TWO Pledges To Help Educate The World Bank About PFOX’s Record of Hate and Harm
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out today praised the World Bank’s plan to eliminate matching funds for the “ex-gay” hate group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), and called it a “positive step in the right direction.” The bank took this extraordinary step after learning more about PFOX’s reprehensible record and strong objections from staff who were upset PFOX had been included on the World Bank’s list of approved charities.
“We are grateful that the World Bank ensured that taxpayers will not be subsidizing PFOX’s anti-gay campaign,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We pledge to continue educating the World Bank on this vital issue. The more they learn about PFOX’s history of hate and harm, the less likely they will consider PFOX a legitimate charity.”
Last week, Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner discovered that a small number of anti-gay staff-members at the World Bank had recommended PFOX as a charity for this year’s Community Connections Campaign. World Bank matching funds were to be given to the chosen charities. Depending on the level of employee participation, the bank’s matching funds are either 50 percent or 100 percent of the employee donations.
Truth Wins Out and Change.org launched an online petition to drop PFOX from the list of charities. World Bank staff also made a persuasive case against using taxpayer funds to assist PFOX. The World Bank decided to take another look at PFOX and elected to change their guidelines. According to the new rules:
Bank-matching funds will be provided to those organizations that have, through prior participation, established a track record of support with staff. Organizations that have come on the list this year will not be offered matching funds in this year’s campaign, though the Bank will match any contribution that has been made to this latter group prior to today, November 15, 2010. We will review the new organizations after one year, to see if they have the staff and community support to warrant a match in the FY12 campaign.
Truth Wins Out preferred that PFOX be completely dropped from the list this year, but is satisfied with this interim measure that starves the hate group of taxpayer funds. In 2011, TWO will disseminate key information to World Bank staff and management to ensure they are aware of PFOX’s dubious record.
“It is a shame that other first time charitable organizations will have to suffer because of PFOX’s unseemly presence,” said TWO’s Wayne Besen. “Sadly, the PFOX baby is so toxic that the bathwater had to be flushed to avoid contaminating the entire program’s reputation.”
In August, two key members of PFOX spoke at the “Truth Academy”. The conference was hosted by Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s founder Peter LaBarbera, whose website was listed as an official “hate site” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
At the Truth Academy, PFOX Board President Greg Quinlan raised eyebrows with an offensive speech. Quinlan explained how he allegedly went from gay-to-straight, and found support from an Assemblies of God Church that accepted him because he allegedly was not effeminate.
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan told the chuckling crowd. “I can say that because I’ve been there and done that. You know, the one’s whose wrists are so limp that when the wind blows they slap themselves in the face. I wasn’t one of them.”
At the same conference, Arthur Abba Goldberg, the convicted Wall Street thief who runs PFOX’s speakers bureau, demonstrated PFOX’s unscientific use of stereotypes.
“By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building,” said Abba Goldberg. “They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don’t feel they are masculine enough.”
“PFOX is a dangerous organization that traffics in ugly slurs and crass stereotypes,” said TWO’s Wayne Besen. “Given PFOX’s level of vitriol, it would seem reckless and irresponsible to give this group charitable status in the future.”
PFOX’s former board President is Richard Cohen, who still serves as the “therapy” guru of the organization. Cohen runs the International Healing Foundation and sent his protégé, Caleb Lee Brundidge, to Uganda. The result of his visit was the introduction of the deadly and draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Cohen was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association on March 23, 2002 for multiple ethics violations.
PFOX is an anti-gay political organization founded in 1998 by Anthony Falzarano with the help of an $80,000 Family Research Council grant. Falzarano once called University of Wyoming hate crime victim Matthew Shepard a “predator to heterosexual men.” He also said on CBS News that, “AIDS comes directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.”
“PFOX likes to claim that they ‘love’ LGBT people,” said TWO’s Wayne Besen. “But their syrupy rhetoric does not match their record, nor reality. From the moment this organization was founded, it showed open hostility and extreme animus towards LGBT people.”
There are also lingering questions as to whether PFOX should have been listed as a charity, given that to be included in the World Bank’s Community Outreach Program, an organization is required to have, “a substantial local presence in the Greater Washington metropolitan area.”
PFOX fails to fulfill the criteria. The organization is based in Reedville, VA — placing PFOX 127 miles — and a two hour and forty minute drive — southeast of the nation’s capitol. PFOX also does not list any legitimate chapters in DC or Virginia. The only “contact” e-mail listed in DC or VA is that of the national organization based in Reedville.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community against anti-gay misinformation, counters the so-called “ex-gay” industry and educates America about the lives of LGBT people. Our goal is to fight for a world where LGBT individuals can live openly, honestly, free of discrimination and be true to themselves.
In new video, Frank Mugisha of Sexual Minorities Uganda confirms that U.S. ex-gay activists met with members of the Uganda Parliament and claimed that international homosexuals were out to “recruit” Ugandan children.
Influential Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote an excellent column today, calling on Rick Warren and other evangelicals to do more to stop Uganda’s heinous Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to Parker:
The proposed law is a case study in the unintended consequences of moral colonialism….If we (Rick Warren) decide that genocide is too political for interference, then what good is moral leadership?…
….Other evangelical Christians operating in Uganda are less easily excused from responsibility in the country’s increasingly hostile attitudes toward gays. Often cited as having stirred the pot are pastors Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, who last March worked with Ugandan faith leaders and politicians to help stop the “homosexualization” of the country….
…In a “Meet the Press” interview last November, Warren said he never takes sides, but one wishes he would. To borrow his own words, it is in certain cases extreme, unjust and un-Christian not to.
Parker is correct to say that Warren and other evangelicals have not done enough, considering their deep involvement in Uganda. At Truth Wins Out, we warmly welcomed Warren’s denunciation of the hate bill, however, that was merely covering his behind.
If Warren and others (Alan Chambers, James Inhofe, and Doug Coe – I mean you) are serious about stopping the persecution, imprisonment and murder of innocent people, they will board planes to Kampala this week and speak directly to the people and lawmakers of Uganda. They helped cause this horrific mess, so it is their duty to clean it up.
I just checked Orbitz and confirmed that flights still fly to Kampala. Will any evangelical butts fill the seats? Or, do they only light fires in places like Uganda and then butt out when there is too much heat in the kitchen?
The world is watching….and these “moral leaders” will be judged by their action — or inaction.
The New York Times was late to the game. But, now that the newspaper is paying attention, they are doing an excellent job spotlighting the dire situation for LGBT people in Uganda. Hopefully, this will drive home the message to the would-be mass murderers in Uganda’s government that there will be a heavy price to pay if they continue promoting butchery and barbarism.
Uganda’ government, which has a shameful record of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, is now considering legislation that would impose the death sentence for homosexual behavior. The United States and others need to make clear to the Ugandan government that such barbarism is intolerable and will make it an international pariah.
Corruption and repression ‚Äî including violence against women and children and abuse of prisoners ‚Äî are rife in Uganda. According to The Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman, officially sanctioned homophobia is particularly acute. Gay Ugandans are tormented with beatings, blackmail, death threats and what has been described as “correctional rape.”
The government’ venom is chilling: “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” James Nsaba Buturo, who holds the cynically titled position of minister of ethics and integrity, said recently.
What makes this even worse is that three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred. Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer gave a series of talks in Uganda last March to thousands of police officers, teachers and politicians in which, according to participants and audio recordings, they claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values.
Now the three Americans are saying they had no intention of provoking the anger that, just one month later, led to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.
We don’t have much hope that they will atone for their acts. But right now the American government, and others, should make clear to Uganda that if this legislation becomes law, it will lose millions of dollars in foreign aid and be shunned globally.
Tomorrow’s New York Times correctly identifies the individuals who launched Uganda’s campaign to exterminate its LGBT citizenry.
Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, U.S. ex-gay activist Caleb Lee Brundidge, and U.S. ex-gay activist Scott Lively are the three evangelicals who led a March conference in Kampala to accuse LGBT Ugandans of child recruitment and pedophilia, to recommend forced ex-gay therapy, and to support Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa and antigay pastor Martin Ssempa in their effort to toughen Uganda’s pre-existing life-imprisonment sentence for LGBT Ugandans.
The Times said:
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
The Times fails to point out the direct role that U.S. government aid has played in subsidizing Uganda’s antigay evangelicals. Instead, the Times indirectly points to the State Department’s PEPFAR program for HIV/AIDS prevention as a source of aid to Ugandan conservatives. And the Times identifies sources of funding for Ugandan LGBT human-rights advocates:
“It’ a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.
Despite denials of responsibility issued by the three U.S. ex-gay activists, the Times points out that “the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to ‘a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.’ Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.”
Schmierer has traveled to Uganda numerous times since 2002, and should have known that his false teachings to parents about homosexual “recruitment” would cause violence.
“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.
Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”
“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has managed to elicit statements from the three U.S. ex-gay activists who, in March 2009, keynoted the conference which launched Uganda’s current antigay death-penalty and mass-suppression campaign.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill calls for the nation to execute its sexually active LGBT and HIV-positive citizens — and to imprison family members, friends, doctors and pastors who fail to turn their LGBT peers in to police.
While the three activists step back from demanding an all-out death-penalty — some of them prefer mandatory brainwashing or life imprisonment — none regret having launched the campaign in the first place.
The conference lead organizer, the so-called Family Life Network, clearly expressed its intent before and during the conference and has remained active in the campaign since then.
I always begin my traveling presentation on the “ex-gay” industry with a Daily Show segment (view video at bottom of this link) featuring Richard Cohen, former president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX). No matter the audience — activists, university students or medical professionals — his antics are sure to bring uproarious laughter. This is because the “therapy” promoted by Cohen and PFOX is outright bizarre. Even conservatives in attendance will often admit they are witnessing quackery at its finest.
Unfortunately, PFOX is nothing to laugh about these days. It is teaming up with an anti-gay legal organization to bully GLBT university groups. This unholy alliance is ordering these gay resource centers to hand out ex-gay materials or face possible lawsuits.
If PFOX and their lawyers are harassing your GLBT Center, Truth Wins Out advises you to do the following:
1. Contact Truth Wins Out and let us know about your situation. If you can provide us with the materials used by PFOX, it would be most helpful. (wbesen@truthwinsout.org)
2. Immediately contact Lambda Legal for advice on your specific legal circumstances. (hgorenberg@lambdalegal.org)
3. Make sure that all students in your group and relevant administrators are aware that PFOX’ therapy models are rejected by every major medical and mental health organization in America. This includes the American Psychological Association, American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.
4. Because PFOX practices a fringe therapy considered potentially dangerous, it should be rejected, unless legal counsel specifically and unequivocally says otherwise. In the rare instance that such material is displayed, consider stamping it with the following words: WARNING: THE AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION SAYS THAT ATTEMPTS TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION CAN CAUSE ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR. Ex-gay literature should be treated like a package of cigarettes and those exposed deserve to be warned of the potentially harmful side effects.
5. University groups should consider rejecting PFOX’ materials because it puts students at risk. This is because the organization refers clients to Richard Cohen, who founded the International Healing Foundation. Mr. Cohen was expelled for life from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for multiple ethics violations.
His work includes a controversial method called “touch therapy.” (See Video) This technique includes lying in the lap of a person of the same sex while they caress you. It is supposed to be non-sexual, but some consider it a gateway to sexual abuse. There have been several instances where this method has been exploited to harm vulnerable clients. Based on PFOX’ promotion of this technique, we strongly advise universities to keep all PFOX materials off campus.
6. Caleb Brundidge is a protege of Richard Cohen. Brundidge is also affiliated with Extreme Prophetic ministries, which takes groups to mortuaries to attempt to raise the dead. Clearly, any university or affiliated groups should be very careful before they place students in the hands of people with such extreme views.
7. Please refer all relevant college and university staff to videos of Richard Cohen. It is crucial to see this man in action before deciding if PFOX materials are appropriate for campuses. Administrators must be asked point blank: “Do you want our students in Richard Cohen’ hands?”
8. PFOX is already represented in all schools, since so-called ex-gays are allegedly heterosexual. There is no “ex-gay” sexual orientation in the medical or psychological literature. It is a term invented by anti-gay activists whose goal is to pass anti-gay legislation. Indeed, PFOX was founded in 1998 with an $80,000 grant from the Family Research Council, a Washington, DC lobby group.
9. Another primary resource of PFOX is the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). This organization has been accused of distorting research. It also published an essay that claimed gender variant children should be “ridiculed” and another one that seemed to justify slavery. NARTH has also widely quoted Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively.
10. If someone at your college or university has been harmed by the ex-gay industry – including PFOX – there may be legal options. Please download “Ex-Gay & the Law” to find out more. Or, request that hard copies be sent to your school.
Finally, this is not about free speech as PFOX contends. This is about rational people studying the medical and psychological literature and concluding that PFOX’ methods are peculiar and possibly dangerous. The first role of a college or university is to protect its students. Based on the methods promoted by PFOX and the dubious people associated with the organization, it is reasonable to conclude that their content is unfit for schools.
I’ve disagreed several times with ex-gay blogger Karen Keen, who seemed a bit too unskeptical of obvious wrongdoing by certain Exodus International leaders and ministries, a wee bit too tolerant of harm done to most former ex-gays for the supposed benefit of a few.
However, I give Keen credit for not only acknowledging, but also agreeing with, key concerns about Exodus International’s keynote role last week in a Uganda antigay conference.
Keen writes at length about the conference and Exodus’ responsibilities. I encourage readers to view Keen’s entire article; here are some excerpts. (Read More)
A prominent board member of the “ex-gay” group Exodus International spoke at a conference in Uganda last week, where activists vowed to “wipe out” homosexuality through police action, forced re-education, life imprisonment, and vigilantism.
Exodus President Alan Chambers (pictured) enabled the hate by doing nothing to stop the conference. The following is a timeline of the call for human rights abuses that took place on Chambers’ watch. (Read More)
A three-day antigay conference starting today in Kampala, Uganda, will promote magic, life-imprisonment, and parental blame-games as methods of “curing” people of their sexual orientation. Exodus International board member Don Schmierer of the United States will help keynote the conference.
Schmierer was scheduled to join Holocaust revisionistScott Lively and Caleb Lee Brundidge as speakers for the event, organized by Uganda’s so-called Family Life Network. Brundidge is a therapist within ex-gay Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation who also co-leads Extreme Prophetic, a movement of pentecostal extremists who anticipate that God shall empower them to raise corpses from the dead — right out of cemetery graves.
The decision of Exodus leadership, Lively, and a prominent therapist at Cohen’s foundation to endorse Uganda as ex-gay conference locale is appalling:
Uganda has an atrocious human-rights record. Security forces commonly inflict torture and illegal detention; the nation remains wracked by civil war; more than 1.2 million Ugandans have been driven from their homes; an estimated 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA for use as child soldiers and slaves; and the country is led by president-for-life Yoweri Museveni.
The conference objective is to defend Uganda’s criminalization of homosexuality, which remains punishable by life in prison — or by extrajudicial execution, which also is common. FLN leader and conference organizer Stephen Langa justifies this brutality by falsely accusing gay people of recruiting children. (Langa offers no evidence of such recruitment.)
The conference is not intended for the people who actually struggle with their sexual orientation; it is targeted instead at antigay parents, politicians, violently antigay preachers, and vigilantes. Langa says the conference will (falsely) inform these audiences that sexual orientation can be suppressed and destroyed through changes in parenting, through brutal law enforcement, and through concerted campaigns of ostracism by organizations and communities.
Conference tickets cost 25,000 Ugandan shillings per day — U.S. $13, in a Ugandan economy whose per-capita purchasing power is about one-fortieth that of the United States.
Thus far, only one ex-gay pundit has spoken out against Exodus’ participation in the conference: Warren Throckmorton.
… Throckmorton says that he believes it is a big mistake for these US people to go to Uganda and discuss prevention of homosexuality when they are not scientists and have no training to discuss these matters in a reliable or factual manner.
He says people who are involved are not qualified to speak about the causes or change of homosexuality.
“None of them have any research on the topic or scientific qualifications to understand the research on the subject. They will be spreading old ideas about homosexuality which even Christian psychologists in the US and Europe have dismissed as without support,” he says.
He says that one of the presenters has a significant problem with credibility.
“Caleb Brundidge is affiliated with Extreme Prophetic here in the US. He leads groups to mortuaries to attempt to raise the dead!
“He believes God drops jewels and gold dust on worshippers but refuses to gain verification of these claims. He also claims he was gay and changed. Given his other claims, it is difficult to take any of his claims seriously.
“I also believe it is dangerous for those who might struggle to admit their struggle in Uganda when it might land them in trouble with the authorities,” he says in a commentary sent to our reporter after we broke the story of the Conference.
“Mr. Schmierer is a board member for Exodus International and he should not be promoting questionable theories of prevention in a country where just admitting being gay can lead to serious consequences,” he adds.
Exodus International and Exodus Global Alliance support criminalization and long prison terms for gay people in many countries in the world. Despite numerous requests, Exodus International has refused to disavow its membership in EGA or its role in EGA opposition to human rights. [And since 2002, despite my own personal appeals to Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas, Exodus International has refused to establish and publish a clear and official policy opposing the criminalization and prosecution of homosexual orientation and behavior.]
Why, then, is it a surprise to Prof. Throckmorton when Exodus board member Schmierer acts in support of imprisonment and forcible brainwashing in Uganda?
Addendum: A commenter at Ex-Gay Watch points out that it is effectively illegal to be ex-gay in Uganda. To admit past or present sexual activities with the same sex, immediately exposes oneself to imprisonment, torture, or extrajudicial execution.
Perhaps the entire leadership of Exodus International should fly to Uganda, stay there for a year or two, and enjoy life under the laws and vigilantism that they defend. To advocate for laws that one refuses to live under is both sadistic and cowardly.
Last week, Metro Weekly’s Chris Geidner discovered that a small number of anti-gay staff-members at the World Bank had recommended PFOX as a charity for this year’s Community Connections Campaign. World Bank matching funds were to be given to the chosen charities. Depending on the level of employee participation, the bank’s matching funds are either 50 percent or 100 percent of the employee donations.
I’ve 
A prominent board member of the “ex-gay” group Exodus International spoke at a conference in Uganda last week, where activists vowed to “wipe out” homosexuality through police action, forced re-education, life imprisonment, and vigilantism.
