Ex-Gay Watch

The Washington Post does a two-fer today in covering the ex-gay agenda. The same Sandra Boodman has another article up that doesn’t quite make fun of Richard Cohen.

She skirts the edges of mockery by noting that his marraige was arranged by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the creepy, Kim Jong-Il-esque head of the right-wing newspaper The Washington Times. She describes in a somewhat sardonic tone Cohen’s bizarre practices, which include his hitting a pillow with a tennis racket and screaming “Dad!” and finding a nice man to cuddle with. Boodman also notes that Cohen was permanently expelled from the ACA.

She doesn’t do much to challenge Cohen directly, but in his case, does she really have to? Coehn justifies his lack of a counseling license in the interview by saying he’s “coaching,” and the article ends by quoting him as saying “You’ve got to feel it to heal it.” The facts speak for themselves, and require no explanation.

Zach has updated his journal once again, and unleashed another torrent of support / debate / ranting / etc. on his MySpace account. He reaffirms that the last entry was his, refuting the speculation that it was written by somebody else. He promises not to write anything in conflict with his thoughts, but also says:

I really just want to say what I want to say, how I want to say it, but I know that noone will listen if I do that — or get extremely irritated and start to insult me even moreso – and have reason.

Zach had blogged before going into Love in Action about his paren’ts promise that “things would get better, even if it doesn’t work.” This appears to mean that Zach’s father Joe Stark would work harder to maintain a masculine role in the family, and that his friends would be scrutinized more closely in terms of being “sexually safe.” It may also mean he is not allowed to blog any more. He still does not answer any of the questions that everyone wants answered.

So far as anyone can tell, Zach is still 16, a little bewildered, and trying to make sense of a crazy situation. Good luck.

Sandra Boodman has an article in the Washington Post discussing ex-gays and the psychology behind the issue. The article is well balanced, in the old sense of presenting the issue and the related facts (as opposed to the new ‘balanced,’ which means presenting lies when the facts don’t back up one side of a debate).

She has quotes from Warren and Joe over at NARTH, Robert Spitzer, Jack Drescher, two ex-ex-gays and one ex-gay. She discusses web sites like inqueery and freetobeme, which are designed to indoctrinate teens and other confused individuals into the ex-gay rhetoric. They bring up the Montgomery County battle, and have Drescher comparing ex-gays and creationists (as well as comparing reorientation therapy to laetrile, the quack cancer cure).

She describes some of the methods and memes of reparative therapy. She fails to challenge Throckmorton’s claim that he has “worked with a lot of clients who’ve done it.” She also fails to challenge or caveat Nicolosi’s claim of “curing” two thirds of the St. Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic’s patients. She mentions the problems associated with the Spitzer study, which Nicolosi relies upon earlier in the article. She also briefly mentions Focus on the Family’s involvement and the three-degrees-removed ties between the Bush Administration and reparative therapy.

All in all not a bad article covering the topic, and the issues associated with it.

NARTH sent out an email looking to form a rapid response team to counter “misinformation in the media or other cultural institutions about reorientation therapy.” Exgay groups have been getting a lot more attention in the media with the buzz surrounding the Zach story, and the exgay story could be in the limelight for a while.

Exgay groups already have a lead on ex-exgays, operating through high-level organizations like Exodus and cooperating with groups like NARTH and Focus on the Family.

If ex-exgays wanted to form a similar group (cooperating with groups like PFLAG and the APA), it would vastly strengthen the ability for ex-exgays to make their stories known and to get out a message of their own. In the current media blitz, such an organization would be a great help to those who believe conversion therapy doesn’t work.

Since there exists no such high-level organization at the moment, our list is probably a good place to start.

FYI, I’m on vacation through Sunday, August 7th. Have a good week, everyone!

As reported yesterday, Good Morning America had a segment on Zach’s story this morning. It had many features similar to the CNN story, yet many strikingly different.

GMA featured Zach, and had a voice actor readingly directly from the MySpace blog while the words scrolled across the screen. They had a clip from Zach’s father stating his beliefs about homosexuality, and quoted Rev. Smid regarding the Refuge program. They also had Dr. Drescher on the program, but allowed him to speak about the dangers associated with reparative therapy camps, and noted that the APA condemns reparative therapy.

The end of the segment included a debate between CNN-featuree Brandon Tidwell and Refuge graduate Gerard Wellman regarding the effectiveness or dangerousness of the program. Before the debate began, it was noted that Gerard is on the payroll at Refuge.

Brandon had a lot more to say in the live TV broadcast than he did on the edited CNN segment; his first statements regarding the program were that it “breaks you down, and destroys your identity.” He also stated outright regarding the Refuge program, “Yes, absolutely it’s wrong.” When questioned about Rev. Smid’s claimed 65% success rate, he explained that Love in Action does not have the research to back up their statistics.

Gerard, on the other hand, repeated a number of talking points regarding the Refuge program, including the “hundreds of thousands of people like me” statistic. He explained clearly that Refuge does not change one’s attractions, but puts “guard rails” on their behavior. Gerard repeated almost verbatim from Smid’s previous comments that “…there are no guards, no locked doors, nobody is forced to be there.” In reply, Brandon noted that leaving the program would have a vast number of negative consequences for teens from their parents and community, and that “You can’t just pick up and leave any time you want!”

An accompnying article on ABC’s web site gives a little more background from two other graduates, Melissa Fryrear and Peter Toscano, and mentions the initial investigation into the Refuge program.

ABC stated that Zach is to be released tomorrow.

Deborah Feyerick covered the LIA / conversion therapy story last night on CNN. She glossed over many of the rules that have bloggers upset, generalizing them as “no flashy clothes” and “no touching.”

She prominently featured LIA resident Ben Marshall. Marshall described how he was drug there kicking and screaming, and Feyerick notes that he not only survived the program, but decided to stay eight months. Later in the segment, he says that he is better in control of his lust, and that he hopes to marry a woman. She mentions Zach in passing (and not by name), and relates Zach’s initial upset to Marshall’s.

She also featured Brandon Tidwell, who went through three months of the LIA program before reconciling his Christianity with his homosexuality. Tidwell does not denounce the program, get more than one minute of the six minute segment, or mention any of the rules of the program or its success rate.

She introduced Dr. Jack Drescher, an APA psychologist, with the line “But others say…” and edited his part down to less than 30 seconds. The condemnation of reparative therapy by the APA, AMA, or other medical organizations was not mentioned, nor were any of the studies associated with those resolutions.

Addenda:

Transcript of the July 27 “Paula Zahn Now” report, Part I

Transcript of the July 28 “Paula Zahn Now” report, Part II

A story that rather fell through the cracks here on XGW: Zach’s story made the New York Times. In terms of raw information, it adds a little background into the leadup to Zach’s memorable MySpace post:

He was bombarded by phone calls from reporters, he said, as well as by 100 e-mail messages a day from as far as Norway. Zach’s writings, which appeared on his page on www.MySpace.com, were publicized by one of his online acquaintances, E. J. Friedman, a Memphis musician and writer, who read Zach’s May 29 blog entry, “The World Coming to an Abrupt – Stop.”

Mr. Friedman, 35, was disturbed by what he read and fired off an instant message. “I said: ‘You should run away from home. There are people who will help you,’ ” Mr. Friedman recalled. “He said: ‘I can’t do that. I want to have my childhood. If this is what I have to go through to have it, then I will.’ “

In terms of the story itself, it has now acquired national attention in the mainstream media, in addition to blog followers such as Daily Kos and Republic of T.

Ex-Gay Watch welcomes its newest writer:

Andrew is a web designer, blogger, and citizen media specialist. He is currently attending Purdue University in Indiana, where he has ties to the Queer Resource Center and other gay groups. He has been blogging for a little over at year at Welcome to America; an outlet for ranting with an offhanded focus on gay issues.

Politically, he is a moderate, with a bent towards common sense and pragmatism.