New List Includes Notorious “You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide” Ministry Run by Hate Pastor Bradlee Dean
BURLINGTON, Vt – Truth Wins Out applauded the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today for releasing 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.
“We commend the Southern Poverty Law Center for so vigilantly monitoring anti-LGBT hate in America,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Truth Wins Out also congratulates the eleven extremist organizations newly added to the list of officially-certified hate groups, because we know all too well how hard each of them has worked to earn this dubious designation.”
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 Besen told the SPLC’s Ryan Lenz, “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone.”
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.
“Minnesotans should take special note of the SPLC’s newly-expanded list,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development, who went undercover at Bachmann & Associates last year. “Virulently anti-LGBT extremist groups like the one led by Bradlee Dean will never be satisfied with simply excluding loving same-sex couples from marriage. These hate groups won’t stop until LGBT people are beaten back into second-class status in every aspect of society.”
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,” said TWO’s Becker. “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.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Ryan Lenz wrote an authoritative article in the group’s well-respected Intelligence Report detailing the hate and misinformation coming from “ex-gay” junk science group The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).
The group is run by arrogant and radical extremist Joseph Nicolosi (pictured), whose theories are so bizarre that he actually believes Bozo the Clown can turn people gay. Here is an excerpt from the interesting and informative article:
Billing itself as the counterweight to the two most prominent mental health authorities — the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association — NARTH pushes the idea, with the zeal of a religious movement, that no one is born gay and that a person’s sexual orientation can be changed through what is known as “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, also commonly called “ex-gay” therapy. At the heart of this argument is the belief that homosexuality is an unnatural deviation from normal sexual development, a form of mental disorder.
With these views, NARTH has emerged as the preeminent source of what many regard as “junk science” for the religious right — psychology that underpins the anti-gay movement’s fervent opposition to equal rights and stigmatizes LGBT people as mentally sick.
Without the research NARTH provides, there are few avenues remaining for the religious right to condemn homosexuality, at a time when the American public is growing more accepting of LGBT people and more open to extending equal rights to same-sex couples. “There’s no other play in the playbook except going back to the fire and brimstone,” argues Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, one of several watchdog groups monitoring the reparative therapy industry.
But even as NARTH is held up as an authority on the science of homosexuality by both fringe groups and politically potent national organizations like the Family Research Council, its claim that LGBT people can be “cured” of their homosexuality is not backed by the evidence.
If you have been harmed by “ex-gay” therapy — it is critical that you share your story with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Watch Nicolosi’s backward views and then see his immature, unprofessional temper tantrum.
Finally, SPLC found eleven new anti-LGBT hate groups. We want to congratulate them (particularly Linda Harvey’s Mission America) because they worked so hard to earn the designation.
Here is a list of those groups:
United Families International, Save California, Sons of Thundr (Faith Baptist Church), You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide, Parents Action League, Jewish Political Action Committee, Mission: America, Windsor Hills Baptist Church, True Light Pentecost Church, Tom Brown Ministries, and Public Advocate of the United States.
SPLC is a wonderful organization doing great work on so many fronts.
I was doing a bit of research this morning and I stumbled upon a “Quack Classic” by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). In a book he co-wrote with his wife Linda Nicolosi, “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality,” he opines:
I have also seen this same intense fascination with neutered or genderless cartoon characters. One father told me that his son, who is now involved in homosexuality and is refusing to consider change, had a boyhood fascination with Bozo the clown. At the time his parents thought it was cute, even if a little strange. But he held onto the obsession until the age of twelve. The truth is, these obsessive interests are boys’ attempts to lose themselves in a fantasy world where they can imagine themselves as something other than male and where the challenges of gender do not exist. (P. 67)
How does Dr. Nicolosi know that this is “the truth” and not some surreal theory he pulled out of his posterior? And aren’t most forms of entertainment attempts to lose oneself in a fantasy world — such as watching sports, going to the movies, drinking beer, watching television, or playing video games?
Here is the truth: When one reads such idiotic notions it is a reminder of why the entire field of “ex-gay” therapy should be easily dismissed and not taken seriously. Such therapy exists, not as science, but as a cynical public relations stunt designed to trick people into thinking the medical field echos the opinions of fundamentalist Christians on homosexuality.
However, the more one reads about the techniques and ideas espoused by “doctors” like Nicolosi, the easier it is to see through the nonsense. So-called Reparative Therapy is a joke perpetuated by religious individuals playing doctor who obviously have psychological disturbances and severe sexual hangups. The bizarre ideas they come up with prove that they are on the wrong side of the couch and are in serious need of professional help.
This is the same buffoonish book where Nicolosi tells fathers that “The experience of taking showers together has the potential to strengthen a boy’s identification with his father and his father’s masculinity, as well as with his own male anatomy.”
To bolster his position, Nicolosi quotes Dr. George Rekers, the infamous quack who got caught taking a young male escort to Europe that he met on Rentboy.com:
If the son repeatedly touches his father’s privates every time they take a shower together, Dr. Rekers advises the father to say, “I don’t mind if you look at my penis, because I’m your dad and seeing what my grownup penis looks like helps you learn how your body will grow up to be like mine. But now that you’ve already touched it to see what it’s like, I need to teach you that we guys don’t touch each other’s penises — unless we’re a doctor examining a patient or a parent giving a little boy his bath or checking if a boy needs medicine if he complains his private parts hurt or itch. Furthermore, the father should explain that when a boy touches his own penis, he should do so in private.” (P. 187)
This creepy claptrap is what “reparative therapy” is all about. These are the pathetic products and wacky ideas that PFOX, JONAH, and Exodus International have been peddling to clients for years.
And they wonder why they are laughed at and mocked by thinking society. But such tomfoolery masquerading as science is fully deserving of scorn and belly laughs. Clearly, “ex-gay” activists are not serious people and they promote almost child-like, superstitious notions on human sexuality that must be confronted and dismissed by the modern world.
Here is Nicolosi spewing more unscientific trash, such as a trauma, sexual abuse, or a distant father can turn boys gay. Or maybe it is an older brother good at sports that makes the timid younger brother gay. It is important that people realize that no mainstream, credible scientific organization in the world supports Nicolosi’s carackpot ideas.
My time undergoing reaparative therapy with a group called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) was recently brought to public attention. The one experience that has stood out and has raised eyebrows across the world was my last session with a JONAH “life coach” (a self described ex gay) who manipulated me into removing my clothing and touching myself in a locked room as he looked on. While that experience is something I have to live with every day of my life, I wish I could say that was the only unconventional “technique” that I was exposed to while attempting to change my sexuality. I’ve decided that it’s time to start talking about some of the other experiences that I endured while attending weekends and group meetings with JONAH and another group called People Can Change.
At the age of eighteen I was directed to JONAH by a local rabbi in my community. I was told that JONAH was supposed to be the answer to my prayers and they were supposedly going to “cure” me of my homosexuality.
Upon meeting with Arthur Goldberg, the director of JONAH, I immediately felt reassured by the false hope Goldberg gave me when he said that anyone could change and become straight so long as they tried hard enough. I wasn’t the only person who was victimized by the false hope peddled by these groups. Many of my friends who went to JONAH ended up leaving after not changing their sexual orientation.
However, after speaking to Goldberg I was ready to do anything these people asked of me in order to become straight. I never thought that accepting myself as a gay person was an option, especially because of the strong Orthodox religious community that I was raised in. As far as I knew, there were no other gay people where I came from and hearing that false message from Goldberg only reinforced my ill informed belief that I can change my sexuality and become straight.
Over the next year and a half I endured many different “processes” conducted by JONAH and People Can Change, processes that they claimed would ultimately serve to change my sexuality. Today, four years later, I’m a proud gay man and wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’d like to tell you about some of the “exercises” conducted by the people who claimed to be “experts” in this field — exercises that left me scarred and traumatized until this very day.
The first thing Goldberg told me that I must do was register for an upcoming “Journey into Manhood” (JIM) weekend hosted by People Can Change. He was very insistent that this was the first very big step that I must take in order to get the ball rolling. Four weeks later, on June 1, 2007, I found myself on my way to a retreat center in rural Pennsylvania, feeling anxious and unsure about what to expect from the next 48 hours.
ABC Nightline aired a segment on Journey Into Manhood and interviewed myself as well as another person who had negative experiences while on this weekend. Unfortunately, the producers at ABC gave us merely 10 seconds of a 21-minute segment, which basically turned into a promotional piece for People Can Change and their “Journey Into Manhood” weekend. During my interview with ABC I spoke about some of the dreadful memories that come to mind when I think back to those weekends. I spoke about what it was like to participate in what the facilitators of the weekend called “guts work,” which is something I’d like to elaborate on.
“Guts work,” otherwise known as psychodrama, was one of the main parts of the JIM weekend. We were split up into groups of ten with the point being to recreate a traumatic memory. This was accomplished by choosing people in our group to serve as surrogates for those deemed responsible for causing those traumas. An example of this would be if someone had an abusive father or mother, they were instructed to pick someone to represent that energy and reenact the distressing situation from long ago with the intention of getting in touch with our “authentic” emotions which they claimed would lead us to healing or reduction of our SSA (same sex attraction, gayness).
So to clarify, the small breakout group spent about ten hours, with each of us given an hour to recreate some of the most traumatic incidents of our life in the hopes of bringing out anger, sadness, or other emotions that came with those memories.
For me, those ten hours were pure hell.
I witnessed people go back to some of the most painful memories of their lives, being sexually abused, being beaten by a parent or classmates, and I watched in fear and horror as every single man “lost it” and started yelling on the top of their lungs and then were encouraged to hit something that represented that anger. So you have someone who’s angry with his father or mother, and he’d be screaming at the top of his lungs while hitting a pillow with a bat or tennis racket and yelling the name of their mother, father or other bully that brought on this anger. As someone who grew up in a household with a lot of yelling, this explosive rage and emotion frightened me.
Despite the facilitator’s reassurance that we were safe, the boiling rage and horrifying screams of people reliving the most traumatic situations in their lives made me feel unsafe, vulnerable and exposed. Though I try to erase these images and memories, they are forever seared in my mind.
When it was my turn to reenact my own traumatic event I was reluctant to participate. But I desperately wanted to become heterosexual and they told me that I needed to step out of my comfort zone in order to complete the “work” that was required to “change.”
I recreated a situation in my childhood that until this day is something I don’t speak about publicly, something too traumatic for me to describe in this essay. I recreated part of the situation and watched it “play out” by the people I picked to represent those energies. I was very detached from the “guts work” and I pretended to get angry and riled up so that I would be able to complete my work as quickly as possible. The event that I reenacted relates to extensive childhood sexual abuse that I endured for a very long time, and watching it play out once again in front of my eyes was so difficult and disturbing, I just wanted it to be over as soon as possible.
After yelling really loud, cursing at the top of my lungs, and even hitting something, as I recall, they asked me to pick someone to represent my parents because according to the facilitators it was my parents’ job to protect me from the abuse I faced, and this tragedy of my childhood was their fault. I was encouraged to yell at my father (someone representing his energy) and blame him for not protecting me.
I have many issues with my family and my parents, but this event that I was reliving was not their fault. One of the saddest parts of reparative therapy is the way it destroys relationships, because clients are falsely led to believe their parents caused their homosexuality. This unscientific and unfounded belief can often lead to enormous resentment, which ends with clients alienating themselves from their families.
One of the many issues I had with this “process” was that licensed medical or mental health professionals weren’t monitoring it. As People Can Change themselves acknowledge, they aren’t a “professional therapy organization,” and so I found myself reliving possibly one of the most traumatic events of my life in the presence of amateurs, which left me feeling unprotected in this explosive environment.
These stories are still only hitting the tip of the iceberg of what reparative therapy was like for me, as time goes by, as I heal from these experiences, I’m becoming more able to write about them and share the experiences that myself and many others endured while attempting to change our sexuality.
Amanda Marcotte got an annoying, misinformed letter from a bigot. Here’s what it said:
Dear Ms. Marcotte:
No one is born “gay” or “transgender.”
These conditions arise as a result of faulty bonding and identification with the same-sex parent, starting in early life. They indicate deep-seated gender self-alienation (TG’s cross-identify with an opposite-sex figure), and are preventable and treatable.
The writings of well-known figures like Chastity Bono, James Morris, and Richard Raskind confirm this pattern.
Psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons’s articles “Gender Identity Disorder in Children” and “The Desire for a Sex Change” are instructive.
The Left has been lying to the public for decades, with false science and false argument. “Gays” are a manufactured “minority” used for political purposes.
The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality has the real information (http://www.narth.com).
More and more Americans are learning the truth. GayScam, this fraud, will be ended. The laws will be adjusted accordingly.
–Sharon Kass Washington, D.C.
Oh, they think they’re so smart. They quote known quacks, but they somehow think they’re the ones with the correct information, and that the rest of us and the mainstream scientific community are collaborating against them, just to make them look stupid, when in reality, they don’t need our help to make themselves look stupid. Anyway, Amanda’s response is pitch-perfect:
Well, you weren’t born an asshole, either, but I still think it’s wrong to take your computer away.
She, of course, elaborated on that response in a second reply, in case the wingnut didn’t get the joke, and you should read her piece in its entirety, but sometimes I think the above answer more than suffices.
One thing that consistent when it comes to dealing with the Religious Right is that you can’t trust a word they say or write. I’d go as far as to say that when they make any sort of statement, it’s best to assume they’re lying unless proven otherwise. The latest case of a Religious Right organization lying about the work of an actual researcher is a doozy:
This time it’s Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of NARTH, writing a long piece about same-sex adoption. It has a small section titled, “The children do suffer,” with this opening:
There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.
He brings up two studies to support this, one of them by Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, and then regretfully tells us:
Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence.
I know something that might surprise Fitzgibbons: One of those opposing scholars is — have you guessed? — Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, the source of his weighty evidence.
Dr. Sirota wrote to Box Turtle Bulletin to ask them to help spread the word about the misrepresentation of her work by NARTH. As with most Religious Right lies, it’s fairly simple and staring you in the face, but you have to actually know the content of Sirota’s research to see it:
You can read the full text of Sirota’s message here, but let me put it in a nutshell. To support his denunciation of same-sex adoption, Fitzgibbons offers this summary of Sirota’s research:
Researchers interviewed 68 women with gay or bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers. The women (average age 29 in both groups) with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty with adult attachment issues in three areas: they were less comfortable with closeness and intimacy; they were less able to trust and depend on others; and they experienced more anxiety in relationships compared to the women raised by heterosexual fathers.
The problem is not with what Fitzgibbons said; it’s what he left out: The gay and bisexual fathers in Sirota’s study were married to the mothers.
Dr. Sirota’s article is about the impact of a homosexual father raising a girl in a heterosexual marriage. It has nothing to do with same-sex couples, nothing to do with same-sex adoption at all.
Typical. This is very similar to the tactics wingnuts like Maggie Gallagher employ when they compare statistics of children raised in single parent homes vs. married parent homes in order to argue against gay parenting. Because you see, in so many places, gay parents can’t be technically married, therefore it’s reasonable to say that loving, committed gay couples raising children are the same as single parents, right? Of course not, but wingnuts are liars.
Alvin McEwen has a nice little round-up of other instances of wingnuts misrepresenting actual grown-up science to further their ideology here.
PHOENIX, AZ – As the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) – an organization that promotes discredited therapies for “those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality” – prepares to hold its national convention this week in Phoenix, pro-equality organizations are planning a convention of their own to debunk the theory that you can “pray away the gay.”
Over the course of two days during the NARTH convention, a collective of organizations and individuals — including No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, Human & Equal Rights Organizers (H.E.R.O.), and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) of Phoenix — will host press conferences, presentations, protests, and discussions during an “alternative convention” at the Phoenix Airport Marriott Hotel – the same venue as the NARTH convention.
The reparative therapies promoted by NARTH have been repudiated by numerous studies and deemed harmful by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association.
WHO: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations and individuals who refuse to give cover to the quack science and destructive practices of “ex-gay” therapy
WHAT: LGBT equal rights organizations confront the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) attendees with an “alternative convention” by sending a clear, strong message that hate will be met with relentless challenge and radically-inclusive love.
WHEN:
PRESS CONFERENCE
Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. at the Phoenix Airport Marriott, 1101 N. 44th St, Phoenix, AZ 85008
Professionals from the psychological community will hold a press conference to refute misinformation taught at the conference.
SIGN MAKING PARTY
Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 at 6 p.m. at One Voice Community Center, 4442 N. 7th Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85013
Participants create signs for Saturday’s protest. Food and beverages provided.
ALTERNATIVE CONVENTION
(All events take place at the Phoenix Airport Marriott, 1101 N. 44th St, Phoenix, AZ 85008, unless otherwise indicated)
Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011
7:30 – 10:30 a.m.: No Longer Silent Presents: Psychology & Theology – Why Homosexuality is Neither a Sin nor a Sickness
Apologies are all the rage with the “ex-gay” set right now! John Smid has been running around apologizing for various things for the past several weeks/months — he even showed up at Memphis Pride with those grotesque “I’m Sorry!” cards distributed by the Marin Foundation — and now Richard “Beat That Pillow With A Tennis Racket Like It’s Your Mom” Cohen has caught the fever as well! Unfortunately, his “apology” is not an apology at all, and nothing seems to have changed about his beliefs or his life’s work.
It comes via a press release on changeispossible.com, so let’s take a look. Here is the headline:
International Healing Foundation Apologizes to the LGBTQCommunity on its 21st Anniversary
Organization Expands Mission from ‘Change is Possible’ to ‘Coming Out Loved’
Uh huh. Notice that they are “expanding” their vision, rather than “changing” it. Change is apparently not possible in their world.
The International Healing Foundation has educated and counseled thousands of men, women and adolescents who experience unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA). However, on its 21st anniversary, IHF apologized to the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) community for years of unknowingly fueling anti-gay sentiment by simply stating, “Change is Possible.”
That’s not what people are demanding apologies for. It’s more for the years upon years of religious bigotry repackaged as false, discredited “science,” giving people false hope, depression and increasing the suicide risk among vulnerable people who have been abused by religion into believing that “change” is even necessary, much less possible. It’s also for the thousands upon thousands of families which have been damaged further or ruined by such techniques. Moving on.
“We at IHF wish to offer a sincere, heartfelt apology to everyone in the LGBTQ community,” said IHF founder and director, Richard Cohen. “I apologize and ask forgiveness to those who were hurt by our message.” Cohen, a leading expert in the field of sexual orientation and married father of three, knows first-hand how it feels to be ostracized having lived a gay life.
I’m not feeling your apology, Richard.
Beginning today, IHF’s doors are wide open to everyone in the LGBTQ and straight communities. The new mission, “Coming Out Loved,” is the catalyst of true tolerance, real diversity, and equality for all. IHF staff will assist anyone who is conflicted about their sexuality and other challenging issues that arise for many in the gay community.
Wait, they weren’t willing to act as predators for any easy prey in the past? I’m confused.
IHF has adopted therapeutic guidelines from the American Psychological Association for members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities; American Counseling Association guidelines for the transgender community; and National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality therapeutic guidelines for anyone questioning their sexuality and/or experiencing unwanted SSA.
Nice! So if you come in and you’re happily gay — why would you go there if you were happily gay? — they’ll at least attempt to use a veneer of professionalism by using APA guidelines. If you’re transgender, they’ll use the guidelines of the American Counseling Association, from which Richard Cohen was banned for life in 2002 for multiple ethics violations. And if you’re their target market, which is, again, people who have been abused so much by religious indoctrination and bigotry that they believe that there are inherently sick, evil and flawed, they’ll continue to use the guidelines of the sham organization NARTH, a group which masquerades as secular and scientific [and which quietly kicked Cohen out of their lives a few years back -- they don't like for their public faces to be that crazy, though they will continue to work with people like him behind the scenes], while being purely ideological in nature, and a group so consistently dishonest, with such a long trail of broken homes in its wake, that I cannot imagine what would constitute an “ethics violation” in their world. Telling the truth? Reporting the results of a scientific study accurately? Not using willful abuse of children as the basis for much of their work?
Cohen asserts everyone should be loved and accepted for who they are. “By opening our doors to everyone in the LGBTQ and straight communities, we are expanding upon our mission and broadening the scope of our services,” he says. For more information, visit www.ComingOutLoved.com.
And that is the end of the press release. Is this anything more than a cry for help out of the ravines of inadequacy and irrelevance?
In case not everybody’s familiar, let’s take a little tour of the failure that is Richard Cohen’s life, and visit a couple of his friends as well, which should clear up any remaining confusion over whether Cohen’s apology is worth anything.
If readers have been following the “kill the gays” debacle in Uganda, it’s important to remember that one of the major backers of that bill is Stephen Langa, who got much of his information on gay people from Cohen’s book Coming Out Straight. Here is Rachel Maddow tearing Cohen apart on her show in 2009, and showing Langa teaching directly from his book.
And here is a picture you may have seen before, of Stephen Langa with other noted unhinged American homophobes and “ex-gay” leaders, Scott Lively and Don Schmierer, respectively. The man in the middle is Caleb Brundidge, who is also on the staff of Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation [sic]. The picture was taken in Uganda, right before the “kill the gays” Crusade really got its legs. Thanks for all your help, American hate group leaders/whack-jobs! Cohen definitely has blood on his hands.
Richard Cohen also used to be the president of PFOX, but thoroughly embarrassed himself and his entire movement when he was on The Daily Show a few years back, so they canned him. [Our own Wayne was also on that episode, if you haven't seen it.] He keeps close ties with them, though, and with NARTH. Indeed, his close associate at the International Healing Foundation [sic], the group who issued this crap apology, is Christopher Doyle, a “sexual reorientation coach” who is also on the board of PFOX.
If you don’t remember Christopher Doyle, here is a picture of him queening out and running away from Joe Jervis at the Truth Wins Out protest of the NARTH convention.
The tall bald guy is Christopher Doyle, an “ex-gay” who is on the board of PFOX and who is on staff with “ex-gay” whackadoodle Richard Cohen as a “Sexual Reorientation Coach” at the International Healing Foundation. If that wasn’t enough for this professionally “former” c*cksucker, he writes newspaper editorials arguing against the Day Of Silence. Anyway, I don’t think pillow-whacker Richard Cohen has totally gotten Doyle in touch with his “natural masculine nature,” because when I kept taking photos, Doyle put his hand on his hip and hissed, “I don’t need this. Why don’t you just sssssssstop!”
If you don’t know what Joe means when he refers to Richard Cohen as a “pillow-whacker,” we’ll get to that at the end, so that we can end on a funny note.
Earlier this year, Christopher Doyle, who is, again, the very fey bestie of Richard Cohen, who works with him at the organization which just issued this BS apology, said this:
Putting “ex-gay” in quotes suggested that such a sexual orientation is not valid, not recognized or both. But thousands of former homosexuals collectively identify themselves as such. The D.C. Superior Court ruled in 2009 that ex-gays are a protected sexual orientation class in the District.
Not all persons who experience same-sex attractions choose to live gay lives. Many of us have voluntarily left a homosexual life through therapeutic work or behavioral choice. I did, and I have been happily married to a woman for nearly five years; we have two children. I no longer experience same-sex attraction and have no desire to return to the homosexual life. Please respect this choice.
Left unproven, as he is obviously unwilling to do so, is his assertion that he “no longer experience[s] same-sex attraction.” Wayne and I wait with bated breath for the first professional “ex-gay” swindler to submit himself to testing which would prove that they are no longer gay, but it never comes. Instead, on a fairly regular basis, they admit, as Alan Chambers and John Smid have, that they are still totally into dudes.
To wrap this up, you can have a look at the truly insane things Richard Cohen believes about why people end up gay or lesbian, or you can just have a laugh watching a couple of videos. Here’s Richard Cohen on CNN beating a pillow with a tennis racket and screaming at his mom, just after he cuddles a grown man.
And here is Richard having a bizarre, queeny temper tantrum about how mean gay people are. Listen to him scream!
This is the man who is very sorry for seemingly nothing, and wants you to think he is relevant, and also to give him more money, because his movement is dying and his life’s work is a waste.
The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) Conference is this coming weekend in Phoenix, AZ and will feature, Sharon Slater, a prominent leader in efforts to work through UN delegations to keep homosexuality illegal around the world. NARTH refuses to oppose criminalization but has invited Slater who works to maintain it. Seems to me NARTH is complicit in these efforts and should be held accountable.
I agree with Dr. Throckmorton that NARTH is a political organization — not a scientific one — that has close ties to shady characters like Dr. Michael Brown and Sharon Slater.
Conservative Christian professor and blogger Warren Throckmorton confirms what many have long suspected:
The ex-gay think-tank NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) claims to be a professional mental-health organization — but it isn’t.
Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists. …
Two prime speakers at next week’s convention in Phoenix are not scientists at all, but antigay activists.
Here’s another way of putting it:
NARTH is an organization of 750 antigay bigots who pay a token number of ethically sketchy ideologues with college degrees to pose as experts, distort the research of others, and parrot the antigay prejudice that donors pay to consume.
