Earlier in the week, we reported on the harm done by “fondle therapy” and a renegade Exodus ministry in Michigan (at least until this week) that practiced the bizarre technique.

Today, TWO’s Michael Airhart wrote about another strain of “ex-gay” ideology, “death therapy” that is being prompted by British anti-gay activist Stehpen Green. The theory is that if you kill homosexuals, there will be no more homosexuality. Although macabre, it actually works if your not squeamish about mass murder, squashing freedom and state sponsored persecution.

The latest form of ex-gay ideology to emerge is “hooker therapy.”

The Advocate reports today that an Australian father who is accused of forcing his teenage son to have sex with a prostitute — out of fear that he was gay — may face rape charges.

As the rest of the family celebrated Christmas 2007, the father allegedly took his son to a motel in North Rockhampton, where he paid the ho to have sex with his son, according to The Morning Bulletin, a newspaper in Rockhampton. He left the room, demanding that the boy show him a used condom as proof he finished with the prostitute.

A magistrate decided on Tuesday that there was enough evidence to bring the father to trial.

“First [he] didn’t want to say anything to me,” the boy’s mother testified. “Then he told me his father took him to a motel room and there was a prostitute there. He wouldn’t talk, he just started crying.”

Detective sergeant Christine Knapp said police first became aware of the situation when the father tried to report his son to authorities six months later, in May 2008, saying the boy was abusing his younger brother. The father said he “tried to sort it out himself by taking his son to a prostitute” to no avail.

Of course, the official “ex-gay” groups will deny any connection with this incident – and technically they would be correct. However, the discredited idea that one can change from gay-to-straight, if they just try hard enough, keeps mutating into perverse progeny. We saw this insanity with the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda and now we see it with “ho therapy”.

Attempts to convert gay people rarely have a happy ending – unless one counts those on the payroll of so-called “ex-gay” organizations. However, it is difficult to deny that the noxious notion of “ex-gay” has led to distress, dysfunction and disaster in manifold forms.

Hooker therapy appears is the latest incarnation of the insanity that has blossomed under the rubric of “ex-gay”.

On August 5, Michigan resident Patrick McAlvey (left) revealed in a Truth Wins Out video the bizarre “therapy” he received from Exodus International counselor Mike Jones, who runs the group’ Lansing affiliate, Corduroy Stone. More than a month later, Exodus continues to shelter and support Jones, while offering silence in the face of scandal. The group has made no effort to investigate McAlvey’ charges, nor has it apologized for practicing touch therapy, a controversial practice it supposedly is against.

At the age of nineteen, McAlvey, who came from a religious background, was terrified that he might be gay. Feeling vulnerable and desperate to “change”, he placed his trust in Jones. Michigan’ GLBT newspaper, Between the Lines, interviewed McAlvey, now 24, where he elaborated on his therapy sessions with Jones in vivid detail.

“He asked how large my penis was,” McAlvey explained. “He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore. He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to. 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.”

Exodus may call this “therapy”, but where I come from (the real world) this is called foreplay. This is just not acceptable behavior and is predatory when it comes from an authority figure.

In sessions, Jones would also have McAlvey lie in his arms for hour-long intervals — a technique known as “touch therapy”. This method would be questionable in any circumstance, but even more so when the counselor who is caressing the client still admits to struggling with his homosexuality.

On his website, Jones acknowledges that he is still having “areas of sexual temptations”, is “sexually attracted to other men” and is “still not sexually attracted to women.” If this is the case, how is he qualified to help other people change their sexual orientation? And, if Exodus’ defines Jones as a success story, why would people waste their time and money on this failed program?

Most important, why is a sexually repressed gay man allowed to place young men in his lap under the auspices of therapy? Imagine the uproar if an older heterosexual therapist was “helping” straight teenagers or young women with such exploitative and quack-like techniques!

Interestingly, Exodus International has a policy statement saying it “is opposed to the therapeutic practice commonly referred to as “holding/touch therapy’” and that it “does not endorse any individual or organization that is known to use that method.”

If this is the case, then why has Exodus failed to launch a probe or discipline Jones, an actual Exodus counselor facing a direct charge that he flagrantly violated the organization’ policy? (Read More)