A agree with Mike Airhart that The Advocatepiece was a nightmare that glosses over the issues. I also think they mischaracterized the state of the “ex-gay” movement and were factually wrong on many fronts. Not to mention the reporter needs to get a hold of his emotions and not suck up to ex-gays who think he is “perverse” and “sexually broken.” The failure of this article was a shame because the Advocate magazine has traditionally done a terrific job covering this issue. I have confidence they will get it right in the future. Here is a summary of my beefs:
The article: “Exodus encompasses more than 120 ministries in the United States and Canada.”
The Facts: Exodus claims a 59 percent increase in its member agencies, growing from 117 in 2003 to more than 200 in 2008. (although Exodus is prone to exaggeration)
The article: “A growing chorus of such stories, it’s shaken up the usual talk-show paradigm.”
The Facts: Could anything be further from the truth? Telling the story of survivors is not a new phenomenon. Anyone who thinks it is, simply has not been out of the closet very long, spinning the issue or is ill informed.
In the 1990s, there was a key ex-gay survivor group that I worked with in Washington, Dos Equis, that provided me survivors. These courageous individuals were telling their stories in national media while some of today’s leading survivors were sill in ex-gay groups, essentially paying the salaries of Exodus’ leaders. Before this, the documentary “One Nation Under God” told the story of survivors, including John Evans and Mike Bussee. And, Sylvia Pennington articulated their struggles in the book, “Ex-Gays? There Are None?”
While at the Human Rights Campaign, I held several press conferences, beginning in 1998, with ex-gay survivors. These included high profile events at Washington’s famed National Press Club. During this time period, I booked survivors on major talk shows and had their stories told in national media. In 2000, under my direction, HRC produced a groundbreaking publication, “Finally Free” that introduced America to 14 ex-gay survivors.
While I appreciate and greatly admire the current work of our newer survivors, to take sole credit for a survivors movement is unfounded and historical revisionism. Indeed, today, TWO (and BoxTurtleBulletin) are also leaders in this arena – and this is reflected by the cutting-edge videos that fill our website.
The article: The article referred to me as an ex-ex-gay.
The facts: I was never an ex-gay and I appreciate the Advocate correcting this error. (Read More)
(Cry Baby: Throckmorton, Whines To Right Wing Rags)
Still fuming from the American Psychiatric Association’s cancellation of the “Quack Panel” he was scheduled to appear on this week, notorious “ex-gay” therapist Warren Throckmorton continued on his vindictive warpath. All week, he has done the rounds, whining and playing victim, with fawning right wing rags - apparently the only media that will listen to his bizarre ideas.
Throckmorton’s latest stop on his “Sour Grapes Media Tour” is an interview with World Net Daily - a publication best known for publishing a kooky article that claims that eating soy products might turn children gay.
“‘Weird Nut Daily’ and Warren Throckmorton are two peas in a pod, so it was entirely expected that they would join hands to do a hatchet job on TruthWinsOut.org,” said Besen. “It is time for Throckmorton to preserve his remaining dignity by ending his ‘Sour Grapes Tour’ and moving on. The Quack panel did not happen because the more people learned about Throckmorton, the more uneasy they became with giving him a platform that might appear to legitimize his outlandish and archaic views on sexuality” (Read More)
After admitting earlier today that he had an extramarital affair and fathered a child out of wedlock, Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.), who was nailed for drunk driving last week, was spotted today huddling with the House chaplain in the back of the chamber during floor debate.
Fossella, who is married and has three children with his wife, could be seen standing on the back rail of the chamber, on the Republican side near the center aisle, in deep conversation with Rev. Daniel Coughlin, the House chaplain.
In a statement today, Fossella went so far as to name the woman with whom he has had an affair for several years. Her name is Laura Fay, a retired Air Force Lt. Col. who, as Fossella now admits, is the mother of their 3-year-old daughter.
Fossella’s “love child” was exposed in his drunken-driving charge because Fay is the person who fetched Fossella from an Alexandria, Va., police station after he was charged with driving while intoxicated in the wee hours of the morning last Thursday.
I just checked the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional scorecard. This human Sin-Bag had three straight ZERO ratings. So, he can oppose loving GLBT families while he wrecks his own home?
According to the Empire State Pride Agenda, the Staten Island Representative had voted not once or twice–but three times to, as many of his colleagues argued, “preserve the sanctity of marriage.”
This is so typical of our right wing opponents. Any time a conservative starts boasting about his or her morals and values and sanctimoniously preens about the “sanctity of marriage” - look out! They not only are likely to have skeletons in their closet - but a graveyard of lies, hypocrisy and deceit. It has almost become a cliché that the more one preaches against something, the more likely he or she is to be engaged in that forbidden arena.
“Corrective Rape” at schools in the Western Cape is a growing concern, say non-governmental organizations, some of who have noted an “alarming” level of cases.
Earlier this year, the report by the Human Rights Commission on school violence mentioned the growing crime, where heterosexual male pupils rape lesbian pupils, believing that this will make them heterosexual.
A recent study by the Triangle Project and the University of South Africa found that schools were still “unsafe places for many lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered (LGBT) learners”.
“The level of cases coming to the fore is alarming … It’s like (heterosexual boys think) if you want to be lesbian, this is your punishment.”
He said in some communities, boys thought if girls ignored their come-ons, they could force themselves on them.
“Heterosexual boys also perceive lesbian women as being competition, so they think: ‘I need to change you’,” he said.
Of course, these extreme cases do not represent the so-called “ex-gay” movement in general. Certainly, Exodus and even NARTH, I beleive, would oppose such torture. However, the notion that GLBT people must be “changed” no matter what the psychological or physical toll is in step with the West’s ‘ex-gay’ movement. The very existence of these organizations creates a sour climate where GLBT lives are demeaned and homosexual relationships are viewed as inferior. In such a hostile environment, some people will take desperate measures (exorcisms) or partake in dangerous experiments (shock therapy) to fix the “problem.”
The lesson the world must learn - from North America to South Africa - is that GLBT people should be left alone to live in peace, exactly as they were created. It is time to end the sickening abuse in all of its injurious forms that occur in the name of “corrective” or “ex-gay” therapy.
The Washington Times was among the news media that were quick to blame unspecified “gay activists” today for the failure of a symposium on religion and ex-gay conversion therapy that was to be held at the Washington Convention Center at the same time as an American Psychiatric Association convention.
But from the start, the planners of the symposium doomed the forum through political and clinical biases:
None of the panelists demonstrated professional knowledge of the myths perpetrated and the harm done by so-called conversion therapies
Former ex-gays — those injured by conversion therapies that are promoted by two of the would-be panelists — were excluded from the discussion
The symposium was promoted, and important facts distorted, by Focus on the Family
Symposium publicity exaggerated the forum’s level of official APA support
Political distortion and exploitation of the symposium by Focus on the Family emerged weeks ago. The symposium’s lead planner — Dr. David Scasta, former Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists president — seemed stubbornly ignorant of the damage being done to legitimate science and to the victims of the ex-gay industry, as well as the unearned credibility being conferred upon would-be panelists who have misused religion as a political weapon to promote bigotry and emotional harm among unpopular demographics.
Scasta was quoted by the Times (with erroneous credentials):
“It was a way to have a balanced discussion about religion and how it influences therapy,” said David Scasta, a former APA president and a gay psychiatrist in charge of assembling the panel. “We wanted to talk rationally, calmly and respectfully to each other, but the external forces made it into a divisive debate it never intended to be.”
In criticizing Bishop Gene Robinson for dropping out of the symposium and precipitating its failure, Scasta shows that he naively ignored the ultimate basis for Robinson’s decision:
“I got one e-mail from him [Bishop Gene Robinson] saying he thought I was being used by the other side, such as Focus on the Family,” Mr. Scasta said, calling the reaction from gay groups over-the-top and self-defeating.
“This was supposed to reduce polarization, which has hurt the gay community. They are blocked into this bitchy battle and they are not progressing. They are not willing to do missionary work and talk to the enemy. They have to be willing to listen and change themselves.”
Calm, rational, and respectful discussion is an essential element of sound discussion about psychiatry. But when that tone of discussion is achieved through half-truth, exclusion of essential facts, naivete, and political bias among the planners, such discussion is bound to harm professionalism in the mental-health fields.
Instead of resolving obvious and potentially fatal flaws in his plans, Scasta appears to have shut out early gay-media inquiries about the flaws in his program, ignored Robinson’s warning about antigay activists, scapegoated Robinson, and finally wasted time whining about gay activists. (Read More)
The Maryland pro-tolerance parent-faculty group Teach The Facts launches a thoughtful discussion of research into sexual fluidity among some women.
Various researchers, among them Dr. Lisa Diamond in Sexual Fluidity - Understanding Women’s Love and Desire, have asserted that sexual orientation in some women naturally drifts in both directions: from heterosexual to homosexual or vice versa. In other words, some women are naturally attracted to attributes other than a given person’s gender characteristics. Such fluidity appears to be extremely uncommon among men.
The TTF blog compares intelligent analysis of sexual fluidity and bisexuality with the ideological rigidity and deception of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, an advocacy group which baselessly asserts that same-gender attraction is rooted in bad parenting or abuse rather than natural impulses; that all people can change; that change occurs by choice, not nature; and that change only occurs one way — from homosexual to heterosexual.
eHarmony.com, the heterosexuals-only dating service that was once closely associated with Focus on the Family, is now being chastised by Focus’s CitizenLink newsletter and Boundless magazine after it published a nonjudgmental article about one-night stands which emphasized safety tips to avoid getting hurt.
Comments to the Boundless blog are mixed: Some are offended by eHarmony’s perceived affirmation of sexual self-gratification, some by eHarmony’s support for non-evangelical and non-Christian couples, and some by Focus on the Family’s apparent rush to judgment.
At least two antifamily, pro-harassment organizations — Mission: America and the American “Family” Association — continued to lobby antigay parents today to shield their teen-agers from anti-bullying messages by keeping them home from school on April 25, which has been designated an annual Day of Silence by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
The Day of Silence commemorates GLBT youths who were victims of school violence and murder, by reminding classmates that violence and harassment silence GLBT youths and their families.
The boycott against freedom of speech and nonviolence in schools is co-sponsored by the ex-gay Abiding Truth Ministries, American Family Association, Americans for Truth, Concerned Women for America, Exodus Mandate, Illinois Family Institute, Indiana Voice for the Family, Liberty Counsel, Mass Resistance, Mission: America, Parents’ Rights Coalition, the ex-gay Stephen Bennett Ministries, and Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson’s pro-violence group Watchmen on the Walls.
In inland California, anti-tolerance organizations hope the boycott will prove financially costly to public schools and taxpayers, as school funding is said to be determined in part by attendance. A pro-discrimination group, Capitol Research Institute, has organized a counter-event euphemistically called a “Day of Learning” for antigay parents and students that participate in the pro-harassment boycott. What exactly will participants “learn”? According to The Press-Enterprise, they will learn how to gather signatures “to repeal a state law that prevents discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation.” Meanwhile, the antigay Alliance Defense Fund has declared April 28 to be an annual day when antigay students verbally harangue gay classmates with defamatory, egotistical, and hypocritical religious messages.
GLSEN has released the following ad featuring Lance Bass to counter pro-harassment, pro-silence propaganda that is being fed to students by antigay political organizations:
Meanwhile, pro-exgay pundit Warren Throckmorton continues his campaign against the anti-bullying day. Throckmorton’s proposal creates an artificial division between the Golden Rule and explicit opposition to antigay violence and harassment. Throckmorton may view his own campaign to supply students with misinformation as a lesser evil than that of the boycotters. But, in pandering to the worst elements of the pseudo-Christian religious right, Throckmorton trivializes both Christian values and the growing problem of antigay violence and harassment in schools.
Lisa Miller and her partner, Janet Jenkins, exchanged vows in a civil union ceremony eight years ago in Vermont. Through artificial insemination, Lisa conceived and gave birth to Isabella in 2002. In 2003, Lisa adopted an ex-gay sexual identity, took Isabella and fled to Virginia, where she found an activist judge willing to violate Vermont child-custody and visitation orders.
From Vermont’s perspective, Lisa is now a law-breaking fugitive who has turned her daughter into a political pawn in the culture wars.
Since then, Lisa has flouted Vermont family law and constitutional precedent in which states (such as Virginia) may not override other states’ jurisdiction and court rulings in matters of family law. Even as she violated the law, lived as a fugitive in Virginia, and sought to sever Janet’s ties to Isabella, Lisa won child support from Janet.
On Thursday (April 17), the Virginia Supreme Court will rule hear arguments in the custody dispute.
Focus on the Family has weighed in, supporting Lisa’s violations of Vermont family law and implicitly favoring a “special right” of antigay states to disobey the court rulings of states that have jurisdiction over a marriage, civil union, or child custody.
In 1988, I was fresh out of college and working as a full-time volunteer for Catholic Charities in Nashville, Tennessee.
I was also a quietly celibate gay man who was living with fellow Christian volunteers.
By day, I helped illegal aliens apply for legal residency through Catholic Charities while my housemates worked with prisoners and the homeless.
When we weren’t working, my unpaid housemates and I spent evenings at home in low-income East Nashville, sitting in front of our portable black-and-white television watching “Facts of Life” and a new show called “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” We shared meals of low-budget jambalaya, chatted on weekends with acquaintances (on their dime, if possible) at the Vanderbilt University Fuddrucker’s, and explored various churches and neighborhoods around Nashville. As my one-year volunteer placement wound down in mid-1988, I sought religious sponsors who might help me work for Nashville CARES or for similar AIDS treatment and support organizations in other cities.
This was my gay lifestyle.
Across town, Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas was, by his own new account, living a very different lifestyle: bar-hopping, using drugs, seemingly oblivious (then and now) to liberal Christian outreach to society’s outcasts.
In a heartbreaking moment of vulnerability, Randy remembers the day when he learned his former partner had died from AIDS: (Read More)
eHarmony.com, the heterosexuals-only dating service that was once closely associated with Focus on the Family, is now being chastised by Focus’s 
