(Exodus’ Randy Thomas schmoozing with Karl Rove in headier times)
Is the once active “ex-gay” organization Exodus International on the decline?
Those who follow the group have noticed fewer events scheduled and virtually no media presence. The last press release for Exodus was posted on October 6, and the group’s front page promotes an event as far back as June. In terms of messaging, the group appears to be stuck in a rut and its once vital campaigns have grown predictable and stale.
Needless to say, I’m pleased with this development!
It is unclear if Exodus’ woes are a result of an internal shake-up, or if financial setbacks have hobbled the organization. Perhaps, they are not working as closely with Focus on the Family, which augmented Exodus’ past campaigns with creativity and professionalism. Ever since Focus on the Family handed over the flashy “ex-gay” road show Love Won Out to Exodus, it appears that the standing of Exodus has diminished.
The only evidence the group is still alive comes from Vice President Randy Thomas’ blog posts. But, even this venue suffers from inertia and rust, with Thomas posting offensive videos of Chambers preaching hate in 2006. Are there no new videos or messages to highlight?
In 2010 the organization left hardly a footprint. Its sluggish efforts lacked energy, and its impact had noticeably diminished. It will be interesting to see if Exodus comes out of its slumber and recovers in 2011.
The “ex-gay” group People Can Change (PCC) is increasingly filling the void left by Exodus. PCC runs Journey Into Manhood (JIM) weekends, which is a scam that takes gay men into the woods for $650, with the goal of making them more masculine. The group recently gained notoriety after ABC Nightline filmed a puff piece highlighting the group’s work. (A more accurate description of the group might be Journey into Manhunt)
The good news is that PCC is particularly vulnerable to scandal and outright collapse. This heavily Mormon organization adheres to the bizarre therapy model of Richard Cohen, the laughable and discredited “Sexual Reorientation Coach” who runs the bizarre International Healing Foundation. Convicted Wall Street hood, Arthur Abba Goldberg, is responsible for funneling a good number of paying clients into the group. (I’d love to see what’s in it for him) The organization’s senior trainer, Alan Downing, faced credible accusations of sexual misconduct by two clients earlier this year.
The PCC scheme is likely on borrowed time and is making a mistake by stepping out so publicly. Journalist Ted Cox wrote a fabulous expose showing the creepy and peculiar happenings at Journey into Manhood weekends. We had hoped that ABC Nightline would have engaged in real journalism and corroborated Cox’s story. However, they eschewed investigative reporting for cheap access to the camp, leading to a disappointing and woefully incomplete depiction and representation of Journey into Manhood weekends.
Still, it is only a matter of time before committed broadcast journalists with standards of excellence infiltrate JIM to reveal the closety, homo-erotic exercises that are offered in the camp’s “Cuddle Room”. When this happens, the entire program will turn into a punchline. I can hardly wait.
PFOX is also trying to assert itself, but its ties to the colorful and outrageous sexual engineer, Richard Cohen, will likely retard the group’s progress. The organization’s president, Greg Quinlan, appears angry and unstable, further hindering PFOX’s efforts to have an impact and gain mainstream credibility. And, Executive Director Regina Griggs is no more than a figurehead who avoids public appearances outside the safety of adoring fundamenalist Christian audiences. Indeed, PFOX may simply be a shell group for the Family Research Council and a number of Christian legal groups that want to show that “ex-gays” exist for political reasons. (To its detriment, PFOX embarrassingly can’t find real “ex-gays” to show, unless they work for the group, like Quinlan)
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) remains a dangerous organization, because their members pose as legitimate experts on homosexuality. However, they consistently underachieve because they fail to produce respectable peer review studies. Instead, they offer up transparent propaganda that has undermined the organization’s reputation with the public and media.
It will be interesting to see which one of these organizations — or perhaps a new one — comes out of the woodwork to pick up the slack. Hopefully, the answer is “None of the above.”
Richard Cohen, continues to undermine “ex-gay” groups
UPDATE: Evan here, with a quick update. If you want to see what it looks like when an actual, trained journalist who takes his job seriously investigates Journey Into Manhood, click here to read Ted Cox’s report.
I was incredibly disappointed with ABC Nightline’s segment that aired last night about the bizarre group People Can Change, which hosts Journey into Manhood (JIM) weekends. JIM takes closeted men with religious hang-ups into the woods, where they hug each other to allegedly become more masculine. The goal of this male bonding is to remake these repressed homosexuals into heterosexuals.
The problem is, it does not work, the techniques are based on junk science and the attendees, which pay $650 to be manipulated, can be psychologically harmed. JIM is a strange brew of New Age psychobabble mixed with fundamentalism, weaved into a scam that can accurately be described as consumer fraud, in my view.
JIM does not work for the vast majority of people who go through it. Yet, ABC made the critical mistake of focusing on the hand-picked alleged success stories, while largely ignoring the vast majority of attendees — which were victims who were ripped off by this scheme.
Why would a network elect to create what essentially was an infomercial for JIM, while skimming over the harm perpetrated on the majority? Shouldn’t this story be told in the form of an expose from the perspective of the victims?
Sadly, Nightline’s producers elected to trade accuracy for access. They bragged that they were the first network that got to take cameras into JIM. Well, not exactly. ABC was denied access to the actual JIM weekends — which are furtive, painful and bizarre — and instead allowed the network to film a JIM Reunion featuring canned spokespeople touting the Party Line. In essence, the PR people at JIM slyly created a Potemkin Village and ABC was suckered into videotaping the propaganda.
This really pisses me off. I spoke to the producer, Melia Patria, and explicitly warned her that in order to do this segment correctly, Nightline had to go undercover, like 60 Minutes used to. This would be the only way to get an accurate account of the silliness and seduction that truly represents JIM.
I suppose good old fashioned journalism is a quaint and anachronistic notion. These days, the networks often take the easy way out, even at the expense of an accurate portrayal of their subject matter.
The ABC piece was also biased, in that it gave an enormous amount of time to the JIM propagandists, while giving mere soundbites to victims Chaim Levin and Ben Unger, who were featured in a Truth Wins Out video. These men bared their souls and took big risks coming forward, and all they got was short shrift and shafted. Ben and Chaim did a marvelous job (as did star psychiatrist Jack Drescher), but their valid criticism of JIM was a mere afterthought.
Nevertheless, propaganda can only go so far. ABC does get credit for asking the right questions in terms of whether the so-called “ex-gays” are still attracted to the same sex. After hesitating, JIM’s spokesmodel, “Preston”, admits that he still thinks guys are hot. And, in a startling admission, his wife admits that they cruise men together. I’m sure church might even be fun with that couple! (Speaking of wives, why didn’t ABC interview anyone from survivor groups like the Straight Spouse Network, to show how these “ex-gay” marriages usually lead to divorce in the long run?)
Is it not astounding that the handpicked poster boy of JIM’s propaganda campaign looks at dudes with his wife? The moral of the story, thus, is the best this organization can offer is repression of sexual desires, rather than a genuine change in sexual orientation. Do people really need to spend $650 to suppress their desires?
Today, I am going to challenge ABC to do another segment — and do it correctly. The network has a moral obligation to tell the real story and do so from the victim’s perspective — not the victimizers. There are good people at Nightline who can get this right, and as top tier journalists with network budgets, they have the ability to do so. It is imperative for the sake of journalistic integrity that they take this story further and objectively search for truth. When they do so, I can guarantee the final product will be quite repellent to mainstream America and look much different than the slick PR dish served up last night.
I suppose we’ll see whether ABC commits an act of journalism tonight when they profile the laughably weird Journey into Manhood camps, which were notably exposed a while back when journalist Ted Cox went in undercover as an attendee and, as a straight man, experienced what it’s like when a camp counselor jams his boner into your back. As it usually goes with these mainstream media reports, sometimes they’re good, and sometimes they’re awful, beholden as the corporate media is to presenting “both sides” of issues, even when there aren’t two valid “opposing sides.” Here’s ABC’s intro:
When Preston met up with a bunch of his friends in New Caney, Texas, for a guys’ weekend at a secluded camp, it wasn’t for hunting or fishing. These men traveled here to attend emotional counseling sessions to cope with unwanted sexual attraction towards other men.
“To be able to connect from one man to another, with no facade, with no you know nothing holding back, it’s just amazing,” said Preston, a 28-year-old from outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. He requested only his first name be used.
The retreat called “Journey to Manhood” offers therapeutic peer counseling over 48 hours to help men like Preston, who voluntarily come to learn how to deal with what they call “same-sex attractions.” For the first time ever, the retreat allowed cameras inside their controversial organization and ABC News was granted exclusive access.
This is probably the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read from a wingnut making baseless claims about people changing their sexual orientation. Responding to Valerie Jarrett’s poorly chosen words about gay people’s “lifestyle choices,” wingnut Bob Ellis writes:
Yes, what [Jarrett] meant to say was this: “I know that homosexuals are slaves to their lusts and are incapable of allowing their minds or their wills to supersede their desires. Everyone knows that, unlike the alcoholic who can stop drinking or the gambler who can stop gambling, homosexuals are ‘born that way’ and are incapable of free will when it comes to sexual behavior.”
This is what homosexual activists and their “useful idiots” claim to believe, even though countless homosexuals have for thousands of years been leaving the homosexual lifestyle behind.
WOW! I had no idea Richard Cohen was beating pillow with tennis rackets thousands of years ago! Moreover, I bet the Journey into Manhood camps in ancient Greece were even hotter than they are now, what with the little toga things all the guys wore. It’s probably a whole different experience having an “ex-gay” counselor press his boner into your back when he’s dressed in such thin linens!
By the way, in the original piece, Ellis links the word “countless” to a story about 1 [one] guy in the UK who claims he has changed his sexual orientation, but as usual, nobody really knows what gets him sexually aroused but him. For “thousands of years,” he links to a Bible verse which didn’t even include the word “homosexual” in its original text, and for which the word “homosexual” is not only a poor translation, not only a lazy translation, but also just flat wrong. For the word “leaving,” he links to some crap about NARTH, which is funny since one of the “main brains” behind the operation was recently caught coming back from Europe with a male escort, having had his luggage lifted thoroughly whilst on vacation. Etc.
You get the idea. The links are all echo chamber crap which only seems credible to the stupid or easily led.
If you ever want to study the actions of a coward, look no further than Rich Wyler (pictured). He is the founder of People Can Change (PCC), which hosts Journey into Manhood (JIM) weekends. This is an individual who fancies himself as a macho, he-man, and for roughly $700 he takes effeminate gay men into the woods to butch them up. He and his unqualified, touchy-feely trainers do this by sometimes getting clients naked or having them give “non-erotic” massages in his seedy “cuddle room”. ( A more appropriate name for JIM would be “Journey to Your Manhood”)
Last week, Truth Wins Out broke the story of how JIM’s senior trainer, Alan Downing, was undressing clients and making them fondle their genitals in front of a mirror — in a convoluted effort to make them straight. When the scandal broke, Wyler almost immediately took Downing’s name off of the PCC website. Yet, there is no statement or apology from Wyler. (A better name for this lucrative scam would be, “People Can Charge”)
Why no statement?
Downing was no intern – he was the group’s SENIOR TRAINER. If the therapy did not work for Downing, who the hell does it work for? Of course, it doesn’t matter if it works, the product that PCC sells is false hope. All is well in the world as long as Wyler keeps forking in the dough by manipulating confused gay men who are traumatized by years of religious abuse.
If Wyler were a real man, he’d address this scandal head on. But, no, he’s a sniveling wimp. That is why he hid for years under the pseudonym Ben Newman. Old habits are hard to break. It seems Newman/Wyler is still hiding and refuses to let his former JIM campers know about the shocking sin that took place under his nose.
We will be watching to see if Wyler will publicly admit to this huge failing that undermined his “butch-up-the-gays” program.
Contact: Wayne Besen, TWO Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Therapist Alan Downing, A Key Figure In JONAH and People Can Change, Allegedly Made Clients Get Naked And Touch Genitals
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out (TWO) released an exclusive video statement today from two former clients of “ex-gay” life coach Alan Downing. The clients, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, alleged that during individual therapy sessions, Downing (pictured) made them undress in front of a mirror and touch their bodies while the significantly older therapist watched. Unger and Levin call the sessions a “psychological striptease” and believe they were harmed by what they consider unprofessional behavior and sexual misconduct.
Downing, who admits he is still attracted to men, is a major player in the “ex-gay” industry and a practitioner of so-called “reparative therapy”. He is the lead therapist for Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and is listed on the People Can Change website as a “Senior Trainer” for Journey into Manhood, which is a controversial “ex-gay” backwoods retreat designed to supposedly make gay men more masculine.
“These dysfunctional, unscientific programs are rife with sexual impropriety and need to be shut down,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Too often, repressed ‘ex-gay’ quacks pretend they are trying to get into your head when they are really trying to get into your pants. They call what they do reparative therapy, but it’s more like re-perv-ative therapy.”
“He was encouraging me, ‘it’s okay Ben, you can take your shirt off’…here was a man that was much older than me, and I was around 20,” said Ben Unger, a former client of Alan Downing. “At that point, I was just staring at a mirror with my shirt off and he was right behind me staring at the mirror with me at my body. Then telling me to look at my body and feel my body. It was weird.”
“While I was standing there without my clothes on, he asked me to touch my genitals,” says former Downing client Chaim Levin. “Once again, I communicated that I was not comfortable with it. And he was like, you know, ‘just feel yourself. Just feel it for a second. So, you can grasp your masculinity physically.’”
“If you believe having a closeted gay therapist undressing clients makes one straight, than you’ll believe that playing doctor makes one a brain surgeon,” said TWO’s Besen. “The concept is both outrageous and ridiculous and these sick, exploitative practices should be abandoned immediately.”
JONAH was co-founded by Arthur Abba Goldberg, a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope”. Upon completing parole, Goldberg secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people. Known as “Abba Dabba Do” in the financial world, Goldberg was sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes and served six months in prison.
“Given the sordid history of JONAH, this latest scandal is not too surprising,” said TWO’s Besen. “This is an unscrupulous organization of high moral turpitude that has few qualms about harming desperate and vulnerable clients. This group has consistently been tied to bizarre, sexually suggestive methods that are unsettling, dangerous and ineffective.”
Journey into Manhood, where Downing is a counselor, exhibits similar eyebrow raising techniques. Writer Ted Cox infiltrated this peculiar program and was surprised to find what he called, “homoerotic exercises” and a cabin that he called “The Cuddle Room” because it was a space where supposedly “ex-gay” men gave each other inappropriate massages.
“Apparently some of the guys in one cabin threw their mattresses into the middle of the room and had an all-night holding session,” said one of the men attending the Journey into Manhood session, according to Cox’s article.
“How ironic that therapists that claim to cure homosexuals keep ending up naked with their gay clients,” said TWO’s Besen. “Such lurid exploitation has moved from a disconcerting pattern to a full-blown trend and it needs to be investigated by the authorities.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights religious extremism. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders as charlatans. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Ted Cox went undercover into the ex-gay industry for a solid year.
As part of his investigation he attended the secretive retreat, Journey into Manhood (JiM). This experience included getting another man’s erection shoved into his back – in the guise of therapy. By the way, Ted is straight, so kudos for his having to put up with such nonsense. Here is what he also had to say:
While the ex-gay movement has publicly declared that they can bring “freedom from homosexuality,” there’ no evidence that someone can change his or her orientation through these religiously motivated programs. Rather than turning straight, the men and women that I met throughout this project dealt with a cycle of repression, backsliding into sin, then shame, guilt, and repentance. These programs collect hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on a promise they can’t deliver.
These programs are dangerous. Ex-gay watchdog groups document the stories of men who, after years of failed attempts to become straight, resort to suicide. Later I’ll introduce you to Eric, a fellow JiM attendee who would hook up with men on Craigslist and then go home to his unsuspecting wife. For many men in ex-gay programs, often their wives, friends, family, and church members have no idea they struggle with SSA.
What I saw and experienced at JiM both enraged and disturbed me. I had trouble staying in character as I watched one man, as part of his therapy, act out beating his father to death with a baseball bat ‚Äî just one of several “Are you kidding?” moments. How anyone could believe that a JiM weekend could turn a man straight still baffles me.
Arthur Goldberg’ damage-control campaign has begun, says Dave Rattigan of Ex-Gay Watch. His strategy is to portray himself as an innocent man who made a mistake, and is now the victim of a ruthless personal attack by the purveyors of the much-feared gay agenda.
Click here to read Rattigan’s excellent refutation, “I’m the victim: Arthur Abba Goldberg versus the world.”
By now, the world knows that Arthur Abba Goldberg was a big-time crook. After he left prison and his parole was up, he founded Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). He also became a major player in the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality (NARTH) During his decade-long tenure he never revealed his sordid past.
He hid by slyly dropping the “Abba” from his soiled name. For 10 years, he has posed as a moral paragon and paraded himself around the nation as an “expert” on homosexuality. The truth is, he is just an ex-con up to his same old tricks. Except this time, his con game is “curing” LGBT people.
Today, I went into the bowels of a musty New Jersey library to retrieve old copies of The Record (Bergen) from 1989. I had to use microfiche, giving me flashbacks of my high school investigative reporting classes. Below is a crook photo of Goldberg from the July 18, 1989 issue of The Record under the headline, “SWINDLE: Bond Whiz Admits Guilt in $2B Fraud.”
The sub-headline is “Abracadabra is No Houdini.”
Sadly, Goldberg and his apologists are already spinning his criminality and moral turpitude. They are saying that his appalling past is being distorted by gay activists. And, they are claiming that his crimes are minor…..because we ALL know someone who tried to steal $2 billion dollars. More on that another time. For now just enjoy the newspaper clips.
Wall Street Felon known as “Abba Dabba Do’ Reemerges As “Cure’ Gays Guru
A Truth Wins Out (TWO) and South Florida Gay News (SFGN) investigation revealed today that a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope” has secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people. Known as “Abba Dabba Do” in the financial world, Arthur Abba Goldberg was sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes and served six months in prison.
“We have long considered Arthur Goldberg a con-artist, but our investigation shows he is also an ex-con,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “His diabolical past mirrors his dishonest present-day work with the ex-gay industry. Whether it was shady deals on Wall Street or shading the truth on gay issues, Goldberg is someone who lacks credibility and can’t be trusted.”
“Mr. Goldberg’ silence today about his illegal conduct yesterday is a clear indicator that 18 months in prison 20 years ago has not inhibited his willingness to deceive others in order to advance himself today,” said SFGN Publisher Norm Kent. “You free yourself by admitting your wrongs, not erasing them. Goldberg is hardly in a position to be advocating how gay men and women should be authentic with their own lives when he is a fraud with his.”
Upon completing his parole, Goldberg dropped his conspicuous middle name, Abba, and co-founded Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) in 1999. He is currently the president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality (PATH), an umbrella group for “ex-gay” referrals and the Executive Secretary of the notorious National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). He is also the President of Congregation Mount Sinai, a temple in Jersey City and a Principal for the International Center for Gender Affirming Processes (CGAP). Goldberg is a key ex-gay industry insider and viewed as an architect of its strategy and message machine, says TWO and SFGN.
In 1989, Goldberg plead guilty in federal court in California and Illinois to three counts of wire and mail fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The accusations he admitted to include his participation as the engineer of a phony bond and investment scheme, which netted his Wall Street investment firm nearly $11 million in illegal fees.
The U.S. Attorney who handled the case at the time, K. William O’Connor, told the court at his sentencing that Goldberg’ crime was “a fraud of spectacular scope.”
The SEC banned Goldberg and his firm from ever selling securities again. In addition to his prison term, Goldberg was disbarred in both New Jersey and Connecticut. Despite that, he lists himself as a Doctor of Laws today on the website of NARTH.
Additionally, Goldberg is the author of “Light in the Closet” (Red Heifer Press), which promises to “explode the gay gene mystique, offering hope, compassion, direction and vitally needed information to gay strugglers, their families, friends, and surrounding community.” JONAH also plays a key role in supplying clients for Journey into Manhood Weekend, an ex-gay boot camp, where participants are taken deep into the woods to supposedly discover their masculinity. Goldberg is not gay, but has an openly gay son who reportedly lives in the New York City area.
“We conducted an investigation into Goldberg’ dark history to shine a little light in his own closet; to tell the world the truth about who Goldberg really is, and how he has never owned up to his sordid and tawdry past.”
Although Goldberg (in The Record 1989) often claims that he has been deeply involved in civil rights issues, his case revealed a deep insensitivity to minorities. An October 1, 1989 story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals that Goldberg jokingly described a bond issue the firm had underwritten in Guam as “selling bonds to the cannibals.” He also sought out poor minority communities, such as East Saint Louis, as targets for his conspiracies.
“Simply by concealing his middle name and omitting his dirty deeds from his biography, Goldberg was able to mask his past as a mini-Madoff,” said Besen. “The real Arthur Abba Goldberg is an unsavory character who lacks the credibility and integrity to portray himself as an expert on gay and lesbian issues.”
In an interview, one of Goldberg’ former clients suggests that his past moral deficiencies are reflected in his current work. He says that Goldberg is manipulative and exploits those who are despondent and desperate to conform, so they can fit in and be accepted by their friends and family members.
“Arthur Goldberg takes advantage of the vulnerability of religious Jews by promising them the opportunity to heal from their homosexuality and be able to live a life within the community they grew up in and fulfill the expectations they had of themselves and of their families,” the former client told TWO and SFGN. “When speaking to Arthur Goldberg, he uses false statistics of changing hundreds and thousands of men and women and other such numbers as an 80% success rate, which is misleading and false.”
Based in Fort Lauderdale, South Florida Gay News is the premier information source for the region’ gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
(Research team: Wayne Besen, Norm Kent, Michael Hamar,
Jerry Wong) (Read More)
If you ever want to study the actions of a coward, look no further than Rich Wyler (pictured). He is the founder of People Can Change (PCC), which hosts 
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out (TWO) released an exclusive video statement today from two former clients of “ex-gay” life coach Alan Downing. The clients, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, alleged that during individual therapy sessions, Downing (pictured) made them undress in front of a mirror and touch their bodies while the significantly older therapist watched. Unger and Levin call the sessions a “psychological striptease” and believe they were harmed by what they consider unprofessional behavior and sexual misconduct.
A Truth Wins Out (TWO) and South Florida Gay News (SFGN) 
Alternatives to Homosexuality (
The U.S. Attorney who handled the case at the time, K. William O’Connor, told the court at his sentencing that Goldberg’ crime was “a fraud of spectacular scope.”
Although Goldberg (in The Record 1989) often claims that he has been deeply involved in civil rights issues, his case revealed a deep insensitivity to minorities. An October 1, 1989 story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals that Goldberg jokingly described a bond issue the firm had underwritten in Guam as “selling bonds to the cannibals.” He also sought out poor minority communities, such as East Saint Louis, as targets for his conspiracies.
