzer was growing tired and asked how many more questions I had. Nothing, I responded, unless you have something to add. He did. Would I print a retraction of his 2001 study, “So I don’t have to worry about it anymore”?
Dr. Spitzer’s research was particularly harmful because he was the only non-socially conservative scientist to produce a study claiming some people could “pray away the gay.”
“This man is an atheist, so he’s not Bible thumping and doesn’t have an ax to grind,” said Greg Quinlan, President of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), in an October 7, 2011 interview on NewsPlus with Mark Segraves. “He just decided, let’s talk about this ex-gay thing and see if it’s true. And he has concluded it can be true for people who are highly motivated to change.” PFOX currently has a video of Dr. Spitzer on the front page of its website.
Virtually every anti-gay organization in the country quotes Dr. Spitzer’s work. It will be an integrity test to see which groups remove citations of his work in the coming week. Those who continue to use his study to back their agenda are deliberately misleading people and we intend to hold them accountable.
This is not the first major “ex-gay” study to be debunked. For decades, anti-gay organizations gleefully pointed to Homosexuality in Perspective, a 1979 book written by Dr. William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, that claimed to cure gayness. Indeed, the husband-and-wife sex research team went on Meet the Press on April 22, 1979 to discuss their findings. In his groundbreaking 2009 book, Masters of Sex, author Thomas Maier discovered that the results of Masters & Johnson’s study were entirely fabricated. Virginia Johnson acknowledged that the results were fake and she had actually argued in 1978 that the book should never have seen the light of day – but it was already too late in the publishing process to undo the damage.
Fortunately, the Archives of Sexual Behavior can honor Dr. Spitzer’s wishes and retract his study. They have an ethical and moral obligation to act as quickly as possible to right this terrible wrong that has fueled anti-gay campaigns for more than a decade. Truth Wins Out praised Dr. Spitzer, saying that his admission has solidified his legacy as a respected doctor and significant historical figure.
“It is never easy to admit wrongdoing and Dr. Robert Spitzer deserves much credit for reversing course,” said TWO’s Besen. “He acted in a noble and honorable manner which is consistent with the vast majority of his career.
Not one mainstream organization of medical and mental health professionals has found any evidence to support so-called “ex-gay” therapy; in fact, the evidence they have found suggests that it can actually be harmful to patients.
I am a fan of the late Mike Wallace and am very sad that he has passed away. I have always enjoyed his reports and consider him a first-rate journalist. However, there was one noticeable career snafu that caused an enormous amount of damage to the LGBT community. I wrote about it in my book, “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth”:
In 1967, the news magazine CBS Reports aired an hour-long segment, “The Homosexuals,” that gave America its first glimpse of gay and lesbian Americans. Thanks to the efforts of anti-gay psychiatrists, gays were vilified in front of 40 million people, solidifying despicable stereotypes that would last for more than a generation.
The landmark broadcast included an interview with a closeted homosexual whose face was concealed by dark shadows cast by a large office plant. “I know that I’m sick,” he told reporter Mike Wallace. “I’m not just sick sexually. I’m sick in a lot of ways, immature, childlike, and sex is a symptom, like a toothache is a symptom of who knows what.”
This memorable image of disease, timidity, and shame was juxtaposed with with the confident, self-assured doctors Irving Bieber and Charles Socarides, (These are the quacks who founded NARTH) who offered lurid illustrations of gay life. In one segment, Socarides appeared to be answering unprompted questions during a symposium at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, where he taught. “I was wondering if you think there are any ‘happy homosexuals’ for whom homosexuality would be in a way their best adjustment to life,” a female student said. “Socarides replied, “The fact that somebody’s homosexual — a true obligatory homosexual — automatically rules out the possibility that he will remain happy for long, in my opinion.” Socarides went on to say that the notion of a happy gay or lesbian person is a “mythology.”
In the next segment, Bieber followed with his own devastating display of misinformation. “I do not believe it is possible to produce a homosexual if the father is a warm, good, supportive, constructive father to his son.”
The most damaging part of the broadcast came when the respected Mike Wallace offered his his calumnious assault on what he thought, at the time, was an objective view of gay life:
“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of heterosexual marriage. His sex life — his love life — consists of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits, and even on the streets of the city. The pickup –the one night stand — these are the characteristics of the homosexual relationship. And the homosexual prostitute has become a fixture on downtown streets at night.”
Nearly one out of every five Americans witnessed this incomprehensible catastrophe. With the ubiquity of this show, it is no exaggeration to say that this broadcast can easily be viewed as the single most destructive hour of anti-gay propaganda in our nation’s history.
To get a handle of the enormity of this PR nightmare, one only has to consider the time period in which this took place. There were no cable stations, satellite dishes, Internet websites, or countless other special interest magazines in which dissenting views could be aired. There were no obnoxious television shows where talking heads endlessly bloviated on divisive issues. There were simply newspapers–most of which would not publish gay-related stories unless they were about a homosexual getting arrested for public sex–or the omnipresent networks, where the point of view presented was often considered the gospel. The lack of venues to disseminate messages was compounded by the general absence of openly gay people in society. With few avenues to counter the destructive message of The Homosexuals, the show not only had a devastating impact on public opinion but also was a psychological nuclear bomb dropped on the psyches of gay and lesbian Americans, who prior to this show, had never been represented as a group on national television.
Imagine being a gay person from a small town who had never met another homosexual. This show sent the message that one had either to live miserably in the closet or to accept an underground gay life of crushing loneliness and breathtaking instability. We will never know how many lives were ruined as a result of this broadcast, but there can be no doubt that multitudes of people were driven to despair. Worse yet, they went to doctors such as Bieber and Socarides to help them overcome the despondency that these very doctors worked to create.
Mike Wallace has since come to regret his participation in this broadcast, blaming the anti-gay therapists for spreading misinformation about gay people. Wallace repented in an interview many years later:
“Well, I said it. That is — God help us — what our understanding of the homosexual lifestyle was a mere twenty-five years ago because nobody was out of the closet and because that’s what we heard from doctors–that’s what Socarides told us, it was a matter of shame.”
May Mike Wallace rest in peace. It is good that he acknowledged this error. Unfortunately, the quacks that pushed these lies and deceived Wallace and America are still out there profiting from the pain they deliberately inflict.
On another note — my book, Anything But Straight, will be available online as an E-Book in the very near future. If you have not read it yet, I urge you to do so.
The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality has announced the death of its former president, Dr A Dean Byrd.
It is always sad when a person passes who spent his life harming people with grossly unscientific theories and outright homophobia before they are able to repent. We hope his family has more peace than the families who had to deal with the guilt foisted on them by this dangerous “therapist.”
Isn’t it amazing how people, when they go through the woodchipper known as the “ex-gay industry,” consistently go one of two directions? They either end up back out of the closet and hopefully living healthier lives than before [even if it takes years and years for them to heal from the experience], or they end up cashing in at the teat of the people who brainwashed them in the first place, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse. They never just end up being “ex-gay” and settling into a happy “ex-gay” life. No, they have to engender hatred toward the rest of the LGBT community.
So here’s an example of the latter, by the name of Tim Wilkins, speaking on a panel encouraging North Carolina to write discrimination into its constitution. Brian at Right Wing Watch sets it up:
Wilkins began his remarks by describing how he is “ashamed” of his “past homosexuality.”
Wilkins in fact, is a professional “ex-gay” activist whose ministry “stems from his own freedom from homosexuality some thirty years ago.” He is also a member of NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, and organizes a conference that “addresses such topics as If a Friend Says ‘I’m gay’, Debunking the ‘Gay Gene’, ‘What’s a Parent to Do?’, Untwisting ‘Gay Theology’, Counseling the Homosexual, Preventing Homosexuality, and A Biblical Bridge Out of Homosexuality.’”
Oh, wow, this man must hate himself something fierce. Let’s watch the video together and I’ll live-blog it below:
First thirty seconds: “I once was gay but now am wingnut.” Amaaaaazing grace, etc.
0:30-1:00: Same sex marriages are “unequal” because two people of the same gender can’t possibly complement each other in a relationship, due to…
1:00-1:30: There are not enough various and sundry genitals in same-sex relationships, therefore they are not supporting diversity!
1:30-2:00: “I believe that same sex attraction is a temptation, not an orientation.” The fact that this conflicts with what every single mature adult scientist and mental health professional has to say on the matter is of no consequence, as that interferes with my being a wingnut.
2:00-2:30: The only real sexual orientation people have is sin. Dirty, dirty sin. If there was no sin, there would be no gayness, QED.
And to bring it home, 2:30 until the end: “Pluto… used to be a planet, a gay, gay planet, and then one day it went to Alan Chambers’ office and when it came out, it wasn’t a planet anymore! Pray away the gay planet!”
And scene.
Sidenote: In trying to write this post, WordPress keeps replacing the name of the Not Planet with five asterisks, at least on my computer. Did we already pray away the Not Planet at Truth Wins Out, and thus cannot speak its name?
As our regular readers will know, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an expanded list of anti-gay hate groups earlier this week as a part of a wide-ranging report on the state of hate groups across America. The report found an alarming increase of nearly 60 percent in the number of active anti-gay hate groups between 2010 and 2011.
Organizations joining the ranks of SPLC-certified hate groups include Mission America, founded by Linda Harvey, whom TWO has dubbed “the most homophobic woman in America;” Public Advocate of the United States, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia and headed by Eugene Delgaudio, whose anti-LGBT bigotry is so extreme that he refers to the Student Non-Discrimination Act – which would protect LGBT students against bullying and discrimination in public schools – as the “Homosexual Classrooms Act;” and Minnesota’s notorious You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide ministry, fronted by radically anti-gay pastor Bradlee Dean, a hair-metal rocker who travels to public schools across the country delivering vitriolic “faith-based” anti-gay lectures to teenagers.
The latest edition of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report also contains an authoritative article detailing the hate and misinformation coming from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an “ex-gay” junk science group. This group is headed by radical extremist Joseph Nicolosi, whose theories on sexual orientation are so bizarre that he actually believes Bozo the Clown can turn people gay. NARTH has become the primary source for the faulty research and scientific distortions used by the religious right to justify their continued opposition to LGBT equality at a time when public opinion is swinging dramatically in the other direction. TWO’s Wayne Besen told the SPLC’s Ryan Lenz, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.”
Minnesotans should take special note of the newly-expanded list. The inclusion of Bradlee Dean’s You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International as an anti-LGBT hate group is notable because of the close ties between Dean, his organization, and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Before Dean dumped the notoriously anti-gay former presidential candidate for allegedly “going to the left,” she famously prayed for Dean’s traveling youth ministry to “multiply ten-fold,” helped the group raise funds, and made a guest appearance on Dean’s television show. Both Dean and Bachmann — whose husband’s Christian counseling clinic was busted for offering “pray away the gay” therapy last year by a Truth Wins Out hidden-camera investigation — are outspoken supporters of a proposed amendment that would write marriage discrimination into the Minnesota state constitution.
So-called “ex-gay” organizations have been at the forefront of the push for marriage discrimination in Minnesota, as documented in a recent report by Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent. Exodus International, the nation’s largest “ex-gay” umbrella group, has also decided to weigh in this summer, bringing its annual conference to St. Paul from June 27-30 – at exactly the same time that the debate over the proposed anti-gay amendment is expected to reach a fever pitch.
This is no coincidence. Truth Wins Out plans to be on the ground in Minnesota during Exodus’s road show, and we look forward to collaborating with local and state organizations to fight back against ‘ex-gay’ lies.
On May 5, 2010, Miami New Times reporters Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp discovered that he had vacationed with a male escort in Europe that he had met on RentBoy.com. When the anti-gay doctor and his hooker arrived at Miami International Airport, reporters photographed them with a little pink camera. Confronted with the evidence, Rekers said he learned that his companion was a prostitute only midway through their vacation.
