Ex-Gay Watch

To quote Austin Powers…”Allow myself to introduce… myself!”

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The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) released a press release and report on September 26th entitled Will Cross-Dressing Activists Come To Your School?. (Off-TVC Link to a PDF of the report here for those who experience the TVC trackback blocking.) Executive Director Andrea Lafferty wrote the report.

One heavily relied upon source for the new TVC report is Daniel E. Byrne’s NARTH article Pediatric Academic Societies’ 2006 Annual Meeting Encourages Normalization Of Gender-Variant Children. The TVC identified Dr. Byrne as a NARTH member — in fact most of the Part II of the TVC report came from Byrne’s article — but with the new NARTH disclaimer, who knows the heck knows if Dr. Byrne was actually speaking for NARTH, or if the NARTH website crew just posted the article as an “free speech” opinion. (Rhetorical question alert: Will the NARTH Website now publish “opposition” pieces submitted by gay and transgender affirming psychologists/psychiatrists as part of their new “free speech” approach to sexual orientation and gender identity?)

Here are some excerpts from the new TVC report (in no particular order)…
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It’s Nazri.

How so?

Whether she’s wearing salt ‘n’ pepper or a tie dye, Nazri is sexy enough to turn a gay man straight.

Uh oh. My resolve to be gay is weakening.

Tanya Erzen, author of “Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement” was recently on Orange County’s NPR affiliate KPCC discussing her book.

Audio here (in real audio format)

Peter LaBarbera’s anti-gay group, Americans For Truth, delighted in today’s Oprah show. He posted this article:

Oprah Exposes NAMBLA: Homosexual Pedophiles Online

…Mr. Eisenwald [sic] was a guest on “Oprah” because today’s program focused on homosexual pedophiles and on NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association…

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Focus on the Family’s Mike Haley and National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality founder and president Joseph Nicolosi have participated in the making of a DVD called “The Condition of Male Homosexuality.”  It is described on the NARTH website as “an excellent introduction to the conditions that lead to male homosexuality, and how to begin the journey toward wholeness.”  Presumably one must spend the $12 to find out just what “wholeness” means, but we can probably take a guess.

While NARTH often claims to be a secular, scientific organization, this would seem another example of their heavy collaboration with James Dobson’s politically active Focus on the Family.  According to NARTH, the DVD was “recorded at a Love Won Out conference.”  Love Won Out is the Focus sponsored traveling conference where members of Exodus, NARTH and Focus on the Family spread their message that being gay is abnormal, unnatural, unchristian and unhealthy – not to mention unnecessary because “change is possible.”

Since Focus on the Family is not only in agreement with NARTH but is indeed an active partner, we have to ask what James Dobson, et al, have to say about this.  Would they be so silent, so distant if the Schoenewolf paper had made insensitive, trivializing remarks about the struggles of Christians and, instead of NARTH, had been posted by GLSEN?

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is not pleased that they are being perceived as an organization that endorses slavery and tormenting of children. But rather than rethink the wisdom of having advisors that hold views that are abhorrent to decent society, NARTH has gone on the defensive.

First NARTH posts a disclaimer that the views expressed in the articles on their site were the views of the authors and not necessarily of NARTH. That might actually mean something if the authors were not part of NARTH’s advisory committee. If these authors are not NARTH, who is?

Now they are trying to claim that we are intimidating them. Yes, you read that right. A new blog discussion on the NARTH website administered by the anonymous “Sojourneer” reads:

A Public Record of Homosexual Activists Intimidation Tactics

I want this topic to document acts of intimidation by the gay activists, governments or institutions for expressing opposition to homosexual activism. As mentioned in another post, these acts seem to be getting more aggressive and malicious. Tell your stories here please stand up and make these attacks public. By making it public you are demonstrating the intimidation is not going to work. If we are silent it will only get worse and may become violent later. I want this to be a public national record and a reference source for others interested in keeping a record of such attacks.

Sojourneer then lists his first example of an aggressive and malicious (and potentially future violent) attack:

Below is the first installment of lies and distortion, in an attempt to discredit Narth and Dr. Shoenewolf. (sic)

And here Sojourneer posts Wayne Besen’s press release about NARTH advisor Gerald Schoenewolf and his comments in defense of slavery.

As NARTH wishes a permanant record of gay intimidation tactics and as exgaywatch (and Wayne) appear as Exhibit 1, I posted my reponse to their accusation. Perhaps they’ll even post it.
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There is an article today in the Chicago Sun-Times that profiles an effort by Researchers from the Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and University of Illinois at Chicago, headed by Dr. Alan Sanders, to determine whether one or more genes can be identified that may be instrumental in the development of male sexual orientation.

The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health and involves research on a 1,000 sets of gay brothers. I encourage those gay men (or ex-gay men) who read here and who have a gay brother to review the study’s website to determine whether to participate.

There was one quote in the story which I found intriguing:

Scientists have rejected earlier notions that homosexuality is a mental illness. The thinking now is that sexual orientation is determined by roughly 40 percent genetic factors and 60 percent environmental factors.

I am not particularly knowledgeable on heritability and how it is measured in terms of determining attributes. I emailed Dr. Sanders about this 40/60 allocation and he was gracious enough to respond:

I appreciate your writing in. There is not a hard and fast number, but rather, twin studies allow one to make estimates (such as that 40%, also expressed as 0.40), and I certainly provided that estimate to Jim Ritter [the reporter]. The technical term is “heritability” which means the proportion of the variance in a trait that genetics/heredity accounts for. There are a number of twin studies out there on male sexual orientation, and all of them find that similarity for sexual orientation among identical twins (who are genetically identical) is significantly higher than that for same sex fraternal twin pairs (who are as similar genetically as any other full siblings, i.e., born of the same biological mom and dad). We are passing on the estimate (remember that it is an estimate with a range of possibilities — this ~40% is just the mid-range number if you will, it could be more or it could be less genetic) from what we judge to be one of the largest and best done methodologically studies. Here is the fuller quote from our study web site’s FAQ section (http://www.gaybros.com/faq.html):

Researchers found that in a study of brothers, if one male sibling was homosexual, the chance his identical (monozygotic) twin would be homosexual was 52%; the chance that his fraternal (dizygotic) twin would be homosexual was 22%; the chance that his adopted brother would be homosexual was 11% [21].

[21] Bailey JM, Pillard RC (1991): A genetic study of male sexual orientation. Archives of General Psychiatry 48:1089-1096. PMID: 1845227

There were actually several estimates of heritability even within that paper: “Heritability estimates ranged from 0.31 to 0.71. Thus, estimated heritability remained substantial under a wide variety of assumptions.”

So, if one says variation in sexual orientation is exactly 40% due to genes (and hence exactly 60% due to other contributions, i.e., the environment), this is not accurate since we are really talking about an estimate here. The main point is that genetics/heredity make very significant contributions to the trait. I hope this helps.

If you have difficulty following the above, please review the website to see if your questions are answered there.

As Dr. Sanders’ research will be the most comprehensive to date and across the largest number of gay brothers, perhaps his results will give us some sound answers as to the extent that genes contribute to a man’s orientation and which genes have an impact. I wish him the best and hope that something conclusive comes from his efforts.

In response to Linda Harvey’s “A Seven-Point Plan to Protect Christian Youth Against Homosexuality,” I present this satire. But first, I just want to remind readers this is the woman who opposes youth access to HIV testing because she believes (without a shred of evidence presented) it contributes to an epidemic of STDs.

If we are to save this generation of gay youth for God, we must act now.

Here’s our Seven Point Plan for equipping gay youth on the issue of religiously motivated oppression:

1. Begin a serious Bible study for your gay youth community center on homosexuality, reading and discussing the Scriptures that pertain to this issue and how they have been misread and abused.

2. Repeat, and repeat again, and repeat again, that there is no evidence in Scripture or in science that homosexuality is a mental illness. This is not a developmental condition for people raised by bad parents, but is a generally immutable characteristic entirely separate from treatable issues such as clinical depression or choice of behavior. Once a person frees themselves of internalized homophobia, same-gender attraction feels natural to persons so oriented. This is critically important to state unequivocally and often, that God created people as gay, bisexual, and straight, and these created orders have always been a part of human life, to the revelation of God and to having a spirit that can be in close relationship with Christ. If you need more scientific ammunition, there are many fine sources available on the Internet such as statements by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association.

Satire continues after the jump…

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Recent discussions on this site and others have revolved around whether Christians who are parents, pastors, grandparents or friends of gay people and that attend anti/ex-gay conferences are motivated by hate. The authors and frequent participants of XGW agreed that fear and misunderstanding of gay people were more likely to be the true reason for these people to be open to the ex-gay message.
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