Ex-Gay Watch

-The Presbyterian Church (USA) ordains its first out lesbian minister.

-GLAAD names Herndon Graddick as its new president.

-The Saudi Arabian government bans “gays and tom boys” from all public schools.

-The Massachusetts Tea Party aligns itself with Scott Lively.

-A bullied Iowa teen commits suicide.

-Rob Tisinai considers the contradictory statements of anti-gay activists.

-The Archbishop of Wales speaks up in support of marriage equality.

-The religious right launches its annual assault on GLSEN’s Day of Silence.

-Mitt Romney hires an openly gay man as his national security spokesman.

-Focus on the Family’s “religious liberty” initiative qualifies for the Colorado ballot.

Andrew Comiskey, founder and current leader of Desert Stream Ministries (Living Waters), has posted what appears to be the first public criticism of Exodus President Alan Chambers recent rebranding efforts.  In a letter to unspecified recipients, Comiskey describes the importance of reparatve therapy to what Exodus does, and the prevalence of the Living Waters brand of therapy in the Exodus network. He describes their “concern over Exodus distancing itself from reparative therapy.”  There was some indication of this in a discussion between Comiskey and Joseph Nicolosi that we reported on recently.

We at DSM are only indebted to the good of reparative therapy and its underpinnings in developmental psychology. How else would we understand how we become disintegrated in our gender identities, as well as gain objective markers en route to wholeness?

We cannot afford to distance ourselves from the whole healing community, which must involve solid reparative therapists. They can do what we cannot in our ministries, and vice-versa. We need them!

Comiskey goes on to question Chamber’s theological underpinnings, claiming that he has put too much emphasis on his Baptist tradition of “once saved, always saved” in supposedly claiming that gays can be Christians.  He refers to comments Chambers made at the Gay Christian Network conference in January.  And there is great concern for positions held in a book by Chamber’s pastor. Read more…

On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow gave a history of the ex-gay movement in light of psychiatrist Robert Spitzer’s retraction of his 2001 study. Watch the report below:

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The brief segment provides a fairly good run-down of how groups such as Exodus International rose up in defiance after the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. Maddow identifies how ex-gays seized on the Spitzer study as proof of a “gay cure,” and how, a decade later, Spitzer admitted his conclusions — that gay men and women could successfully change their sexual orientation — were entirely wrong.

Where it falls short, as most mainstream reports on the ex-gay movement do, is in distinguishing between the varieties of ex-gay treatment. Wacky clips of Richard Cohen screaming and flinging around tennis rackets are mixed with mentions of Mitt Romney and Exodus International, with little context to connect the dots.

That objection can be overstated, of course. To gay men and women on the outside of the ex-gay movement, the message is just as insulting and misguided whether it’s found in the out-and-out quackery of a Cohen or the “progressive” language of “journeys,” “processes” and “healing.”

Maddow highlights a 2006 quote from Alan Chambers, which reminds us how recently the Exodus International president was touting an undisguised message of sexual orientation change (and using it to prop up an anti-gay political message):

The lives of thousands of former homosexuals, like me, verify that homosexuality is not an immutable trait, [and] therefore marriage is not a civil right to be casually granted to any group who demands it.

Since then, Exodus has become ever hazier on the issue of “change,” stepping up efforts to rebrand its message in light of its declining fortunes.

A Welsh amateur rugby player who says a stroke turned him gay is the subject of a BBC Three documentary being broadcast in the UK this evening. Writes Pink News:

Chris Birch, now 27, was a Welsh bank employee who weighed 19 stone and enjoyed heavy drinking sessions.

Following a stroke in 2011, he is now a Welsh hairdresser with sweeping dyed hair and a male fiancé.

I Woke up Gay will examine how Birch’s personality changed so abruptly.

He tells the BBC: “I was doing a forward roll down a grass bank one day and cut off the blood supply to my brain which caused a stroke to happen. It was from there, while I was recovering, that I realised I’d changed.

“The Chris I knew had gone and a new Chris sort of came along. I came to the realisation that the stroke had turned me gay.”

The show airs at 9pm and will be available for streaming for seven days on BBC iPlayer (UK only).

Before Core Issues hit the publicity jackpot with its controversial ex-gay advertising campaign, its director, Mike Davidson, was still licking his wounds from a disastrous radio appearance.

Not long after the tense interview on BBC Radio Ulster in January 2012, Davidson, a trainee psychotherapist, had his membership of the British Psychodrama Association revoked. He’d appeared alongside Professor Andrew Samuels, Chair of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, who challenged Davidson’s use of his BPA affiliation to support Core Issues’ claims:

What’s happening here is that a person who is not qualified is doing his best to bolster and boost his credibility. … I think you’ve been exposed as an untrained psychotherapist at the present time. … All reputable psychotherapy and counselling organizations are, broadly speaking, against reparative or conversion therapy. … If this man wants to belong to what is a long-established and reputable professional organization, he has to keep the rules. Simple as that.

Early on in the exchange, Samuels hit on a very pertinent point:

What I think [Core Issues are] hoping for, amongst other things, is to be able to present themselves as persecuted martyrs on human rights grounds.

And that’s exactly what Davidson went on to do in the interview and what he, Core Issues and Anglican Mainstream will be doing a lot of now the Mayor of London has pulled their planned bus advertising campaign.  They have already announced legal action. The Independent reports:

It is believed lawyers for Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues, a charity which promotes so-called “reparative therapy” for gay men and women, are now looking at two potential legal avenues. The first is to sue for a potential breach of contract and the second is to claim that the group’s human rights were breached under articles nine and ten of the Human Rights Act.

In his January radio appearance, an angry Mike Davidson said:

They can do what they like, but they will not shut me up when I tell them that I have a right, as an individual, as do thousands in this country, to seek our goals and to look for the best professional support. That’s all I have tried to do with those who are being discriminated and are being forced into a gay-affirming worldview. That has got to stop.

Later in the program, he called the ban on reparative therapy “oppressive and a denial of human rights.” But such claims are a distraction, for no one is stopping Davidson or Core Issues from trying to change. The issue is whether a professional mental health body is obliged to call conversion therapy scientific and allow its members to practise it under the organization’s authority. Samuels summarized Davidson’s complaint succinctly:

What you’re doing is manufacturing a very simplistic rights-based argument which, when boiled down, comes like this: any doctor, any psychologist, any psychotherapist, any counsellor must do what their client asks them to do.

A Red Herring: The ‘Gay Cure’ Is Not ‘Traditional Christian Teaching’

Repeatedly in the show, Davidson portrayed his own beliefs and practice, and those of Core Issues, as a simple matter of being faithful to the orthodox Christian faith. He made it clear when he joined the BPA, he told Samuels, that he was “a psychotherapist who is also a Christian.” Scoffing at his treatment by the BPA, he said:

Is anybody surprised? … This is just, what, number three, number four, number five psychotherapist who is booted out because he wants to hold to the principles in his personal life around orthodoxy.

Davidson ended the interview with a return to this straw-man argument:

The thing that is really on the table is the fact that if you hold to basic Christian principles in this specific area, you may not be a psychotherapist. … That’s the new UK that we are living in.

Orthodoxy. Basic Christian principles. The facts are that, while there may be something historically Christian about rejecting homosexuality or “same-sex behaviour,” reparative therapy — clinical treatment to change a person’s sexual orientation — is not a historic Christian practice and is the domain of a number of a handful of 20th- and 21st-century Christians — largely conservative evangelical Protestants, conservative Roman Catholics and Mormons.

In the coming weeks, as the UK’s ex-gay, anti-gay movement takes up its arms on the twin battleground of the media and the courtroom, we can expect more claims that groups such as Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues are being prevented from practising their traditional Christian faith — even that they’re being persecuted. Religious public figures who should know better will probably join them in their claims, as they did to support the disgraced counsellor Lesley Pilkington. It’s possible newspapers such as The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph will throw their weight behind the case.

Meanwhile, most gay conservative Christians will be managing their sexual feelings and behaviour, and living celibate lives, in ways that do not rely on the discredited claims of reparative and conversion therapy. Those who preach that clinical treatment makes gays straight may be making the loudest noise, but despite their attempts to portray themselves as mainstream, they are on the fringes of traditional Christianity.

-The Catholic Church threatens to cut off an immigrant rights group for supporting LGBT equality.

-A French imam blesses the wedding of a gay Muslim couple.

-Anti-gay violence continues to increase in Brazil.

-A group of Colorado State University football players reportedly use anti-gay slurs before beating up four freshmen.

-The CIA hosts a summit for LGBT intelligence workers.

-Opposition to North Carolina’s anti-gay amendment gains momentum.

-Actor Paul Iacono comes out of the closet.

-The New York GOP uses redistricting to protect its four senators who voted for marriage equality.

-A group of football players at a San Antonio high school step up to protect a bullied classmate.

-SPLC attorney Sam Wolfe talks about his experiences in ex-gay therapy.

The British Psychodrama Association has revoked the membership of Mike Davidson, a key figure behind the London bus ads that would — if Mayor Boris Johnson hadn’t put a stop to them – have proclaimed to commuters: “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!”

Davidson is director of Core Issues Trust, a Northern Ireland-based organization that is effectively the UK’s equivalent to the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) in the US. As a trainee psychotherapist, he was a member of the BPA, which describes itself as follows:

The British Psychodrama Association (BPA) is the professional association for psychodramatists and sociodramatists in the UK. The BPA is an Organisational Member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), which upholds professional standards in psychotherapy.

In an interview with BBC Radio Ulster in January, UKPC chairman Professor Andrew Samuels took Davidson to task for using his BPA membership to legitimize his promotion of reparative therapy. In an angry exchange, Samuels indicated, without providing details, that the BPA was investigating Davidson and his association with “gay-to-straight” conversion methods. In March, the BPA revoked Davidson’s membership, effectively stripping him of his professional credentials. Read more…

Ex-gays in the UK will go on the offensive later this month when they launch an ad campaign subverting a well-known pro-gay slogan. But its conservative Christian organizers come with a notorious reputation for promoting pseudoscience and extreme homophobia.

The words “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” will appear on the sides of London buses for two weeks, starting from Monday, April 16.

The surprisingly aggressive message spins a slogan famously used by leading British LGBT campaign group Stonewall: “Some people are gay. Get over it!”

Unfortunately for the campaign’s backers, the announcement comes just as the psychiatrist behind the most widely touted “ex-gay” study has retracted his claims that sexual orientation can change. US psychiatrist Robert Spitzer admitted this week that his 2001 research, which has been used and abused for over 10 years to support the ex-gay message, was wrong.

It also does little to commend the message that the man behind the campaign, trainee psychotherapist Mike Davidson, has recently had his membership of the British Psychodrama Association revoked. Davidson, director of ex-gay group Core Issues Trust, lost his professional credentials for offering reparative therapy, a breach of BPA policy, in turn based on the guidelines of the UK Council for Psychotherapy.

The Northern Ireland-based Core Issues is essentially a British version of NARTH, promoting the claim that homosexuals can be healed, which they say means becoming heterosexual — effectively a gay cure.

The ad campaign is jointly organized by Anglican Mainstream, whose history of ugly, homophobic propaganda Ex-Gay Watch has documented. Earlier this year, the group held a conference featuring claims of gay child-molestation and disease-spreading, with its leader, Lisa Nolland, saying that gay activists corrupted children by teaching in schools that “eating faeces” is fun.

In 2008, Anglican Mainstream – which is anything but mainstream in the Church of England, which it claims to represent — published a book accusing gay Christians of going to church only to “sleep it off and cleanse their consciences after a Saturday night spent cruising for sex at the bars,” and said the movement for gay equality was guilty of sacrificing children to a “Molech.”

The two groups have worked together before, most notably on the January 2012 conference whose title attracted controversy for referring to gays and lesbians as “the lepers among us.”

Both organizations supported Lesley Pilkington, the UK psychotherapist stripped of her professional credentials after she told an undercover journalist he was gay because of low self-esteem, suppressed memories of sexual abuse and a family history of Freemasonry.

________

Update: That didn’t take long. Boris Johnson — Mayor of London, Chair of Transport for London (who were to carry the ads) and a well-known Conservative — has pulled the ads. The Guardian reports:

A clearly angered Johnson said: “London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses.”

Expect public displays of martyrdom from indignant fundamentalists claiming they’ve been victimized “merely” for expressing “traditional Christian teaching.”

For a decade, ex-gays have relied on the results of a 2001 study to prove their claim that “change is possible.” But if they continue to promote its flawed research, they will do so only in the knowledge that its author, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, has now publicly disowned it.

In an article in the May issue of The American Prospect magazine, Spitzer tells Gabriel Arana he wants his retraction of the landmark study on the record:

“In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques are largely correct,” he said. “The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.” … Would I print a retraction of his 2001 study, “so I don’t have to worry about it anymore”?

Spitzer, now 80, was a key figure in the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness. Despite his pro-gay stance, he later published research claiming that some gays and lesbians could, with effort, change. In 2001, his paper “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Orientation?” was met with criticism from his APA colleagues. In 2003, it was published in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, thus gaining an academic status that ex-gay groups such as NARTH and Exodus International could point to as evidence that the research was on their side.

But the flaws were obvious: To arrive at his conclusion that “some highly motivated individuals” could make “substantial change” to their sexual orientation, Spitzer had interviewed, by phone, 200 ex-gays — all referred to him by the very groups that had a vested interest in proving ex-gay therapy could work.

Over the years, Spitzer has disassociated himself from such groups, denouncing them where he believed they distorted his findings. He says he asked Archives of Sexual Behavior to publish a retraction, but its editor refused.

What will ex-gay groups do with this revelation? Spitzer’s presence on the NARTH website is ubiquitous — an internal Google search turns up almost 200 results. One article by Daniel Byrne declares boldly that “another attempt to discredit the Spitzer study … has failed.” How will NARTH react by this new attempt to discredit the study — by its own author?

As of today, the Exodus International website contains no less than five direct references to the 2001 Spitzer study to support its message. The 2009 article “What Does Science Say?” for example, cites it as evidence that “sexual orientation can successfully be changed.” The FAQ “What Does Exodus Believe About Sexual Orientation & Change?” says it shows that “efforts to change sexual orientation can produce significant success,” by which it means “a significant shift from homosexual to heterosexual attraction … sustained … for at least five years.” The site also reprints a May, 2001, Wall Street Journal article in which Spitzer leans on his conclusions to argue that sexual orientation is not fixed and ex-gay therapy can work.

Exodus International has already purged its bookstore of NARTH materials, and its president, Alan Chambers, declared earlier this year that “99.9 percent of the people I know have not changed their orientation.” He later “clarified” that he was referring only to “complete orientation change.” So yes, he says, gays can and do change, much as Spitzer claimed in 2001.

So, will Chambers and Exodus now purge Spitzer from its archives the way it purged NARTH and the pseudoscience of reparative therapy? Will Chambers perhaps finally admit that the “change” Exodus has promoted for 40 years hardly happens at all? That it might be possible to manage choices and behaviour, but that fundamental change in sexual attractions is a pipe-dream? With Spitzer’s retraction, the hope of academic support for the ex-gay paradigm grows ever dimmer.

________

Update: Now the article is online in full, here is a lengthier quote to give a better idea of the context:

Spitzer was drawn to the topic of ex-gay therapy because it was controversial—“I was always attracted to controversy”—but was troubled by how the study was received. He did not want to suggest that gay people should pursue ex-gay therapy. His goal was to determine whether the counterfactual—the claim that no one had ever changed his or her sexual orientation through therapy—was true.

I asked about the criticisms leveled at him. “In retrospect, I have to admit I think the critiques are largely correct,” he said. “The findings can be considered evidence for what those who have undergone ex-gay therapy say about it, but nothing more.” He said he spoke with the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior about writing a retraction, but the editor declined. (Repeated attempts to contact the journal went unanswered.)

Spitzer said that he was proud of having been instrumental in removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. Now 80 and retired, he was afraid that the 2001 study would tarnish his legacy and perhaps hurt others. He said that failed attempts to rid oneself of homosexual attractions “can be quite harmful.” … [Spitzer] asked how many more questions I had. Nothing, I responded, unless you have something to add.

He did. Would I print a retraction of his 2001 study, “so I don’t have to worry about it anymore”?

Spitzer asked Arana to print his retraction — and there it is.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers has published his reflections on what he said to a conference of gay Christians last month.

Speaking to the Gay Christian Network in January, Chambers enthusiastically greeted GCN leader Justin Lee as his “brother in Christ”:

I honestly trust [Justin Lee], and I honestly like him, and I honestly believe that he loves Jesus and that we are brothers in Christ and that we will spend eternity together … and because of that, the thing that brought me here first and foremost is: We’re Christians, all of us. We may have diverging viewpoints … but the thing that brings us together, the thing that causes us to even want to have this dialogue, or need to have this dialogue, is the fact that we all love Jesus. We all serve him. We serve the very same God and believe very different things.

Now Alan Chambers wants his constituents to know he wasn’t endorsing the faith of gay Christians. While he told Lee he viewed him as someone who loved Jesus and served him, he is now at pains to assure Exodus’s conservative evangelical Christian supporters he still regards gay Christians as sinful people who have turned their backs on Jesus:

As an adoptive father, my children are irrevocably mine.  They may disown me, stop talking to me and sin against me, but that does not change the fact that they are mine and always will be.  I believe the same is true of God with His adopted children.

Thus, I believe that people who sin (all of us) can be Christian if they have accepted that free gift of salvation. If someone ever knew Christ, they still do.

In other words, he doesn’t really believe gay Christians love Jesus and serve him, an impression he unmistakably intended to create at GCN. He believes they may have once been saved, and therefore, because of a theological loophole, they may still go to heaven. But essentially they’re wayward children who have disowned God, stopped talking to God and are sinning against God. He said one thing at the conference and another thing today.

As I pointed out immediately following the controversial GCN panel appearance, Chambers has a habit of doublespeak on this issue of gay Christians, as he did last year when he told the Oprah network he expected to see gays in heaven. It was obvious to me that he would have to do the same backpedalling after the GCN conference; it was only a matter of time.

He goes on to downplay his remarks that “99.9 percent of the people I know have not changed their sexual orientation.” He meant that “complete orientation change occurs very rarely” [emphasis mine].

I or one of my co-contributors will unpack more of these statements next week. For now, I’ll offer one more observation about what Alan Chambers did and didn’t say at the GCN conference, which some bloggers lauded as a sign of progress for Exodus. Chambers failed to take responsibility for Exodus International’s actions.

Asked about the message “Change is possible,” he claimed Exodus had always meant something more nuanced than America heard (it was a misunderstanding after all); asked about the dubious practices of Exodus member ministries, he protested he was unaware of any problems; confronted with the story of a gay teen coerced into treatment by an Exodus ministry, his first instinct was to question the integrity of the report. Pressed for an apology for his organization’s past promises of sexual orientation change, he said he was sorry Exodus had been “ambiguous.” His tired excuses were that “we serve a messy God,” and that Exodus hasn’t always been great at communication.

Things will start to change when people who wield such power over the lives of others accept full responsibility for the harm they cause and take concrete steps to undo the damage. Alan Chambers and Exodus International have yet to come close.