I just discovered yet another “ex-gay” website in Florida, Shasta Ministries, that aims to help fundamentalist Christians in “evangelizing to the gay community.”

Anyway, here is the latest advice on how the fundies plan to seduce you with their phony version of love. They want to put their mitts on you (or maybe fondle??):

One of the best things you can give them in physical, non-sexual touch Part of the issue of homosexuality is having not learned how to completely relate to people of the same gender in a non-sexual way. Most of the physical encounters they have with the same sex are romantic or sexual. For you to simply hug them and put your arm around them as a brother or sister in Christ, you will help them begin to mend one of the biggest holes in their life. You do not even need to tell “I am doing this because you need to mend a part of your childhood” or any crap like that. Simply implement this as a friend so that they can see that they do not need to be sexual with the same-gender to get fulfillment.

Give me a break. LGBT people are no more in need of a non-sexual hug than anyone else. This is just complete garbage disguised as science from quack therapists. I grew up with a very affectionate family. So have most LGBT people that I know.

Here is a stat for the fundies that want to reach out and touch you: A gay child that is rejected by his or her family is 8 times more likely to attempt suicide. 6 times more likely to be depressed and 3 times more likely to abuse drugs.

That’s right fundies, you are the problem, not the solution. It seems the only LGBT people that need your creepy hugs are your own damn children that you have rejected. Now, go hug them and get your hands off me.

Seriously, where do they come up with such ridiculous ideas?

On August 5, Michigan resident Patrick McAlvey (left) revealed in a Truth Wins Out video the bizarre “therapy” he received from Exodus International counselor Mike Jones, who runs the group’ Lansing affiliate, Corduroy Stone. More than a month later, Exodus continues to shelter and support Jones, while offering silence in the face of scandal. The group has made no effort to investigate McAlvey’ charges, nor has it apologized for practicing touch therapy, a controversial practice it supposedly is against.

At the age of nineteen, McAlvey, who came from a religious background, was terrified that he might be gay. Feeling vulnerable and desperate to “change”, he placed his trust in Jones. Michigan’ GLBT newspaper, Between the Lines, interviewed McAlvey, now 24, where he elaborated on his therapy sessions with Jones in vivid detail.

“He asked how large my penis was,” McAlvey explained. “He asked if I shave my pubic hair. He asked what type of underwear that I wore. He wanted me to describe my sexual fantasies to him and the type of men I’m attracted to. 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.”

Exodus may call this “therapy”, but where I come from (the real world) this is called foreplay. This is just not acceptable behavior and is predatory when it comes from an authority figure.

In sessions, Jones would also have McAlvey lie in his arms for hour-long intervals — a technique known as “touch therapy”. This method would be questionable in any circumstance, but even more so when the counselor who is caressing the client still admits to struggling with his homosexuality.

On his website, Jones acknowledges that he is still having “areas of sexual temptations”, is “sexually attracted to other men” and is “still not sexually attracted to women.” If this is the case, how is he qualified to help other people change their sexual orientation? And, if Exodus’ defines Jones as a success story, why would people waste their time and money on this failed program?

Most important, why is a sexually repressed gay man allowed to place young men in his lap under the auspices of therapy? Imagine the uproar if an older heterosexual therapist was “helping” straight teenagers or young women with such exploitative and quack-like techniques!

Interestingly, Exodus International has a policy statement saying it “is opposed to the therapeutic practice commonly referred to as “holding/touch therapy’” and that it “does not endorse any individual or organization that is known to use that method.”

If this is the case, then why has Exodus failed to launch a probe or discipline Jones, an actual Exodus counselor facing a direct charge that he flagrantly violated the organization’ policy? (Read More)

Pride Source (Detroit, MI)

Getting Fixed

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.”

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) is teaming up with various anti-gay legal groups to intimidate GLBT campus organizations in high schools, colleges and universities. They are threatening to sue if these organizations don’t distribute the bizarre theories of Richard Cohen.

It is hard to believe, but Cohen is the former President of PFOX. They still promote his books and training sessions. And, if you ask for a speaker – they will likely send you Mr. Cohen – who was expelled for life from the American Counseling Association. If PFOX tries to get into your school, simply show administrators this clip of Cohen from the documentary, “Chasing the Devil.” It is clear, based on this clip – and his record – that disseminating PFOX’s material may put students at risk. Any responsible school that protects its students will not allow PFOX near its campus.

Addendum: PFOX last summer was accused by two different scientific research teams of distorting their research.