In August, the American Psychological Association released a report that explicitly said “there is insufficient evidence” for therapists to claim conversion therapy works.
The APA report also admonished so-called “ex-gay” counselors to not mislead clients by telling them that their sexual orientation can be changed.
The experts who crafted this report made it crystal clear that such efforts to “pray away the gay” are a sham. That, however, has not stopped a trade group of quacks from planning to sell their snake oil in West Palm Beach next month.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is holding yet another conference that runs counter to science and reality. What makes this group dangerous is that it pretends to be secular, but consists of hyper-religious counselors whose goal is to make it appear as if science backs their rigid belief system.
A wide range of tactics will be used to counter this hate symposium. I will be speaking at Compass, the GLBT community Center, on Nov. 17th at 6:30PM. There will also be a protest on Nov. 21st (10-2PM) organized by various student groups in South Florida.
The centerpiece of our opposition will be The 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference (Nov. 20-22), created by SoulForce and sponsored by a host of other organizations. Several of the leading experts who fight the “ex-gay” industry will be on-hand to educate the community about this continuing scourge.
We tend not to think much about heterosexism, but it is both prevalent and pervasive. Much of society — even some of our allies – can’t seem to wrap their brains around the fact that we are equal, our love is on par with theirs, and that our families are valid.
For example, on blog comment sections, I have consistently read critiques from supposed “friends” that we should sublimate our equality to other concerns, such as healthcare or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
These people — and some are well meaning — would do almost anything to protect their families. Yet, they expect us to leave our families vulnerable. They assume we will stay silent so their families can receive benefits, while our own spouses and children are left to fend for themselves.
There is also the societal assumption that everyone is heterosexual, a bad cultural habit, considering GLBT people are everywhere. The primary reason that GLBT people must come out, is the idea that all people are heterosexual until they declare otherwise.
The “straight” assumption plays into the hands of group’ like NARTH that have very narrow views of sexuality and gender identity. They specialize in placing men and women in a behavioral box, with any deviation from that narrow 1950′ model labeled deviant.
NARTH thrives on such stereotypes and often confuses them with science. They make their money by finding insecure gay men and teaching them how to walk and talk so they will be perceived as “normal.” Women are urged to stay home and avoid masculine projects or jobs — lest they reject men and become lesbians.
In essence, groups like NARTH create a fake standard of what it means to be a man or woman. They actively bash anyone who does not adhere to their version of masculinity or femininity. Once a culture of persecution has taken root — they pretend to be the solution to the discrimination and abuse. NARTH ensures that anyone who is outside their approved model is labeled a freak, and for a hefty fee they can de-freak you.
Most heartbreaking, NARTH preys on parents and encourages them to send in children as young as three to be “fixed”. They tell parents that if a child is gay their life will be more difficult — even as NARTH is the one ensuring it will be so. There is a conflict of interest when those responsible for causing rejection and harassment claim they are there to only help those who want to change. They never seem to ask, “Why do people want to change?”
The answer, of course, is clearly the existence of NARTH.
NARTH is a backward organization run by fringe ideologues whose ideas have been soundly rejected by every respected medical and mental health association in America. It is crucial that we continue working to shine a light on its shenanigans, so people understand that NARTH is extreme, not the mainstream group it pretends to be.
Confused. Isolated. Depressed. Angry. Lansing resident Patrick McAlvey was all of these things both before and during his stint in ex-gay therapy. Now, through a new video produced and released by Truth Wins Out, he’s just determined to make sure that no one else goes through what he did.
The 24-year-old McAlvey’s video was released last month just as the American Psychological Association announced that “mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.”
It was too late for McAlvey, but he hopes that the APA findings – plus stories like his – will help other gay youth to love and accept themselves.
Like so many other gay youth, McAlvey was scared when he realized he was attracted to men in sixth grade. Raised in a conservative Christian home, “I didn’t think it was safe to tell anybody,” he said of his young adulthood.
But he did tell one person: Mike Jones, director of Lansing-based ex-gay organization Corduroy Stone.
“When I was 19, I was kicked out of a missionary training school and was forced to move back home with my family,” McAlvey recalled. “I was kicked out because of my attraction to men, so in that time I was sort of in a crisis mode and was very low, very depressed and just trying to make sense of my life and my attraction.”
He contacted Jones, whom he had spoken with before about his “problem,” and began several months of therapy with Jones that supposedly would cure him and make him straight.
Therapy consisted of embarrassing questions and uncomfortable situations. Jones would instruct McAlvey to lie in his arms for an hour at a time – known in the ex-gay circuit as holding therapy. He forced McAlvey to learn about tools and home repair, and to watch the play “Equus” with him, which features full male nudity. He would ask him to rate his attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
Then there were the questions. “He asked how large my penis was. He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore,” McAlvey explained. “On one occasion, he asked me to take my shirt off and show him how many push-ups I could do, which I did not do.
“He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to.”
But despite all his efforts, McAlvey never stopped being attracted to men. “I never felt like I was changing,” he said of the therapy.
Eventually, he told Jones he wasn’t going to come to therapy anymore. But the damage had been done.
“I just really came to hate myself; to loathe myself,” McAlvey said. “I didn’t trust anyone and I didn’t allow anyone to get close to me because I was terrified that they might find out my secret and that they would think less of me. I spent many years locked up in my room, crying by myself for no good reason.”
McAlvey hopes that telling his story will mean less LGBT teens face the same tough years he did. “I view it as a real assault on some of the more vulnerable members of the LGBT community,” he said. “I think it’s important to speak up to prevent other people from being harmed in the ways that I was.”
Now, less than five years out of his time in ex-gay therapy, he’s doing just that. And while McAlvey hopes that his video will help others, he also thinks it will help him to move on. “(It’s) a bit of a cathartic experience for me, saying publicly that this is not something anymore that I need to be embarrassed of or regret,” he explained. “Instead, I’m going to turn around and use it for good. … It’s turning a negative experience into something that can be used positively.”
The decision to take his story public took time, and a lot of personal healing for McAlvey. When he stopped seeing Jones, he was still grappling with his sexuality and acceptance of himself. Eventually, he was able to see that it’s OK to be gay. “I realized that I don’t think change is going to happen and I don’t think it needs to happen,” he said. “It was getting to the point where I really was comfortable with who I am, and that takes time, a lot of processing and figuring out how to undo some of the internalized homophobia that was the result of this therapy.”
The video, which has almost 6,000 views on YouTube, is the final step in that reparative process – and McAlvey wants to get his message out to LGBT youth. “I would communicate to them the freedom that I felt when I finally embraced my sexual orientation and accepted it as a beautiful and natural part of myself,” he said of speaking to another teen like himself. “I would certainly convey that it is my belief that their sexual orientation is a beautiful, natural part of them that they should feel no shame for and should not think needs to be changed.”
Last week, Truth Wins Out released a video by ex-gay survivor Patrick McAlvey of Lansing, Michigan. He has spoken out on local radio and will join me on Culture Shocks radio with Barry Lynn TODAY at 4PM (ET). I hope you will tune in and listen to the live broadcast on the Internet.
The men who seek help from evangelical counselor Warren Throckmorton often are deeply distressed. They have prayed, read Scripture, even married, but they haven’t been able to shake sexual attractions to other men — impulses they believe to be immoral.
Dr. Throckmorton is a psychology professor at a Christian college in Pennsylvania and past president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association. He specializes in working with clients conflicted about their sexual identity.
The first thing he tells them is this: Your attractions aren’t a sign of mental illness or a punishment for insufficient faith. He tells them that he cannot turn them straight.
But he also tells them they don’t have to be gay.
The article delves into more detail about Throckmorton’s therapy:
For many years, Dr. Throckmorton felt he was breaking a professional taboo by telling his clients they could construct satisfying lives by, in effect, shunting their sexuality to the side, even if that meant living celibately. That ran against the trend in counseling toward “gay affirming” therapy — encouraging clients to embrace their sexuality.
Later in the WSJ article, I comment on the section of the APA’s guidelines that seem to say that Throckmorton’s type of therapy may fall within its new guidelines:
“It’s incredibly misguided,” said Wayne Besen, who runs a group called Truth Wins Out, which fights conversion therapy. He says trying to fight their same-sex attractions can cause immense suffering. “People have their lives destroyed,” Mr. Besen said.
My Thoughts:
I want to clarify that I am supportive of the overall APA report. I think they did a terrific job stating how therapists should handle clients who are struggling to accept their sexual orientation. Most important, they directly challenged “ex-gay” therapists who mislead clients about gay life.
And, the APA made it crystal clear that such charlatans should not be selling snake oil by claiming they can magically turn clients from gay-to-straight. In my view, any therapist who makes such a pitch is a con artist. Any organization that offers such bogus and far-fetched promises is guilty of consumer fraud.
Additionally, the APA should be commended for tackling the affects of religious faith on people working through this issue. Their landmark report explicitly tells religious therapists that clients should be given room to explore who they truly are, without the therapist burdening them with excessive faith-based guilt. This is a step forward, considering that nearly every “reparative therapist” uses shame-based methods to pressure vulnerable and desperate clients into suppressing their natural sexual orientation.
However, (although I am not a psychologist) I remain largely skeptical of the therapy offered by Throckmorton and other conservatives. Throckmorton tells The Wall Street Journal that he starts his sessions by helping clients prioritize their values.
This is where it can get tricky.
Religious therapists (I am not referring specifically to Throckmorton) can manipulate the framing of priorities. For example they may ask clients what they find more important to their value system: “ephemeral hedonism” or “eternal life in heaven”. Given this loaded option, clients may feel they have no “choice” but to live a life of hell on earth in order to get the keys to the Kingdom when they die. This is quite a mental burden for clients to carry and surely can’t be conducive to optimum mental health.
Clients can also be easily manipulated by therapists who induce guilt by saying, “it is fine if you choose to exercise your options in a selfish manner by choosing your sexuality over Scripture.” Such diabolical therapists may be within the new guidelines (barely) by ostensibly offering a troubled client the “choice” and “freedom” to be a “bad” person. But, we all know this is just a tricky form of psychological abuse. While the APA guidelines are helpful, the group may need to address in the future how unsavory counselors use loopholes to continue tormenting the fragile minds of clients.
The WSJ article also mentioned how the APA report considers celibacy a viable “option”:
But if the client still believes that affirming his same-sex attractions would be sinful or destructive to his faith, psychologists can help him construct an identity that rejects the power of those attractions, the APA says. That might require living celibately, learning to deflect sexual impulses or framing a life of struggle as an opportunity to grow closer to God.
“We’re not trying to encourage people to become ‘ex-gay,’” said Judith Glassgold, who chaired the APA’s task force on the issue. “But we have to acknowledge that, for some people, religious identity is such an important part of their lives, it may transcend everything else.”
The APA has long endorsed the right of clients to determine their own identities. But it also warned that “lesbians and gay men who feel they must conceal their sexual orientation report more frequent mental health concerns.”
It is true that in extreme cases, a lifetime of celibacy may lead to a happier existence than coming out of the closet. These rare people, unfortunately, are often so damaged by fundamentalism that they are unable to express their sexuality in healthy ways. Indeed, they are stricken by excessive guilt if they enjoy any form of pleasure that is not sanctioned by their church.
In such instances of irreparable damage to victims of faith-based oppression, celibacy may work (sort of) as a last ditch effort to help these people find a small measure of peace. There are also individuals with low sex drives who may not have an inordinate amount of trouble conforming to onerous religious strictures.
However, celibacy is not a serious option for healthy individuals with normal desires. If a therapist tells a teenager that he or she will have to live the next 50 or so years sexually frustrated and without the possibility of love, you are not going to convince me that this is in the best psychological interest of that conflicted youth.
Imagine being that young person with raging hormones, yet having to suppress powerful urges every minute of the day. On weekends, you stay home playing video games while your friends are dating. At lunchtime in the cafeteria, you have to hear about their sexual exploration, while you bitterly nurse longings that will never be fulfilled. On the way home from school, love songs play on the car radio that are meant for everyone but you. And then you settle on the couch and watch television shows brimming with a sensuality that you will never discover.
Living in such a way would, in the vast majority of cases, make an otherwise healthy person neurotic, depressed and even suicidal. Celibacy, for the most part, is a fantasy concocted by conservative therapists who so despise homosexuality that they would rather see a person loveless and lonely than openly gay.
I also worry that suppression of sexuality will lead to increased mental and sexual abuse in society. The ex-gay ministries (and the Catholic Church) are rife with examples of supposedly celibate or “healed” leaders taking advantage of young people in their care. Youth are easier to manipulate (see TWO video below)and the path of least resistance for the tortured and troubled souls who swear off sexuality (heterosexual and homosexual), only to find that it is not possible over the course of a lifetime. Celibacy is not realistic, nor advisable for most people, and can have deleterious side effects. The idea of the “satisfied celibate” is largely a misguided myth perpetuated by therapists who can’t overcome their own anti-gay leanings.
Ultimately, the more ex-gay ministries and counselors are forced to move away from stigmatizing homosexuality, promising fake miracles and selling false hope, the better off clients will be. If these groups can’t sell the proverbial “heterosexual light at the end of the tunnel”, the vast majority of young gay people will leave the traumatic tunnel behind and come out into the light of freedom and honesty.
Everyone deserves the chance to love and be loved – and conservative therapists will have an increasingly difficult time telling gay clients that they are exceptions to this rule. By calling for more accountability among anti-gay therapists and demanding they be truthful and adhere to modern science, the APA has made a worthy contribution with its report.
There is “no evidence that sexual orientation change efforts work.” This was the American Psychological Association’ verdict on “ex-gay” therapy after an appointed task force of experts studied the issue for two years.
The conclusion did not surprise those of us who work with people who have been harmed by such programs. For example, I just interviewed Patrick McAlvey, who entered therapy to change his sexual orientation at the age of 19. His counselor, Mike Jones, is the director of Corduroy Stone, an affiliate of Exodus International.
McAlvey says that his sessions included prolonged hugs, the suggestion that he use handyman tools to increase his masculinity and questions about the size of his genitalia. There was also an episode of “holding therapy” where he reclined into the lap of his supposedly “ex-gay” counselor for an hour. The goal, according to McAlvey, was to get comfortable with his own manliness by “feeling the strength” and “smelling the smell” of another man.
What Jones and other ex-gay counselors routinely call “therapy” can seem a great deal like foreplay to the rest of us.
“I think it does a lot of damage to peoples’ mental health,” said McAlvey. “If I had had a fair representation (of gay life) I could have avoided a lot of suffering.”
Of course, such therapy and ministry programs can only exist by grossly distorting the lives of gay people. For example, in a recent radio interview, ex-gay activist Charlene Cothran claimed that gay people do not want legal equality and are really only interested in the “freedom to be a homosexual in a park with no clothes on.”
The APA deserves credit for taking ex-gay therapists to task for twisting the truth and holding them accountable for their scare tactics, such as claiming that there are no happy gay people. (Read More)
Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Web: www.TruthWinsOut.org
“Ex-Gay’ Therapy is Harmful and Ineffective, Says TWO
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out commended the American Psychological Association today for adopting a resolution and releasing a report that explicitly says that “there is insufficient evidence” for therapists to claim conversion therapy works. The APA report also admonishes so-called “ex-gay” counselors to not mislead clients by telling them that their sexual orientation can be changed.
“Ex-Gay therapy is a profound travesty that has led to pointless tragedies and we are pleased that the APA has addressed this psychological scourge,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “It is our hope that persistent violators of the principles enumerated by the APA will be held accountable for their unethical actions.”
The APA report cast doubt on efforts to change sexual orientation and said, “Enduring change to an individual’ sexual orientation was unlikely.” It also questioned the objectivity of some counselors promoting “change” programs and cautioned them to not “prioritize one outcome over another.”
“We recommend that the APA take a leadership role in opposing the distortion and selective use of scientific data about homosexuality by individuals and organizations and in supporting the dissemination of accurate scientific and professional information about sexual orientation in order to counteract bias,” the report said.
“It is clear that many ex-gay therapists use stigma and shame to keep gay and lesbian people from genuine self-acceptance,” said Truth Wins Out’ Wayne Besen. “We hope that the APA’ willingness to couch its criticisms so directly will limit the number of psychological casualties produced on the couches of ex-gay therapists.”
The report included a section on adolescent inpatient facilities that try to change sexual orientation in youth.
“The limited published literature on these programs suggests that many do not present accurate scientific information regarding same-sex sexual orientations to youth and families, are excessively fear-based and have the potential to increase sexual stigma,” said the APA report, “Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation.”
Additionally, the report recognized survivors who “described their experiences as a significant cause of emotional and spiritual distress and negative self-image.”
Truth Wins Out released a new video today featuring, Patrick McAlvey, a survivor of ex-gay counseling under Mike Jones, director of the Exodus International ministry, Corduroy Stone, based in Lansing, Michigan. Jones’ sessions with McAlvey, who was 19 at the time, included prolonged hugs, the suggestion that he use handyman tools to increase his masculinity and questions about the size of his genitalia. There was also an episode of “holding therapy” where he reclined into the lap of his supposedly “ex-gay” counselor for an hour. The goal, according to McAlvey, was to get comfortable with his own manliness by “feeling the strength” and “smelling the smell” of another man.
“I think it does a lot of damage to peoples’ mental health,” said McAlvey. “If I had had a fair representation (of gay life) I could have avoided a lot of suffering.”
The APA report came one week after Exodus International’ President, Alan Chambers, admitted that he is still “tempted” and must live in “self-denial” to remain “ex-gay.”
“The truth is, I’m in denial, but it is self-denial,” Chambers told Citizen Link, Focus on the Family’ online magazine. “…What I’ve found is that my freedom, and the freedom of those who’ve left homosexuality, was centered around denying what might come naturally to us…there is a way out for those who want it, but it doesn’t say that they are going into heterosexuality.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, exposes the ex-gay myth and educates America about gay life.
If Mohler and Throckmorton really wanted to have a debate, and if, as they say, they are not afraid of open debate, why don’t they just host it themselves?
There certainly must be enough room for this panel (or one like it) to speak at Mohler’s Baptist Theological Seminary, or at the Focus on the Family headquarters (Mohler is on the Board), or perhaps at a Love Won Out conference?
If they do not issue invitations for APA views to speak at their centers, then perhaps it is actually they who are afraid to debate in front of a wide audience? And, perhaps what everyone is saying, that they are just looking to make publicity to cast APA in a bad light is true. Maybe they are afraid that if their flocks are presented with real scientific views it will be more difficult to manipulate and brainwash them?
So, right wingers, when are the invitations coming?
(Cry Baby: Throckmorton, Whines To Right Wing Rags)
Still fuming from the American Psychiatric Association’s cancellation of the “Quack Panel” he was scheduled to appear on this week, notorious “ex-gay” therapist Warren Throckmorton continued on his vindictive warpath. All week, he has done the rounds, whining and playing victim, with fawning right wing rags – apparently the only media that will listen to his bizarre ideas.
Throckmorton’s latest stop on his “Sour Grapes Media Tour” is an interview with World Net Daily – a publication best known for publishing a kooky article that claims that eating soy products might turn children gay.
“‘Weird Nut Daily’ and Warren Throckmorton are two peas in a pod, so it was entirely expected that they would join hands to do a hatchet job on TruthWinsOut.org,” said Besen. “It is time for Throckmorton to preserve his remaining dignity by ending his ‘Sour Grapes Tour’ and moving on. The Quack panel did not happen because the more people learned about Throckmorton, the more uneasy they became with giving him a platform that might appear to legitimize his outlandish and archaic views on sexuality” (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.
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."
