[Djamila Grossman, The Salt Lake Tribune]

On the heels of extremely bigoted, anti-gay remarks the other day from Boyd Packer, one of the highest ranking leaders in the Mormon church, thousands gathered in Salt Lake City, dressed in black, to protest his words, coming as they did after a spate of gay teen suicides:

Packer’s speech, delivered during the LDS Church’s 180th Semiannual General Conference, hit a nerve, protesters say, because it came after a string of gay teen suicides in the national news. Boys as young as 13 took their own lives after reportedly being bullied by their peers for being gay.

On Thursday, protest organizers estimated that 4,500 people ringed the two downtown blocks that make up the LDS Church’s headquarters. Participants wore black, and some carried signs. Lying head to toe or sitting shoulder to shoulder, they encircled Temple Square two times.

“Tonight, we are symbolic of all the children who have been killed by messages like Boyd K. Packer’s,” said organizer and Salt Lake City blogger Eric Ethington. “When you hear nothing from [church leaders] but that you are nothing but evil and you need to change the unchangeable nature of yourself, that is only a message kids can take for so long.”

It’s getting louder. Keep turning up the volume.

[h/t Joe]

Delaware Tea Party GOP nominee for Senate and former anti-gay activist, Christine O’Donnell, is running a lazy, ego-driven campaign that eschews living, breathing voters.

Instead of interacting with real people, the stage horse has devoted all of her time to appearing on national cable television shows. Clearly, O’Donnell does not think she can win and is positioning herself as a cable or radio talk show host.

Given that reports say that she is broke and having the campaign pay her rent — it may be a wise move for “Crazy Christine” to secure a lucrative media contract. Here is what the New York Times had to say about her uninspiring, nearly-invisible effort on the campaign trail:

If Ms. O’Donnell is actually running anything like a traditional campaign for the Senate, there isn’t much evidence of it right now. The campaign’s Web site lists no public events at which voters or reporters can meet her or hear her speak. (And in any event, Ms. O’Donnell has declared herself off limits for interviews with national reporters.) Last week, a spokeswoman for Shirley & Bannister, a Virginia-based consulting firm that the O’Donnell campaign recently hired, said she would find out about any scheduled appearances by the candidate, but then she stopped returning e-mails.

At the state Republican headquarters in Wilmington, staff members said Monday that they had no information about whether Ms. O’Donnell was out campaigning. A pile of O’Donnell yard signs, leaning against a wall near the door, was the only obvious signal that the party even had a Senate candidate. (The headquarters continues, though, to get calls from out-of-state voters who are furious at the local party for not supporting Ms. O’Donnell.)

Is Crazy Christine running for office or running away from voters? I think the answer is quite clear. If I had as little knowledge has her on the issues, I’d be hiding too.

Group espousing treatment of gays cites her work

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

A national group that advocates “treatment” of homosexuality is being criticized for allegedly distorting a Utah researcher’s work to advance the theory that people choose their sexual orientation – a controversial notion rejected by mainstream psychology.

Lisa Diamond, a University of Utah psychologist whose sexual identity studies suggest a degree of “fluidity” in the sexual preferences of women, said in an interview Tuesday that the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, misrepresents her findings. Position papers, some penned by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, an adjunct professor in the U.’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, point to Diamond’s research as evidence that gays’ sexual orientation can be straightened out through treatment – much to Diamond’s dismay.

“If NARTH had read the study more carefully they would find that it is not supported by my data at all. I bent over backward to make it difficult for my work to be misused, and to no avail. When people are motivated to twist something for political purposes, they’ll find a way to do it,” Diamond says in a videotaped interview posted on the Internet.

Diamond made those remarks two weeks ago as Californians were debating Proposition 8, the divisive ballot measure that mandates marriage as solely between a man and a woman.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints encouraged members to give time and money to the successful campaign, triggering a cascade of criticism and protests.Diamond’s comments specifically targeted Encino, Calif., psychologist Joeseph Nicolosi, co-founder of NARTH and the author of “Healing Homosexuality,” and “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” says Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender studies, in the videotape. “There’s no chance this is a misunderstanding or simply a different scientific interpretation. … It’s illegitimate and it’s irresponsible and you should stop doing it.”

Nicolosi did not respond to an interview request and Byrd claimed he did not know why Diamond, a fellow U. faculty member, took umbrage with NARTH’s citation of her work.

“NARTH’s view is that people can adapt any way they want and there is freedom of choice,” Byrd says. “If it says ‘fluidity’ it says ‘fluidity.’ How you interpret it is something else.”

Diamond, who has never met Byrd, said in an interview that NARTH “cherry picks” findings or references from her work that appear to support their position. Her denunciations of NARTH was instigated by Truth Wins Out, a New York City-based watchdog that patrols social conservative groups’ use of social science in support of hot-bottom agendas.

“They use these fake statistics and distort science to support bigotry and discrimination. It’s important to take these tools away from them,” founder Wayne Besen says.

NARTH is based in Nicolosi’s California office, but maintains an office in the same downtown Salt Lake City building as Evergreen International, a Mormon faith-based group that encourages gays to abandon same-sex attraction. While the two groups do not advertise their association, NARTH’s sole paid staffer last year was Evergreen’s executive director David Pruden, according to tax documents.

NARTH is no stranger to controversy. One past president, the late psychiatrist Charles Socarides, campaigned for years against the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to discontinue listing homosexuality as a mental illness. The American Psychological Association likewise maintains a stance of deep skepticism toward reparative therapies that seek to convert patients to heterosexuality.

“To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation is safe or effective,” the APA says on its Web site. “Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to a negative climate for lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons.” Diamond goes even further.

“The therapists are saying, ‘We can change your orientation,’ when all of the data, all of the data suggest that is not the case. They say same-sex attractions can disappear – they don’t,” she says. Reparative therapies “do additional damage” with techniques that incorporate electroshock and nausea-inducing treatments “that leave people feeling greater shame, greater guilt, worse about themselves.”

Evergreen Also Whitewashes Suicide of Stuart Matis, Says TWO

NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) slammed “ex-gay” Mormon group Evergreen International today for gross violations of ethics and morality. The “pray away the gay” ministry listed convicted sexual predator therapist Christopher Austin as a resource and also covered up the suicide of Stuart Matis, a Mormon who took his own life because he could not change his sexual orientation.

“Evergreen should be ashamed and apologize for the unethical and immoral way it conducts business,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Instead of admitting the group’ failures, Evergreen has engaged in a series of omissions and cover-ups that whitewash reality at the expense of their victims.”

The blog, Ex-Gay Watch, discovered that Evergreen listed Christopher Austin on its site. What Evergreen failed to mention was that Austin, a disgraced therapist in Irving, Texas, was convicted of sexually assaulting a male client in Sept. 2007. Austin was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but received seven years probation, had to register as a sex offender and was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine.

“Unfortunately, Evergreen continued to promote Austin’ therapy and hold him up as an example of success,” said Besen. “Under pressure, Evergreen finally scrubbed him from its website this week, but the appropriate action would have been to let people know the truth. Sadly, Evergreen’ answer is to bury the facts in order to promote their fiction that one can change from gay to straight.”

In an equally disturbing incident, Evergreen whitewashed the heartbreaking suicide of Stuart Matis. On its website, Evergreen lists Fred and Marilyn Matis as past speakers and blithely says, “Their oldest son, Stuart, had same-gender attraction.”

This, of course, leads readers to believe that their son is now “ex-gay.” What Evergreen fails to tell readers is that the dangerous “ex-gay” message led Stuart to end his life. In his suicide note, Stuart Matis wrote:

“The church has no idea that as I type this letter, there are surely boys and girls on their callused knees imploring God to free them from this pain. They hate themselves. They retire to bed with their fingers pointed to their heads in the form of a gun. I am now free. I am no longer in pain and I no longer hate myself. As it turns out, God never intended for me to be straight. Perhaps my death might be a catalyst for some good.”