Ex-Gay Watch

In an attempt to turn ex-gays into real men, some in the ex-gay camp recommend a weekend retreat called New Warriors Training Adventure to their clients. An interesting and enlightening discussion of the New Warriors program can be read at Dr. Warren Throckmorton’s blog , where the following retreat activities are described as taken from a recent article in the Houston Press.

• Blindfolded walking tours in the nude;

• People blowing sage smoke in his face while 50 or so naked men danced around candles;

• Men sitting naked in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called “The Cock”;

• Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer.

As Throckmorton notes in a follow-up post, there was a rift a few years ago amongst the New Warriors when a local branch hosted a talk by NARTH founder, Joseph Nicolosi.

The New Warriors Training Adventures are put on by The Mankind Project (MKP) and are described eloquently at their website as an invitation to step forward and look in the mirror. However, red flags are raised soon after by a barrage of yes or no questions phrased in such a way as to make one feel wimpy who dares to answer “no”.

• Do you have the courage to face your own fears and insecurities and discover the tremendous power and beauty that lies within you?
• Are you willing to step into the fullness of who you really are?
• Are you willing to discover the real joy and terror of being a man?

From the descriptions given by the Houston article as well as commenters at Throckmorton’s site, it appears the New Warriors Training focuses more on terrorizing than discovering joy. Participants are literally stripped down, physically and emotionally. In the article, one woman retells her husband’s description of an activity.

…everyone was sitting Indian-style in a big circle in the lodge when the man leading the group said, ‘If you wish, you may reach over and grab your brother’s dick. If your brother doesn’t want your hand there, he can remove it.’ Well, my husband told me he just froze. And from that point on, he just wanted out. Read more…

The long and winding runway that PFOX and its allies have traversed with the Montgomery County School Board at the expense of their taxpayers finally reached a straitaway and green light earlier this month. The controversial curriculum was approved by a Maryland Circuit Court judge on October 10.

PFOX remains unhappy and intends to “keep up the good fight”. While the curriculum addresses sexually transmitted disease and condom use, PFOX insists that specific statistics regarding homosexuality and AIDS be noted, assuming, I suppose this will scare some students into pursuing opposite sex attractions. Continuing with that logic, if you’re going to end up with a sexually transmitted disease, just make sure you get it while practicing straight sex so you’ll go to heaven when you die from it. As always, PFOX persists in their folly of insisting that ex-gay constitutes a third orientation, as if we need another one, and are either hell-bent or heaven-twisted in their demands that it be included as part of the lessons.

Jim Kennedy of TeachtheFacts had this to say regarding the ruling:

“You have to figure, the county-level school board and superintendent approved it, and then it was appealed to the state, and the state school board and state superintendent separately approved it, and then they tried to appeal that, and now the court has said no — they declined to issue a stay,” he said.
“So what is that? About five strikes?”

Mike Airhart made a great point in the comments of the article about Dr. Austin.

XGW did not decide Austin was guilty; a Texas jury did…

David Roberts made another interesting observation.

I continue to be amazed at the Svengali like ability Mr. Austin seems to have over some people.

As a former client, I have some thoughts I would like to present regarding Dr. Austin’s conviction. First, I’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with therapy under his care. People are consistently amazed by the perseverance and grace I’ve demonstrated during and after my marriage to Tdub. I say this not to boast, but as a direct compliment to Dr. Austin, who was instrumental in bringing me to such a place. He helped me maintain that demeanor over the course of several years; he is a gifted therapist.

However, I’ve come to realize that Dr. Austin is a very confused man, and I wonder privately if there may be more going on there. I’ll not make any wild claims about his state of mind, but I’ve seen the “Svengali” at work over a long period of time, and I’ve been friends or acquainted with many of his ex-gay clients. Our home was once a popular location for the ex-gay barbecues we sometimes joke about here at XGW. Because of those sorts of relationships, formed outside the realm of the counseling center, I was privy to a bit more of the inner-workings and dynamics of the group. I believe Dr. Austin is a master manipulator; gifted therapist, most definitely – master manipulator, unfortunately so.

It’s taken me quite some time to believe it, but the final “nail in the coffin” came after the break-up of my marriage to Tdub. One of our first concerns was appropriate therapy for our sons. We initially believed that Dr. Austin would be a good choice to help the boys through the transition of our family break-up as well as Tdub’s coming out. This is when we began to learn just how manipulative he had been. For reasons I won’t detail, and by people I won’t name, we were strongly cautioned against allowing our boys to enter therapy with him. We received this information from individuals with first-hand experience, and telling us placed them at great personal risk by also divulging their dalliances with Dr. Austin. To my knowledge, none of these particular indiscretions have been part of any of the trials or investigations to date.

I think it important to realize that one’s experience and level of trust with a man like Dr. Austin can only be used to evaluate one’s own relationship with him. It says nothing about his overall capability for damaging the lives of others. I personally have nothing against him. Even Dr. Austin’s extremely unorthodox practices, detailed in Part II of my series on ex-gay therapy, weren’t harmful to me. On the other hand, the fact that he pushed the boundaries of whatever guidelines may exist, either written or unwritten, among ex-gay therapists, certainly doesn’t improve my view of him at this point. The bottom line is this; I’m not going to abandon common sense and sound reason just because I wasn’t victimized by him myself.

If by some incredible long shot Dr. Austin was wrongly convicted, I feel confident he’ll be fine. He did, after all, instruct me in all sorts of Biblical truth which continues to sustain me during desperate times. I wish him Godspeed, either way.

As a public school teacher, I’ve been calling for the reversal of the “open forum” ruling on student backpacks for quite some time, including this little blurb in the 5th paragraph of an XGW article last March. As far as I’m concerned, backpacks should be used to carry materials to and from school which pertain explicitly to the education of the student as outlined in the school’s curriculum and implemented by the student’s teacher.

Instead, we have the once again upheld “open forum” ruling which allows any Tom, Dick, Harry, or PFOX organization to print up flyers and send them home in the interest of free speech for all community groups. The lawyers representing PFOX refer to them as

“a community outreach program to people involved in homosexual behavior”

and says they provide

“support to children and families of children with same sex attraction”.

And this is an appropriate sort of flyer to send home in the backpacks of elementary school children? Long gone are the days when little Suzy and Johnny arrived home with nothing more than a book, a math page, and possibly information about signing up for Karate, Girl/Boy Scouts, or a community sport. Suzy and Johnny can now arrive home with information letting them know it’s possible to “overcome” their unwanted same sex attractions and encouraging their parents to seek “help” for them.

A backpack is a tool to be used for the purposes of the school and it’s curriculum; it is not the place for promoting unproven, unsupervised, and overwhelmingly harmful psychological techniques.

This statement was released on Tuesday, July 3, in Rockville, Maryland.

The Maryland State Board of Education ruled in favor of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Tuesday clearing the way for the 8th and 10th grade health education curriculum to include two lessons that promote tolerance, empathy and respect for all people regardless of sexual orientation and one 10th grade lesson that demonstrates the proper use of a condom.

The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, a coalition which includes PFOX, has been battling the Montgomery County school board for two and a half years over the content of their sexual education curriculum.

Nancy Navarro, president of the Montgomery County school board, had this to say:

The State Board rejected each and every legal challenge brought by the opponents and determined and that there was no valid reason to overturn our decision. It is my hope that the litigation in this matter will finally come to an end as we move forward with the lessons that teach that all people deserve to be respected regardless of their sexual orientation.

According to TeachTheFacts, the CRC has stated that they intend to file a suit in federal court.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays has joined forces yet again with Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Family Leader Network in opposition to the Montgomery County School Board in Maryland. PFOX and its allies were unsuccessful in their efforts to stop the piloting of what they deem a “controversial” sex and health curriculum last fall, and they’ve recently petitioned the Maryland State School Board to block the full implementation of the lessons in all Rockville, Md.-area middle and high schools for the coming school year. The coalition threatens to sue the county school system if they don’t get their way, claiming that the school system released factually inaccurate information, did not put out material for public review before approval, and violated students’ constitutional rights including freedom of speech and the right to freely exercise religion.

A federal judge ruled in May 2005 that the curriculum’s teacher resource materials singled out specific religions for condemnation of homosexuality. The curriculum has been completely overhauled since that time.

The entire health unit is written to be delivered over a 12-day continuum in 45-minute sessions. However, it is the two-session piece of the whole titled “Respect for Differences in Human Sexuality Lesson” that is the focus of the coalition’s efforts. I took the time to print out and read through the Grade 8, Lesson One and Lesson Two portions of the curriculum and, surprise, surprise, I’m just not finding the “controversy”. The coalition’s concerns are detailed at the CRC website and one of their biggest problems with the eighth-grade lessons is a supposed inconsistency. The curriculum states:

“Sexual orientation is innate and a complex part of one’s personality.”

and then in a later paragraph,

“What causes sexual orientation? Almost certainly there is no single reason why some people are homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation results from an interaction of cognitive, environmental, and biological factors.”

The coalition says that these two statements are inconsistent and a significant portion of their threatened lawsuit is based on these grounds. I don’t agree. We are, after all, innately sexually oriented, and the causes of which orientation we become are many and varied. What’s inconsistent about that? The curriculum could possibly do a better job at segueing those concepts, but I don’t find them difficult to reconcile. It’s not lawsuit difficult.

Read more…

eHarmony advertises that they want to “move beyond traditional online dating.” For some reason, that phrase strikes me as a bit ironic. It doesn’t get much more “traditional” than the process one goes through at eHarmony. However, if you’re gay you can forget about it.

Linda Carlson is suing the relationship site for discrimination. Her lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court based on the fact that she was denied access because she is gay. Carlson’s lawyers believe the suit to be the first of it’s kind against the internet’s largest dating site of 12 million members. The company issued this statement in response to the suit.

“The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages.”

The founder of eHarmony, Dr. Neil Clark Warren is a psychologist with a divinity degree. He was initially affiliated with Focus on the Family, and the site was promoted as being “based on the Christian principles of Focus on the Family author Dr. Neil Clark Warren.” However, Dr. Warren began to distance himself from FOTF and Dr. Dobson back in 2005, claiming among other things that they were becoming too narrowly political for the dating site. He stopped radio appearances with them and bought back the rights to the books he’d written for them.

Read more…

My experience with ex-gays, ex-gay ministry, and vicariously, with reparative therapy, changed me because it was a learning experience. I’ve always been honest about the fact that change is a relative term with decidedly religious overtones. Furthermore, while I hesitate to say that changing orientation is not possible for some, I am willing to say that I believe it to be highly improbable.

While I described some bizarre practices in Part II, there were some positives derived from the ex-gay therapy experience. Our couples sessions were always quite helpful to us. We learned many great strategies for communicating, and we grew more able to understand and articulate our individual issues. In fact, I’d say that Tdub’s ability to make the straightforward confession of having sought out a same sex relationship (thus ending our marriage), was made possible by growth achieved in therapy. Pre-therapy Tdub was not a forthcoming sort of person with information of that nature and magnitude.

Would I recommend reparative therapy to others? Probably not. I’m not so keen on the methods of the only reparative therapist I’ve known, and I wouldn’t want to take the risk of anyone else going through those sorts of methods. Dr. Throckmorton says he’s not a reparative therapist, but I’d certainly recommend him to someone who felt they must try to change their same sex attractions. However, I don’t believe all gay people need therapy or need to change their attractions any more than straight folks do. Personally, I think it would be just fine if every one of us were issued a few certificates for some free therapy at birth, to be cashed in at some later date.

The most significant lessons I’ve learned from being involved in the world of ex-gay have been from folks I’ve encountered and even grown close to because of my personal blog. Most importantly, I’ve learned that there’s nothing black and white about same sex attraction. Through my blog, I’ve met Christians who are gay and “married” (my friend Brady did have a ceremony here in Texas), gay and celibate, gay and monogamous, and most recently, a Christian who is transgender. All of these folks have come to their place in their faith journey through much prayer, seeking, and study. They are trusting in Christ and figuring things out as they go along, just like me. We have much more IN common than NOT.

And that’s the most important thing I’ve learned.

My journey in, through, and out the other side of ex-gay world has been at times horrific, painful, and agonizing. I use those terms with great humility knowing that I’m not the one who has, in actuality, suffered and paid the greatest price of all. I’m only here to tell my part because of Tdub. My prayers and hopes are that his journey eventually leads him to peace, joy, and contentment with who he is and how God made him. I remain thankful for grace, for peace that passes understanding, and for being trusted by God to live in, and tell of, this story.

When my husband began reparative therapy I was quite anxious. He was “prescribed” weekly individual and group sessions. Initially, it was the idea of group sessions with other same sex attracted men which worried me. At the time, I couldn’t imagine how such connections could benefit him without foiling the goals of the therapy. The goal of the reparative therapy was to lessen my husband’s unwanted same sex attractions and replace those with opposite sex attraction. It was explained to me during my first individual visit with the therapist, that the group sessions provided the guys attending with a safe place to be transparent without fear of judgment. Ideally, and in the form of a secondary goal, my husband would progress to the point that he would no longer need group therapy because, in time, he’d learn to be comfortable and transparent with other men who didn’t share his specific struggle. I was also assured that there was a zero tolerance policy enforced when it came to inappropriate relations between group members.

In the beginning, I visited the therapist individually about once a month or so. During my first visit, I had two primary questions for him: “How long will it take?”, and “What are the chances that this will work?” During one of our early couples sessions, (the process involved a great many sessions, as you can imagine) we’d had the discussion and come to an agreement of what a “normal” sexual relationship would look like for us. The reply I received for a reasonable time frame for therapy to “work” was 18 months. I was told that my husband suffered from arrested development and was “stuck” emotionally at around the age of twelve-years-old. Unfortunately, based on several incidents that had occurred in the months prior to my husband revealing his secrets of attraction to me, this diagnosis made a great deal of sense to me at the time. As to the question of the chances of the therapy working for my husband, the answer was that it tended to be more effective for those who had more at stake. I was told that the motivation of staying married and keeping a family together was a primary factor in the success of many men in their battle against same sex attraction.

There were some bizarre strategies employed in my husband’s reparative therapy. However, I’ll attempt to put them in context lest it sound completely implausible that anyone could possibly agree to such methods. Tdub didn’t “come out” to me of his own free will. At the point he did come out, I had become suicidal due to the very troubled nature of the marriage as well as circumstances surrounding it. We both viewed reparative therapy as the only hope for our union. When something you deem holy, right, and good is on the line for you, it’s possible to lose touch with a bit of common sense. At least that’s how I now justify my almost unquestioning acceptance of some of the bizarre and risky practices that went on in our therapy experiences. It’s going to be easier for me to just list those, so here goes:

Read more…

I’ve been encouraged to share personal narratives about what I’ve learned from ex-gay therapy/ministry. While I’ve never experienced being ex-gay personally, my unique perspective affords me a great deal of “inside” anecdotal information that could be valuable to folks on any side of the issues surrounding ex-gay therapy/ministry.

I hope that folks who read XGW will take this series as an opportunity to better understand the language and position of those in the ex-gay movement. I understand (not fully, of course) how offensive the very idea of ex-gay therapy/ministry is to so many of you who may read this. And yet, I know beyond all doubt that we ALL have things to learn from one another and that by at least attempting to understand a different perspective we are each able to more effectively communicate our own. The one and only path I’d like to steer all of us towards is that of love and understanding. I don’t mind adding that I personally believe the heavier burden of understanding lies with those on the ex-gay side of the issue.

Part One

If you’re reading this post, you’re on a computer. Your computer is loaded with an operating system. Most of the things that happen on your computer happen because of default settings. Default is the way computers are set up so that every amoeba and their pet parasite are able to browse the Internet.

Read more…