Ex-Gay Watch

There are many things that have happened within the past year for which I am grateful. I have met wonderful people, some I spend time with and some I only know online, but all of whom I delight in knowing. I have added activities to my life (a bowling league – yeah, I know, don’t laugh) and removed others (better left unidentified). Some things were new: I went skiing for the first time in a decade or so and met a friend who has become very close; and some things were recurring: my church, my family, close friends.

But the one thing for which I am most thankful this past year has been my ability to participate at this site.

When I was raised my family had some particularly strict methods for raising children. Television was treated as suspect and was presumed to be an evil influence. I read. A lot. And while other children had dreams of being a moviestar, I dreamed of being a writer. Somehow I ended up as an accountant instead. And though there’s no reason I could not have pursued my dream, I never took the time to start.

I am very appreciative of Mike Airhart and the others here at Ex-Gay Watch for allowing me the opportunity to fulfill this dream. I’m humbled by their willingness to let me put my thoughts into words and publish them to the world. And I am ever so grateful to you, our readers, who have generously given of your time to come here and read and respond – sometimes in agreement, sometimes not, but usually with thoughtfully care and perspective. We truly have the best readers and commenters that I’ve seen anywhere on the web. Thank you.

And have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Pro-exgay pundit and college professor Warren Throckmorton reports today:

NARTH has had some changes in recent days. A. Dean Byrd, PhD, CEO of the LDS affiliated Thrasher Research Fund was appointed President-elect of NARTH and I heard through a friend who attended the conference that David Pruden, Executive Director of Evergreen International, was appointed Executive Director of NARTH. Dr. Byrd (ProCon bio) is also a clinical professor in the medical school at the University of Utah and was formerly the Director of Clinical Training for the LDS Social Services. No word on when Dr. Byrd’s term will begin.

No word on the fate of Joseph Nicolosi, the organization’s longtime president.

Under Nicolosi, NARTH grew from a mere answering machine in an antigay therapist’s office into a flagship of the ex-gay movement. But the organization also strayed from its conservative scientific roots into cultural warfare. Its unaccountable advisory-board members and crackpot web team issued statements that affirmed child abuse and defended racism and slavery. Nicolosi himself recently encouraged ex-gays to abhor themselves, and his Love Won Out keynote speeches in recent years were lacking in constructive advice and peppered with angry comments about effeminate ex-gays and their parents.

The Nicolosi era may have passed, but his successors bring some controversy of their own.

A. Dean Byrd was criticized last year for clinical bias when he advocated for patient freedom to choose ex-gay therapy but not, apparently, for the freedom to choose therapy that would help a patient co-exist and be healthy with one’s sexual orientation.

David Pruden has an established history of using misleading language in media communications:

• He said, “Absolutely, one can change one’s sexual identity” — sidestepping the entire question of sexual orientation.
• He misrepresented the scientific research of Simon LeVay and others on the biology and genetics of sexual orientation.
• He misrepresented the research of Dr. Robert L. Spitzer regarding success/failure rates in ex-gay programs.
• He participated in the AFA exgay political video “It’s Not Gay.” This video relied not upon reputable medical or scientific sources, but rather upon false medical claims derived from antigay activist Paul Cameron. The video also relied heavily upon the un-Christlike testimony and culture-war politics of one HIV-positive ex-gay activist, Michael Johnston, who was soon revealed by AFA to have been having unsafe-sex orgies with men at the time of the video’s production.

NARTH has long marketed itself as a professional and conservative mental-health organization, not a religious group. Its choice of new leaders seems to confirm the organization’s transition from a mission of academic inquiry to one of revising science in pursuit of religious orthodoxy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has ordered the government to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other countries.

This may appear to be unusual in that it requires a country to recognize a marriage that isn’t legal in that country. However, in this matter Israel already has established precedent and custom.

The rabbinate has a monopoly over Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel. Those citizens who wish for a civil marriage rather than a religious marriage cannot do so in Israel. So they go abroad, marry, and register the marriage with the nation. If, for example, a protestant Christian couple did not wish to go through Catholic Court, or a Muslim man wished to marry a Jewish woman, or even a Jewish couple did not want an Orthodox wedding, they would have to do so in another country.

In that context, this ruling does not seem bizarre. The court simply said that a distinction cannot be made in registering foreign weddings based on the sex or sexual orientation of the partners (ie. no special rights for heterosexuals).

Naturally, the ultra-Orthodox in Israel trotted out the extremist rhetoric to condemn the Court decision.

“We don’t have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here,” said Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox lawmaker, referring to two cities the Bible said was destroyed because their citizens were so sinful.

“I assume that every sane person in the State of Israel, possibly the entire Jewish world, is shocked, because the significance is… the destruction of the family unit in the State of Israel,” Gafni told Army Radio.

Gafni clearly is not aware of the sentiment in the American Jewish community (or perhaps he thinks Reform Jews and secular Jews are not sane). He also misses the irony that it was the rigid control of Orthodox Judaism on the marriage process within the state of Israel that created the loophole he so despises.

We should anticipate that anti-gay activists will soon be seeing signs of Armageddon in this new happening in the Holy Land. The chance to defame gay people and accuse them of attacking the religions of the world is too juicy for them to forego.

We will use this opportunity to see how the ex-gay ministries and their leaders respond. Will they recognize this as a political decision made in a foreign country, or will they see this as an opportunity to make false claims about gay men and women?

To quote ‘W’ we’ve smoked Exodus out of their hole. Randy Thomas finally responded this morning to concerns over his statements made on the Adam Carolla show.

It looks like you can go to your local Wal-Mart this weekend and not worry about running into Don Wildmon.

Those wacky gays and lesbians are at it again; they’re doing things that they don’t want to do – making huge sacrifices – all so they can destroy society and all that’s good!!!

Or, at least, that must be what Alan Chambers is thinking. Back in February he told the Conservative Political Action Conference

gay people do not really want gay marriage

But now news comes out of Canada to tell us Same-sex marriages are on the rise. Maybe it’s just a liberal militant homosexual activist coordinated part of the radical Gay Agenda (but if so, why didn’t I get the memo?).

We have now been able to ascertain exactly what PFOX distributed to the high school students of Montgomery County, Maryland. A public school parent provided Teachthefacts.org with a copy of the PFOX flyer distributed at Quince Orchard High School.

The handout had very little information other than a list of websites that children should visit to get more information. The type of information the children would receive if they visited these sites includes:
Read more…

For the past few decades conservative evangelical leaders have become increasingly focused on politics. And while there are some from this branch of Christianity are starting to question why the election of politicians should take priority over feeding the hungry or caring for the sick, the ex-gay movement remains at the forefront of anti-gay political activism.
Read more…

Randy Thomas (membership director for Exodus International, the largest “ex-gay” group in the country) was interviewed recently on the Adam Carolla radio show and claimed nobody is ever forced to attend an “ex-gay” program against their will. This video examines Randy’s claim and Exodus’ track record on the matter.

I thank Peterson Toscano (a survivor of the Love In Action “ex-gay” program) for bringing this issue to my attention on his blog last week. Peterson provided a great deal of inspiration and assistance in creating this video.

This is the second part of a multiple part series about the term gender. Conservative religious organizations and ex-gay organizations use the term gender — and variants on the term gender — to group together GLB & T people in a manner that GLB & T people don’t group themselves together. This series will explore groupings around the term gender, and the term’s variants.
–Autumn

It’s not quite yet common knowledge in western society that there are significant differences between being a gay man and being transgender woman, but more and more people are becoming aware that being gay and being transgender are pretty far from the same thing.

However, it appears that in the collective minds of NARTH, there’s barely a line between gay men and transwomen. Here’s my educated guess as to why:

NARTH’s tie-in of gay and transgender people utilizes the medical community’s Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnoses. Specifically, GID in Children is considered a pre-homosexual/pre-transsexual diagnosis {from the link: Zucker and Bradley (1995, p. 53) noted that “homosexuality is the most common postpubertal psychosexual outcome for children [with GID].”}, while GID in Adults is the diagnoses for transsexuals.
Read more…