Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, head of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) did not appear in his scheduled time slot at LWO Saturday. Joe Dallas, author of The Gay Gospel?: How Pro-Gay Advocates Misread the Bible, spoke in his place. Nicolosi recently appeared in a CNN Anderson Cooper 360 segment which featured the Phoenix LWO conference. As reported here, his comments and demeanor were not exactly flattering. Could Focus on the Family be reconsidering their longstanding alliance with the causation and cure obsessed Nicolosi?
In the following clip from the same CNN special, Nicolosi remarks glibly on the subject:
Yet the Love Won Out website reflects at least an outward change in their claims along these lines. In the past it contained the statement “Focus on the Family is promoting the truth that homosexuality is preventable and treatable…” That has now been changed to “change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions…”
While more information will no doubt be forthcoming, we would have to agree that moving away from Nicolosi, NARTH and their strange, implausible theories can only be a step in the right direction.
I trust men and am still gay today as I ever was. I don’t think trusting men is the answer Dr. Nicolosi. I don’t even believe that father/ son relationships are causal in gay people. Maybe some gay men had poor or lacking relationships with their fathers but it’s a far stretch to say that the relationship is CAUSAL in their sexual development.
Moreover, I wonder why a man would elect to build a career on this notion. What’s behind that? It doesn’t really add up to me. For the “ex-gays” it’s much easier to understand, they devote themselves to their own therapy by putting it on others but this man is more of a mystery to me.
Um, I trust lots of men and always have. My partner is a male, and I have trusted him for 15 years. I have had many male friends in childhood and in later years.
As far as father/son relationships, my father and I had some difficult times from about 8-15 (he drank a bit too much at times), but they were no different than a lot of kids. I had already realized by that time I was attracted to me. Perhaps, any distancing was because he realized that I was gay (my great grandmother and kindergarten teacher thought that I was gay early in life for some reason). Our relationship was fairly normal though, and I wasvery independent early on. My father and I have a terrific, loving relationship, and when I left my spouse to go to graduate school, my dad warned me that I better not cheat on my spouse or turn straight, so if there was a father/son problem, it is not there. According to Nicolosi, shouldn’t I be straight now?
I had a great relationship with my father all of my life. He would hug and kiss me and tell me, “Joe, I have loved you ever since you was born.” And, he said that the last time 3 days before he died. On the day before he died, he said, “Joe, Jesus loves you.” That was assurance was that with him and Jesus, and in the way that he said it, everything was okay with myself as far as Dad and the Lord were concerned.
The summer before I started 1st grade, Dad took me with him by bus from Eastern Oklahoma to Western Oklahoma to look for work in a city where friends lived. We stayed with those friends. I had wondered why he took me instead of my brother who was 2 years older. But, that was because, unlike Lewis, I never felt that I had to be were Daddy was all of the time. The last trip he and I took together was when we went to Mexico with stops in Texas. Other than the fact that I was 28 at the time, it was fun and when we were in San Antonio, he visited with relatives while I went shopping on my own.
My younger brother who was born when I was 7 was not treated any differently that our brother and I were treated. But, he claims to be straight.
Almost very well adjusted openly gay man which I have met since I left the closet in March 1984 had a great relationships with their fathers.
Because he has already made up his mind about the matter, Niolcosi is completely oblivious to one simple TRUTH — that ALL men (regardless of sexual orientation) had BOTH good AND bad relationships with their Dads! A unique mixture of traits. They were people — not sterotypes who only live in Nicolosi’s perverse little world of “cause” and “cure”.
Our fathers were human beings, after all == with all of the strengths and weakness that are characteristic of the species. Some of us were lucky — and had more good than bad. Others, gay and straight alike, suffered the effects of abuse, absenteeism or alcoholism. But in either case, one things is damn sure — our fathers didn’t CAUSE our orientation. I counsel many straight men who had terrible relationships (or NO relationship) with their fathers.
My own Dad was a hard-working, loving, tough, devoted, masculine, artistic, impatient, quietly Christian, Navy man. It honks me off to have Nicolosi disrespect his memory (and all our fathers) by insisting that he COULDN’T have been all those things — since I turned out gay.
The gay man “does not trust men. When he begins to trust men, his homosexuality disappears.”
This is outrageously glib. Nicolosi is going to go the way of Paul Cameron and become a joke in all but the most fundamentalist circles.
Will someone please tell me, that after massacres like the outrage at VT, which is an extension of domestic violence.
Or economic horrors like the destruction of Enron, or even when a child’s bike is taken….
that the Bible beaters, with a straight face, can equivocate homosexuality with theft and murder?
And us women or men, who’ve been cheated on or autonomically divorced, unless it was because of being married to someone gay, should know the difference between homosexuality and divorce and adultery.
And the public’s assertion that this is all of a piece when discussing BEHAVIOR and which ones are destructive or hurtful, it IS truly mindboggling that this assertion still exists when discussing or trying to exhibit the differences with the anti gay.
How is it possible to be more afraid of or offended by casual affection between same sex couples but not as much by the casual violence that not only permeates society in reality, but is used as entertainment as well?
And being a first responder to fresh crimes scenes of violence, burglary and vandalism myself, the constant comparison looks patently STUPID to me.
This denial, blindness, deafness…whatever, to the profound differences to said behaviors, is inexcusable.
Reality demands the cooperation of Love Won Out and every other person who claims scholarly and intimate knowledge regarding homosexuality should know better.
Danger, isn’t in the simple existence of gay men and women. Incompatible behavior isn’t incompatible with a society’s safe and cooperative function.
Forcing the issue of celibacy, or incompatible sexual congress with straight people BEGS sexual frustration and disfunction, it doesn’t alleviate it.
And domestic violence is psycho sexual disfunction. And the ex gay ministry plays with fire in this way.
And just as the reality and needs of gay people is denied and a silly preoccupation in my mind….ticking STRAIGHT timebombs go off in this nation all the time.
In retrospect, when it comes to counseling, and support for someone emotionally unstable to begin with, I resent this preoccupation with gay people on their campuses having a social network that serves THEIR needs.
When NO ONE’s needs are met, gay or not. Male or female, shootings like this are what happens.
And shame on the ex gay industry for deflecting reality and putting millions of dollars into an enterprise that thrives on fear and the urban myths around gay sexuality.
Mass killers are NOT an urban myth. Hate crimes are not an urban myth. Neither is the specific sexual aggression of young straight males.
Ask anyone in law enforcement with more urgent business than interfering with the sex lives of gay people (as they used to do).
This would all be hysterically funny and a stupid joke, if LWO’s results did anything important and really saved the lives they claim.
I wish they WERE more preoccupied with domestic violence. I’d have a hell of a lot more respect for them.
When I was in my 30s, Dad made a negative comment about one of my character traits and what I did related to that and he said it to Mom when I wasn’t around. Mom pointed out to him that I got that from him since he was the same way in that area. I do admit to being abused by one of my maternal uncles who was 12 years older than me; but, if Dad had been more educated during that period, he would have recognized the situation and would have objected to me being alone with the uncle.
When I was going through grief and bereavement counseling with Judy, my therapist at a Tulsa Indian Clinic, I did tell her about the uncle situation after we had several sessions related to the g&b thing. I told her that if my sexual orientation had been a choice and related to that, I would be strictly straight and have nothing to do with men. The memory of certain offensive odors from him and what he did in my presence would otherwise have a negative effect. It was not physical rape; but, it was rape nevertheless in the spiritual and psychological sense. But, my sexual orientation is exclusively homosexual and I have no problem with being friends with men of almost all types and orientations. I have a gay best friend/ And I have a spiritual best friend who is not gay and I am Buddy to him. The latter is my pastor and although I am 13 years older, we are more like equals. But, I give him some pastoral advice, too, when I think he needs to hear it. My father gave him pastoral type advice, too.
Jeff knows about what I went through because he experienced it, too and the age period was about the same, too; but, he had a great relationship with his father. Being sexually molested has no bearing on sexual orientation. That only affects one’s self-esteem and creates confusion, too.
Michael Bussee here knows all about the stereotypes that the ex-gay ministries, Bible-thumpers and certain “Christian” therapists continue to promote, even after they have been exposed. So, when he posts here, he knows exactly what he is talking about because he promoted the very same things, too.
Those ex-gay/change outfits don’t want others to know that they have a zero success rate. In a way, they are parasites in the Christian community and live off of other folk’s money.
Praise the Lord for getting Michael out of the closet and back to real living.
By Nicolosi’s theory then….there should be a hugely disproportionate amount of BLACK homosexuals in our culture, and NONE in the partiarchal societies of Africa and the Far East.
With so many black household lacking fathers, let alone strong ones…young black boys should be a major concern of the ex gay industry.
So it’s too obvious that their whole theory is a steaming pile.
Unless they want to say now that there is some inbred quality in blacks since slavery that makes them uniquely immune to homosexuality because fathers have culturally been a crapshoot.
Whatcha bet LWO would have to say about that?
:0P
Aaron said:
Exactly! According to Nicolosi’s logic, same sex relationships would be the best possible ‘cure’ for homosexuality.
In one of these clips, it is mentioned that Nicolosi is Catholic. Does anyone know if there any other “out” Catholics playing major roles in these LWO conferences?
Wow! I hadn’t seen him or heard his voice in five or six years. That was very odd.
Mark 6:17
Herod was the one who had ordered the arrest of John, put him in chains, and sent him to prison at the nagging of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. For John had provoked Herod by naming his relationship with Herodias “adultery.”
10:5-8
But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of he (Moses) wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.”
Dr. Nicolosi, your a coward. Your agenda “ex-gay” has no substance in Christ. What kind of fraud are you running? You and your people strike me as faggots. Faggots, pimps and ho’s, dawg.
I hope that Joe Nicolosi appears on National Televesion much more often because that will help the public be much more aware of this man and his insanely egotocentric beliefs. I hope that the public will be much more aware of how insane NARTH is and therefore reject such notions espoused by the organization.