Exclusive Truth Wins Out interview with Thomas Maier

For decades, anti-gay organizations have gleefully pointed to Masters & Johnson’s 1979 book, “Homosexuality in Perspective”, that claimed to cure homosexuality. Indeed, Dr. William H. Masters and Virgina E. Johnson, the husband and wife sex research team, went on Meet the Press on Sunday, April 22, 1979, to discuss their finding that homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals. The book has since been used by the so-called “ex-gay” industry to “prove” gays could go straight, if they just tried hard enough.

In his groundbreaking new book, “Masters of Sex”, author Thomas Maier discovered through investigative reporting that the results of Masters & Johnson’s study were entirely fabricated. Virginia Johnson acknowledged that the results were fake. She had actually argued in 1978 that book should never have seen the light of day – but it was already to late in the publishing process to undo the damage.

One can not overstate the importance of Maier’s findings. They undo the very underpinnings of the so-called “ex-gay” therapy movement, further showing that there is no scientific evidence or data to support the outdated idea that gay people can become heterosexual through therapy. Indeed, many people who have undergone such “treatment” claim the experience was harmful and that they were psychologically damaged. The American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.”

• The Southern Baptist Convention extends its battle against freedom of religion among Southern Baptists.
• The antigay National Organization for Marriage exploited Miss California pageant winner Carrie Prejean last week when it created an ad around her and falsely claimed that Prejean had lost a Miss USA crown (she never had the crown — she wasn’t even a front-runner) due to her false and uneducated answers to simple questions about marriage for gay people. After a week of interviews in which Prejean touted Christian values, criticized liberal values of individual freedom, and demonstrated an absence of critical thinking and pro-family insight regarding marriage, now NOM is embarrassed by the revelation of recent nearly-nude pictures of Prejean, who — like her gay nemesis Perez Hilton — appears willing to say or do almost anything to generate controversy and fame for herself. Now she will likely lose the Miss California crown — as she should: Her amorality, partisan politics, and poor judgment are a poor reflection upon America. But don’t blame Prejean or ask her to demonstrate personal responsibility. Blame the homosexuals who made her act intellectually vacant, politically intolerant, and oversexed.
• Joseph Nicolosi, ex-gay therapist and former president of NARTH, declares that 75 percent of his patients have been cured of homosexuality — though, when consulted independently, these patients seem neither to agree that they have been cured, nor to agree with Nicolosi that their parents caused any trauma that would result in their ongoing homosexual attraction. Nicolosi refuses to document his claim.
• Exodus International president Alan Chambers — not content to foster vigilante violence in Uganda — is now referring to U.S. gay people as God’s cripples. Or, to be more precise, God’s hell-bound and “handicapped” children — but with a wink and a nudge that says a bit too much.

Similar to U.S. ex-gay poster boy Christopher Delaney, the Italian songwriter Povia believes that homosexuality is little more than a phase that anyone can overcome:

“[I] had a gay phase, it lasted seven months and then I got over it.”

Povia, a headliner for the upcoming Sanremo Music Festival, has raised the concern of Italian gay equality group Arcigay because he penned a song, Luca Was Gay, about an ex-gay man.

Pinknews says the song implies homosexuals can be “converted” to heterosexuality.

Aurelio Mancuso of Arcigay told Pinknews that Povia also said he has two friends that he has “converted” to being straight.

According to Pinknews:

Two years ago Povia won the Sanremo festival with a song about marriage, and the Vatican has been accused of overtly interfering with the event.

Mancuso believes that Luca Was Gay refers to Luca Tolve, who says he was “cured” of his homosexuality at the hands of controversial Catholic American psychologist Joseph Nicolosi.

A Facebook protest has accumulated more than 16,000 members since its launch in mid-January. It seeks to pressure festival organisers to remove Povia from the lineup.

Group espousing treatment of gays cites her work

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

A national group that advocates “treatment” of homosexuality is being criticized for allegedly distorting a Utah researcher’s work to advance the theory that people choose their sexual orientation – a controversial notion rejected by mainstream psychology.

Lisa Diamond, a University of Utah psychologist whose sexual identity studies suggest a degree of “fluidity” in the sexual preferences of women, said in an interview Tuesday that the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, misrepresents her findings. Position papers, some penned by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, an adjunct professor in the U.’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, point to Diamond’s research as evidence that gays’ sexual orientation can be straightened out through treatment – much to Diamond’s dismay.

“If NARTH had read the study more carefully they would find that it is not supported by my data at all. I bent over backward to make it difficult for my work to be misused, and to no avail. When people are motivated to twist something for political purposes, they’ll find a way to do it,” Diamond says in a videotaped interview posted on the Internet.

Diamond made those remarks two weeks ago as Californians were debating Proposition 8, the divisive ballot measure that mandates marriage as solely between a man and a woman.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints encouraged members to give time and money to the successful campaign, triggering a cascade of criticism and protests.Diamond’s comments specifically targeted Encino, Calif., psychologist Joeseph Nicolosi, co-founder of NARTH and the author of “Healing Homosexuality,” and “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” says Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies, in the videotape. “There’s no chance this is a misunderstanding or simply a different scientific interpretation. … It’s illegitimate and it’s irresponsible and you should stop doing it.”

Nicolosi did not respond to an interview request and Byrd claimed he did not know why Diamond, a fellow U. faculty member, took umbrage with NARTH’s citation of her work.

“NARTH’s view is that people can adapt any way they want and there is freedom of choice,” Byrd says. “If it says ‘fluidity’ it says ‘fluidity.’ How you interpret it is something else.”

Diamond, who has never met Byrd, said in an interview that NARTH “cherry picks” findings or references from her work that appear to support their position. Her denunciations of NARTH was instigated by Truth Wins Out, a New York City-based watchdog that patrols social conservative groups’ use of social science in support of hot-bottom agendas.

“They use these fake statistics and distort science to support bigotry and discrimination. It’s important to take these tools away from them,” founder Wayne Besen says.

NARTH is based in Nicolosi’s California office, but maintains an office in the same downtown Salt Lake City building as Evergreen International, a Mormon faith-based group that encourages gays to abandon same-sex attraction. While the two groups do not advertise their association, NARTH’s sole paid staffer last year was Evergreen’s executive director David Pruden, according to tax documents.

NARTH is no stranger to controversy. One past president, the late psychiatrist Charles Socarides, campaigned for years against the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to discontinue listing homosexuality as a mental illness. The American Psychological Association likewise maintains a stance of deep skepticism toward reparative therapies that seek to convert patients to heterosexuality.

“To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation is safe or effective,” the APA says on its Web site. “Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to a negative climate for lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons.” Diamond goes even further.

“The therapists are saying, ‘We can change your orientation,’ when all of the data, all of the data suggest that is not the case. They say same-sex attractions can disappear – they don’t,” she says. Reparative therapies “do additional damage” with techniques that incorporate electroshock and nausea-inducing treatments “that leave people feeling greater shame, greater guilt, worse about themselves.”

Dr. Lisa Diamond’ Charges Come One Week Before NARTH’ Annual Convention In Denver

Truth Wins Out released an exclusive video interview today with University of Utah professor, Dr. Lisa Diamond, who said that the National Association of Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) grossly and deliberately distorted her research on sexual orientation. Dr. Diamond’ assertion comes one week before NARTH’ annual conference in Denver, which will take place Nov. 7-9.

“Dr. Nicolosi, you know exactly what you are doing,” said Diamond in the video, addressing NARTH’ co-founder Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. “This is a willful misuse and distortion of my research. Not an academic disagreement. Not a slight shading of the truth. It’ willful distortion. And, it’ illegitimate and it’ irresponsible and you know that. And you should stop.”

“We are fighting back against the gross distortions of our lives by anti-gay organizations who manipulate science for political gain,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “These organizations claim to be moral, but often twist scientific research in the most shameless and dishonest ways imaginable. We are committed to exposing these lies and ensuring that science is accurately and honestly presented.”

Lisa M. Diamond, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah. She has won a number of awards for her work. In 2000, Dr. Diamond published a study, “Sexual identity, attractions, and behavior among young sexual minority women over a 2 year period.” This study was distorted by NARTH. The anti-gay organization falsely claimed that Dr. Diamond’s work shows that sexual orientation is “amenable to change.”

Dr. Diamond also produced a second study, “Female Bisexuality From Adolescence to Adulthood: Results From a 10-Year Longitudinal Study” in Developmental Psychology (2008, Vol. 44, No 1., 5-14). NARTH recently cited this study to support its anti-scientific belief that homosexuality is a mental disorder that should be treated. Truth Wins Out informed Dr. Diamond about these misrepresentations of her research, and she agreed to discuss how her work was manipulated. (Read More)

During the course of 2008, critics of the ex-gay movement have pointed to at least three prominent ex-gay activists whose web pages or recent statements spread unhealthy myths and ignorance about the human health disaster of HIV/AIDS.

(Read More)

Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales remembers being forced to sit with his father as a leading ex-gay therapist tried to make them falsely believe that Gonzales had been abused as a child. The same therapist later urged Gonzales to help him rig the results of a flawed 2001 study by Dr. Robert Spitzer.

Former ex-gay Peterson Toscano was horrified to discover that the same therapist — the longtime president of a supposedly secular organization that promotes ex-gay therapy — has been using his phony claim to be secular to spread blatant religion-based bigotry having nothing to do with science or mental health.

Now, from 2006 Yale University graduate Gabriel Arana, comes word that the therapist — Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality — mis-counseled him for three years, teaching him superstitions instead of truth. Among the myths:

• homosexuality is a sublimated desire to reconnect with one’ lost masculinity (the homos-are-pansies theory)
• under-attentive fathers and over-attentive mothers create gay children (the parent-bashing quackery promoted by Exodus and Focus on the Family)

More alarming: Arana confirms Gonzales’ accusation — denied by Spitzer — that Nicolosi actively sought to rig Spitzer’s survey of alleged success stories among ex-gay counselees. In other words, Nicolosi allegedly fostered research fraud: (Read More)

Op-ed by Wayne Besen

By the time victims of so-called “ex-gay” or conversion therapy reach me at TruthWinsOut.org, their self-esteem has been trampled and their self-worth is non-existent. These individuals were often betrayed by therapists who were supposed to be helping, but turned out to be the root cause of their enormous pain and suffering.

Sadly, such therapists have aligned themselves with religious organizations that send the detrimental message that if a gay client refuses to undergo sexual conversion or commit to a lifetime of celibacy he or she will be socially ostracized or will burn in Hell. From my experience, I have yet to see how such coercive and cruel treatment is conducive to good mental health.

Having studied the “ex-gay” movement for a decade and authored a book on the topic, “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the “Ex-Gay’ Myth,” I have found that conversion therapy is ineffective, harmful and anachronistic. These therapies don’t make clients heterosexual, nor do they help reconcile faith and sexuality. All that is accomplished, unfortunately, is enticing vulnerable clients to pay dearly for the identical shame and repression they previously received for free.

Regrettably, a well-financed cottage industry has arisen to deny reality and distort the lives of gay and lesbian people. This is evidenced by a group of politically motivated right wing counselors who filed a formal complaint in February with the American Counseling Association falsely claming that the ACA had violated its own polices and had stigmatized the beliefs of Christian counselors. It’ real goal, however, was to bully the ACA into allowing some practitioners to harm clients, while shielding this damage in the cloak of religious liberty.

In another example, last summer, right wing therapists wrote a letter to protest the American Psychological Association. They were expressing their outrage over an APA task force that will review current scientific research and stances on conversion therapy in a brazen attempt to intimidate the reviewers.

On behalf of the survivors of such therapy, I implore all mental health associations to withstand such political interference and resist the attempt to mainstream fringe therapies that harm gay and lesbian Americans.

There are three primary reasons why such therapy models should be definitively rejected. First, they confuse stereotypes with science. Secondly, they lack peer review studies and evidence that such therapies work — while there is a growing body of evidence that they hurt large numbers of people. Third, they rely on bizarre techniques that are a blight on the field of mental health. (Read More)