It was announced that both “ex-gay” organizations Love Won Out and Exodus will merge, which begs the question, is one better than two?
Love Won Out is the brain child of right wing evangelical “leader” James Dobson. Dobson has a long history of over thirty years of anti-gay rhetoric, which started in 1977 with the inception of Focus on the Family. He then formed the organization Family Research Council 1981 which attempts to imposed its right wing evangelical Christian views in government, politics,and law making.
Exodus is also a right wing evangelical organization that was founded in 1976. Since its formation Exodus has been marred with controversy. Exodus was founded by five alleged “ex-gay” men, two of which (Gary Busse and Michael Cooper) later left the organization, reneged their prior claims, and announced their love for each other. In more recent years another controversy emerged when John Paulk, a self proclaimed “ex-gay” and Exodus chairman, was caught by Wayne Besen in a Washington DC gay bar in 2000. This came after years of Paulk attesting to be “cured” from his former “gay life”. This proved to be a huge embarrassment to Exodus, contradicting years of claims preaching just the opposite. Paulk was removed and relieved of his duties with the organization.
Interestingly enough Paulk is also connected with James Dobson, as they co-founded the organization Love Won Out in 1998, a subsidiary of Focus on the Family, to specifically address and promote an “ex-gay” agenda.
Exodus and Love Won Out work to the detriment of the GLBT community as they promote conversion and reparative therapy, claiming its effectiveness to change ones orientation. These claims are asserted without any empirical evidence or peer reviewed studies and at the condemnation of 13 medical and mental health organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). These 13 organizations vehemently oppose reparative and conversion therapy and its damaging ways so much they actually formed the “Just the Facts coalition” which clearly states their disapproval of such actions and tactics.
www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/justthefacts.pdf
This merger just reinforces the need to remain steadfast in our efforts to expose the “ex-gay” movement for what it really is, present facts and promote love and acceptance rather then shame and self loathing.
Exodus International was founded in 1976 by gay Christian men who, at the time, were unhappy with their sexual orientation and eager to believe antigay activists’ Freudian habit — unsupported by reputable and unbiased research — of blaming parents for the formation of politically incorrect sexual orientation, and of telling gay men to pretend to be straight by butching up their behavior, taking a leap of supposed “faith” into a doomed heterosexual marriage, and proclaiming their heterosexuality loudly enough to drown out all signs to the contrary.
Within a few years, the wiser of Exodus’ co-founders left the organization, acknowledging that they had never been heterosexual and that ex-gay dishonesty had damaged their spouses and families.
But in 1979, a glimmer of hope emerged for would-be “ex-gays” when gynecologist William Masters and psychologist Virginia Johnson released a book, Homosexuality in Perspective, that they claimed was a result of years-long research. Conversion therapy was one focus of this work.
According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jack Drescher, M.D.:
In their study of 151 homosexual men and women with “sexual inadequacy,” they divided the latter term into two categories: “the sexually dysfunctional and the sexually dissatisfied.” The latter were defined as “men and women who expressed the desire to convert or revert to heterosexuality” (p. 240).
The book claimed to offer observations from the research participants as well as followup regarding short-term and long-term failure rates, although Masters and Johnson admitted that their followup methods were unsound since they relied upon subjective claims of conversion-therapy participants and not objective measures of the subjects’ attraction and orientation.
The data was impressive and served as a basis for much ex-gay literature. But it now appears that much of the key data may have been falsified by Masters.
Most staffers never met any of the conversion cases during the study period of 1968 through 1977, according to research I’ve done for my new book Masters of Sex . . .
When the clinic’s top associate, Robert Kolodny, asked to see the files and to hear the tape-recordings of these “storybook” cases, Masters refused to show them to him. Kolodny—who had never seen any conversion cases himself—began to suspect some, if not all, of the conversion cases were not entirely true. When he pressed Masters, it became ever clearer to him that these were at best composite case studies made into single ideal narratives, and at worst they were fabricated.
Eventually Kolodny approached Virginia Johnson privately to express his alarm. She, too, held similar suspicions about Masters’ conversion theory, though publicly she supported him. The prospect of public embarrassment, of being exposed as a fraud, greatly upset Johnson, a self-educated therapist who didn’t have a college degree and depended largely on her husband’s medical expertise.
With Johnson’s approval, Kolodny spoke to their publisher about a delay, but it came too late in the process. “That was a bad book,” Johnson recalled decades later. Johnson said she favored a rewriting and revision of the whole book “to fit within the existing [medical] literature,” and feared that Bill simply didn’t know what he was talking about. At worst, she said, “Bill was being creative in those days” in the compiling of the “gay conversion” case studies.
Maier has published a book, Masters of Sex, about Masters and Johnson — their personal relationship, their studies, and the impact of their work. Says Drescher:
Apparently Masters and Johnson may be just the latest in a long series of conversion therapy proponents, who when pressed, have been unable to substantiate their findings to outside sources.
When will Exodus International remove its praises of Masters & Johnson from its website and publications? And when it does, will it admit that the articles were false, or will it leave a decade’s worth of readers with misinformed and unchanged minds?
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) is teaming up with various anti-gay legal groups to intimidate GLBT campus organizations in high schools, colleges and universities. They are threatening to sue if these organizations don’t distribute the bizarre theories of Richard Cohen.
It is hard to believe, but Cohen is the former President of PFOX. They still promote his books and training sessions. And, if you ask for a speaker – they will likely send you Mr. Cohen – who was expelled for life from the American Counseling Association. If PFOX tries to get into your school, simply show administrators this clip of Cohen from the documentary, “Chasing the Devil.” It is clear, based on this clip – and his record – that disseminating PFOX’s material may put students at risk. Any responsible school that protects its students will not allow PFOX near its campus.
New Landmark Publication By Truth Wins Out and Lambda Legal Offers Legal Options To Those Hurt By Ex-Gay Programs
If You Have Been Harmed By ‘Ex-Gay’ Programs, ‘Ex-Gay & The Law’ Is For You
CHARLOTTE – Truth Wins Out and Lambda Legal released a landmark publication today, “Ex-Gay & The Law“, that aims to educate victims of “ex-gay” programs of their legal options. This work was inspired by the many people who have had their lives damaged by programs that seek to “pray away the gay” or use questionable counseling techniques.
“Ex-Gay & the Law helps survivors of ex-gay programs explore their legal rights if they believe they have been harmed,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “This groundbreaking publication offers practical legal advice so important questions can be answered.”
“We are pleased to help support this publication and to be a part of this effort,” said Hayley Gorenberg, Deputy Legal Director of Lambda Legal. “Groups that proclaim to ‘cure’ gay people of their sexual orientation lack any legitimate medical backing, cause harm, and sometimes operate unlawfully and unethically. If you have experienced any of the scenarios outlined in the last pages of ‘Ex-Gay & the Law‘, we welcome you to contact or Legal Help Desk.”
Each year, thousands of men and women enter “ex-gay” programs. Adolescents are even forced into these boot camps by their parents. While their stories differ, nearly all of these individuals have one thing in common: They are harmed by the traumatizing experience.
The American Psychiatric Association says, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior.”
Ex-Gay & The Law was released at a press conference in Charlotte to counter Focus on the Family’s ex-gay Love Won Out conference. The Charlotte Rainbow Action Network for Equality (CRANE) hosted the event.
CRANE is a grassroots coalition of activists and community members working toward civil and social equality for Charlotte’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from anti-gay lies. TWO also counters the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about gay life.
Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full regonition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.
In a WorldNetDaily article promoting the Love Won Out ex-gay road show, writer Bob Unruh reports:
One organization, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, said the term “ex-gay” threatens the homosexual community because “it implies that one remains homosexual by choice. That the gay person need not continue in the homosexual lifestyle is an unsettling message.”
[Gary] Schneeburger [of Focus on the Family] agreed. He said the one thread that runs through all the testimonies of speakers at Love Won Out conferences is the revelation individuals had when they realized that change was possible.
“That message is what folks [in the homosexual community] are intolerant about. They don’t want to have the discussion,” he said.
Various web sites periodically voice the false hope that the ex-gay movement is moderating its dishonest rhetoric of undefined “change”; PFOX and Focus on the Family, however, demonstrate a steadfast commitment to the failed rhetoric of the past. (Read More)
Agence France Presse reports (via PageOneQ), and Pandagon comments, on phony rehab centers opened by the Roman Catholic Church in Poland to teach quack therapy, prayer, chastity, and sexist gender roles.
Men at The Odwaga Center reportedly are taught to play the post-Biblical sport of soccer, while women are taught to cook.
Zach Stark, who endured more than a month of involuntary detention in Exodus International’s costly live-in ex-gayification program Love In Action, appears briefly in the upcoming ex-gay documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, which is planned for release later this year.
The following family-friendly cartoon — appropriate for schools — refutes the ex-gay myth with humor as well as fact.
Compare that presentation to antigay reparative-therapy advocates Julie Harren Hamilton and David Blakeslee, whose ex-gay video presentation peddles the unfounded myth that bad parenting, bad perceptions of parenting, and sexual abuse play a significant role in the development of sexual orientation in most gay individuals. PFOX promoted this ex-gay video via official e-mail this week.
Why might these particular antigay Christians be so antifamily — so desperate to blame family members — and so eager to believe the ignorant guesswork of one particular 19th-century secular psychotherapist named Sigmund Freud?
Former ex-gay Christine Bakke recalls some un-Christian and unprofessional advice from ex-gay “therapists”:
I knew one woman whose therapist gave her assignments to flirt with men.
An ex-gay guy who went on several dates to try to learn how to be with a woman (without disclosing that he identified as ex-gay), on the recommendation of his therapist.
A woman who was counseled by the leader of the ex-gay group that women should wear makeup (”need to put some paint on the side of the barn”).
A man who changed his last name because his ex-gay therapy led him to believe that his parents were to blame for him being gay.
A woman who insinuated that she had been abused because she felt like her story didn’t “fit” the ex-gay model without some kind of a root cause.
A young man who said that after he got out of the ex-gay movement and was finished with reparative therapy, that’s when the real repairing began. He had to repair the relationships with his family after buying into the belief that they were distant from him and made him gay.
Ex-gay “therapy” is founded not upon Christian values or the Bible, but upon long-discredited conjecture of a 19th-century secular psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.
Neither good intentions nor vague godtalk can excuse the destruction that is caused to individuals and families when ex-gay activists and “counselors” use fear, blame, and hopelessness to promote so-called “freedom” — freedom from sexuality, freedom from accountability, freedom from honesty within the family unit.
– The symposium will be at 2:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon (5/5/08) in lecture halls 159 A & B in the Washington, D.C., Convention Center –
Since 1973, the once dreaded American Psychiatric Association has become an ally of gay and lesbian equality. They have consistently withstood outside pressure from right wing organizations and instead chose to do what was in the best interest of GLBT mental health. Most notably, they endorsed same-sex civil marriage in a groundbreaking 2005 position paper.
In 1997, the APA first addressed ex-gay (or reparative) therapy by stating, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great and include depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior…Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur.”
In 2000, the APA issued an even stronger statement and recommended “that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum, to ‘first do no harm.’”
Unfortunately, a terribly misguided gay psychiatrist, Dr. David L. Scasta, is violating the spirit — if not the letter — of APA policy statements. In May, he will be part of a controversial symposium (Scasta calls it historic) he organized. It includes ex-gay therapist, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who is the Sultan of Stigma and a leading purveyor of religion-based shame therapy.
Writing in the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists’ newsletter, Scasta claims this forum will seek, “common ground” on “both sides of the religious divide.” He also urges that participants keep the symposium, “scientifically and rationally based” and hopes those on stage are committed to, “avoiding rhetoric.” Near the end of his article, Scasta claims his goal is to “ratchet down the forces of polarization.”
If the seminar’s mission is to let cooler heads prevail, inviting Throckmorton is a curious choice. An unlicensed psychologist who teaches at fundamentalist Grove City College, Throckmorton wrote an inflammatory paper for a right wing website titled, “Is Sexual Re-orientation Possible?”, that compared leaving homosexuality to quitting smoking. (Read More)
I knew one woman whose therapist gave her assignments to flirt with men.
