A nationally known antigay psychologist who testified for the state in its defense of Florida’s gay adoption ban recently took a trip to Europe with a gay male prostitute from Miami who advertised himself online.
George A. Rekers — an officer of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and a retired University of South Carolina professor — hired the young escort known as Geo on Rentboy.com, a gay-sex website.
Miami New Times reported the story on Tuesday and it quickly went viral on the Internet. By Wednesday, Rekers had taken down his Facebook page and Geo had removed his Rentboy profile.
Both Rekers and Geo, who declined to give his real name, deny they had a sexual relationship during their 10-day journey to Spain and England.
“In all honesty, I did go on the trip with him,” Geo, 20, told The Miami Herald on Wednesday. “He was setting me up as a companion. In all honesty, he’s a very kind family-values man.”
Rekers, 61, said via e-mail that he hired Geo as “an assistant to lift his luggage in his travels because of an ongoing condition following surgery.”
Gay activists seized the opportunity, though.
“He’s not a credible witness,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, the state’s leading gay-rights group. “The hateful rhetoric he spews in court is very damaging to the children being denied permanent and loving homes because of this adoption ban.”
Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a national group that opposes the ex-gay movement, said it doesn’t matter whether or not Reckers and Geo had a sexual relationship.
“Who cares? It’s even creepier if they didn’t have sex,” said Besen, who grew up in Fort Lauderdale. “If you go to Rentboy.com to have the company of a sex worker and not have sex, I think that shows a pattern of repression and delusion. That’s just not normal behavior.
“Rekers is driving the story right now with his comical denial. He could have just as easily given someone a big tip to carry his bags, like everyone else does.”
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is back in the news after its most prominent board member, George A. Rekers, was discovered by the Miami New Times with a male prostitute he met on RentBoy.com.
This has put a searing spotlight on an organization that works hard to portray itself as reputable and mainstream. However, a closer examination of NARTH reveals that it has long been a refuge for disreputable characters, extremists and even criminals. It is a thoroughly discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.
Here are 13 Key Facts to know about NARTH:
1) Dr. George Rekers is on NARTH’s Board of Directors. He is the author of numerous books including, “Shaping Your Child’ Sexual Identity” and “Growing Up Straight: What Every Family Should Know About Homosexuality.” A major anti-gay figure that used to work at University of South Carolina, Rekers is also a founder of the Family Research Council and testified as an expert witness in favor of gay adoption bans in both Arkansas and Florida.
On May 5, 2010, Miami New Times reporters Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp discovered that he had vacationed with a male escort in Europe that he had met on RentBoy.com. When the anti-gay doctor and his hooker arrived at Miami International Airport, reporters photographed them with a little pink camera. Confronted with the evidence, Rekers said he learned that his companion was a prostitute only midway through their vacation.
“I had surgery,” Rekers told the New Times, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’ why I hired him.”
2) Arthur Abba Goldberg was a prominent member of NARTH’s Board of Directors. He is also the co-founder of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). On February 15, 2010, a Truth Wins Out (TWO) and South Florida Gay News (SFGN) investigation revealed that Goldberg was a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope”. Goldberg was sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes and served six months in prison. Upon completing his parole, he secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people. As a result of this investigation, Goldberg was removed from NARTH’s Board of Directors in March 2010.
3) In 2006, Gerald Schoenwolf, PhD, also a member of NARTH’ “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a polemic on the group’ website that seemed to justify slavery: “With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,” wrote Schoenwolf. “It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.”
4) In 2006, NARTH psychiatrist Joseph Berger, MD, a member of its “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a paper encouraging students to “ridicule” gender variant children. “I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex–but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings,” Dr. Berger wrote on NARTH’ website. “On the contrary, don’t interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.”
5) NARTH associates with known extremists. At one NARTH convention, Richard Cohen (see Cohen and Nicolosi videos below) served as a therapy trainer. Cohen once belonged to a cult that practiced nude therapy and was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2003 for malpractice. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a NARTH therapist, has written that Prozac may cure gayness. Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, has been a frequent contributor to NARTH’ website. Lively’ book, “The Pink Swastika” blames the holocaust on gay people. NARTH therapist Christopher Austin, (mugshot left) who taught seminars for NARTH, was convicted for sexually abusing his clients.
6) NARTH habitually distorts research. In 2008, Dr. Lisa Diamond, University of Utah, publicly rebuked NARTH in a Truth Wins Out YouTube video. Diamond claimed that Dr. Nicolosi deliberately twisted her work for political gain. NARTH also uses outdated studies from up to 100 years ago and repackages these invalid studies as new.
7) NARTH recommends “treating” males as young as three years old, referring to them as “pre-homosexual boys.” In our view, this is consumer fraud since parents are unlikely to see results, despite expensive therapy sessions. We also believe forcing children to undergo traumatic, shame inducing “therapy” is child abuse that may cause lasting psychological scars.
8) Reparative therapy is not considered a legitimate and accepted form of psychological care. It is soundly rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America. The American Psychological Association says attempts to change sexual orientation can cause, “anxiety, depression and self destructive behavior. In August 2009, the American Psychological Association produced a landmark report that said, there was “no evidence” that ex-gay therapy was effective, and many cases it was linked to harm. There are survivor organizations to help the victims of such therapy, as well as support groups for spouses who married a gay partner who could not change sexual orientations.
9) The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.
10) NARTH believes that heterosexuality is quite malleable. The group’ founder, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, claims that if a straight male suffers “defeat or failure” he could become vulnerable to homosexuality.
11) NARTH is not a secular organization, as it often claims. For many years, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi served as a spokesperson for the far right Christian organization Focus on the Family. On CNN’ 360 Degrees with Anderson Cooper, (April 14, 2007), Nicolosi said, “We, as citizens, need to articulate God’ intent for human sexuality.” At the Feb. 10, 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix, the “secular” therapist told the audience, “When we live our God-given integrity and our human dignity, there is no space for sex with a guy.”
12) Upon co-founding NARTH, its co-founder, Dr. Charles Socarides, who has a gay son that once served as President Bill Clinton’ gay liaison, told The Washington Post, “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it. It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.”
13) NARTH’ co-founder, Joesph Nicolosi encourages male clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and referring to friends as “dude”. NARTH therapists have been known to practice rubber band therapy, where a gay client is made to wear a rubber band and snap it on his wrist when sexually stimulated. It is a mild form of aversion therapy meant to “snap” the client out of the moment of attraction. NARTH members have also been known to practice “touch therapy”, where a client sits in the therapist’ lap for up to an hour, while the therapist caresses him.
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.”
Personally, I don’t like the bogus term “SSA”, which stands for “same-sex attraction.” There is no such thing (or diagnosis) as SSA and it is a manipulative attempt to separate LGBT people from their natural, inborn sexuality.
The term SSA is skillfully employed to make it appear as if fundamentalist bigots are not attacking the person, just their sexual feelings. It is a diabolical method of creating a medical-sounding term to deliver Anita Bryant’ hateful “love the sinner, hate the sin” message. At least Bryant had the courage to say what she believes and not hide behind euphemisms and phony pop psychology.
If you think I am wrong, ask yourself: Why does disgraced “sexual reorientation coach” Richard Cohen (pictured) love the term SSA so much? It is all over his website and his books. He is basically turning you into a sick patient rather than a real person. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) also loves SSA.
We should not help our enemies by adopting their language, which is specifically designed and employed to portray us as freaks with a problem that needs to be fixed. SSA — much like STD — sounds like you have a disease that can be cured by running to the local doctor for a shot, the pharmacy for a prescription, or the shrink for a session.
If you don’t think language is important, consider yesterday’s CBS/New York Times News poll. It found a significantly higher level of support for “gays” in the military rather than “homosexuals” in the armed services. Here is an excerpt:
A New York Times/CBS News poll finds that a majority of the public support allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military.
There’ less support, however, for allowing homosexuals to serve openly.
Confused?
The results highlight the importance of wording on the issue. In a test, half of the poll’ respondents were asked their opinion on permitting “gay men and lesbians” to serve, and the other half were asked about permitting “homosexuals” to serve.
The wording of the question proved to make a difference. Seven in 10 respondents said they favor allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve in the military, including nearly 6 in 10 who said they should be allowed to serve openly. But support was somewhat lower among those who were asked about allowing “homosexuals” to serve, with 59 percent in favor, including 44 percent who support allowing them to serve openly.
At Truth Wins Out, we are not the word police. We allow a great divergence of opinion and if you love to use the phrase SSA, then keep doing so. It’s a free country. Please realize, however, that you are making Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and Richard Cohen quite happy by adhering to their slick public relations scheme.
More than 35 years after homosexuality was erased from the DSM (list of mental disorders) why voluntarily describe yourself in sterile, medical terms, as if you have a “problem” that quacks can “fix” for a hefty fee?
I was impressed with British journalist Patrick Strudwick’s report in The Independent, “The ex-gay files: The bizarre world of gay-to-straight conversion.” It was an important addition to the literature and I respect his work.
His reporting is an accurate representation of “ex-gay” therapy and echos the abusive practices I witnessed in my book, “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.” Strudwick began his article with the alarming news of the extent “ex-gay” therapy has spread in the United Kingdom:
According to a report by Professor Michael King of University College London, one in six UK psychiatrists and psychotherapists have sought to reduce or change a patient’s sexual orientation. And with the help of the American conversion therapy movement, practitioners here, along with a clutch of international “conversion” organisations, are becoming co-ordinated and unified. They plan to gain credibility, university backing and government funding. In some cases, the NHS is even paying for the treatment.
The journalist also made the smart connection between these programs and political power:
After the conference I look David up online. As I’m researching his practice and qualifications, I see a reference to Iris Robinson, the scandal-stricken Ulster MP who in 2008 famously compared homosexuality to child abuse. In an interview with the BBC, she mentioned she knew a “lovely psychiatrist” who “tries to help homosexuals to run away from what they are engaged in.”
Strudwick pointed out how they twist language to make it appear like homosexuality is a mental illness:
Like those at the conference, she doesn’t say “gay”; she only uses the term “SSA”.*
The writer highlights how these quacks ignore the inconvenient fact that homosexuality has not been listed as a mental disorder for three decades and mislead clients:
I ask how she (Lynne, the therapist) views homosexuality — as a mental illness, an addiction or an anti-religious phenomenon?
“It’s all of that,” she replies.
Lynne explains that it’s about “reprogramming” and going back into my early developmental stages. “Parts of you have developed but there is a little part of you that has stayed stuck,” she says.
Ex-gay organization had been source of contention locally
By Todd A. Heywood 12/16/09 9:57 AM
LANSING — Gay rights advocates are lauding a split between the controversial Lansing-based ex-gay ministry Corduroy Stone and prominent ex-gay ministry group Exodus International.
“Exodus has removed their affiliation and the board of directors has dissolved. Now he’ just some guy,” said Patrick McAlvey, 24, who earlier this year told his story of dealing with Mike Jones and Corduroy Stone Ministries to the national organization Truth Wins Out.
“He’s not a mental health professional. He’ not a pastor,” McAlvey said of Jones, a retired Michigan State University employee. “He’ just some guy with made-up theories and outlandish techniques claiming he can help people change their sexual orientation. He is dangerous and I hope people steer clear of this predator.”
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.
Here are 10 Key Facts to know about NARTH:
1) NARTH recommends “treating” males as young as three years old, referring to them as “pre-homosexual boys.” In our view, this is consumer fraud since parents are unlikely to see results, despite expensive therapy sessions. We also believe forcing children to undergo traumatic, shame inducing “therapy” is child abuse that may cause lasting psychological scars. (Read More)
Confused. Isolated. Depressed. Angry. Lansing resident Patrick McAlvey was all of these things both before and during his stint in ex-gay therapy. Now, through a new video produced and released by Truth Wins Out, he’s just determined to make sure that no one else goes through what he did.
The 24-year-old McAlvey’s video was released last month just as the American Psychological Association announced that “mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.”
It was too late for McAlvey, but he hopes that the APA findings – plus stories like his – will help other gay youth to love and accept themselves.
Like so many other gay youth, McAlvey was scared when he realized he was attracted to men in sixth grade. Raised in a conservative Christian home, “I didn’t think it was safe to tell anybody,” he said of his young adulthood.
But he did tell one person: Mike Jones, director of Lansing-based ex-gay organization Corduroy Stone.
“When I was 19, I was kicked out of a missionary training school and was forced to move back home with my family,” McAlvey recalled. “I was kicked out because of my attraction to men, so in that time I was sort of in a crisis mode and was very low, very depressed and just trying to make sense of my life and my attraction.”
He contacted Jones, whom he had spoken with before about his “problem,” and began several months of therapy with Jones that supposedly would cure him and make him straight.
Therapy consisted of embarrassing questions and uncomfortable situations. Jones would instruct McAlvey to lie in his arms for an hour at a time – known in the ex-gay circuit as holding therapy. He forced McAlvey to learn about tools and home repair, and to watch the play “Equus” with him, which features full male nudity. He would ask him to rate his attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
Then there were the questions. “He asked how large my penis was. He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore,” McAlvey explained. “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.
“He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to.”
But despite all his efforts, McAlvey never stopped being attracted to men. “I never felt like I was changing,” he said of the therapy.
Eventually, he told Jones he wasn’t going to come to therapy anymore. But the damage had been done.
“I just really came to hate myself; to loathe myself,” McAlvey said. “I didn’t trust anyone and I didn’t allow anyone to get close to me because I was terrified that they might find out my secret and that they would think less of me. I spent many years locked up in my room, crying by myself for no good reason.”
McAlvey hopes that telling his story will mean less LGBT teens face the same tough years he did. “I view it as a real assault on some of the more vulnerable members of the LGBT community,” he said. “I think it’s important to speak up to prevent other people from being harmed in the ways that I was.”
Now, less than five years out of his time in ex-gay therapy, he’s doing just that. And while McAlvey hopes that his video will help others, he also thinks it will help him to move on. “(It’s) a bit of a cathartic experience for me, saying publicly that this is not something anymore that I need to be embarrassed of or regret,” he explained. “Instead, I’m going to turn around and use it for good. … It’s turning a negative experience into something that can be used positively.”
The decision to take his story public took time, and a lot of personal healing for McAlvey. When he stopped seeing Jones, he was still grappling with his sexuality and acceptance of himself. Eventually, he was able to see that it’s OK to be gay. “I realized that I don’t think change is going to happen and I don’t think it needs to happen,” he said. “It was getting to the point where I really was comfortable with who I am, and that takes time, a lot of processing and figuring out how to undo some of the internalized homophobia that was the result of this therapy.”
The video, which has almost 6,000 views on YouTube, is the final step in that reparative process – and McAlvey wants to get his message out to LGBT youth. “I would communicate to them the freedom that I felt when I finally embraced my sexual orientation and accepted it as a beautiful and natural part of myself,” he said of speaking to another teen like himself. “I would certainly convey that it is my belief that their sexual orientation is a beautiful, natural part of them that they should feel no shame for and should not think needs to be changed.”
The men who seek help from evangelical counselor Warren Throckmorton often are deeply distressed. They have prayed, read Scripture, even married, but they haven’t been able to shake sexual attractions to other men — impulses they believe to be immoral.
Dr. Throckmorton is a psychology professor at a Christian college in Pennsylvania and past president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association. He specializes in working with clients conflicted about their sexual identity.
The first thing he tells them is this: Your attractions aren’t a sign of mental illness or a punishment for insufficient faith. He tells them that he cannot turn them straight.
But he also tells them they don’t have to be gay.
The article delves into more detail about Throckmorton’s therapy:
For many years, Dr. Throckmorton felt he was breaking a professional taboo by telling his clients they could construct satisfying lives by, in effect, shunting their sexuality to the side, even if that meant living celibately. That ran against the trend in counseling toward “gay affirming” therapy — encouraging clients to embrace their sexuality.
Later in the WSJ article, I comment on the section of the APA’s guidelines that seem to say that Throckmorton’s type of therapy may fall within its new guidelines:
“It’s incredibly misguided,” said Wayne Besen, who runs a group called Truth Wins Out, which fights conversion therapy. He says trying to fight their same-sex attractions can cause immense suffering. “People have their lives destroyed,” Mr. Besen said.
My Thoughts:
I want to clarify that I am supportive of the overall APA report. I think they did a terrific job stating how therapists should handle clients who are struggling to accept their sexual orientation. Most important, they directly challenged “ex-gay” therapists who mislead clients about gay life.
And, the APA made it crystal clear that such charlatans should not be selling snake oil by claiming they can magically turn clients from gay-to-straight. In my view, any therapist who makes such a pitch is a con artist. Any organization that offers such bogus and far-fetched promises is guilty of consumer fraud.
Additionally, the APA should be commended for tackling the affects of religious faith on people working through this issue. Their landmark report explicitly tells religious therapists that clients should be given room to explore who they truly are, without the therapist burdening them with excessive faith-based guilt. This is a step forward, considering that nearly every “reparative therapist” uses shame-based methods to pressure vulnerable and desperate clients into suppressing their natural sexual orientation.
However, (although I am not a psychologist) I remain largely skeptical of the therapy offered by Throckmorton and other conservatives. Throckmorton tells The Wall Street Journal that he starts his sessions by helping clients prioritize their values.
This is where it can get tricky.
Religious therapists (I am not referring specifically to Throckmorton) can manipulate the framing of priorities. For example they may ask clients what they find more important to their value system: “ephemeral hedonism” or “eternal life in heaven”. Given this loaded option, clients may feel they have no “choice” but to live a life of hell on earth in order to get the keys to the Kingdom when they die. This is quite a mental burden for clients to carry and surely can’t be conducive to optimum mental health.
Clients can also be easily manipulated by therapists who induce guilt by saying, “it is fine if you choose to exercise your options in a selfish manner by choosing your sexuality over Scripture.” Such diabolical therapists may be within the new guidelines (barely) by ostensibly offering a troubled client the “choice” and “freedom” to be a “bad” person. But, we all know this is just a tricky form of psychological abuse. While the APA guidelines are helpful, the group may need to address in the future how unsavory counselors use loopholes to continue tormenting the fragile minds of clients.
The WSJ article also mentioned how the APA report considers celibacy a viable “option”:
But if the client still believes that affirming his same-sex attractions would be sinful or destructive to his faith, psychologists can help him construct an identity that rejects the power of those attractions, the APA says. That might require living celibately, learning to deflect sexual impulses or framing a life of struggle as an opportunity to grow closer to God.
“We’re not trying to encourage people to become ‘ex-gay,’” said Judith Glassgold, who chaired the APA’s task force on the issue. “But we have to acknowledge that, for some people, religious identity is such an important part of their lives, it may transcend everything else.”
The APA has long endorsed the right of clients to determine their own identities. But it also warned that “lesbians and gay men who feel they must conceal their sexual orientation report more frequent mental health concerns.”
It is true that in extreme cases, a lifetime of celibacy may lead to a happier existence than coming out of the closet. These rare people, unfortunately, are often so damaged by fundamentalism that they are unable to express their sexuality in healthy ways. Indeed, they are stricken by excessive guilt if they enjoy any form of pleasure that is not sanctioned by their church.
In such instances of irreparable damage to victims of faith-based oppression, celibacy may work (sort of) as a last ditch effort to help these people find a small measure of peace. There are also individuals with low sex drives who may not have an inordinate amount of trouble conforming to onerous religious strictures.
However, celibacy is not a serious option for healthy individuals with normal desires. If a therapist tells a teenager that he or she will have to live the next 50 or so years sexually frustrated and without the possibility of love, you are not going to convince me that this is in the best psychological interest of that conflicted youth.
Imagine being that young person with raging hormones, yet having to suppress powerful urges every minute of the day. On weekends, you stay home playing video games while your friends are dating. At lunchtime in the cafeteria, you have to hear about their sexual exploration, while you bitterly nurse longings that will never be fulfilled. On the way home from school, love songs play on the car radio that are meant for everyone but you. And then you settle on the couch and watch television shows brimming with a sensuality that you will never discover.
Living in such a way would, in the vast majority of cases, make an otherwise healthy person neurotic, depressed and even suicidal. Celibacy, for the most part, is a fantasy concocted by conservative therapists who so despise homosexuality that they would rather see a person loveless and lonely than openly gay.
I also worry that suppression of sexuality will lead to increased mental and sexual abuse in society. The ex-gay ministries (and the Catholic Church) are rife with examples of supposedly celibate or “healed” leaders taking advantage of young people in their care. Youth are easier to manipulate (see TWO video below)and the path of least resistance for the tortured and troubled souls who swear off sexuality (heterosexual and homosexual), only to find that it is not possible over the course of a lifetime. Celibacy is not realistic, nor advisable for most people, and can have deleterious side effects. The idea of the “satisfied celibate” is largely a misguided myth perpetuated by therapists who can’t overcome their own anti-gay leanings.
Ultimately, the more ex-gay ministries and counselors are forced to move away from stigmatizing homosexuality, promising fake miracles and selling false hope, the better off clients will be. If these groups can’t sell the proverbial “heterosexual light at the end of the tunnel”, the vast majority of young gay people will leave the traumatic tunnel behind and come out into the light of freedom and honesty.
Everyone deserves the chance to love and be loved – and conservative therapists will have an increasingly difficult time telling gay clients that they are exceptions to this rule. By calling for more accountability among anti-gay therapists and demanding they be truthful and adhere to modern science, the APA has made a worthy contribution with its report.
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.”
5) NARTH associates with known extremists. At one NARTH convention, Richard Cohen (see Cohen and Nicolosi videos below) served as a therapy trainer. Cohen once belonged to a cult that practiced nude therapy and was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2003 for malpractice. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a NARTH therapist, has written that Prozac may cure gayness. Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, has been a frequent contributor to NARTH’ website. Lively’ book, “The Pink Swastika” blames the holocaust on gay people. NARTH therapist 
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I was impressed with British journalist 
