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.

American evangelical leader Lou Engle has confirmed his support for the leaders who drafted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.

Engle, whose TheCall conference in Uganda promoted the bill that would spell execution for gays and their supporters, told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches that he was in favor of “the principle of a nation … restraining [homosexuality] from coming into their nation.”

He said he supported “a legal restraint and punishment” to keep out the “homosexual agenda,” but was evasive about what type of punishment he favored. He denied supporting the death penalty for gays, but said there were biblical grounds for execution in the case of a person transmitting HIV to a minor.

Engle downplayed his association with David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who drafted the bill, and said he did not even remember meeting Bahati and his right-hand man, Bishop Julius Oyet. He did, however, say that he “appreciated the two guys whose hearts were to bring forth a principled bill.”

In May this year, Engle praised Ugandans for “showing courage to take a stand for righteousness in the earth.”

More analysis from Dr Warren Throckmorton can be found here.

Ugandan MP David Bahati was “ecstatic” that American evangelical leader Lou Engle supported his Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, according to journalist Jeff Sharlet.

The bill, which would effectively make homosexuality – and “aiding” homosexuality – a capital offense, was promoted heavily at Engle’s TheCall Uganda conference in May this year. More recently, Engle apologized and denied having anything directly to do with the promotion, claiming it occurred in his absence. But, as Warren Throckmorton has shown, the bill was promoted in Engle’s presence as well.

Now writer Jeff Sharlet adds more confusion to this web of inconsistencies and half-truths, saying he spoke to Bahati, who believed Engle explicitly supported the bill:

Both [Bishop] Oyet and Bahati told me that Engle had explicitly expressed his support for the bill, telling them that he had to lie to the Western media because gays control it.

The rest of Sharlet’s account throws doubt on other claims by Engle, including the suggestion that Christian leaders in Uganda are trying to soften the penalties in the bill. Bahati supports the harsh punishments, obviously, since he drafted the bill. It appears Bishop Oyet is now his right-hand man.

Throckmorton follows up Sharlet’s guest post with some pressing questions for Engle, whose words have been inconsistent at best, deceptive at worst. Read the full article here.

Scott Lively, the anti-gay activist whose conference appearance precipitated Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, is fighting back against the media’s “character assassination” of him.

In an email sent to supporters this week, Lively wrote:

Friends,

I’m looking for a good Christian media source to interview me on film on the Uganda issue for posting online.  I intend to get off defense and counter-attack the false witnesses with hard facts about Uganda and the dishonest way the media has addressed the story.  Please forward this to any pro-family journalists you know and ask them to contact me at sdllaw@gmail.com.

In the mean time, I have created a new category of news stories at DefendtheFamily.com under the title “Uganda.”  There are about 20 stories there now, going back to about 2003 which show the growing problem of pro-homosexual activism in that country, long before my 2009 seminar which is now being blamed for creating a climate of “homophobia” in Uganda. There are also numerous examples of liberal media propaganda about the anti-homosexuality bill.

If you happen to hear someone criticize me based on the intense, global anti-Scott Lively character assassination by these media, please refer them to our website, both to read the material there, but also to download Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda which was the source of all of my comments and teaching in Uganda.

Thanks for standing with me through the firestorm,

Dr. Scott Lively

The media hardly needs to assassinate his character. His own testimony is sufficient: he is in favor of the criminalization of homosexuality, and opposes the death penalty only on pragmatic grounds, not on principle, as Dr Warren Throckmorton points out. Lively’s preferred solution is “rehabilitation” – in other words, forced reparative therapy for homosexuals.

Scott Lively’s ugly words speak for themselves – and for his character.

Warren Throckmorton gets to the heart of Sodom and Gomorrah in his latest blog post:

The real sodomite is the arrogant person, the overfed and apathetic person who ignores the poor and others in need. The sexual sins of Sodom are second rate compared to the sins of pride and greed. Ban Sodomy, anyone?

Sodomy, viewed from God’s perspective, is practically the American way. I guess we have been exporting sodomy to Uganda.

You might think Throckmorton is getting liberal. In fact, he is merely being consistent with Scripture (Ezekiel 16:49-50):

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.

Throckmorton suggests conservative Christians should direct their (considerable) anger towards greed, selfishness and indifference, instead of the gays:

The sins of Sodom mark the American church in ways that are very uncomfortable to confront. Defined biblically, I hope we can unite against sodomy. Defined biblically, we have all been sodomites, have we not?

We agree.

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.

Over 100 activists have pledged to join a protest in London on Saturday, when reparative therapist Dr Joseph Nicolosi (pictured) addresses conservative Christians at the Sex & the City Conference.

Nicolosi will be joined by NARTH colleague Jeffrey Satinover and JONAH President Arthur Goldberg for the weekend, organized by CARE and Anglican Mainstream, the Church of England group behind the egregiously homophobic 2008 publication God, Gays and the Church.

Among Nicolosi’s outmoded and offensive ideas are that lack of fatherly love leads to homosexuality (“If you don’t hug your sons, some other man will,” he tells fathers) and that being artistic is a warning sign of a gay child.

A major plank in the arguments of reparative therapy organizations like NARTH has been the 1979 study by Masters and Johnson, but as Warren Throckmorton reported this week, a new book suggests its findings were severely misleading, if not completely fabricated.

A tip of the hat to Peterson Toscano, who is currently touring the UK. (And this author will be sure to catch him if he can!)

Danish researchers are to publish a study whose findings will challenge the claims of anti-gay propagandists Paul (pictured) and Kirk Cameron.

Epidemiologists Morten Frisch and Henrik Brønnum-Hansen will publish “Mortality Among Men and Women in Same-Sex Marriage: A National Cohort Study of 8333 Danes” in the January 2009 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The study finds that since 1996 the mortality rate among gay men in same-sex marriages has been virtually equivalent to that of heterosexuals.

Their conclusions directly contradict the Camerons, whose notoriously flawed study claimed that gay males had an average lifespan of 42 years. True to the Camerons’ intentions, the results have been used to bolster the arguments of anti-gay groups eager to portray homosexuality as a destructive “lifestyle.”

Evidently not one to mince his words, Frisch earlier told ex-gay-supportive Warren Throckmorton that Cameron’s report was “agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook,” and that its “methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication.”

Ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan’s wife of three years, Cheryl Quinlan, appears to have received a decree of divorce in May of 2007, having filed the initial complaint seventeen months earlier.  XGW readers will recognize Greg from a recent incident involving distorted quotes attributed to noted geneticist Francis Collins.  The couple had no children and both considered themselves ex-gay before marriage.  Greg did not reply to our request for a comment.

This writer debated about whether or not to post this information.  Divorce is a painful, private time and we would not wish it on anyone, nor do we want to make things worse for Greg or Cheryl.  The inevitable pain of such events led in part to our request that Pam Ferguson (Willful Grace) write for XGW.  We hoped that she could help others recognize and steer clear of the ex-gay philosophy that holds heterosexual marriage as the ultimate proof of a successful “conversion.”  Too many have gone down that road in a mockery of what marriage means — a bitter irony when one considers that these same unions are held up by Exodus leaders “doing their part” in support of California’s (anti-marriage equality) Proposition 8.

The primary reason for us to report this, however, is that Greg and Cheryl first put their marriage into play by making it such a large part of their ex-gay activism.  Even more than most, they displayed it as proof of their claims that people can change from gay to straight.  And they used it as the basis of their platform to convince law makers to deny the rights of others. For example, in his testimony for Ohio’s version of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Greg said:

Tens of thousands of homosexuals have changed and more desire to change. Homosexuality is a behavior–not a genetic trait. Based on verifiable evidence, there is no justification for same sex marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnership legislation. None.

My wife and I are living proof–along with thousands of others–that persons with same-sex attraction can, and have, changed–and thereby can marry and be happy again.

We have chosen to follow the Manufactures’ specific guidelines for our lives. That means committed to one another as man and woman.

Read more…

By now, regular readers of Ex-Gay Watch will know of the controversy surrounding homophobic remarks made by Iris Robinson, a Member of UK Parliament.

Robinson, a health spokesperson and wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister, said that homosexuality was “vile,” “disgusting,” “nauseating” and “an abomination,” and recommended ex-gay therapy to turn homosexuals heterosexual.

We have already discussed a handful of contrasting reactions, but there are others worth noting. For example, Canadian Exodus ally Wendy Gritter weighs in on Warren Throckmorton’s blog to denounce the invective in no uncertain terms: Read more…