Waiting For An Apology From The American Family Association Of Pennsylvania

Truth Wins Out Commends Former Exodus Lobbyist Randy Thomas For Apologizing to the LGBT Community

Ex-Gay Activist Says He's Sorry For The Hurt and Harm He Caused While At Exodus

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Truth Wins Out commended Exodus International's former political lobbyist, Randy Randy Thomas older Thomas, today after he apologized to the LGBT community for inflicting harm and increasing hate during his tenure at Exodus International, which was the largest "ex-gay" organization until it shut down last month. Thomas is the fourth major "ex-gay" leader to apologize in the past two years.

"We are gratified that Randy Thomas has begun the process of taking personal responsibility for his key role in damaging the lives of many innocent people," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director Wayne Besen. "He is a key player in this industry and his admission will help keep future generations from walking down the treacherous ex-gay path."

According to Thomas in his apology:

"I participated in the hurtful echo chamber of condemnation. I gave lip service to the gay community, but really did not exemplify compassion for them. I placed the battle over policy above my concern for real people. I sometimes valued the shoulder pats I was given by religious leaders more than Jesus' commandment to love and serve. That was wrong and I'm disappointed in myself. Please forgive me."

"I was, in a sense, attracted to this kind of power and allowed my conscience to be numbed so I could have a seat at their table. In the name of trying to positively affect Christian leaders, I willingly became one of their pawns. Again, I was selfish and prideful. Please forgive me."

In his apology, Thomas specifically expressed regret for working to further the career of Andrew Comiskey, the head of Desert Stream Ministries and one of the vilest "ex-gay" activists in the industry. In the past, Comiskey has claimed that "Satan delights in homosexual perversion" and whose "ministry" has continually been shadowed by allegations of sexual abuse committed by staff members.

"Randy's realization that folks like Andrew Comiskey are chief instigators of hatred against LGBT people echoes Alan Chambers' earlier reference to many anti-gay activists as 'vipers,'" said Truth Wins Out Associate Director Evan Hurst. "As a movement, the anti-gay forces in the United States and around the world are known, not for their Christian love, but for the fact that their grace extends only to those who submit to their orthodoxy and supremacy without question. The second the human heart enters the equation, the Religious Right bare its fangs. We applaud Randy for taking this important step to start the healing and prevent future harm to LGBT people."

Thomas, a rising star in the "ex-gay" industry, began his career by leading Living Hope ministry in Dallas. He Randy Thomas was soon recruited as Vice President of Communications, and moved to Exodus International's Orlando headquarters. Thomas eventually took on the role of chief lobbyist, where he reached his pinnacle in 2006, when he and Exodus International President, Alan Chambers, attended a White House meeting with President George W. Bush to push for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Thomas fought tenaciously against the successful inclusion of sexual orientation in the federal hate crime law. He appeared in an infamous newspaper ad under the inflammatory headline, "Hate crime laws say we were more valuable as homosexuals than we are now as former homosexuals." He was also a key speaker at Focus on the Family's ex-gay road show, Love Won Out.

While Thomas did not come out as gay, his apology was a good first step. He also wrote on Truth Wins Out's website that, "I will be sharing more about my thoughts concerning what has happened, personally, and from my perspective in the movement."

In the past two years, Alan Chambers, John Paulk, John Smid, and now Randy Thomas have all issued apologies, rocking the "ex-gay" industry to its core. Unfortunately, new groups like Restored Hope Network and Voice of the Voiceless have risen to fill the vacuum. The recent apologies, however, undermine the credibility of these new "ex-gay" organizations and complicate their efforts, says TWO.


Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

The End of the Horrifically Harmful "Ex-Gay" Myth

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Who Will Be The Last Bigot Standing?

Head of Exodus Ministry Issues Apology to Gay Community

Los Angeles Times - June 19, 2013:

Hours before going onstage in Irvine for a religious conference, the leader of a Christian ministry that had long been devoted to fighting homosexuality offered an apology to the gay community.

"We're sorry," said Alan Chambers, president of Florida-based Exodus International. He vowed to transform his mission "to help those who suffered so much pain."

"I am sorry I didn't stand up to people publicly 'on my side' who called you names.... I am sorry I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine," Chambers said in a statement.

"More than anything, I am sorry that so many have interpreted this religious rejection by Christians as God's rejection. I am profoundly sorry that many have walked away from their faith and that some have chosen to end their lives."

Chambers plans to deliver that message when officials kick off the annual Exodus Freedom Conference on Wednesday night at Concordia College in Irvine.

He first offered an apology in a taped interview on "Our America With Lisa Ling," which airs Thursday.

Chambers said he contacted Ling this spring after months of thinking about "those who shared their very powerful stories with us through the years and the huge hurt we've caused to them. We wanted to do it publicly to reach others. And it was a very uncomfortable. It's something I wouldn't take all the money in the world to listen to again, but it was also something I had to do."

Chambers has served as president of the Orlando-based ministry for more than 11 years.

"To pretend that Exodus is a wonderful organization that never caused anyone trauma is not true. We need to change the way we do things, the language that we use, the truth of our story and how we interact with each other as Christians," he told the Times.

Brad Allen, a former Exodus employee who came out to his family and friends in 2012, and who appears with Chambers on the Lisa Ling show, said, "I was incredibly proud of him for doing this — and he's taking flak from all sides.

"He's being called a 'heretic' and the 'worst kind of sinner' but in his heart, he knows this is right."

Allen, who worked with Chambers as a church network coordinator, later became a pastor in Denver. He lost that job once he revealed that he is gay. He calls the Exodus apology "seismic."

In Southern California, a theology professor ordained two years ago after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America dropped its ban on same-sex ministers won election in May to become the church's first openly gay bishop.

"Here in 2013, with the anti-gay rhetoric ramping up, we do not want to make war," Chambers said in an interview with The Times. "We want to start a conversation. For so long, I've walked a tightrope of diplomacy" compared to this moment, in which he says he feels "free."

He hopes that "changes in my own life, as well as the ones we announce tonight" for Exodus — which works with more than 200 member ministries and agencies — "will bring resolution, and show I am serious in both my regret and offer of friendship

Family Values: Key ‘Ex-Gay’ Activist Admits He Molested ‘Little Girls’

by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out:

In a shocking admission, Christopher Doyle, a board member for Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) and blogger for the Christian Post, admits that while he was an adolescent he got in trouble for molesting “little girls” that his mother was responsible for watching in her daycare center. According to “Christopher’s Story,” which was previously posted on PFOX’s website, Doyle confessed:

"I tried to have sex with the little girls that my mother watched in her daycare, and eventually, one of the girls told her parents what I was doing. The shame that was placed on me by my parents was more than I could bear. Rather than rescue me, teach me, and put me in counseling, the ‘bad boy’ was left alone to deal with all of this shame.”

Doyle claims that he was only ten years old at the time of the illegal incidents. Still, such disturbing behavior is rather unusual and raises enormous red flags in our view, considering Doyle’s access to youth as a therapist. He is currently a counselor at the International Healing Foundation (IHF), a business where the therapists regularly pet vulnerable clients in a technique called “touch therapy.” IHF has long focused on youth and its founder, Richard Cohen, has written a bizarre “ex-gay” children’s book “Alfie’s Home.” Doyle is also a key member of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which claims that 50% of their clients are LGBT youth.

Perhaps most alarming, Doyle has started a company, Acception Productions, that is working to get its anti-gay videos — that deceptively pretend to be anti-bullying videos — into public schools. At the time of publication, Doyle has not provided the ages of the girls he admits to “trying to have sex with.”

It could be that Doyle’s confessed youthful perversion only occurred during that time period, many years ago. However, one must take pause when looking a his career, one that disturbingly goes through great lengths to place Doyle in close proximity to youth.

The question that parents should ask: Do they want Christopher Doyle, given his notorious past, engaging in touch therapy with their sons and daughters?

Why the 'Ex-Gay' Industry Is Going Under

There is evidence that the so-called ex-gay industry is becoming less viable by the day, says Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out in the latest issue of Newsweek:


This has been a particularly bad couple of weeks for the “ex-gay” industry.

First, it was reported that the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality’s tax-exempt status was revoked last September. This group is a notorious antigay propaganda mill that portrays LGBT people as mentally ill and tries to “cure” them of their homosexuality.

The IRS revocation was the result of NARTH not filing Form 990 for three consecutive years. This could have been due to administrative incompetence. Or the group’s revenues may have decreased sharply, and officials chose to not file to avoid public scrutiny of their financial failures. In NARTH’s last 990 filing, in 2008, the group reported a loss of $29,692 on total revenue of $137,143.

In any case, this is a victory because NARTH will no longer be collecting tax-deductible donations. It strips the group of its already shredded credibility and eliminates its thin veneer of professionalism. Not surprisingly, on its website the antigay organization continues to portray donations as “tax-deducible,” deliberately misleading the public and even its own contributors.

Second, the “ex-gay” industry took a hit in New Jersey this week, when the state Senate’s Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee voted 7-1 with two abstentions, to advance a bill that would prohibit licensed therapists from trying to “cure” gay minors. The Garden State bill was similar to California’s SB1172, which was signed into law last year by Gov. Jerry Brown but is currently being contested in court.

Clearly, NARTH is on the ropes and in deep trouble For years, the organization published books and worked closely with religious organizations, such as Exodus International and Focus on the Family, to promote the message that gay people did not exist and were simply “heterosexuals with a homosexual problem.”

Another function of the organization was to promote junk science and distort valid biological and psychological research on homosexuality. This has caused leading researchers, such as University of Utah’s Lisa Diamond and UCLA’s Allan Schore, to accuse NARTH of twisting and politicizing their research.

NARTH’s deterioration began in 2006 after Gerald Schoenwolf, a member of its Scientific Advisory Committee, wrote a polemic on the group’s website that seemed to excuse 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 … those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa.”

In 2010, NARTH became a laughingstock when its most prominent Scientific Advisory Committee member, George Rekers, was caught vacationing with a male escort he met on RentBoy.com. That same year, it was revealed that another NARTH board member, Arthur Abba Goldberg, had once served time in prison for bilking poor communities with complicated bond schemes.

It is not the tawdry scandals, however, but the actual substance of NARTH’s work that is responsible for the organization losing support. The group is a fount of bizarre theories and outlandish practices that can even make social conservatives cringe. For example, Scientific Advisory Committee member Gerard van den Aardweg believes that self-pity causes homosexuality. In his book Hope and Homosexuality, he claims the cure for being gay is “humor therapy,” in which clients are told to mock their inner child:

“He then imagines his ‘little child’ as standing before him in the flesh, or visualizes himself in his imagination as the ‘child’ he was in his past. He starts talking to this ‘child,’ like someone who exaggeratedly pities another. He tells the ‘child’ how enormously pitiful he is; accumulating a series of fantasized reasons for his complaining, he paints before this ‘child’s’ eyes a super-drama (hyper-drama) surrounding the complaint.”

Equally comical is a workbook sold on NARTH’s website, Practical Exercises for Men in Recovery of Same Sex Attraction (SSA). The author, James E. Phelan, below with bag over head, offers a comprehensive list of 236 activities clients can participate in whenever they feel homosexual urges. This list includes bowling, singing to myself, watching the sky, reading maps, caring for houseplants, going to a revival or crusade, seeing famous people, crying, seeing or smelling a flower or plant, going to a drive-through (Dairy Queen, McDonalds, etc.), walking barefoot, bird-watching, smiling at people, playing Frisbee, and going to auctions.


Additionally, Phelan has clients practice “safe driving” and warns, “Keep your eyes on the road, not on other people’s cars. Focus on driving, not having sex with other drivers.” Phelan also urges readers to create a “masturbation action plan” and to tell their wives, “Let me be the man of the house,” and concludes that “dominant women only demasculinize men,” so “a man has got to be the lion of the den.”

What people need to understand is that these programs are fringe and rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in the nation, such as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association.

Indeed, reparative therapy is arguably not even therapy at all. It appears to be an organized campaign by antigay activists to hijack medical language to stigmatize a group of people so they will not achieve equal rights. The result is enormous psychological harm to clients and a negative impact on family relationships, because parents are falsely blamed for causing their children to be gay.

For these reasons, laws should be passed in every state to prohibit charlatans from abusing LGBT minors in the guise of “therapy.”

NARTH counters that this will inhibit “client determination.” However, deceptive advertising that makes false promises is what lures desperate and vulnerable parents to force their children into therapy. Moreover, if clients truly determined their course of medical treatment, they would be writing their own prescriptions, and I don’t see anyone advocating this.

NARTH argues that if such therapy is banned for minors, it violates therapists’ First Amendment rights. It seems NARTH practitioners have confused their role as physicians — who are held accountable for what they advise — with the bombast of talk radio hosts who can say whatever they want. Indeed, there are limits to medical speech; for example, a doctor may be held liable if he tells a patient recovering from a heart attack to improve his health by subsisting on a diet of funnel cakes and fried butter.

A final unconvincing argument is that such laws are an attack on parental rights. We heard this argument in the New Jersey hearing:

“I don’t understand who you people are, trying to come into our homes and tell us what to do with our children,” Carol Gallentine told the legislators. “I see you people bullying the parents.”

In reality, the government has long tradition in intervening to stop the neglect or abuse of children. For instance, a parent cannot use religious beliefs to deny a child critical medical treatment. A father can’t force a daughter to undergo female circumcision or cite a Bible verse about “sparing the rod” to justify beating his son.

Reparative therapy is always dangerous and ineffective because it begins with a deliberate misdiagnosis that claims that gay clients are mentally ill. When a therapist begins treatment with such a faulty premise, malpractice is almost always the result. This is why I strongly believe that psychologists who are NARTH members or practice reparative therapy should be stripped of their medical licenses.

There are a few well-meaning but misguided therapists who think that what I suggest is going too far because it will create a slippery slope. What they are essentially arguing, however, is that we must allow the practice of an illegitimate form of therapy to prevent potential overregulation of legitimate therapy. But in doing so, they are willfully sacrificing the mental health of clients who are being ripped off and ruined. They seem to forget that the first rule of medicine is to do no harm. And, of course, harm is the very essence of reparative therapy.

WAYNE BESEN is the founder of Truth Wins Out, a movement to fight antigay propaganda and the "ex-gay" industry.

The "Ex-Gay" Myth in The New York Times

‘Ex-Gay’ Men Fight Back Against View That Homosexuality Can’t Be Changed

The New York Times - Nov. 1, 2012

A Response by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out:

In California, Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed SB 1172 that stops quack therapists from practicing dangerous “ex-gay” techniques on minors. This is great news, considering the American Psychiatric Association says that such practices can lead to “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.” Why would any responsible state allow children to be subjected to such child abuse that may lead to suicide?

Now that California has elected to protect kids from quacks, several states are considering passing similar measures in 2013. Stung by the California defeat and worried about their future, the lucrative “ex-gay” industry is launching a PR offensive to stop new laws from being passed in states and even at the federal level. The first shot in this PR war is the launching of the “ex-gay” website Voices of Change which is being promoted by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and People Can Change (PCC), an organization with close ties to discredited laughingstock Richard Cohen. This new, website contains a video from NARTH co-founder Dr. Joseph Nicolosi where he claims that half of all his clients are teenagers.

“We are getting more an more teenagers coming to our clinic,” said NARTH’s Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. “Years ago when I did this work, the average age of our clients was late 20′s and early 30′s…Today, I would say that 50-percent of the clients at our clinic, and we have 135 ongoing cases a week. We have seven therapists that only deal with homosexuality. Fifty percent are teenagers.”

If this weren’t disconcerting enough, Cohen’s International Healing Foundation (IHF) has received a huge infusion of cash to target desperate and vulnerable LGBT youth. More than $635,000 was donated to IHF in 2011, with most of the funds allocated for group’s “Special Schools Project.” This appears to be an effort to con school districts into believing that IHF is a pro-gay organization that stands for diversity and is opposed to bullying. However, the group’s dishonest materials cunningly try to steer LGBT youth to “ex-gay” organizations.

Today’s New York Times story written by reporter Erik Eckholm is set in the middle of this ongoing fight. It focuses on the marketing efforts of “ex-gay” activists to try to trick Americans into believing they have gone from gay to straight. Fortunately, it seems that some of the people who commented on the Times’ website today saw through the “ex-gay” charade:

It doesn’t seem like these men are ‘not gay,’ it just seems they are no longer sexually active with other men. If these were the best examples of people ‘cured,’ then the results speak for themselves. Celibacy is not the same thing as heterosexual. – Julia Pappas-Fidicia, New York City

As a Clinical Psychologist who has written on ‘reparative therapy,’ let me offer a suggestion. Those offering reparative therapy should no longer offer it as a therapy of any sort, but instead as a religious ritual or discipline. After all, that’s what L. Ron Hubbard did with Dianetics when he got into trouble offering it as a treatment. He simply turned it into a world religion. Scientology. Let ‘Gay Reparative Therapy’ be the Scientology of Christianity. — Jonathan C. Smith, PhD, Chicago

I feel a great deal of sympathy for these men, who are clearly suffering. I’m sure these treatments are not cheap…They are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous psychologists and ‘therapists.’ – Daisy, Boston

Before we look at this story, I want to share a few thoughts:

First, NARTH — which is the leading “ex-gay” organization — is to the study of sexual orientation what a mood ring is to the science of depression. Ex-Gay practices are a fringe PR gimmick designed to trick a majority of voters into believing that gay people can change so they can rationalize discrimination and justify poor treatment. Here are two very telling quotes that capture the real views of NARTH:

“Homosexuality is a psychological disorder, there is no question about it,” said NARTH co-founder, the late Charles Socarides. “It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.” – Weiss, Rick (1997) Psychologists reconsider gay conversion therapy, The Washington Post, Aug. 14

“The most important message we can offer is that there is that there is such thing as a ‘gay child’ or a ‘gay teen.’ We are all designed to be heterosexual. Confusion about gender is primarily a psychological condition, and to some extent, it can be modified.” (p. 16) A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Joseph and Linda Ames Nicolosi (2002)

In the first quote, Socarides reveals NARTH’s true hostility by calling homosexuality a “purple menace.” Now, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I suspect that the phrase “purple menace” appears nowhere in the literature at top universities where future mental health experts are trained.

In the second quote, Nicolosi uses the phrase “designed to be heterosexuals.” Designed by whom? They are clearly talking about God. Reparative therapy is a discredited practice because of its theological origins masquerading as science. Where genuine science seeks to explore the natural world in hope of discovering answers, reparative therapy is the opposite because it starts with a prepackaged theological answer and gropes for verbiage to justify its preordained conclusion. The prospect for learning and observation are non-existent, since all results have to conclude that homosexuality is a purple menace caused by a mental illness that can be fixed. Clearly, reparative therapy is based on the Scripture Method, not the Scientific Method.

The often desperate and vulnerable clients featured in today’s NYT article are extremely susceptible to swaggering “ex-gay” therapists who appear to have all the answers. For many, if the therapy does not work, they will immediately become outcasts in the religious communities they grew up in. They can lose their family. If they are youth they can become homeless. In other words, there can be enormous incentives for claiming transformation, even when it is not true.

This is exacerbated by name it-and-claim it theology shared by many “ex-gay” ministries. The idea is that if you keep repeating something desirable and have faith in God, He will reward you for your faith. Much “ex-gay” testimony can be attributed to such theology which can be summarized as lying to please the Lord. This tradition is a Catch 22, because if you acknowledge not changing, the minister might say, “of course you aren’t changing, you don’t have enough faith.”

Finally, there is also the issue of conflict of interest or “ex-gay” for pay. Leading NARTH defenders, like David Pickup and James Phelan, have a business model they are defending. Because of clear financial incentives, what they claim about change is essentially meaningless — much like those selling products on late night infomercials. It should be noted that it is difficult to find many “ex-gays” who don’t have a conflict of interest, such as running a therapy outfit or a ministry.

Now, on to the New York Times article. It begins with the story of Blake Smith:

Mr. Smith, 58, who says he believes homosexual behavior is wrong on religious grounds, tried to tough it out. He spent 17 years in a doomed marriage while battling his urges all day, he said, and dreaming about them all night.

But in recent years, as he probed his childhood in counseling and at men’s weekend retreats with names like People Can Change and Journey Into Manhood, “my homosexual feelings have nearly vanished,’ Mr. Smith said in an interview at the house in Bakersfield, Calif., he shares with his second wife, who married him eight years ago knowing his history. “In my 50s, for the first time, I can look at a woman and say ‘she’s really hot.’ ”

I pity Blake and his family. How did it make his wife feel when he was pretending to be attracted to her for 17 years while dreaming about men all night? How does arranging such doomed marriages promote family values? It seems that Blake has wasted the majority of his life in denial, selfishly dragging down women into his self-induced shame hell. He deserves to find true love and physical satisfaction, and so do his two wives, past and present. Had he not been indoctrinated with anti-gay religious dogma, he likely would have been much happier, whole, and not viewed his sexuality as a cosmic battle between good and evil. Blake does not represent success, but the neurotic mess that homophobia can make of one’s life. Instead of liberating Blake, he’s in his 50′s still deluding himself at the expense of his family. I’ve seen this story before — where men finally come out in their 60′s and 70′s and ask, “where did my life go?”

I’m going to be blunt: I don’t believe that Blake finds women hot. When it comes to wild claims of creating a heterosexual attraction for homosexuals, “ex-gay” organizations have no credibility and shouldn’t be taken seriously. How many “ex-gay” posterboys have they put forward only to be revealed as frauds? Given the number of high level failures, one would have to be naive to take their tales of change at face value.

The story continues, pointing out two recent disasters for the “ex-gay” myth:

Reparative therapy suffered two other major setbacks this year. In April, a prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, publicly repudiated as invalid his own 2001 study suggesting that some people could change their sexual orientation; the study had been widely cited by defenders of the therapy.

Then this summer, the ex-gay world was convulsed when Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, the largest Christian ministry for people fighting same-sex attraction, said he did not believe anyone could be rid of homosexual desires

I’m a big proponent of using physical measures to test whether such people have gone from gay to straight. (No Lie MRI, polygraph, penile plethysmography). Relying on the tale of an “ex-gay” who often has a financial incentive or is under immense social pressure or religious duress to claim success is a waste of time. Since physical tests exist, why doesn’t NARTH use them? Is Blake willing to take one? If not, what is he hiding?

On the topic of genuine “change,” here is a revealing quote from former Brazilian “ex-gay” poster boy Sergio Viula:

“In fact, ex-gays don’t exist – it’s pure self-suggestion…What we ex-gay purveyors did was an act of violence against ourselves, as we had internalized the homophobia that surrounded us from early childhood, as well as against the others, because we reproduced that very homophobia which they had internalized by themselves long before. We just reinforced it even more.”

Next, the article states:

Mr. Smith is one of thousands of men across the country, often known as “ex-gay,” who believe they have changed their most basic sexual desires through some combination of therapy and prayer — something most scientists say has never been proved possible and is likely an illusion.

The New York Times article actually refutes the “ex-gay” claim that there are thousands of such folks by the people interviewed:

Aaron Bitzer, 35, was so angered by the California ban, which will take effect on Jan. 1, that he went public and became a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional.

To those who call the therapy dangerous, Mr. Bitzer reverses the argument: “If I’d known about these therapies as a teen I could have avoided a lot of depression, self-hatred and suicidal thoughts,” he said at his apartment in Los Angeles. He was tormented as a Christian teenager by his homosexual attractions, but now, after men’s retreats and an online course of reparative therapy, he says he feels glimmers of attraction for women and is thinking about dating.

“I found that I couldn’t just say ‘I’m gay’ and live that way,” said Mr. Bitzer, who plans to seek a doctorate in psychology and become a therapist himself.

So the posterboy for success that the “ex-gay” industry provides America’s most prestigious newspaper says he feels “glimmers of attraction for women?” If this is the best they can do, it proves the entire “ex-gay” schtick is a public relations campaign, not genuine therapy that produces actual results. For all the boasting, bluster, and bravado, the “ex-gay” industry has virtually no success stories to highlight. For example, when Dr. Robert Spitzer asked NARTH’s Dr. Joseph Nicolosi for subjects to participate in his 2001 study on whether people could go from gay to straight, Nicolosi failed to deliver his allegedly “changed” homosexuals. In a video TWO filmed this year with Spitzer, the psychiatrist claimed:

He [Nicolosi] just didn’t have many patients who could really claim that they had changed.



With a lack of real success stories from actual clients, the “ex-gay” industry is forced to make the preposterous claim that “ex-gays” are invisible because they are afraid to come out of the closet, fearing that people like me might be mean to them. According to the Times story:

Ex-gay men are often closeted, fearing ridicule from gay advocates who accuse them of self-deception and, at the same time, fearing rejection by their church communities as tainted oddities…Many ex-gays guard their secret but quietly meet in support groups around the country, sharing ideas on how to avoid temptations or, perhaps, broach their past with a female date.

Here are a few facts:

The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews. Gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures. Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crimes.

Clearly, the consequences of coming out as a gay person can be very real, while there is zero evidence to show that coming out as heterosexual (which is what ex-gays presumably are) is dangerous. Despite the ominous figures, millions of gay people have still managed to come out, even in conservative or rural areas. My spouse came out in a Nebraska town of 700 people. Yet, somehow we are supposed to believe that so-called “ex-gays,” with no evidence that they are victims of hate crimes, are cowed into hiding? Such whining defies logic and is simply the irrational bleating and excuse making of “ex-gay” groups who can’t produce success stories to back their unsubstantiated claims.

Interestingly, the LGBT movement has no trouble showing survivors of such psychological abuse and there are even support groups, like Beyond Ex-Gay.

In short, the “ex-gay” industry is posing as victims when they are actually the victimizers. They are about enforcing rigid gender norms, restrictive stereotypes, and portraying homosexuality in the worst possible light. Far from open minded, the only acceptable outcome for clients in such intolerant programs is heterosexuality. Anyone who comes to a different conclusion is ostracized and stigmatized. It is most amusing that the “ex-gay” industry has recently adopted the liberal arguments of choice, exploration, and self-determination, when in reality these alleged choices are a mirage. What they really offer is heterosexuality or the highway. Who are they kidding?

The truth is, “ex-gay” abuse is about shame and blame. Virtually no one over the age of thirty felt comfortable growing up gay. Even in today’s more accepting society, there are large swaths of America where coming out can mean social death, rejection, and even violence. However, that has nothing to do with one’s homosexuality, but the way people react to it. Reparative therapy adds to the stigma, reinforces a client’s shame, and confuses stereotypes with science. Had the the people featured in this story been brought up in a more accepting environment, then they would have been more comfortable as gay. Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, consists of sexual arousal and feelings of love — two beautiful elements that make life meaningful. The only way it is possible that homosexuality can make one unhappy is if it is portrayed as bad and leads to adverse social consequences. (which is why “ex-gay” groups are in favor of anti-gay laws) The idea that homosexuality on its own can lead to unhappiness is a bizarre and incoherent notion rooted in bias.

What we do know is that acceptance of LGBT youth makes a huge difference on whether they succeed or fail:

San Francisco State researcher Caitlin Ryan found that LGBT teens who experienced negative feedback from their families were 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide, 6 times as vulnerable to severe depression, and 3 times at risk for drug abuse. (Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Jan 2009)

Science is also beginning to show that because of social pressure, there are those who claim to be heterosexual — even homophobic — who are actually gay. Reparative therapy is just another variation of the conditions that strongly encourage false reporting. (We know at least two clients of Nicolosi who were asked to participate in Robert Spitzer’s study who were not transformed, which shows the strong degree of coercion used by the reparative therapy industry)

It is important to note that reparative therapy can temporarily make perfect sense intellectually to a lot of people who fit NARTH’s prefabricated model of what causes homosexuality. If one comes from a home with a distant same-sex parent or was sexually abused, or picked last on sports teams, their paradigm seems to explain everything in a neat and tidy manner. Except it really explains nothing at all and there is no evidence that such family dynamics cause homosexuality any more than an affinity for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or the enjoyment of Hula Hoops. NARTH’s family model can also describe the experiences of countless heterosexuals. It also conveniently ignores the fact that a great number of LGBT people grew up in loving homes where they were close to both parents. For example, I’m very close to my parents who have been married for 43 years. I was never sexually violated. I grew up bowling, fishing, and playing football. I was the captain of my high school basketball team, MVP, and second team All-City in 1988. When I hear the theories of reparative therapists, I think they are bizarre and have little to do with reality. But, that’s easy for me to conclude, given my background. It’s not so easy for those to figure out who fit neatly into NARTH’s fabricated paradigm and are more easily exploited.

In terms of “ex-gay” industry opening up old wounds by discussing family dynamics, this can be terribly problematic. Unless the counselor is qualified (and many “ex-gay” counselors are not), such unwise actions can cause additional trauma to clients. This is one more reason that LGBT youth should never be subjected to the abuse of such charlatans.

I will also note that initially going to “ex-gay” therapy does bring a sense of relief for some clients. A good portion of them are deeply closeted and have had very little contact with openly gay individuals. Suddenly, they went from complete secrecy, loneliness, and silence, to having their sexual orientation out in the open — even if it is in a dysfunctional faux therapeutic setting. Whether one comes out as gay or “ex-gay” it is still a form of coming out and does bring a sense of peace. However, the same effect can be accomplished in a supportive setting and the glow eventually wears off “ex-gay” counseling when it fails to deliver on its false promise.

One defense for such therapy is this: “I don’t claim this is possible for everyone, but it works for me. What’s wrong with that?”

This is an old huckster technique used to bamboozle gullible people into buying snake oil. The idea is to use personal testimony to claim a product works knowing that such tales are difficult to refute. If one watches late night TV, countless infomercials — from weight loss products to face cream to muscle building formulas — make outrageous claims using personal testimony. The other appealing aspect is that when the product inevitably doesn’t work, the exploited customer can be blamed for not achieving the promised results. Reparative therapy is a con that uses the same tried and true methods of other swindlers. Of course, when it comes to “ex-gay” abuse, when the miracle or change doesn’t come, it can lead to depression or worse, as the victim can’t understand why they are failing. Often, they believe that they were abandoned by God, greatly exacerbating feelings of depression and low self-esteem.

Additionally, no one cares what an adult individual does in his or her private life. The problem arises when so-called “ex-gays” are paraded by political groups on national television and used to testify in an effort to pass anti-gay laws. For example, I started Truth Wins Out in 2006 after George W. Bush invited Exodus’ Alan Chambers to the White House to promote the Federal Marriage Amendment. The “ex-gay” issue only gained traction in 1998 when 16 anti-gay organizations launched the “Truth in Love” campaign with a full-page ad in the New York Times. Indeed, the “ex-gay” issue has never been about changing one’s sexual orientation, but using the idea of change to pass anti-gay laws. “Ex-Gay” activist Greg Quinlan, President of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) is currently working to overturn a marriage equality in Maryland.

It is also worth mentioning that there is a growing body of science is beginning to show that sexual orientation has biological origins. In many cases, the brains of gay and straight people are subtly different. Anyone or group that makes a blanket statement that sexual orientation is caused by rape or poor parenting doesn’t have a very strong grasp of science, they are not informed on the latest research, or they are deliberately twisting the science for political gain. When groups like NARTH and PFOX makes such statements it reveals a level of ignorance so great that it virtually disqualifies them from even being in the room where serious scientific discussions occur.



I’ll end by featuring the testimony of Cameron Michael Swaim in today’s Times story:

Cameron Michael Swaim, 20, said he is in the early stages of his struggle to overcome homosexual desires. Mr. Swaim is unemployed and lives with his parents in Orange County, Calif., where his father is a pastor of the Evangelical Friends Church of the Southwest.

He tried the gay life, but “it just doesn’t settle with me,” he said, and ultimately decided “there’s got to be a way to heal this affliction.”

Through weekend retreats and participation in a Southern California support group Mr. Swaim has started to explore his family relations, he said, something that has been painful but seems to be helping.

“I’m building my confidence around men,” he said, “ and that has built my confidence around women.”

Five years from now, Mr. Swaim hopes, he will be engaged or married. In the meantime, he is trying to scrape together enough money to start seeing a reparative therapist.

It is a shame that Swaim had the misfortune of being born into a home where he was taught to despise his most intimate feelings and human needs. Had be been born into a better home — one that would have been accepting rather than rejecting — he would not be suffering though the obvious trauma he now endures. It is heartbreaking that he plans to drag a woman into his mess — a woman who surely deserves better than to live his lie. When this future marriage finally falls apart, I urge his ex-wife to contact the Straight Spouse Network. This is a support group for women and men who were often used as props and beards in the destructive game played by the “ex-gay” industry. There is also the book, Straight Wives, Shattered Lives by Bonnie Kaye.



Reparative therapy by nature is coercive. It takes vulnerable people and tries to scare the heck out of them. For example, this comes from pg. 16 of the Nicolosi book, “Preventing Homosexuality“:

There are life threatening health risks associated with the gay lifestyle

A gay lifestyle adjustment will be difficult and socially controversial

Dr. Nicolosi has also told clients: “I do not believe that any man can ever be truly at peace in living out a homosexual orientation.”

Make no mistake, the gross distortions “ex-gay” therapists promulgate about gay life are the key reason people, such as those featured today in the Times, want to change. The charlatans offering help are the ones causing the harm.

The sooner such wanton child abuse can be stopped, the better.


About the Author: Wayne Besen is the Founding Executive Director of Truth Wins Out and author of “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth” (Haworth, 2003). In 2010, Besen was awarded the “Visionary Award” at the Out Music Awards for organizing the American Prayer Hour, an event which shined a spotlight on the role American evangelicals played in the introduction of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

"Ex-Gay" Extremists Cure Themselves of Their Delusions

But if history be our guide, viciously anti-gay hate groups such as the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania won't leave their evil, and harmful, ways behind for another decade or so.

Rift Forms in Movement as Belief in Gay ‘Cure’ Is Renounced

by Erik Eckholm for The New York Times:

For more than three decades, Exodus International has been the leading force in the so-called ex-gay movement, which holds that homosexuals can be “cured” through Christian prayer and psychotherapy.

Exodus leaders claimed its network of ministries had helped tens of thousands rid themselves of unwanted homosexual urges. The notion that homosexuality is not inborn but a choice was seized on by conservative Christian groups who oppose legal protections for gay men and lesbians and same-sex marriage.

But the ex-gay movement has been convulsed as the leader of Exodus, in a series of public statements and a speech to the group’s annual meeting last week, renounced some of the movement’s core beliefs. Alan Chambers, 40, the president, declared that there was no cure for homosexuality and that “reparative therapy” offered false hopes to gays and could even be harmful. His statements have led to charges of heresy and a growing schism within the network.

“For the last 37 years, Exodus has been a bright light, arguably the brightest one for those with same-sex attraction seeking an authentically Christian hope,” said Andrew Comiskey, founder and director of Desert Stream Ministries, based in Kansas City, Mo., one of 11 ministries that defected. His group left Exodus in May, Mr. Comiskey said in an e-mail, “due to leader Alan Chambers’s appeasement of practicing homosexuals who claim to be Christian” as well as his questioning of the reality of “sexual orientation change.”

In a phone interview Thursday from Orlando, Fla., where Exodus has its headquarters, Mr. Chambers amplified on the views that have stirred so much controversy. He said that virtually every “ex-gay” he has ever met still harbors homosexual cravings, himself included. Mr. Chambers, who left the gay life to marry and have two children, said that gay Christians like himself faced a lifelong spiritual struggle to avoid sin and should not be afraid to admit it.

He said Exodus could no longer condone reparative therapy, which blames homosexuality on emotional scars in childhood and claims to reshape the psyche. And in a theological departure that has caused the sharpest reaction from conservative pastors, Mr. Chambers said he believed that those who persist in homosexual behavior could still be saved by Christ and go to heaven.

Only a few years ago, Mr. Chambers was featured in advertisements along with his wife, Leslie, saying, “Change is possible.” But now, he said in the interview, “Exodus needs to move beyond that slogan.”

“I believe that any sexual expression outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage is sinful according to the Bible,” Mr. Chambers emphasized. “But we’ve been asking people with same-sex attractions to overcome something in a way that we don’t ask of anyone else,” he said, noting that Christians with other sins, whether heterosexual lust, pornography, pride or gluttony, do not receive the same blanket condemnations.

Mr. Chambers’s comments come at a time of widening acceptance of homosexuality and denunciation of reparative therapy by professional societies that say it is based on faulty science and potentially harmful.

A bill to outlaw “conversion therapy” for minors has passed the California Senate and is now before the State Assembly. Earlier this year, a prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, apologized for publishing what he now calls an invalid study, which said many patients had largely or totally switched their sexual orientation.

Defenders of the therapy say that it can bring deep changes in sexual orientation and that the attacks are politically motivated.

David H. Pickup, a therapist in Glendale, Calif., who specializes in the treatment, said restricting it would harm people who are unhappy with their homosexuality by “making them feel that no change is possible at all.”

Mr. Pickup, an officer of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, composed of like-minded therapists, said reparative therapy had achieved profound changes for thousands of people, including himself. The therapy, he said, had helped him confront emotional wounds and “my homosexual feelings began to dissipate and attractions for women grew.”

Some in the ex-gay world are more scathing about Mr. Chambers.

“I think Mr. Chambers is tired of his own personal struggles, so he’s making excuses for them by making sweeping generalizations about others,” said Gregg Quinlan, a conservative lobbyist in New Jersey and president of a support group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays.

Exodus International, with a budget of $1.5 million provided by donors and member churches, is on a stable footing, Mr. Chambers said. He said the shifts in theology had the support of the Exodus board and had been welcomed by many of the 150 churches that are members in North America, which increasingly have homosexuals in their congregations. More opposition has come from affiliated ministries specifically devoted to sex-related therapies, with 11 quitting Exodus so far while about 70 remain.

In another sign of change, the vice chairman of the Exodus board, Dennis Jernigan, was forced to resign in June after he supported anti-sodomy laws in Jamaica. The board pledged to fight efforts anywhere to criminalize sexual acts between consenting adults.

Robert Gagnon, an associate professor at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of books on homosexuality and the Bible, last week issued a public call for Mr. Chambers to resign. “My greatest concern has to do with Alan’s repeated assurances to homosexually active ‘gay Christians’ that they will be with him in heaven,” he said in an e-mail.

Gay rights advocates said they were encouraged by Mr. Chambers’s recent turn but remained wary of Exodus, which they feel has caused enormous harm.

“Exodus International played the key role in planting the message that people can go from gay to straight through religion and therapy,” said Wayne Besen, director of Truth Wins Out, a group that refutes what it considers misinformation about gays and lesbians. “And the notion that one can change is the centerpiece of the religious right’s argument for denying us rights.”

Many of the local ministries in Exodus continue to attack gays and lesbians, said David Roberts, editor of the Web site Ex-Gay Watch, and they often have close ties with reparative therapists. He speculated that Mr. Chambers was trying to steer the group in a moderate direction because “they were becoming pariahs” in a society that is more accepting of gay people.

Mr. Chambers said he was simply trying to restore Exodus to its original purpose when it was founded in 1976: providing spiritual support for Christians who are struggling with homosexual attraction.

He said that he was happy in his marriage, with a “love and devotion much deeper than anything I experienced in gay life,” but that he knew this was not feasible for everyone. Many Christians with homosexual urges may have to strive for lives of celibacy.

But those who fail should not be severely judged, he said, adding, “We all struggle or fall in some way.”

The Story Behind "Curing The Gays"

Mark Benjamin, national correspondent for Salon.com, describes for MSNBC's Rachel Maddow what he learned reporting undercover on the "ex-gay" movement.

Here in Venango County, Jane Richey and her "Christian" radio station WAWN are fervent proponents of the crackpot, dangerous, sometimes deadly, "ex-gay" theory.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The 'Ex-Gay' Movement That Wasn't

from Truth Wins Out:

In an excellent article, The Washington City Paper exposes Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) as a shady front group for rabidly anti-gay legal organizations.


Amanda Hess, the reporter, could not even find real "ex-gays" in Washington, DC to interview who were not getting paid to say they had "changed".

The article rightfully calls PFOX a "smokescreen" and also raises the important question of whether the group has a strategy of staging hate crimes, to portray so-called "ex-gays" as victims.



Here's the article: The Ex-Gay Movement That Wasn't

Getting Fixed - Harmed By "Ex-Gay" Therapy

Patrick McAlvey endured ex-gay therapy. Now, he wants to let other gay teens know they're not broken

by Jessica Carreras:

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."

Harmed By 'Ex-Gay' Therapy

Patrick McAlvey entered therapy to change his sexual orientation at the age of 19. His former counselor, Mike Jones, is currently the director of Corduroy Stone, an affiliate of Exodus International.



He originally met Jones after he spoke at a Church youth ministry, while McAlvey was still in Middle School. The two connected years later, after McAlvey returned to Lansing.

McAlvey says that his sessions with Jones included prolonged hugs, the suggestion that he use handyman tools to increase his masculinity and questions about the size of his genitalia. There was also an episode of holding therapy where he reclined into the lap of his supposedly ex-gay counselor for an hour. The goal, according to McAlvey, was to get comfortable with his own manliness by "feeling the strength" and "smelling the smell" of another man.

Today, McAlvey is "out" and has accepted his sexual orientation

"I think it does a lot of damage to peoples mental health, said McAlvey. If I had had a fair representation (of gay life) I could have avoided a lot of suffering."

For more information, see Truth Wins Out.

Rubbish In The Guise Of Research

from Truth Wins Out:

In a brazen effort to preempt an American Psychological Association report on human sexuality, scheduled for release in August, an anti-gay organization unveiled its own report, which amounts to rubbish in the guise of research.


The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality's (NARTH) "new" study, "What the Research Shows: NARTH's Response to the American Psychological Association's Claims on Homosexuality", is so embarrassingly slipshod that no scientist would take it seriously.

But, the goal, of course, is not to impress researchers who would cackle at the kookiness. The real aim, according to Dr. Jack Drescher, a renowned psychiatrist and author, is to confuse the public and gullible media into believing the APA and NARTH are equally credentialed scientific bodies engaged in a legitimate dispute over homosexuality.

The truth, however, is that NARTH is a fringe group held in ill repute by anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of science. The organization is best known for encouraging male clients to drink Gatorade and call friends "dude" to increase masculinity.

The first clue that this study was utter trash was the fact that NARTH and Focus on the Family referred to it as "new". Indeed, not one iota of fresh research took place. Not one moment was spent in the lab, nor were any subjects recruited to broaden the base of knowledge on the etiology of sexual orientation.

The study was basically a compilation of everything negative ever written about gay people, no matter how invalid, idiotic or biased the conclusion. NARTH essentially blasted sh** out of a cannon, hoping at least some would stick to the wall.

The second clue to the inanity of this report was that NARTH's Scientific Advisory Board guided it. The last time this assemblage of reprobates appeared in the news, it was after one of their members (Gerald Schoenwolf) seemed to endorse slavery, while another (Joseph Berger) opined that gender variant children should be "ridiculed" by their peers.


The third clue was when NARTH claimed that its work appeared in the peer-reviewed "Journal of Human Sexuality." They conveniently fail to mention that this is their own journal - staffed by other like-minded quacks. This is the equivalent of me offering a glowing review of my last book on my own personal website, while pretending it was an independent overview.

The fourth clue was that NARTH refused to rely on modern research. Instead, they elected to incorporate discredited and outdated century-old studies, where gay subjects were often recruited from prisons or mental hospitals. It is no coincidence that NARTH used work from the horse and buggy era, as no research in more than thirty years has supported their views on homosexuality.

Could you imagine how people would be howling if an organization used 125 year old studies on African Americans, climate change or even medicine? The idea is as shocking as it is laughable.

Most absurd, NARTH invoked the Stonewall uprising that ushered in the modern gay rights movement, on the event's 40thanniversary, to highlight the alleged oppression of "ex-gays." According to the group's website:

"Those who have received help from reorientation therapists have collectively stood up to be counted-as once did their openly gay counterparts in the 1970s. The first time a formal demonstration against the American Psychiatric Association was protested against-not by pro-gay activists, but by a group of people reporting that they had substantially changed their sexual orientation, and that change is possible for others-was on May 22, 1994, in Philadelphia. A similar demonstration occurred...at the 2006 American Psychological Association Convention in New Orleans."

Interestingly, NARTH writes this passage as if it is a casual observer witnessing an organic uprising. What NARTH conveniently fails to point out is that the group engineered and staged these protests as a public relations gimmick. I was at the so-called "protest" in New Orleans. The demonstrators were all professional "ex-gay" activists or members of NARTH - including the group's president Joseph Nicolosi and his son.

So, let's put this "study" in perspective.


NARTH is repackaging 125-year old research as new and unveiling its "findings" in its own publication, while trying to claim that it survived peer review. The group is also pretending to document a spontaneous popular uprising that they had actually staged. They are hoping to pull off this publicity stunt by creating an online echo chamber, with Christian news outlets mindlessly repeating their obvious lies.

NARTH is not interested in science. Its real motivation is bigotry that can be best evidenced by a quote made by the group's late co-founder Dr. Socarides: "Homosexuality is...a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society."

If it quacks like a duck, it may just be quacks ducking out on reality.

Church’s Exorcism of Gay Teenager Is Child Abuse and Fanaticism Disguised as Faith

Shocking Video Reveals Underbelly of ‘Ex-Gay’ Ministries

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out condemned Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn., for practicing child abuse in the name of religion, after a video surfaced where the church tried to exorcize demons from a gay teenager.

“This video reveals the underbelly of the ex-gay ministries and shows the medieval mindset of such organizations,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “We call on all such ministries to immediately stop the child abuse, which is harm in the guise of healing. As an organization that helps victims of such barbaric practices, we can attest to the psychological trauma that can result.

The exorcism video shows a teen writhing on the ground as adults implore so-called “homosexual demons” to get out. The leaders yell at the boy on the ground saying, “Right now in the name of Jesus, I call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus.” This scene unfolds for 20 minutes with the boy in a near seizure, even vomiting.

Patricia McKinney, pastor of the nondenominational church who describes herself as a prophet, told CNN that she believes homosexuality, like crack addiction can be influenced by demons.

“It’s not just the homosexuality spirit. It could be the alcohol spirit, the crack cocaine spirit, the adultery spirit. Everything carries a spirit,” McKinney told CNN.

Unfortunately, this terrifying incident is not unique. It is a standard part of groups such as Exodus International, which promise to help people “pray away the gay.”

Here's a different perspective:



Learn more at Truth Wins Out

Infamous "Ex-Gay" Study Debunked

For decades, anti-gay organizations (including Venango County's Lighthouse Ministries, Christian Radio Station WAWN, and American Family Association of Pennsylvania) have gleefully pointed to Masters & Johnson's 1979 book, "Homosexuality in Perspective", where the famed sex therapist couple claimed they could cure homosexuality.


Sadly, they had released their results on NBC's Meet the Press, which harmed countless GLBT people and fueled the so-called "ex-gay" industry.

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.

One can not overstate the importance of Maier's findings. They undo the very underpinnings of the "ex-gay" industry, that has touted "Homosexuality in Perspective" as "proof" that one could"change."

In an exclusive one minute video, Maier discusses his revelation with Truth Wins Out.

Help For Those Hurt By "Ex-Gay" Programs

New Landmark Publication Offers Legal Options To Those Hurt By The Type Of "Ex-Gay" Programs Promoted By Venango County Extremist Organizations Such As the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania and "Christian" Radio Station WAWN.

If You Have Been Harmed By 'Ex-Gay' Programs, 'Ex-Gay & The Law' Is For You

CHARLOTTE - Truth Wins Out and Lambda Legal released a landmark publication today, "Ex-Gay & The Law", that aims to educate victims of "ex-gay" programs of their legal options. This work was inspired by the many people who have had their lives damaged by programs that seek to "pray away the gay" or use questionable counseling techniques.

"Ex-Gay & the Law helps survivors of ex-gay programs explore their legal rights if they believe they have been harmed," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "This groundbreaking publication offers practical legal advice so important questions can be answered."

"We are pleased to help support this publication and to be a part of this effort," said Hayley Gorenberg, Deputy Legal Director of Lambda Legal. "Groups that proclaim to 'cure' gay people of their sexual orientation lack any legitimate medical backing, cause harm, and sometimes operate unlawfully and unethically. If you have experienced any of the scenarios outlined in the last pages of 'Ex-Gay & the Law', we welcome you to contact or Legal Help Desk."


Each year, thousands of men and women enter "ex-gay" programs. Adolescents are even forced into these boot camps by their parents. While their stories differ, nearly all of these individuals have one thing in common: They are harmed by the traumatizing experience.

The American Psychiatric Association says, "The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior."

Ex-Gay & The Law was released at a press conference in Charlotte to counter Focus on the Family's ex-gay Love Won Out conference. The Charlotte Rainbow Action Network for Equality (CRANE) hosted the event. CRANE is a grassroots coalition of activists and community members working toward civil and social equality for Charlotte's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) community.

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from anti-gay lies. TWO also counters the "ex-gay" myth and educates America about gay life.

Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full regonition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.


Download Ex-Gay and the Law