As reported on this blog and elsewhere, the ex-gay industry operates a number of “camps” or “clinics” in Ecuador, where lesbians undergo rape and torture, many of them put there by their parents. Credo and Change.org circulated petitions; the latter site garnered 100,000 signatures, pressuring Ecuador’s Ministry of Health into agreeing to meet with LGBT activists and work on shutting these camps down for good.
Hooray for social media and for sunlight as disinfectant, and hooray for the brave women who told us what it was like in those places, at great personal risk.
The Advocate recently wrote about the testimony of lesbians from Ecuador who were forced into “prey away the gay” camps. These women report being raped, starved, handcuffed, and forced to dress like prostitutes during the “curative” process. Thanks to an outcry from Ecuadorian and international LGBT organizations, a few of the clinics have been shut down since the international spotlight has shone upon them, but many reportedly remain open. El Tiempo reports that many victims are reluctant to come forward because they don’t want to denounce their parents, who forced them into the clinics in the first place.
The French website that originally broke the story reported that
clinics have also enclosed gays and transvestites and trans people, but on a smaller scale, “probably because they get to leave the family earlier than girls,” says Tatiana [Velasquez, of the lesbian organization Taller de Comunicacion Mujer].
As if it weren’t hard enough to be gay in a homophobic culture, if you’re a gay woman in a homophobic and misogynistic culture, you’re that much more easily trapped and victimized. Homophobia: a weapon of sexism.
Change.org has begun a petition, which you can sign here (there’s another one at Credo), to get Ecuador’s Minister of Health to shut down the clinics and force his country to stop brutalizing its lesbian citizens in this way.
Also, Truth Wins Out sadly said goodbye to actor and board member Glenn Shadix, who passed away this week.
As for music this week, I think it was about two weekends ago when I literally, out of nowhere, listened to Nina Simone, and nothing but Nina Simone, for about forty-eight hours. I needed it. I still remember being a freshman in high school, when a friend handed me a Nina Simone CD, the debut from Portishead, and Fugees’ The Score, and simply said, “these are things you need in your life.” She was correct. The first song I ever heard was “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl,” which remains one of my very favorites. A close second is “Love Me Or Leave Me.” So we’ll listen to those, then hit shuffle on the iTunes machine, and see where we end up.
1. Tori Amos – “Beauty Queen/Horses”
2. Prana – “The Dream”
3. Phoebe Killdeer & The Short Straws – “Let Me”
4. jj – “My Love”
5. Das Racist – “One Dollar Can” [this is actually an ode to Arizona Iced Tea, no lie]
6. Toad the Wet Sprocket – “All I Want”
7. Primary 1 – “Clicks Like That”
8. Tricky – “My Evil Is Strong”
9. Beck – “Readymade”
10. Xiu Xiu – “Dear God, I Hate Myself”
You can, by the way, download the Das Racist mixtape completely legally and for free here, and let me assure you that if you like really freaking smart Hip-Hop type things, you will enjoy.
Lisa Miller is the one-half of a Vermont lesbian couple that conceived daughter Isabella with partner Janet Jenkins — and then abducted Isabella and took her to Virginia. There, prejudiced state courts violated Vermont’s family-law jurisdiction over the family and allowed Miller to violate Jenkins’ visitation rights until the court rulings were overturned by Virginia’s Supreme Court in 2007.
Since then, Miller lived more-or-less openly as a fugitive — violating Jenkins’ visitation rights, showcasing her daughter as a Christian Right political trophy, and sharing her story of troubled celibacy and sexual confusion (which she described as an ex-lesbian fundamentalist freedom) to Christian Right media. Then, late last year, because Miller had violated Jenkins’ visitation rights since 2004, a Vermont judge issued a final ruling granting sole custody of Isabella to Jenkins.
By the time of that ruling, however, it appears that Miller had already absconded with Isabella again. Miller abandoned her Virginia home and left her lawyers at the fundamentalist Liberty Counsel supposedly unaware of her wishes and whereabouts, even as they continued to represent Miller in court.
LezGetReal now believes that Miller is hiding as a “missionary” in Quito, Ecuador, using a church group affiliated with HCJB Global as shelter for the abduction.
We hope that U.S. and Ecuadorian authorities urgently investigate.
Belated congratulations are in order for the journalists behind a two-part investigative report that ran in Ecuador’s El Universo about unregulated and illegal ex-gay centers for the supposed treatment of homosexuality.
The disturbing articles, which also drew attention from Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin (“Ex-gay torture chambers in Ecuador“), revealed that there were more than 140 centers throughout the country claiming to cure homosexuality. Most heartbreakingly, those who were interviewed at these centers were teens or young adults sent there against their will by their parents. There was also a strong link between religious fervor and the nature of the teachings at these sites.
Today comes word that reporters Mar??a Alejandra Torres Reyes and Marjorie Ort??z received a 3rd place mention for Latin America in the prestigious Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize for both articles. The award, established in 1992 by the European Commission, “is awarded to journalists for outstanding reporting on Human Rights, Democracy and Development”, according to press materials. This year, more than 1,000 journalist entries from 133 countries were submitted for consideration.
Truth Wins Out reported broadly on Exodus’ complicity in ex-gay boot camps and antigay persecution in Ecuador and elsewhere in the developing world at the time that the El Universo articles first appeared in May 2008.
Duque comments: “I hope (the award) brings additional attention to the plight of teens who are taken to these type of centers throughout Latin America, often against their will, and that it helps to shut down such illicit ventures once and for all.”
Since then, Miller lived more-or-less openly as a fugitive — violating Jenkins’ visitation rights, showcasing her daughter as a Christian Right political trophy, and sharing her story of troubled celibacy and sexual confusion (which she described as an ex-lesbian fundamentalist freedom) to Christian Right media. Then, late last year, because Miller had violated Jenkins’ visitation rights since 2004, a Vermont judge issued a final ruling granting sole custody of Isabella to Jenkins.
