Ex-Gay Watch

A Christian leader in the UK says that sexual abuse is the most common cause of homosexuality, and that when a demon is asked to leave, so does homosexual desire.

Jill Southern of Ellel Ministries told the Eastern Malaysian Daily Express last month:

It’s a lie to say you are born homosexual. It is usually a result of homosexual abuse in very early childhood when they were wrongly touched but there are other possible causes such as gender confusion and rejection by a peer group as a ‘weakling’.

Sexual abuse causes an ungodly “soul tie” with the abuser, which in turn opens the door for a demonic spirit, according to Southern:

So this spirit of homosexuality has an appetite for homosexual acts, and is using your body for its own appetite. When a homosexual person confesses and repents the sin, we can tell the spirit to leave and the homosexual desire will also go.

But it’s not just victims of abuse who have opened themselves to demonic attack. Gay sex in itself joins us to demons:

When we engage in ungodly sex, we are enjoining our spirit to the demonic spirit behind it, and this destroys our lives.Ungodly sex allows our spirit to be penetrated by the demonic power behind the ungodly act. In fact, homosexuality is self-destructive behaviour.

This comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Ellel Ministries, a controversial organization that nevertheless still enjoys popularity among charismatics, both in the UK and worldwide. Ellel was founded, and is still led, by Peter Horrobin, a pioneer in “inner healing,” with an emphasis on deliverance from evil spirits.

In 1995, at the height of the ministry’s controversy, a BBC documentary alleged several abuses, including testimony from a man who claimed to have been held down while Ribena – a British blackcurrant-flavored soft drink – was poured down his underwear in order to deliver him from a sexual spirit. (If I remember correctly, it was a spirit of masturbation.)

I have never heard a denial from Ellel, and according to a 2002 article, even one of its own directors, David Cross, appears to give credence to the story:

You’ll have to ask Peter about that … but perhaps we did some silly things in the early days.

Cross says that evil spirits are peripheral to the work of Ellel, however, and says that most of the ministry’s participants leave happy:

What I can tell you is that 99 per cent of our visitors go away with a new sense of peace. Evil spirits are a tiny part of what we do here.

Didn’t Jesus have something to say about that 99 percent?

XGW also notes that Ellel has an alliance with US ex-gay, Exodus-affiliated deliverance minister David Kyle Foster.

Hat-tip for the Daily Express story to YukiChoe.

A guest post By Patrick M. Chapman, PhD

Introduction and Methods

As an academic with a PhD in biological anthropology, and as someone who tried for over a decade to change my sexual orientation, I approached with interest and skepticism the new Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse book, Ex-gays?: A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation. By studying participants in the Exodus International ex-gay ministries the authors intended to answer two questions: 1) can a homosexual orientation be “healed,” specifically can a person change their orientation using religious-based therapy, and 2) are attempts at change harmful (p. 15). Jones and Yarhouse indicate their interest in these questions stems from the conflicting views of science, which suggests change is impossible and attempts thereof are possibly harmful, and of their conservative Christian acquaintances who claim to have been “healed” from “homosexual orientation in favor of heterosexual experience” (p. 73).

I am suspicious when people claim to be no longer homosexual because they have “heterosexual experience”: the latter implies behavioral modification, not orientation change. Thus, in studies examining change of orientation it is important to explicitly define terms and concepts. Jones and Yarhouse define “sexual orientation” by the object of one’s attraction, desire or arousal (p. 209).

Every study involving homosexuality has flaws and the current one is no exception. Jones and Yarhouse attempt to limit the inherent problems with mixed results. To their credit they honestly acknowledge Exodus as a primary funding source for the project. They claim the ex-gay organization did not exert any control or power over their results and conclusions (p. 127), and there is currently no reason to believe otherwise.

To be included in the study participants had to be at least 18 years old, involved with Exodus due to same-sex attractions, and “involved in the change process for less than three years” at the start of the study (p. 126). Jones and Yarhouse claim this is a prospective study, involving 98 participants at the start of the change process (pp. 39, 366). One must be careful of this assertion for two reasons.

First, technically the study is not prospective because 41 individuals were involved in the Exodus program for one to three years prior to the study (p. 121). This is important in that the authors claim these participants demonstrated higher levels of change than those who were in the change process for less than one year (p.276). In other words, the participants that relied on recollection for their original condition (a retrospective appraisal) reported the most change. The difference in change may have been influenced by the prospective or retrospective component, not whether change actually occurred.

Second, the claim that participants were at the start of their change process is misleading. Jones and Yarhouse report 54 of the participants had previously taken “concrete steps” to change their orientation through non-Exodus programs: 21 for three to five years, 18 for 5.5 to 12 years, and 15 individuals for 13 years or more (p. 150). To be clear, on page 126 the authors assert that to be included in the study participants had to be “involved in the change process for less than three years” but on page 150 they indicate 54 individuals, more than 50 percent, did not meet this criteria. Additionally, 49 of the 98 participants previously attempted to change their sexual orientation through other religious-ministry organizations (p. 151), while 56 previously used professional therapy in an effort to achieve the goal (p. 150). Suggesting the individuals in this study are “starting the change process” is incorrect. Perhaps this was their first attempt with Exodus ministries but that is not the same as “starting the change process.” Nonetheless, when reporting the results the authors frequently, incorrectly, and misleadingly portray the individuals as being in the “change process” for either less than one year or three to four years at most (see pp. 232, 276, 353 for examples).

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Part 2 will focus on the results examining if change is possible.

Patrick M. Chapman has a PhD in biological anthropology and is author of “Thou Shalt Not Love”: What Evangelicals Really Say to Gays (Haiduk Press: in press).

Dr. James E. Phelan recently caused quite a stir with a disturbing and somewhat gleeful report on his blog about having “one-two drop kicked the hell out of” a man in the Columbus Marathon. Phelan had heckled a gay group, one of many who had gathered alongside the road to cheer the runners on. The victim of his drop kick had protested this by allegedly shoving Phelan. No one we contacted remembered such an event so we can’t confirm or deny what happened. Phelan himself confided that the police had not been notified.

In the mean time, we noticed that Phelan’s name no longer appears on the Exodus International referral list of ex-gay ministries and therapists. He was listed there when this story broke last month (cache), but not now. Exodus has not yet responded to our request for more information.

If Exodus has indeed dropped Phelan from their referrals, we applaud them. His comments in the post mentioned above, responses to comments about that incident and statements since on various blogs, including XGW, display a troubling attitude and certainly not one conducive to a healthy patient-therapist relationship of trust and vulnerability. We are still waiting to see if NARTH, Transforming Congregations*, Richard Cohen and JONAH will take similar action. Phelan actually spoke at the NARTH annual convention days after this incident, where he also received an award.

Apparently NARTH values such attitudes in their therapists.

* Transforming Congregations has released this brief statement on their website:

The Board of Directors of Transforming Congregations has accepted the resignation of Dr. James Phelan as one of its co-Presidents. Although the Board disapproves of some of Dr. Phelan’s recent public actions and comments, we did not request or desire his resignation, having hoped instead that we could come to a mutual understanding regarding mission and ministry. We appreciate Dr. Phelan’s integrity in recognizing that his approach has diverged from ours, and we wish him well in his future endeavors.

Frank Lockwood at the Bible Belt Blogger seems to think Surgeon General appointee Dr. James Holsinger is preparing for a recess appointment. Lockwood reports that Holsinger has just resigned from the board of trustees of Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Ky, and has mentioned the recess appointment plans to others.

Holsinger’s nomination, opposed by several leading Democrats, has stalled in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. But Holsinger is telling people the president plans to appoint him to the post anyway once the Congress goes into its holiday recess, a well-connected Wilmore source says.

Jim Burroway at the Box Turtle Bulletin has more.

Peterson Toscano is reporting that he and Christine Bakke will be on the Strictly Confidential radio program tonight at 9pm ET. You can listen to the live stream here at that time.

According to Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink,

The Washington, D.C., Board of Education will vote next month on “Healthy Learning Standards” that would encourage condom use and teach eighth-graders that they “may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender.”

Needless to say, Focus on the Family is not happy about the proposed curriculum.  Speaking against the program, Randy Thomas is quoted in the article:

“Parents need to be aware of the fact that in many school districts across the nation, the promotion of homosexuality is coming in stealthily under titles like ‘health learning standards’ or ‘family life education,’” Thomas said. The new “standards” appear to push a one-sided perspective of homosexuality.

“They only present homosexuality as something positive,” he said, “whereas, as a former homosexual, I know what its like, and it’s not all positive, it’s not all perfect.”

Since CitizenLink fails to provide any specific details about what would be included in these new learning standards, readers are left to fill in the gaps for themselves.  Those who take the time to find out what the curriculum (titled “Health Standards,” not “Healthy Learning Standards”) actually says will find little if anything to suggest the sort of bias implied in the CitizenLink article.  The section dealing with sexual orientation reads as follows:

8.1.5 Define sexual orientation, using correct terminology; and explain that as people grow and develop they may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender.

8.1.6 Compare and contrast the theories about what determines sexual orientation, including genetics; prenatal, social, and cultural influences; psychosocial factors; and a combination of all of these.

Readers who do their homework will also learn that the sex education portions of the curriculum (which covers a broad range of health-related topics) place a strong emphasis on abstinence, something Focus on the Family usually lobbies for quite vocally.  If there is a “gay agenda” hidden in the proposed curriculum, CitizenLink provides no substantiation of its existence.

CitizenLink’s brief commentary also begs the question of what Focus on the Family and Exodus would consider a balanced presentation of the issue.  Would a Focus/Exodus-designed curriculum acknowledge that many openly gay and lesbian individuals lead healthy, productive lives, or would it portray the GLBT community as diseased, shallow and emotionally stunted individuals inclined toward pedophilia?

Would that curriculum be used as a recruiting tool to herd impressionable young teens into ex-gay programs, or would it honestly inform them that the best most Exodus participants can hope for is lifelong celibacy?  Would it portray all gays and lesbians as victims of bad parenting and/or sexual abuse, or would it objectively present all of the research that’s been done on the causes of homosexuality (as the proposed curriculum appears to do in its current form)?

Given the consistent track records of Exodus, Focus on the Family and their allies, it’s difficult to accept cries of “one-sidedness” from them without being reminded of the pot that called the kettle black.

Mike Airhart contributed to this article.

In early 2007, Truth Wins Out and former ex-gay Daniel Gonzales produced a YouTube video that found a blend of untruths and misleading “truthiness” in the annual antigay “Day of Truth” campaign.

Gonzales has updated the video to reflect changes at the ex-gay counseling program Love In Action — and the failure of Exodus to take corrective action against the campaign’s errors and unethical tactics.

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

The webmaster for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, Gabriel Espinosa, has been cited by Box Turtle Bulletin for his use of the F word (and little else besides the expletive) in correspondence with public officials about what constitutes fair access by transgendered persons to gender-specific restrooms.

Espinosa’s only suggestion for those who seek fairness for transgendered persons:

Hopefully, it will be one of your daughters who gets raped first!

Previous XGW coverage of Gabriel Espinosa.

Other coverage: Wayne Besen

Discredited anti-gay researcher Paul Cameron was guest speaker at a meeting of the Christian Council of Britain last month. Cameron used the opportunity to claim that homosexuals are responsible for 29 percent of child rapes and murders.

It is hard to say which is worse: Paul Cameron aligning himself with the far-right, nationalist Christian Council of Britain, or the Christian Council of Britain aligning itself with the virulently homophobic Paul Cameron. We know all about Cameron, but here’s a sample of where the CCB is at:

The Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland resolved that it recognises that all men are of one blood (or proto-race) in Adam through to Noah; and that from that one race divergent sub-races have historically devolved – Russian doll-like – (Genesis 11:1-9) so that we are now different, though related, races and nations of men, all of whom God has made (Psalms 86:9); which are each to bring their glory into the kingdom of God (Revelation 21:26). The Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland therefore resolved to recognise the godly importance of race and nation as groups based on this historical and providential process of objective descent: giving rise to different organically-formed communities; sharing and passing-on common genetically inherited (physical, intellectual and character) features, together with cultures, mores, relationships, loyalties, memories, and identities-in-common; and ultimately – by the will of God – national homelands, where an ongoing connection between land and people has developed, and can be encouraged and preserved (Acts 17:26). The Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland recognises these facts and privileges, especially with regard to the historic British people whose land this is. The Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland therefore resolved especially to welcome the British as such a People, and as individuals, into membership.

In other words, other races and cultures are fine; just don’t let them into our country. Elsewhere, CCB founder Reverend Robert West said that “the mixing of races challenges the glory of God”.

The CCB grew out of the racist British National Party (BNP), to which West – a councillor in his native Lincolnshire – later defected when he was ousted by the Tory Party. See these documentaries for evidence of the BNP’s ugliness, which it tries hard to disguise. British religion blogger Richard Bartholomew has documented the CCB, West’s career and the BNP connection extensively, beginning here.

What are we to conclude? That evidently neither Paul Cameron nor the Christian Council of Britain are fussy about the company they keep.

I always wondered what those red marks were . Has anyone heard of this?