(Arthur Abba Goldberg’s original article is HERE)

By: Erez Harari

“If you want to be gay, gey gezunta heit (you should live and be well)”

This catchphrase, coined by Arthur Goldberg of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) is used to illustrate that his “reparative therapy” organization believes that individuals who “choose” to be gay have every right to do so, just as an individual has a right to choose to “change”.

However, a recent article written by Arthur Goldberg on Arutz Sheva (a national Israeli news station) belies the disingenuousness of this message when Arthur lambasted a recent Yeshiva University event entitled “Being Gay in the Orthodox World”. This event was intended to illustrate some of the struggles, both internal and external, that Orthodox Jews have when trying to negotiate their religious and sexual identities (videos of the event are on vimeo.com, search: “YU gay panel”).

The purpose of the event was solely to raise awareness and tolerance, and it was explicitly stated that the event would not address halachah (Jewish law), reparative therapy, or the biological vs. social nature of sexual orientation. It was merely a chance for people to share their personal, often heart wrenching, stories about growing up gay in the Orthodox Jewish community.

This message was completely lost on Arthur Goldberg, who works with individuals “struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions” on a daily basis.

He begins his article by stating that the program “illustrates a classic strategy designed to manipulate Jews”. He clearly  twists a simple plea for awareness and sensitivity into some sort of nefarious plot concocted by individuals with sinister ulterior motives. He then suggests that the panelists, a group of four Yeshiva University alums in their 20s, some of whom only came out within the past year or two, were “clever purveyors of a propaganda effort to alter attitudes within the Orthodox community”.

It’s surprising that raising awareness of the fact that homosexuality exists in the Orthodox community and encouraging sensitivity towards homosexuals is turned into a bad thing. No one violates Torah law by being nice to people.

Arthur claims that members of the “ex-gay” community were denied an opportunity to speak on the panel. This is blatantly false. The panel was comprised exclusively of Yeshiva University students and alumni and Arthur was denied a spot on the panel because he is not an alumnus. (Read More)

An ominous and provocative headline, with shades of a gay conspiracy, appeared a few years ago on the Center for American Cultural Renewal’s website. It was the lead to a guest column by Dr. Warren Throckmoron and it boldly declared, “Hiding The Truth From Schoolchildren: It’s Elementary Revisited.”

The article discussed a young gay activist, Noe Gutierrez, who had appeared in the pro-gay “It’s Elementary Video,” only to soon enter the ex-gay ministries. Throckmorton wasted no time exploiting this youthful and confused individual to make political hay. In the blink of an eye, Guiterrez was back on film appearing in Throckmorton’s, “I Do Exist” ex-gay movie.

Of course, Gutierrez has now come out of the closet, a professional disaster for the good doctor. At the time, a triumphant Throckmorton had this to say in his column:

Noe’ Gutierrez, the young man that told his story in the video, came out as gay at 16 but then came out again as ex-gay at 24. On “It’s Elementary,” he was filmed speaking to a San Francisco area middle school on behalf of Community United Against Violence. Mr. Gutierrez was quite involved in gay advocacy and frequently spoke publicly on this topic. However, about six years ago Mr. Gutierrez went through a period of re-evaluation and change. The end result was his change of sexual identity from gay to straight. Without fanfare, Mr. Gutierrez went through a profound experience of transformation and after a while of working through his experience began telling others of his change.

When ex-gay spokesman John Paulk went into Mr. P’s gay bar in Washington D.C. several years ago, the country knew about it. Even though Mr. Paulk did not fall sexually and is still happily married to former lesbian Anne Paulk, the media turned his lapse of judgment into a referendum on ex-gay ministries.

When Mr. Gutierrez came out a second time as ex-gay, no one wrote about it, even though in the eyes of many people, what he did was a nearly impossible accomplishment. Amazingly, certain people want his story to stay unknown.”

Actually, Throckmorton, we do want his story to be known, and we want you to have the personal integrity to tell it. We’d hate to think that you are a big, fat, lying hypocrite that only wants to tell stories when they benefit your right wing views. That’s called propaganda, not the “honest discussion” you keep telling people that you want to have.

All I can say is, “thank God for the Internet,” so we can expose Throckmorton for the phony he truly is. The web is just packed with his cocksure quack quotes, arrogantly ensuring America that “change is possible.” There is still hope for Throckmorton, but he must begin by being honest with himself and then telling the truth to others. With no credibility, his days of peddling the lie that people can go from gay to straight have ended.

If Mohler and Throckmorton really wanted to have a debate, and if, as they say, they are not afraid of open debate, why don’t they just host it themselves?

There certainly must be enough room for this panel (or one like it) to speak at Mohler’s Baptist Theological Seminary, or at the Focus on the Family headquarters (Mohler is on the Board), or perhaps at a Love Won Out conference?

If they do not issue invitations for APA views to speak at their centers, then perhaps it is actually they who are afraid to debate in front of a wide audience? And, perhaps what everyone is saying, that they are just looking to make publicity to cast APA in a bad light is true. Maybe they are afraid that if their flocks are presented with real scientific views it will be more difficult to manipulate and brainwash them?

So, right wingers, when are the invitations coming?

On May 5, at APA’s 2008 convention in Washington, the group will host a symposium, at which one of the two mental health practitioner-panelists is Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a psychologist without state board certification and an advocate for “Sexual Identity Therapy,” which he says he has successfully applied to help patients “alter homosexual feelings or behaviors” and live their lives “heterosexually” with “only very few weak instances of homosexual attraction.”

The symposium, moderated by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Peteet, who chairs APA’s Corresponding Committee on Psychiatry, Religion and Spirituality, is titled “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension.” Indeed, the panel includes two prominent religious figures from radically different perspectives – New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and the Reverend Dr. Albert Mohler. Robinson came to nationwide attention in 2003 when he became the first non-celibate, out gay person elected an American Episcopal Church bishop, for the Diocese of New Hampshire.

Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, a nationally syndicated radio host, and a board member of James Dobson’s stridently anti-gay Focus on the Family. The symposium’s primary booster has noted that Mohler has distinguished himself among Christian right evangelicals in acknowledging that homosexuality may not be a choice. Left unmentioned, however, was Mohler’s statement that “if a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use.”

Robinson’s wisdom in appearing with Mohler – and the broader debate about LGBT advocates engaging those on the other side – are not what make this story intriguing, and indeed troubling. Instead it is the embrace by a scientifically-based organization, APA, of an unlicensed practitioner who espouses controversial professional opinions about homosexuality but can point to no peer-reviewed findings that his clinical approach has merit.

Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that the same defender of the symposium who credited Mohler with some degree of enlightenment on gay issues, Dr. David Scasta – a former president and newsletter editor of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists (AGLP) – has circulated a press release for the event dubbing it “a ‘balanced’ discussion,” the sort of characterization one might expect from intelligent design proponents demanding a seat on a panel of evolution experts.