For the decade since it was co-founded by the religious-rightist Family Research Council, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays has criticized the more mainstream Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays because P-FLAG’s parents love their children unconditionally — and because P-FLAG parents refrain from bullying and cajoling their teen and adult children into seeking discredited forms of “therapy” from disgraced ex-gay therapists such as longtime P-FOX chairman Richard Cohen.
P-FOX encourages parents to blame one another — not biology — for their children’s sexual orientation. The organization warns its antigay parents (few of whom have ex-gay children) against trusting mainstream mental-health professionals to treat what is often the underlying cause of their children’s struggles: Depression and low self-esteem. Depression is viewed instead as a tool to make people unhappy enough with themselves to submit to abusive ex-gay programs.
P-FOX also dissuades parents from listening to their teen and adult children who have survived spiritual and emotional abuse under unprofessional and judgmental ex-gay counselors. Instead, P-FOX encourages parents to make life more difficult for ex-gay survivors, in the hope that escalating ostracism from family will force the survivor to resubmit to ex-gay abuse.
Some of these tactics are evident in P-FOX’s latest stunt: An article written by Jeanette Bakke, the antigay mother of former ex-gay Christine Bakke. Christine is co-founder of Beyond Ex-Gay, a support group for survivors of ex-gay abuse.
The mother protects P-FOX readers from exposure to her daughter’s experiences, by refraining from linking to Bakke’s extensive online writing and support work for survivors. Instead, she writes of her own self-pity and of her prayers that her “lost” daughter will one day be “found” by the source of the family’s spiritual abuse.
Christine is much more factual and objective in her response. (Read More)
Former ex-gays are familiar with that sort of response: For decades, ex-gay organizations have cast out members who acknowledged the truth that ex-gay “therapies” almost never succeed and often harm counselees.
