As if we had not suffered enough inclement weather, citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia and South Bend, Indiana will get “ex-gay” snow jobs this weekend.

In Lynchburg there will be a conference on Friday, “the Consequences of Same-Gender Attraction.” The hate-fest will feature Exodus International’s President Alan Chambers, (pictured) who is using this opportunity as a warm-up act for an April trip to Belfast, Ireland.

Hasn’t Chambers’ irresponsible outfit caused enough problems already in places like Uganda? How this man wakes up in the morning and can look in the mirror without feeling deep shame, (not counting the shame he internalizes over his sexuality) I’ll never know. It takes a special type of human being, one with out a conscience, to consistently lie to himself and others.

I’d like to remind the good folks of Lynchburg, that last time Liberty University tried the ex-gay thing, it didn’t go so well. Their “pray away the gay” poster boy was a man named Michael Johnston. He now lives in a sex addiction facility in Kentucky, following a slew of bareback orgies with men. Here’s the mini-movie:

On Saturday, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?”

Of course they can co-exist, unless your religious beliefs and practice are defined exclusively by violent anti-gay animus. If you believe the First Amendment allows you to harass, intimidate, torment and physically abuse LGBT people then there is a conflict. Other than that, there’s no problem.

So, why all the fear-mongering?

It seems quite obvious that in states with laws that protect citizens based on sexual orientation, people are still free to pray any way they wish. But, reality has never been the Religious Right’s cup of tea.

If you are fortunate enough to be around at 1:30pm on Saturday, you will catch a panel featuring arch-homophobes Robert Knight (pictured) and Elaine Donnelly, “Hire Them and Don’t Fire Them: How Homosexual Rights and Privileges Have Eroded Employers’ Rights and Destroyed Religious Freedom.” (Read More)

The notion that a single gene might determine sexual orientation was briefly proposed and swiftly rejected in the early 1990s.

That hasn’t stopped antigay activists from circulating the myth that, because numerous researchers in the past decade have found a mix of biological factors and possibly other unknown factors in the formation of sexual orientation, therefore these experts must believe in the existence of a single “gay gene.”

After spending more than a decade hearing and repeating their self-generated lies about a “gay gene,” this week several evolution-denying religious-right groups are crowing over a year-old reiteration of well-known facts by the American Psychological Association.

WorldNetDaily, LifeSiteNews, Virtue Online, and Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth all parroted A. Dean Byrd of NARTH, who repeated his previous false assertions that “activist researchers” have contended anytime in the past decade that there is a gay gene.

The antigay activists (Byrd included) illogically contend that, because there is no single gene that determines sexual orientation, therefore sexual orientation is caused entirely by the environment — lousy parents, in particular — and therefore, they insist, anyone can “change” their sexual orientation with sufficient right-wing Christian brainwashing.

Not so, said the APA last year:

Many [researchers] think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

Byrd falsely cites three limited studies as proof that anyone can change and that ex-gay therapy causes no harm, even though at least two of the cited studies — by Dr. Robert Spitzer and Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse — excluded potential subjects who reported being harmed or who reported that the ex-gay program failed to change them.

Spitzer, in particular, has repudiated the mischaracterization of his study by NARTH and other ex-gay activist groups, saying that he believes change of attraction and orientation are exceedingly rare and that most people cannot “change” their orientation.

More about Dr. Robert Spitzer here at Truth Wins Out.
Hat tip: Good As You

Why, exactly, does Exodus International — the world’s largest ex-gay organization — allow scientifically inept writers to make the organization’s outreach to youth appear ignorant and irrational?

And why does Exodus commit research fraud just a few months after the reparative-therapy lobbying group NARTH was publicly exposed and criticized for committing fraud with the same research?

I wondered this, again, after reading Emproph‘s latest dissection of a new Exodus Youth article that claims to educate readers about the science of sexual orientation.

Exodus cites 16-year-old research as if it were current; ignores research that has occurred since 1993; mischaracterizes studies regarding the biology of sexual orientation; and overlooks the antigay politics and discredited claims of its main source, reparative therapist Jeffrey Satinover.

Exodus also mischaracterizes the research of Dr. Lisa Diamond, who publicly discredited NARTH last year for mischaracterizing her research regarding sexual fluidity and bisexuality in the same manner.

Exodus concludes by misrepresenting the research of Dr. Robert Spitzer, who in a 2001 study found that few people appear capable of changing their sexual orientation — and that of those who claim to be successful, many remain mostly or fully same-sex-attracted despite their claim to be heterosexual.

The cynically named “Day of Truth,” organized by the antigay Alliance Defense Fund and planned for April 28, is little more than an excuse to inject “ex-gay” propaganda and a disruptive dose of antigay prejudice in public schools.

Ex-gay survivor Daniel Gonzales, who was inappropriately treated by famed reparative therapist Joseph Nicolosi, has released a new video that itemizes the untruths and prejudices that are promoted by the DOT. Check it out:

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)