Ex-Gay Watch

True to its image as a more moderate voice in the evangelical community, Christianity Today has attempted to take a more nuanced approach in its coverage of Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse’s recently released ex-gay study. Although it ultimately fails in its attempt to provide truly balanced coverage, Christianity Today (CT) does nonetheless offer a less strident approach to the topic than most Christian media outlets in its article, An Older, Wiser Ex-Gay Movement.

The article, written by CT senior writer Tim Stafford, starts out promisingly enough:

Transformed ex-gay leaders are the best argument for their movement. Likewise, those who’ve left the ex-gay movement in despair and disgust are the best counterargument. The debate continued this June, when Exodus International held its 32nd annual conference in Irvine, California, featuring dozens of speakers and seminar leaders who have quit homosexuality. Down the road outside the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, a news conference featured three former Exodus leaders saying “ex-gay” is a delusion.

Unfortunately that’s the last readers will hear (aside from a brief reference to Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee) about former ex-gays, their experiences, what they actually have to say about the ex-gay movement or whether following the example of Christ might include caring about those who get left by the wayside. A companion article (The Best Research Yet) does mention in passing that one quarter of the survey participants dropped out of their programs over the course of the three-year study, but apparently those 25 “failures” are worth little more than a footnote. Read more…

We’ve been told that ABC will air two episodes of 20/20 tomorrow night, Friday, from 9 – 11 PM ET. They should focus partly on a return visit to the Exodus member ministry Love In Action, comparing things now to their first report which aired May 31, 2000. Of that visit, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) had this to say:

The May 31 edition of 20/20 Wednesday ran a segment on reparative therapy, the controversial process that proponents claim can change unhappy homosexuals into happy heterosexuals. “Desperate to Change” focused on the religion-based ex-gay group Love in Action, its leaders and the men that live together in a communal setting while they go through the therapy. Reporter Peggy Wehmeyer is often skeptical about the therapy and challenges what she is told. When a doctor at Love in Action puts homosexuality on the same level as murder and rape, she calls him on the disparity. She also includes counterpoints from a therapist opposed to reparative therapy and interviews an ex-ex-gay man who reports that the therapy did not work, even though he completed the program.

John Smid and LIA have been through a lot since then, as has the ex-gay movement in general. Hopefully, ABC will push for the facts so everyone can assess this brand of conversion ministry for themselves, and decide if things have gotten better — or worse — in the last seven years.

There will also be a segment in the second hour about gay conversion therapies in general. We have heard that Dr. Jack Drescher will appear for that. The shows sound worthy of a Tivo at least. We will report on anything interesting we find. If something strikes you as interesting, feel free to discuss.

Addendum: Now we are being told that it will cover Love Won Out, specifically the Omaha conference. Whichever it is, LIA or LWO, it should be worth viewing.

CitizenLink quote:

“Many of the speakers at our conferences had to make a very difficult choice,” said Mónica Martí, Love Won Out media manager. “They had to choose to live their lives by God’s standard for sexuality, instead of bowing down to their own feelings or what popular culture said was unavoidable.

Again the core of Exodus, and the not so subtle ex-gay dichotomy is revealed; you have no real choice, our way is God’s way. And according to Alan Chambers, even celibacy is sinful, if one does not also consider the idea of loving someone of the same sex intimately wrong or even sinful.

And for the Christian, if the result of your struggle for understanding with God is not the same as ours, then one is “bowing down” to ones feelings. By choosing those words, Exodus’ media director is implying that one is making a god of sex.

Sad, very sad.

This is a follow-up in our effort to separate fact from fiction in the alleged assault claimed by Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays (PFOX) at the Arlington County Fair last month. If you haven’t read our earlier coverage, please do so first to help put the following in context. You can find what could be referred to as parts one and two in our archives, along with this related article.

When we last reported on this issue September 5, the Arlington County Police Department, representatives from the Arlington Fair, an Arlington County Board Member and two eyewitnesses all reported having no idea what PFOX was talking about when they claimed an assault had taken place at the Arlington County Fair on August 18. One thing has changed since that time.

On September 10, we received the following email from John Lisle, our contact at the ACPD. It was our original inquiry to him that started their investigation into the matter and we asked that he let us know if any new information turned up. This was also posted to the original thread by a commenter about an hour after we received it.

One officer told me today he was on patrol at the Fair when a woman approached him and told him a man had knocked over pamphlets at the PFOX booth and assaulted another man there.

The officer then spoke to the alleged victim. He did not want to press charges and therefore no written report was filed.

Based on the description the officer was given, he located the suspect at the Fair. Another officer escorted that gentleman off the Fair grounds.

This was quite exciting, as up to now we were coming up dry everywhere. Contrary to the way it has been framed by some, this obviously isn’t proof of an assault — even the police have no witnesses — but it is something. Clearly the PFOX workers had talked with the officers and we were able to exchange questions with them through Lisle over the next week or so. Read more…

You may have noticed that our Atom/RSS syndication feeds have been interrupted recently. We’ve had problems before which seem to trace to Feedburner, so we have stopped using Feedburner. Because Feedburner no longer is pointed to Ex-Gay Watch, you may need to reset your subscription to Ex-Gay Watch in your news reader.

You can use autodiscover from http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/. Or you can choose one of the following feeds:

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If you have any problems that do not resolve by doing this, please post them here. We apologize for the trouble.

This past weekend, Nicholas F. Benton, owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, attended the Falls Church Festival, in Falls Church, Virginia. As the only community newspaper, he and his reporters were there to cover the event. As it turns out, PFOX and PFLAG both had booths there.

Benton is a noted journalist, with a history as a White House correspondent during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He covered the pivotal Reykjavik summit between President Reagan and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev held in Iceland, and founded the Falls Church News-Press in 1991. In short, he is a true professional.

Looking for a creative way to frame both sides of the issue in a photo, Benton asked a couple of women from the PFLAG table if they would hold up a sign from their exhibit in a shot of the PFOX table. The sign said “Gay is Good” in the tradition of respected, long-time gay activist Frank Kameny. After taking the photo, Benton turned to ask the man at the table for his name for the caption under the photo. According to Benton, the man, who turned out to be Greg Quinlan of Ohio Pro-Family Network, responded:

What’s the purpose of this? You’ve created an altercation here. You look like the guy who accosted us in Arlington. Do I have to call the police?

Handing Quinlan his business card, Benton then continued to explain that he was with the local paper, and would like to put Quinlan’s name under the photo when they publish. Quinlan responded by accusing Benton of creating an altercation, to which Benton responded somewhat confused, “It is a photograph, not an altercation, and it shows both sides of the issue.”

Quinlan again accused Benton of accosting him, apparently because he was speaking to him. Quinlan also decided at some point to hold a camcorder up in front of his face while talking. After Benton decided to photograph Quinlan, camcorder in face and all, Quinlan put it down and proceeded to call an unknown person to say they may have “another altercation here” or words to that effect. Because she arrived less than an hour later, we suspect the person on the other end of the phone might have been Estella Salvatierra, who was described in 2002 as a “civil rights attorney and vice president of PFOX.” Elsewhere she is listed as an employee of the FCC and has been for at least five years. Privately we are told she is the source of most of PFOX’s pseudo “civil rights” language.

Is this how PFOX altercations happen? Is this an abbreviated version of what happened at the Arlington County Fair last month? Every shred of evidence we have about that incident indicates that there was a heated argument, and possibly someone threw some literature (we are trying to confirm that part). Was this escalated into assault in the same way taking a photograph was described as “an altercation” and asking for a name “accosting”?

And we would like to ask PFOX, where was that camcorder when all this happened in Arlington? Does video exist of the incident? Why not disclose it so we can answer all these questions once and for all?

No one should ever be assaulted over a debate of issues. Then again, no one should use an accusation of assault to falsely martyr a cause. Our concerns about the possibility of either have led us to investigate the Arlington incident intensely and responsibly. To that end, we have a great deal more to report in the next day or two. Watch for that.

Hat Tip: Wayne Besen for images.

Addendum: The Falls Church (Va.) News-Press reports on the PFOX confrontation.

Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has written a lengthy and detailed analysis of the study’s methodology and conclusions.

Check it out.

Update: Dr. Stanton Jones has replied to Burroway’s analysis of the ex-gay study.

An Exodus press release, not yet available online, tries to sound optimistic:

Leaders of the world’s largest outreach to those dealing with unwanted homosexuality commended recent research showing change in sexual orientation to be possible at a press conference today in Nashville. The study, released by InterVarsity Press yesterday, is the first longitudinal, peer-reviewed, scientific research of its kind on this topic to date.

The Exodus press release offers no specifics — no success or failure rates. And no evidence of genuine peer review.

After reading Prof. Warren Throckmorton’s preliminary look at the study, Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin finds cause for ex-gays to be very concerned:
Read more…

From the U.S.-based Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists:

The Austrian Society of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (OEGPP) is a sponsor of an upcoming conference, “Religiosity in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,” to be held this October in Graz, Austria. Markus Hoffmann, a German conversion therapist who leads an evangelical group that attempts to convert gays and lesbians into heterosexuals, had been invited to speak.

AGLP President, Ubaldo Leli, M.D., wrote the OEGPP in August: “Conversion therapy of gay and lesbian people is unscientific, harmful, and unethical… By inviting these speakers to your conference, you are granting scientific legitimacy to a discredited therapy that not only continues to pathologize gay people, but is based on the erroneous assumption that homosexuality is a mental illness and that gay men and lesbians can and should change their sexual orientation.”

After receiving letters from AGLP, its members, and local Austrian groups, OEGPP’s Vice President, Dr. Christoph Stuppaeck, requested to the organizers that Hoffman’s invitation to speak be withdrawn. Three days later, the organizers announced that Hoffmann had withdrawn from the conference.

From MSNBC:

Is he gay or straight? At a glance, the key to telling might be in the way he walks.

A swing of the hips or a swaggered shoulder is enough for many casual observers to identify a man’s sexual orientation, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Observers were only able to accurately guess the sexual orientation of men; with women, their guesses didn’t exceed chance. But what’s most interesting to researchers is understanding how that snap judgment can unleash a series of stereotypes – even from the most liberal-minded.

The study, by UCLA assistant professor Kerri Johnson, found that observers guessed men’s sexual orientation only 60 percent of the time — almost a coin toss. In other words, contrary to hype surrounding the study, the results suggest that body language does not give away sexual orientation.

The findings aren’t meant to be used as a diagnostic test, Johnson says. In other words, don’t use her research to out someone. But although the research is getting attention for its results about a distinction in how gay men walk, Johnson and her colleagues were more focused on studying the observers.

“If we know how people use these cues to categorize one another, it can help us understand what happens in how they react with other people,” Johnson says.

That quick assessment can mean that the observer is associating that person with stereotypes they’ve heard – for example, that a gay man isn’t as masculine as a straight man. Next, Johnson plans to study the implications of judging someone’s sexuality by those visual clues.

Does this suggest in some fashion that Exodus and NARTH — who allege that gay men lack masculinity and lesbian women lack femininity — have been succumbing to stereotypes rather than empirical observation?

Addendum: Controversial researcher J. Michael Bailey misconstrues the results of the study.

“There’s reason to think that gay people can’t conceal their homosexuality,” says Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. “I don’t think it’s a performance that gay people enact. I think it’s something that either is inborn, or it’s acquired very early, perhaps by watching members of the other sex.”

So does MSNBC writer Melissa Dahl:

Research such as Johnson’s may give scientific credence to “gaydar,” suggesting that people really can tell whether someone is gay or straight from visual clues.

The study found a 40-percent failure rate among just 150 college students in guessing the sexual orientation of men, and also found that the same observers were unable to correctly identify sexual orientation in women. That does not (in my opinion) suggest that people generally can identify sexual orientation from visual cues — among men or women.

Update: Full transcript added.

Peterson Toscano and Good As You set the scene:

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet hosted an ex-gay leader, a former ex-gay, and two therapists — one gay-affirming, the other pro-exgay — during a segment this morning.

Here’s the first half of the segment:

Thanks to XGW commenter Emproph, we have transcripts (and discussion) for both segments. Read on….

Read more…