Ex-Gay Watch

The evangelical media is silent on recent scientific research into sexual orientation, according to Dr Warren Throckmorton.

The Grove City College psychology professor says his Christian audience routinely confirms there’s a blackout on up-to-date information on sexuality in the Christian media:

They know there is no gay gene but they don’t know about the significant brain, perceptual and cognitive differences reported within the past six years by various researchers around the world. … Many evangelicals believe homosexuality is due to abuse. Some will say with confidence that gays are more likely to be abused than straights but they are unaware of the actual magnitudes of difference. … Many evangelicals I speak to think that change of orientation is pretty common and the evidence is being suppressed by the gay-friendly media.

Throckmorton blames the “culture war” for this dearth of facts on the state of sexual orientation research. Read the full article: The Evangelical Blackout of Research on Sexual Orientation.

Exodus Global Alliance has enjoyed tax-exempt status in New Zealand for more than 10 years. This year, however, they have been denied that status on the grounds that they do not meet one of the requirements for being declared a “charity,” providing a “public benefit:”

Exodus Ministries has had charitable status, exempting it from income tax, for more than a decade but the status was removed by the Charities Commission this month under a regime introduced in 2007.

The commission said the trust was not performing any public benefit because homosexuality was not a mental disorder and did not need curing.

The commission noted that the American Psychological Association said there was little scientific evidence to show that homosexuality could be “cured” and attempts to do so could cause harm.

Hardly the only charity targeted by the commission, in fact 1,224 other organizations have been deregistered for being “too political, too commercial, or not having the required paperwork.” 978 have been deregistered this year alone.

EGA is not a part of Exodus International, about whom XGW reports much more often. Rather, they are a global umbrella organization of which Exodus is a member. Details about this relationship can be found on this page of the EGA site. While Exodus International is largely affiliated with the United States, Canada, the UK and Mexico, EGA states that they encompass Africa, Asia Pacific, Brazil, China, Europe, the Middle East, India, and Latin America. Their “International Office” is located in Toronto, Canada.

A study that was published in 2008 blows away the belief that monozygotic twins, also called identical twins, have the same DNA. Geneticist Carl Bruder of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and his colleagues studied the genomes of 19 pairs of adult identical twins and found sites of genetic divergence in each pair. Such divergences occur when there are a different number of copies of the same gene, a genetic state called “copy number variants.” For example, one twin in Bruder’s study had a genetic marker for leukemia – specific genes on particular chromosomes were missing. While this twin did indeed suffer from leukemia, the other twin did not.

This complicates the numerous twin studies that take place in the scientific world, including ones that explore the root of sexual orientation. While it doesn’t necessarily nullify conclusions reached during said studies, it does contradict the belief that any difference found in identical twins could only be attributed to factors that were epigenetic (having to do with the way genes are expressed during development) or otherwise environmental (the “nuture” factor).

Organizations like NARTH who claim to have science on their side will eagerly point to studies that show up to a 50% twin concordance for homosexuality, claiming that anything less than 100% “proves” that a “gay gene” doesn’t exist. And even Exodus International, a Christian organization that focuses on spiritual healing of homosexuality is an affiliate of NARTH and has this blurb on their site:

Current scientific research simply does not support the “gay gene” theory.

…
Researchers from all points of view have not found a 100% correlation among identical twin studies in their study groups. If homosexuality is solely a genetically based trait, there should be no variance among identical twins that share the same genetic history.

A search for the term “gay gene” on Exodus’ site yields 20 results, all in articles ranging from outright denial of genetic influence to defensive posturing that genes might determine some aspects of our lives, but not our morality.

The term “gay gene” is of course an archaic and scientifically inaccurate one, not used by anybody trying to propose a serious argument for the biological origin of non-heterosexual orientations. There is no gay gene just as there is no “left-handed gene,” though the latter trait is accepted unquestionably as biologically originated. Additionally, no serious scientific claim has been made that sexual orientation is “solely a genetic trait.” close attention has been paid to factors that influence gene expression, exposure to hormones in the womb, and physiological traits found to be common among those of a particular sexual orientation.

But now thanks to this research, scientists in all fields have a better understanding of why identical twins are so rarely completely the same – and a better understanding of why, despite genetic factors influencing to a point, one twin may be gay while the other is not.

The journalist behind an ex-gay exposé in The Independent (London) last week, has launched an all-out campaign against reparative therapy.

Patrick Strudwick’s investigative report revealed startling practices among reparative therapists in the UK. In his latest missive, he reiterates and expands on some of his more disturbing claims, such as that ex-gay psychiatrist Dr Paul Miller encouraged sexual arousal during therapy sessions, and that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is inadvertently funding reparative therapy. He also reveals that Cohen disciple and NARTH representative Miller, who was promoted by now-disgraced Northern Ireland MP Iris Robinson in 2008, still struggles with gay pornography and masturbation from time to time. (Apparently not uncommon among people claiming to be healed of homosexuality.)

Now Strudwick has formed the Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce, aka SCOTT. As of writing this, the campaign’s Facebook group has 700 members and counting.

Here is what Strudwick says of the group and the reasons behind it:

The belief system of conversion therapy, that gay people aren’t just ungodly and wrong but are inherently damaged and that they can be “healed” or reprogrammed constitutes a fascistic, fundamentalist ideology. Mental health professionals who harbour such an agenda are a supremely dangerous proposition.

The work of Scott will therefore not stop at disrupting conferences. We want professional bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy to add into their code of conduct specific stipulations condemning attempts to alter orientation (currently they have more general ones about not letting personal feelings about sexuality affect treatment).

We will also continue to expose individual therapists and report them to their professional bodies. It won’t be easy. Many operate using euphemisms that cloud what they’re really doing. They also defend their techniques vehemently, claiming: “We offer choice! We only treat those who come looking for it!” It’s like a Venus flytrap blaming the hungry insect that wanders into its gaping mouth. But we are determined to root them out however long it takes. This won’t be a battle. It’s war.

Strong words indeed.

I approach this with caution. It is great to see reparative therapy being highlighted in the UK media like this, and its dangers exposed. The practices investigated by Strudwick are shocking and disgusting. The world of gay-to-straight conversion must be held up to scrutiny, and abusive forms of therapy must be curtailed.

On the other hand, the ex-gay movement encompasses a wide variety of approaches. There have always been at least two distinct responses by the LGBT community. One response has been to “wage war” on the ex-gay movement and do all in its power to destroy it. This has never been the aim of Ex-Gay Watch. We live in a free society, and groups for people who hate, wish to change, are uncomfortable with, or simply wish not to act on their sexual orientation are free to gather and encourage each other in whatever way in their aims. Ex-Gay Watch will do all it can to denounce deception and oppression by the ex-gay movement, but one thing it does not have the right to do is to destroy it by force.

The reason for my caution is that it is very easy to throw all the aspects of the ex-gay movement together and treat them all as issues that can or should be addressed by, for example, legal force. There are many clear instances of abuse that should be addressed by legal means, such as those brought up by Strudwick’s initial article. Then there are ideas that should be addressed by exercising our right to free speech and arguing against them. We should not mistake one category for the other. For example, a Christian therapist who works with legitimate psychiatric or psychological methods to help a patient to achieve congruence (living with both the demands of one’s faith and the reality of sexual orientation) easily falls under the guise of “reparative therapy” in the popular mind – but we have no right to dismantle such attempts by force.

What needs to be clear is what we are fighting and why, and what our aims are. I am pleased to see the rotten underbelly of the ex-gay movement in the UK exposed, but any declaration of battle must be made with wisdom and discernment.

An excellent piece by Patrick Strudwick in today’s Independent (London) details the author’s strange and disturbing experiences in ex-gay therapy in the UK.

It’s a refreshing article in that it focuses exclusively on reparative therapy, and tends not to dilute it with other aspects of the ex-gay movement. Strudwick begins his undercover investigation by attending a conference by Dr Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH. (We covered that conference here.) There he heard the usual Nicolosi myths, including the oft-repeated claim that “If you don’t hug your son, some other man will.”

Strudwick met two reparative therapists at the conference, and later consulted with them privately. His experience was shocking:

“Any Freemasonry in the family?” No, I say, again asking her to elaborate. “Because that often encourages it as well. It has a spiritual effect on males and it often comes out as SSA [same-sex attraction].”

Next, she looks for self-esteem wounds. “I think you have some unhelpful thoughts about yourself, about who you are,” she says. “What do you think about yourself? In the deepest part of you, in your stomach.”

“I think I’m a good person,” I reply. She wants more. “I think I am a determined person.” Still not enough. “I think I’ve a lot to give.”

“But do you like yourself?” she asks, becoming impatient.

“I think I’m a good person,” I repeat.

“Yes that’s different though from ‘do you like yourself?’ Deep underneath this there’s other stuff we need to get to. I think you must have had quite a lot of bullying.” No, I say. “There was no sexual abuse?” she asks, leaning in and squinting again. No, I repeat. “I think it will be there,” she replies, dropping her voice to a concerned tone. “It does need to come to the surface.”

And so, she prays for me again. “Father, we give you permission to bring to the surface some of the things that have happened over the years. Father, enable your love to pour into that place of isolation in that little boy, whatever age, we give you permission to go there, with your healing power and your light, go into those parts, open all the doors, and access each one with your light.”

She looks up. I ask her again about this abuse. “I think there is something there,” she says. “You’ve allowed things to be done to you.” In the next session I ask if she thinks the abuse would have taken place within my family, because I can’t remember it. “Yes, very likely,” she replies.

This session with an accredited psychotherapist and counsellor is a strange mixture of psychological mumbo-jumbo, Christian fundamentalist myths and a bizarre guessing game bearing more resemblance to a psychic reading than professional therapy.

Strudwick’s next session is with a married ex-gay psychiatrist, a follower of Richard Cohen. He says he can help men to “reach their full heterosexual potential.” Here things become even more bizarre. The psychiatrist admits he hasn’t entirely escaped same-sex attraction, and still experiences “unhealthy patterns of porn and masturbation, if I’m feeling a bit flat.” As therapy, he encourages Strudwick to experience sexual arousal:

I say that when men compliment me on my appearance it triggers sexual feelings. He probes again, asking me how I’m feeling as he talks about my body. Aroused, I repeat. But rather than moving away from this apparent sexual trigger, he asks if we can do an “exercise” around it. I agree.

“Close your eyes and focus on that arousal you’re feeling down in your genitals,” he says. “I want you to hear, as a man, as I look at your body, I see strong shoulders and a strong chest, I see a man who has an attractive body and I want you just to notice the arousal you feel as you hear me talking about that. Imagine an energy and picture that energy as a colour, and make the brightness of the colour relate to the intensity of the sexual feeling, so you might be starting to get a bit of a hard on, you might be starting to feel an erection and that sexual energy, but I want you to just picture that as a coloured light. What colour would it be?”

Red, I say.

“I want you to imagine that red colour, that energy and listen to the affirmations that I see you as a strong, confident man, and I want you to move that red light from your genitals up into your chest to join that feeling of affirmation as a man, and as you breathe in that affirmation do you notice now what happens to the arousal?”

I tell him it’s still there.

The piece is very revealing. It can be read in its entirety here.

The co-author of a major ex-gay study is a key figure in the controversy over the direction of Wheaton College, Illinois.

In the article Whither Wheaton?, appearing in the SOMA Review, Andrew Chignell names Dr Stanton L Jones, Provost of Wheaton College, as a force in the increasingly authoritarian approach to doctrine at the flagship evangelical school:

Still, when one spends time talking with Wheaton faculty, students, and supporters, alongside real appreciation one is also likely to hear expressions of deep concern about the unusually pro-active roles that [President] Litfin and his provost, Stanton Jones, have assumed as the definers and defenders of orthodoxy across the college.

Chignell notes how under Liftin the school has come to adopt a “magisterial” model, where firm doctrinal positions are imposed from the top down. So, for example, any member of faculty who took a less-than-literal view of Adam and Eve was deemed unfit for employment. Those who were not sure would be given a year to bring their doctrine in line or leave. The President eventually softened, allowing those in the second category to remain.

It appears that Stanton Jones, with responsibility for all undergraduate and postgraduate studies, was Liftin’s second-in-command when it came to implementing these changes. Chignell recounts the following episode involving Jones:

A few years later, Alex Bolyanatz, a tenure-track anthropologist who taught about human origins, decided that it might be wise to invite the new provost to sit in on his lectures: “I had no doubt that hearing my version of a Christian view of integrating the evolutionary model with a faith perspective would make anyone say, ‘This guy is just fine; does exactly what we want here.’ I now know, of course, that this was somewhere between stupid and naïve. I invited Provost Stan Jones to attend my class and he did for six sessions. I believed that I was ensuring that I would spend a long and satisfying career there. Wrong! I was, in fact, digging my own professional grave at Wheaton.”

He also relates the story of Christina Van Dyke, now a member of the philosophy faculty at Calvin College, whose appointment process was abruptly halted because of her hardly remarkable views on homosexuality and Scripture. Van Dyke signed the Wheaton Statement of Faith and its “Community Covenant,” but added the proviso that “it isn’t clear to me that the Bible unambiguously condemns monogamous same-sex relationships.”

She did not deny the traditional teaching, but expressed a view about interpretation of Scripture a little more nuanced than that of many evangelicals. Again, Jones intervened. Van Dyke recalls:

I got a call from Stan Jones, asking me a number of questions about my reservations. I kept saying that I was not claiming to have figured this out, but that it was not at all clear to me from my own research and study that the Bible’s position on homosexual behavior was unambiguous. We talked about how I would handle students who came to me to talk about questioning their own sexuality, and I said I would be willing to send them elsewhere. He sent me a whole stack of reading material (much of which he’d written) arguing that the Bible’s position on homosexual behavior was, in fact, clear. I read it all. . . . I didn’t change my mind. … [At] about 5 pm the day before my interview was scheduled, [the chair] called in tears to tell me that he’d just finished talking to the provost, and that I was no longer a candidate for their position.

Stanton Jones and the Jones-Yarhouse Study

It is unsurprising to find Jones coming in for criticism for toeing such a hard line on conservative evangelical doctrine, especially homosexuality. With Dr Mark Yarhouse of Regents University, Virginia, he authored the 2007 study Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation. The study was severely limited, with questionable methodology and negligible results – even when judged generously. Dr Patrick Chapman critiqued Jones-Yarhouse for Ex-Gay Watch here.

Ironically, it has been observed that Jones was the more outspoken of the two in trumpeting the results of the study, despite Yarhouse coming from a traditionally more conservative college. For an essentially academic work, the book is notable for its evangelistic flavour. Chignell’s revelations about Wheaton College confirm that Jones in particular has a partisan interest in the homosexuality debate.

Someone didn’t want the Wheaton story published

This website is the author’s own account of his difficult battle to get the piece published. It was written to coincide with the eve of the appointment of a new president for Wheaton College, and was originally commissioned by John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, an often-thoughtful evangelical publication under the Christianity Today banner. It was accepted “enthusiastically,” Chignell says, in mid-September 2009.

It was due to be published last year, but was unexpectedly pulled by Harold Smith, CEO of Christianity Today International, a day or two before it was to go to press. Wilson told Chignall that “this sort of editorial control had never been exercised in the fourteen-year history of Books and Culture.”

Smith insisted that several issues with the article be addressed before it could be published. It was taken away and revised, and a few meetings later it was again scheduled to run. Just a few days after this confirmation, however, the piece was pulled for a last time. Chignell writes:

The following Monday, Smith called Wilson in and told him that the piece was irrevocably dead. In a note to me, Smith expressed sympathy but gave no explanation, except to say that “new hurdles” had arisen. He did promise that no one from Wheaton College had directly intervened.

Evangelicalism’s battle of the generations

At the heart of Chignell’s piece is a conflict between generations of evangelicals. He graduated from Wheaton himself, and recalls the effect on the school of Bill Clinton’s election as US President in 1992:

At Wheaton in the fall of 1992 (my freshman year), there was intense soul-searching about why God had denied the victory just as change on key issues like abortion seemed within reach. The night after the election, students held a massive vigil, heads bowed and leaders speaking anxiously about the coming liberal onslaught.

He compares that to the reaction to Obama in 2008:

At Wheaton in the fall of 2008, by contrast, the predominantly African American Gospel Choir took the chapel stage the morning after Obama’s election and gave a rousing performance of “God Bless America.” That night there was a panel discussion in which Litfin, too, emphasized that future evangelicals “cannot afford to be seen as in the hip pocket of any particular polity or political entity.”

These are changing times. Many younger evangelicals identify with the political progressives and liberals of the Democratic Party, rather than the social and moral conservatives of the Republicans and their evangelical forebears. In 1993, Wheaton was a place where “the culture wars were hot, with many students (presciently) advocating a hard-right turn as the path to Republican recovery,” Chignell tells us. At Wheaton in 2010, party politics has waned, with students “far more concerned with the relationship between their faith and social justice than with political affiliation,” according to Juliana Wilhoit, the head of what she calls “the most anemic College Democrats organization north of Bob Jones.”

The Jones-Yarhouse study was a valiant attempt to rescue an ex-gay movement whose once-popular claims are fading.  Likewise, the attempts of the outgoing Wheaton President Duane Liftin and his number two to instill by force on Wheaton a hardline “orthodoxy” seem to be last-ditch efforts to salvage the remnants of an increasingly threatened socially conservative evangelicalism.

Re: “New Jersey State Senator and NAACP’s Bond Support Genderless Marriage While Rejecting Ex-Gay Rights” [12-9-09]

“…major scientific studies and mental health associations have stated homosexuality is not innate,” said Regina Griggs, director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX). “No scientific evidence has found a ‘gay gene.’ No DNA or medical test can determine if a person is homosexual. Sexual orientation is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration…”

“Sexual orientation is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration.”

Try it like this:

Human sexuality is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration.
—
Apparently you’re not human until you say so in public.

Building on David Robert’s post on the Richard Cohen portion of The Rachel Maddow Show, Randy Thomas, Vice President of Exodus International, had some things to say about the exchange.

Randy Thomas: I am going to share a review of the actual interview and then move into how I believe she, and some other militant gay activists, are missing the point with regard to Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill.

Transcript, edited for brevity, emphases mine:

MADDOW: But you have told them, particularly in your book, “Coming Out Straight,” which I understand you donated multiple copies of to this organization that‘s promoting this bill. You‘re telling them exactly what they need to hear in order to justify the kill-the-gays bill. I mean, your book portrays gay people as predators who must be stopped to protect the innocent.

COHEN: Oh, no, no, no.

MADDOW: Let me ask – I‘ll just read from your book, OK? Page 49, “Homosexuals are at least 12 times more likely to molest children than heterosexuals. Homosexual teachers are at least seven times more likely to molest a pupil. Homosexual teachers are estimated to have committed at least 25 percent of pupil molestation; 40 percent of molestation assaults were made by those who engage in homosexuality.”

This is the claim that you make in your book that exactly feeds these folks who want to execute people for being gay, what they need in order to justify that. Do you stand by what you said in your book?

COHEN: Actually, you know, that one particular quote, when I do republish it, reprint it, we will extract that from it, because we don‘t want such things to be used against homosexual persons.

MADDOW: That quote is cited – you cite somebody named Paul Cameron as the source of that book.

COHEN: I see that they‘re using it, but you took that one little quote out of a 300-page book.

“you took that one little quote out of a 300-page book”

That “one little quote” may be edited out of Cohen’s next revision, but it’s a paltry excision in light of the other “little” quotes in his book.
Read more…

The American Psychological Association has said that there is insufficient evidence for so-called “sexual orientation change efforts,” and has instructed mental health practitioners to avoid offering reparative or “ex-gay” therapy.

In a resolution adopted at its annual conference today, the APA officially rejected treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental disorder, and lauded approaches “that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth.”

The accompanying report made short shrift of recent ex-gay studies, saying they were based on “inadequate” research methods. The Chair of the APA’s Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation, Judith M Glassgold, said:

At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects.

She called for therapists to be “completely honest” about the likelihood of change, and to acknowledge the “reality of their sexual orientation,” while respecting the client’s religious beliefs.

Ex-Gay Watch has already noted how hardcore supporters of reparative therapy steeled themselves for today’s announcement.

Read full report (PDF)

NARTH’s new peer-reviewed study is not new, is not peer-reviewed and is not a study – flaws even one of its authors admitted to Ex-Gay Watch.

CitizenLink, the news arm of Focus on the Family, made much of the paper’s appearance earlier this week, faithfully reproducing the immodest claims of NARTH’s press release:

A new report in this month’s edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Sexuality finds that sexual orientation is not immutable and that psychological care for individuals with unwanted homosexual attractions is beneficial and poses no significant risk of harm.

This study is … a significant milestone when it comes to the scientific debate over the issue of homosexuality.

The report itself is even bolder, announcing that its results prove the following “singular conclusion”:

Homosexuality is not innate, immutable or without significant risk to medical, psychological, and relational health.

Exodus Vice President Randy Thomas was quick to champion the claims. Other conservatives, such as the ex-gay supportive Dr Warren Throckmorton, were not convinced. UK “post-gay” Peter Ould found it positively embarrassing.

And they are right to be embarrassed, for this supposedly new, peer-reviewed study is nothing of the sort.

First, it is far from new. By NARTH’s own admission, it is merely a survey of 100 years of literature.

That it is a survey means that, second, it is not a study. Jones-Yarhouse, for all its flaws, was a scientific study. NARTH’s paper, written by James Phelan, Neil Whitehead, and Philip Sutton, simply collates a century’s worth of material that (they think) supports the pro-reparative therapy position. It contains no new or original research whatsoever.

Jim Phelan confirmed both of these things directly when XGW spoke to him last year. Phelan said clearly the report was “a literature review – no new science [italics ours].  The data is presented more comprehensively than before.”

Third, that it is peer-reviewed is a sadly risible claim. It appears in Volume I of the Journal of Human Sexuality, a publication produced by NARTH. In other words, NARTH has reviewed its own paper for inclusion in a volume that appears to have been created specifically as a vehicle for NARTH’s views. The “peer review” therefore means next to nothing. In theory, I could rehash a few bits of other people’s work, get my XGW chums to look it over, and then publish it in a new magazine I’ve called the Journal of Ex-Gay Studies and claim it as a peer-reviewed milestone study. The problem is glaring.

Again, on this point, Phelan told XGW that the paper was “to be reviewed by members,” confirming that the peer review was nothing more than an internal review by like-minded NARTH members.

These are three massive obstacles even before we reach the content of the paper itself – of which we at XGW look forward to hearing more in Dr Throckmorton’s promised analysis.

The publication, titled What Research Shows: NARTH’s Response to the American Psychological Associations Claims on Homosexuality, is a clear sign (again, an impression we also gained from Phelan) that NARTH is getting nervous as the APA prepares to revise its position on reparative therapy. This dishonest regurgitation of old material in the guise of new research is a grasping at straws that tells us less about human sexuality and more about the desperation of NARTH and its allies in the ex-gay movement.