On Monday, August 1, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition aired a report from Alix Spiegel entitled “Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?” Instead of accurately representing “ex-gay therapy” as ineffective, dangerous, and condemned by every mainstream professional medical and mental health organization, NPR opted to misrepresent the facts, falsely framing the story as a debate between two equally legitimate sides that “has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. A 2009 press release from the American Psychological Association announcing the results of an exhaustive study on the efficacy of “ex-gay” therapy says it all: “Insufficient evidence [exists] that sexual orientation change efforts work… Practitioners should avoid telling clients that they can change from gay to straight.” In a recent ABC News interview discussing “ex-gay” therapy, renowned author and psychiatrist Jack Drescher put the discredited practice in its proper perspective: “This is so far outside the mainstream it’s practically on Mars.”
Truth Wins Out, GLAAD, and other organizations called on NPR to correct and apologize for parroting “ex-gay” propaganda. Instead, NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos released a tepid, long-winded blog post in which he demonstrated a much greater interest in defending his reporter than correcting her errors.
The Ombudsman’s response is disappointing and woefully inadequate. We expect better from a top-notch, well-respected news organization like National Public Radio. Join Truth Wins Out in calling on NPR to meet with TWO and survivors of “ex-gay” programs so they can be fully informed about the dangers of the “ex-gay” myth –
The LGBT community has every right to be upset over National Public Radio’s handling of a segment that interviewed “ex-gay” activist Rich Wyler and former “ex-gay” Peterson Toscano. The response to the outrage by NPR Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, was inadequate and failed to dispel concerns that NPR had aired a poorly investigated puff-piece that benefited the “ex-gay” industry. In Schumacher-Matos’ defense of his reporter Alex Spiegel and editor Anne Gudenkauf, he stated that they “clearly worked hard on this story.”
I beg to differ and agree with NPR listener Paul Frantz of San Francisco who wrote “It’s a whole lot easier for your reporter to just hand microphones to people on opposing sides of the issue and take the rest of the day off.”
First, NPR should have identified Rich Wyler as an “ex-gay” activist whose business is taking gay men into the woods on weekend trips for $650 to allegedly turn them from gay to straight. The ombudsman replied that such identification wasn’t too important because, “Wyler founded an organization that claims to help men with same-sex attraction change. But they [Spiegel and Gudenkauf] said that Toscano, too, profits from his experience, writing plays and giving speeches about it.”
This comparison highlights how NPR failed to do its homework. While Peterson Toscano may profit from speaking, no one doubts that there are countless LGBT people who exist and do not make their living from activism. The same, however, can’t be said for so-called “ex-gays” who almost always exist in the context of working for conversion ministries or anti-gay political organizations.
Indeed, “ex-gay” activists themselves can’t even find successfully converted gays. Dr. Robert Spitzer, for example, conducted a controversial study on such individuals in 2001. Even with the help of the entire “ex-gay” industry, it took Spitzer two years to find a mere 200 so-called “ex-gays” and a significant portion of his sample were directly provided by activist groups such as NARTH, Exodus and PFOX. Given this reality, NPR should have tried to find individuals that were not “ex-gay for pay.” Truth Wins Out always challenges journalists to find such people and they come up empty handed. This speaks to the fact that there is no genuine “ex-gay” movement, just a high-dollar, politically motivated marketing campaign to create the appearance that such people exist in large numbers.
Second, where was NPR’s research team? Wyler’s People Can Change (PCC) website is rife with errors and research distortions. For instance, in a section called “Evidence of Change,” PCC lists at least two debunked studies as proof of the efficacy of sexual conversion.
Its site included the infamous Masters & Johnson study that claimed LGBT people could be cured. But in 2009 Virginia Johnson acknowledged to Thomas Maier, author of Masters of Sex, that the alleged sexual orientation changes found in their study, Homosexuality in Perspective, were a fabrication. Why is this falsified study still on the PCC website?
PCC also lists Dr. Irving Bieber’s long-discredited 1962 study, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. The research is dismissed for its fatally flawed sample: Out of 106 male homosexuals recruited from mental institutions, twenty-eight were schizophrenics, thirty-one neurotics, and forty-two had character disorders.
Yet, despite the dissemination of pseudo-science used to trick vulnerable and desperate LGBT people into coughing-up $650 for a weekend in the woods, NPR elected to use the dishonest Wyler as a credible source.
Third, Wyler was given a free pass because NPR never bothered to hold him accountable for his organization’s demonization of LGBT people. Schumacher-Matos comes across as naïve when he writes:
Wyler himself says in the piece that while he didn’t feel right living a gay life in Los Angeles, far from his family and church, he understood that it was right for others. I took that to mean that he didn’t denounce being gay, or think it was wrong.
Perhaps Schumacher-Matos and his staff that “clearly worked hard on this story” could have bothered to read the bigoted distortions on LGBT life that appear on PCC’s website:
The common experience among us was that we experienced the gay world as a place that was fraught with promiscuity, lust, obsession with youth and physical appearance, addiction to sex, alcohol and lust. We found judgment, pettiness, spiritual darkness and brokenness. Although we experienced small pieces of healing there at times, for the most part, it only deepened the emotional and spiritual emptiness inside.
Wyler innocently presents himself as a nice guy who simply wants to help those unhappy with their sexual orientation. The reality is that he and his organization demean, dehumanize, stigmatize, and beat down LGBT people to the point where they seek help. A sophisticated and well-researched NPR report would have challenged Wyler on his use of anti-gay rhetoric to recruit clients.
NPR should also have explored a couple of key questions: Why have so many former “ex-gay” activists renounced the “ex-gay” ministries? What was going through their heads to make them publicly extol the virtues of such programs – only to later claim they do not work? This psychological dynamic is key to understanding and critical to telling this story.
Fourth, Wyler’s bogus etiology of homosexuality should not have aired or at least been vigorously challenged by NPR. His core ideology is that LGBT people do not exist and are simply misbehaving heterosexuals that become gay as a result of abuse, neglect or bad parenting. In particular, PCC promotes the scientifically deficient idea that distant fathers are responsible for homosexuality in men. The cure includes male bonding and teaching gay men to play sports. The group even promotes a “sports camp” by the Catholic “ex-gay” organization Courage. Why not allow people like myself — who played college basketball and are very close to their father – to rebut this junk science? Why not have psychological experts set the record straight on this matter, so Wyler does not get away with repeating unsubstantiated myths that damage LGBT people and their families?
Fifth, NPR failed to report on the controversy surrounding Wyler’s organization and its woodsy Journey into Manhood (JIM) weekend. Last year, Truth Wins Out uncovered that two young men counseled by Alan Downing, JIM’s senior reorientation coach, were told to strip in front of a mirror and touch their genitals. While this did not happen at Wyler’s program, it does call into question PCC’s judgment in hiring counselors and its utilization of “touch therapy” to allegedly heal “homo-emotional wounds.”
For example, journalist Ted Cox infiltrated JIM weekend last year and he discovered what he dubbed, the “cuddle room,” where grown men sit in the laps of other grown men and caress each other in an allegedly non-sexual way. One of the petting positions is called the motorcycle, were a man straddles another like he is riding a motorbike. An additional position is named after Richard Cohen, the discredited “ex-gay” therapist who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for multiple ethics violations.
Another PCC life coach is Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) co-founder Arthur Abba Goldberg, a convicted felon who stole billions of dollars on Wall Street. It seems that PCC will take any reprobate and slap on the title of “life coach” or “counselor.” This demonstrates a lack professional standards and potentially places clients in harms way. To cover themselves, PCC’s website states: “The following list includes a mix both of licensed therapists and counselors and unlicensed counselors and professional life coaches.”
Could NPR not have explored the “ex-gay” industry’s penchant for embracing quacks, armatures, and scoundrels, considering that real people are having their lives affected by the ideas and actions of such individuals?
Sixth, it was remarkably shallow and biased the way that Schumacher-Matos handled the religious aspect of this controversy:
Gay rights advocates understandably demand that, rather than trying to change individuals, it is religion and society that must change, which indeed has been happening. But that doesn’t help conflicted individuals who are in this world we live in now. To dismissively say that these individuals should just find another religion is to be discriminatory and ignores the profound importance of a given religion in many people’s lives.
This arrogant statement blatantly ignores that a significant number of LGBT people found health and happiness, as well as ended their internal conflict, by adjusting their belief system to fit reality. And reality is admitting that it is highly unlikely for LGBT individuals to maintain optimal mental health remaining in a belief system that demands perpetual sexual frustration and loneliness.
The indisputable fact is, people can and do abandon destructive or unfulfilling belief systems every day. They change religions, alter their views, and switch churches – just as Michele and Marcus Bachmann have recently done. Wyler belongs to the Mormon Church, which sends youth on missions around the world. One of their primary goals is to convince people to change their beliefs and join the LDS church. When organized religion does this it’s hunky-dory with Schumacher-Matos, while its somehow “discriminatory” when LGBT activists merely suggest that most people are more content when their spirituality and sexuality are not at war.
Finally, in a particularly galling passage, Schumacher-Matos says that the NPR story “was prompted by the recent news that the husband of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann runs a mental health clinic that reportedly provides such therapy.” He then inexplicably writes, “I am curious…to know what really it is that Bachmann’s husband practices…”
As the organization that uncovered the Bachmann clinic scandal, we could have answered this question. It is appalling that NPR did not contact us or ask for a copy of our undercover video, as did other major news outlets, such as ABC News, NBC News, CNN, The Nation Magazine, and The New York Times. Again, glad to know that NPR “clearly worked hard.”
This is a crucial issue that affects the lives of real people. The American Psychiatric Association says attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.” The least that NPR and other media outlets can do is take some time to research this topic before they potentially cause harm by offering platforms to for-profit purveyors of scientifically and ethically bankrupt anti-gay theories and rhetoric.
It is reasonable and responsible for the LGBT community to expect professionalism from those in the media who hold the power to impact our lives.
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) today urged world leaders and members of Congress to skip the National Prayer Breakfast, February 4th, in protest of “The Family’ (aka The Fellowship) direct role in promoting a bill that would lead to severe human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Uganda.
“The National Prayer Breakfast is giving legitimacy to those who promote barbarism in the name of the Bible,” said TWO’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We hope that world leaders who care about human rights will reconsider attending this year’ breakfast. To say grace with the people pushing this hateful and dehumanizing bill in Uganda would be disgraceful.”
On National Public Radio’ Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed author Jeff Sharlet (pictured), whose book, “The Family”, is a groundbreaking expose on the clandestine group in charge of the National Prayer Breakfast. On the program, Sharlet revealed a “smoking gun”, tying The Family directly to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, which threatens liberty and life for all GLBT people living in Uganda. Here is the key part of the transcript:
GROSS: So you’re reporting the story for the first time today, and you found this story — this direct connection between The Family and the proposed [Uganda anti-gay hate] legislation by following the money?
SHARLET: Yes, it’ — I always say that the family is secretive, but not secret. You can go and look at 990s, tax forms and follow the money through these organizations that The Family describe as invisible. But you go and you look. You follow that money. You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It’ not so invisible anymore. So that’ how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’ work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’ kind of right hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’ National Prayer Breakfast. And here’ a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’ executive office and has been very vocal about what he’ doing, and in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.
GROSS: So how did you find out that Bahati is directly connected to The Family? You’ve described him as a core member of The Family. And this is the person who introduced the anti-gay legislation in Uganda that calls for the death penalty for some gay people.
SHARLET: Looking at the, The Family’ 990s, where they’re moving their money to — into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which has described its in the past as an international quote, “invisible family binding together world leaders,” and also, an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads — graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO’ through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by -according to Ugandan media — David Bahati, this same legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
“It is unconscionable to pray with a group that is actively preying on innocent people in Uganda, just because of their sexual orientation,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on all world leaders who care about human rights to opt out of this year’ National Prayer Breakfast. No one should break bread with a group that is breaking the bones and spirits of gay and lesbian people.”
Earlier this month, four members of Congress wrote a powerful letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to express alarm over the proposed law in Uganda.
“This egregious bill represents one of the most extreme anti-equality measures ever proposed in any country and would create a legal pretext for depriving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans of their liberty, and even their lives,” said the bipartisan letter, signed by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc., Pictured), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). “Particularly given the United States’ substantial contribution to Uganda through the President’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), we believe swift action is necessary to ensure Ugandan leaders understand this bill is wholly unacceptable and antithetical to democratic values.”
The United States embassy in Uganda also spoke out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, calling it a major setback in the promotion of human rights.
“If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” the embassy’ public affairs officer Joann Lockard said in an email. “We urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, fights religious extremism exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.
Additional coverage: The Family’s Sen. Ensign Scandal and cover-up
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