Marcus Bachmann - Source: TWO
An undercover Truth Wins Out investigation claims that the counseling clinic headed by Marcus Bachmann, husband of U.S. Senator Representative and presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), offers reparative therapy to clients troubled by their sexuality. Bachmann had previously denied that his clinic, Bachmann & Associates, practiced reparative (change) therapy.
TWO reporter John M. Becker went undercover as a man struggling with his sexuality, meeting with counselor Timothy Wiertzema for five sessions, with a hidden video camera in tow (footage has not yet been released). He writes:
At the start of our second session I went straight to the point: what could I do? Would I ever be able to be completely rid of homosexuality, or merely learn to cope with and manage it? Wiertzema’s response was that it’s situational. Some people have been able to get rid of it completely over a long time period, others over a shorter time period. Still others are able to get it to “subside,” down to a “manageable” level, but it’s still there in the background.
In later sessions he would say that he “…think[s] it’s possible to be totally free of [same-sex attraction]. For sure.” and that “It’s happened! It really has happened to people.”
Ex-gay activist Janet Boynes’ book Called Out is sold at the clinic, Becker says, with an enthusiastic endorsement by Mr. Bachmann. He reports that during the sessions Wiertzema echoed Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH in saying that everyone is born heterosexual; some of us just encounter homosexual temptations. Becker was encouraged to find a heterosexual “accountability buddy” to help keep him on the heterosexual “wagon,” as it were.
Marcus Bachmann called gay people “barbarians” during a radio talk show interview in 2010. His wife Michelle has enthusiastically participated in anti-gay politics for several years, likening the failure to pass a 2004 Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to ignoring the signs leading up to the Attack on Pearl Harbor. She was recently the first to sign a document denigrating families headed by gay couples, and glorifying slavery in the process. It claims that black children were better off during that time because they were more likely to be raised by a mother and father.
What decent therapist wouldn’t help someone quit or manage a behavior or way of thinking they don’t want?
Sexual orientation, straight or gay, is a tad more fundamental to one’s psyche than a “behavior or way of thinking.” And Wiertzema appears to do much more than help change behavior. He attempts to diagnose a cause using the contrived theories of Joseph Nicolosi, claims a cure can be had and interjects his own moral and religious code into the therapeutic process.
Imagine what would happen if all psychotherapists started treating people for those things only they consider an illness, and using methods only they consider appropriate or effective. This is why we have professional associations like the APA, to provide a standard of treatment that clients can trust has legitimate scientific research behind it.
So perhaps the short answer to your questions would be, one who wishes first to do no harm.
Leslie,
Have you ever heard of the Clark “Doll Study”? It was conducted by Benjamin Clark and his wife back in the early 1950’s and took several years. It was and still is, one of the few areas of research that studied the effects of systemic bigotry, discrimination and inferior social status on minority children.
One can easily see what the effects of religious bigotry and emotional contradiction and black mail could do to the young mind of a gay child. To say nothing of real world threat and denial of humanity in society that enforces this in a child.
Similar to what happened to black children raised under Jim Crow.
So the definition of ‘unwanted’ comes loaded with mitigating circumstances. Unwanted homosexuality doesn’t come on it’s own, for the most part. There is considerable COERCION involved where one doesn’t have a choice to be honest or open about their orientation.
I can point to the acceptance and worship of being thin, and it’s result of anorexia.
I can point to Asians having surgery on their eyes to have the Western ideal of eye shape. I can point to the burned scalps of blacks who have chemically straightened their hair, or gone through the expense and pain of having their noses altered to modify their ethnic features.
I can point to Jews who passed for non Jewish to escape anti Semitic laws and social standards.
THAT is why, if a gay person doesn’t want their sexual orientation, it’s because they are TRAINED not to want it as straight people are trained to suspect, weed out and threaten in any way they can, whoever displays the tendencies they are taught to look for.
So it’s NOT decent, to exploit the results of this emotional and physical blackmail of gay people. Not decent at all.
Any more than you’d tell a curvy girl to starve herself to death to reach an ideal that’s not NECESSARY, nor especially gratifying to HER well being.
That is the point, that the standards and ideal of heterosexual life are UNNECESSARY, unrealistic and unnatural for a gay person to attain. Just as there are standards of beauty that aren’t mentally or physically healthy to attain either.
The ex gay industry needs gay people more than the other way around. They aren’t in it for the happiness of a gay person. Were that true, they wouldn’t engage in politics and civil law that destroys all options for gay people to attain self reliance and self determination. In fact, the ex gay ministry would do just the OPPOSITE, and engage in support of gay equality if they were there to be decent and charitable to gay needs.
But there is profit in being anti gay, and apparently, the ex gay industry has nothing else to offer the public to keep their wallets flush.
Michele Bachmann is a Representative, not a Senator.
I can’t recall a time when the ex-gay issue has come up in a presidential election before. But it makes total sense if this is the type of thing Rep. Bachmann and her husband believe. She did, after all, just sign The Family Leader’s “Marriage Pledge,” which states, among other things, that homosexuality is a choice.