Ex-Gay Watch

Local government, police and community investors have distanced themselves from Frontline Church in Liverpool, England, after details of its “gay conversion” ministry were publicized.

In July, I wrote for The Guardian‘s Comment is free about Liverpool LIFE ministry, a group patterned after LIFE NYC, an extreme, anti-gay organization founded by Joanne Highley.

Although Frontline’s defenders are quick to claim they’re only following traditional Christian teaching, Joanne Highley’s teaching goes far beyond the “orthodox” Christian view of homosexuality. Among other things, she believes and practices casting demons out of any bodily orifice that has been penetrated and received an “ungodly deposit of semen.” For Highley, gay sexual orientation in itself is sinful, and it’s something that can be completely cured through prayer, exorcism and dealing with the emotional wounds that supposedly caused it in the first place. She tells her clients to cut off all gay friends completely, as they were never true friends in the first place.

Frontline Church has said it doesn’t follow all of Highley’s teachings, but it has not explained why it made and retains such close ties with an obvious extremist.

The church’s allies in the community are evidently not impressed by the revelation of Frontline’s ex-gay ministry. According to the Liverpool Echo, Merseyside Police has asked the church to stop referring to the regional police force as an “official partner.” Housing association Plus Dane has pulled funding from the church’s Food Bank. And Liverpool Council has said it “would not fund an organisation or its activities where they contradicted our equalities and cohesion policy in the way alleged in this case.”

The story has also been picked up by national newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Also, check out Ex-Gay Watch’s previous coverage of the backstory on Liverpool Frontline Church’s promise of a gay cure.

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Correction (11/17/11): The original article incorrectly stated Plus Dane would continue to fund the church’s Food Bank. Plus Dane has, in fact, withdrawn all funding from Frontline.

A 2007 study of sexual orientation change is back in the news following its publication in a scientific journal. But despite conservative Christians’ championing of the research as proof that gays can change, the article presents nothing new.

Stanton L Jones of Wheaton College, IL, and Mark Yarhouse of Regent University, VA, followed 61 subjects over about seven years of ex-gay therapy to assess whether homosexuals could change.  It was published by Inter-Varsity Press in 2007 as Ex-Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation.

Interested readers can revisit Dr Patrick Chapman’s three-part review of the study to see clearly why it fails — there’s no need to rehearse the flaws again, because what’s presented in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy (Volume 37) is essentially the same. Its negligible results offer little hope for gay Christians who want to do anything more than change their behaviour

The conservative Christian LifeSiteNews.com has already latched onto this old news with the grossly misleading headline “Major Study: Changing Sexual Orientation Is Possible,” but even the authors’ own press release downplays this claim:

In short, the results do not prove that categorical change in sexual orientation is possible for everyone or anyone, but rather that meaningful shifts along a continuum that constitute real changes appear possible for some.

To bolster its optimism, LifeSiteNews.com also throws in mention of NARTH’s 2009 report on sexual orientation change, a mere literature review falsely touted as a new milestone study. Robert Spitzer also gets a nod for his 2003 study, which has been used to prop up an ex-gay, anti-gay message, but the article fails to mention he has since denounced conservative abuses of his findings and says orientation change is rare.

An increasingly desperate Christian Right will try to milk this latest publication for all its worth, but don’t be fooled: Same study, same results, same flaws.

Update: Warren Throckmorton reminds us to mention Mark Yarhouse’s other recent study, which demonstrated that “ex-gay” men in mixed-orientation marriages change their behaviour but not their sexual orientation. Ex-Gay Watch also commented on this here.

A conference on gay-to-straight therapy has been forced to seek a new venue after a Polish university withdrew its support.

The event, featuring notorious NARTH therapist Joseph Nicolosi, was due to take place on September 16 at the Medical School Foundation in Poznan, Poland. The institution cancelled the event before the contract was signed, however, following criticism by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. A front-page story pointed to the American Psychological Association (APA) resolution stating there was a lack of evidence to support the claims of reparative therapists to reverse or cure homosexuality.

The university said hosting the conference “identifies [reparative therapy] with its organization.”

Source: LifeSiteNews.com

The new documentary This Is What Love in Action Looks Like is the definitive account of one of the most shameful episodes in the 40-year history of the ex-gay movement. It’s the story of what happened to gay teenager Zach Stark at Love In Action, a Memphis, TN-based ex-gay ministry, in the summer of 2005.

Zach, then 16, told his parents he was gay. They reacted badly. “They tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me, and they have raised me wrong,” he wrote on his MySpace blog. “I’m a big screw up to them, who isn’t on the path God wants me to be on.”

They enrolled him, against his will, in Refuge, LIA’s teen program. Zach described it as “a fundamentalist Christian program for gays.” For eight weeks he was forced to endure counseling and therapy, both individual- and group-based, in a strictly controlled environment. The object was to turn this gay teen straight.

But Zach’s story, which he tells here for the first time, is just the main thread in a narrative that interweaves several related stories. There is the story of the protesters, including many of Zach’s shocked school friends, who gathered daily outside the LIA facility to show their support for the teenager. There is the story of Lance Carroll, whose parents forced him into Refuge at the same time; in the film, he describes how hearing the protesters outside helped him survive the program. There are also former LIA clients Brandon Tidwell and Peterson Toscano.

And there’s the story of then-LIA Executive Director John Smid. Before I saw this film, I assumed the title was mostly ironic; it’s an account of what Love in Action is and does, but it’s also indictment of the hypocrisy: This is what love in action looks like? Sure.

But what comes through strongly in the documentary is the love of those who rallied around Zach. Local activist Janelle Treibitz says:

We also … came out with, like, a consensus about how we would conduct ourselves in these protests, how we would conduct ourselves to people, to staff members, and … our approach was one of love.

Smid recalls his daily encounters with the protesters:

… I remember driving through, and I heard something different. I heard these people in the streets saying to us as we left, ‘God loves you. God loves you.’ And I just felt a complete shift in the way I perceived the entire process. So for the next week and a half, every time I would come to work or leave, instead of feeling frustrated or angry or embarrassed, I felt loved and cared for by a God that loves me, using whatever vehicle he chose to use to tell me that.

Smid later resigned from LIA and, in 2008, began a new ministry with a different emphasis. In 2010, he issued a formal apology.

Director Morgan Jon Fox doesn’t appear to probe in his interview with Smid; as with other interviewees, he simply allows the subject to tell his story. So there is room for skepticism in evaluating where Smid has come from and where he’s going, and doubtless many gays and lesbians, especially ex-gay survivors, will be totally cynical. My policy is to welcome such steps tentatively, remembering that actions, and not words, will be the ultimate test.

While Fox concentrates on Love in Action, in doing so he provides a wider sketch of the ex-gay movement and its abuses. What we see of Love in Action in the documentary is not an isolated case; the denial, false hope and misguided love pervades the message and ministry of ex-gay groups across the world. That the story is told largely through interviews with those most intimately involved with the LIA controversy only makes the film more compelling here.

Other key players in the story declined to be interviewed. They include Zach’s father, Joe Stark, who stands by his actions, and Alan Chambers, Executive Director of Exodus International, the umbrella organization of which Love in Action is its oldest member ministry.

This Is What Love in Action Looks Like had its premiere in June, 2011.

Other upcoming screenings:

• August 27th at SHOUT, the Birmingham LGBT Film Fest
• September 10th at the Austin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
• September 20th at ReRun Theatre, in New York City
• September 29-Oct 6 at OUT ON FILM, the Atlanta LGBT Film Fest
• November 4th at Indie Memphis Film Fest
• November 3-12 at REELING, the Chicago LGBT Film Fest

Christian therapist Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential runner Michele Bachmann, has been caught in a big lie.

Late last month, recordings emerged of a 2010 radio interview with the Bachmann. He said:

We have to understand: Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. And just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to go down that road. That’s what’s called a “sinful nature.” And we have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings [from] moving into the action steps.

Last week, Bachmann — who has since been shown to be offering gay-to-straight conversion therapy at his Minnesota clinic — denied his comments had anything to do with homosexuality and said the tape had been altered. Now MSNBC’s Hardball has stepped in to clear up the confusion by providing the unedited interview in its original context:

Yes, Bachmann made the offensive and homophobic “barbarians” comment, and no, the recording was not doctored. Bachmann just lied.

Hat-tip: Pam’s House Blend

In a report aired last night, ABC’s Nightline investigated the therapy practice of Marcus Bachmann, the husband of Republican presidential runner Michele Bachmann.

According to a related investigation by Truth Wins Out, Bachmann practices ex-gay therapy, where he and his associates attempt to turn gay men straight. Watch the ABC segment below:

A gay New York Times journalist recently caught up with a former friend and colleague, Michael Glatze, the conservative Christian activist who, in 2007, renounced his homosexuality and claimed to have become straight. Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote about the reunion, with background on Glatze, in the NYT story “Going Straight.”

Following his ex-gay conversion, Glatze, a one-time LGBT youth activist, wrote an editorial for World Net Daily, in which he called homosexuality “neurotic” and “abornmal,” saying it was “lust and pornography wrapped into one.” He also appeared to question whether homosexuality should even be legal:

Homosexuality allows us to avoid digging deeper, through superficiality and lust-inspired attractions – at least, as long as it remains “accepted” by law. As a result, countless miss out on their truest self, their God-given Christ-self.

He’s since made a habit of homophobia and misogyny. In 2009, for example, he called Barack Obama “the world’s first official girl-man president” and decried anti-bullying policies in schools as the result of hysteria from “victim-minded whiners.”

Read the NYT story in full here. A related NYT article this week addressed reparative therapists who “help God-fearing people stay in the closet.“

A British psychotherapist was “reckless,” “disrespectful,” “dogmatic” and “unprofessional” in trying to turn a homosexual patient heterosexual, a hearing has concluded.

Last week, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy found Christian counselor Lesley Pilkington guilty of professional malpractice. after she let her “personal preconceived views about gay lifestyle and sexual orientation … affect her professional relationship in a way that was prejudicial.”

The saga entered the public eye in February, 2010, with an investigative report in The Independent (London), in which gay journalist Patrick Strudwick went undercover to research the world of gay-to-straight therapy. In the article, Strudwick described his visits, in 2009, to two accredited UK counselors to receive reparative treatment.

According to Strudwick’s account, Mrs Pilkington suggested low self-esteem, a family history of Freemasonry and unacknowledged sexual abuse were to blame for his “same-sex attraction,” or “SSA.” He denied any of the three existed, but Pilkington was insistent, he said.

Strudwick has come under fire for deceiving Mrs Pilkington into believing he was an unhappy gay man who wanted to be cured of his homosexuality. Yet even those who support reparative therapy — a practice supported by little scientific evidence — are hard-pressed to justify such dubious practices as linking homosexual orientation to the spiritual influence of Freemasonry and insisting on the presence of sexual abuse. Strudwick’s pretence pales next to this pseudo-scientific charlatanry.

As a result of the hearing, the BACP suspended Pilkington’s licence, and she will have to undergo extensive retraining or risk losing it altogether. With the support of the Christian Legal Centre, however, she is expected to appeal the verdict.

The other psychiatrist in Patrick Strudwick’s investigation was Belfast-based therapist Dr Paul Miller, an associate of Richard Cohen. According to Strudwick, the General Medical Council dismissed his call for a hearing against Miller.

A documentary about the ex-gay movement will have its premiere in June 2011, after six years in the making.

The premiere of This Is What Love in Action Looks Like takes place at Frameline 35, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, which takes place from June 16 to 26. The movie had its genesis in the 2005 story of Memphis, TN, teenager Zach Stark, whose parents forced him to attend a residential gay-to-straight “bootcamp” run by Love in Action, the Exodus-affliated ex-gay ministry.

The film features interviews with many figures at the center of the controversy, including Stark, now 22, his father and then-LIA director John Smid.

There has been no announcement regarding further plans for theatrical or home video distribution.

Watch the trailer below:

Exodus International President Alan Chambers will be appearing on Dr Drew tonight (Friday, April 15). The show airs at 9.00pm ET and PT on CNN’s HLN Network. According to Exodus, Alan will share “his personal story as well as sharing the message and mission of Exodus International.”

I’ll be watching in the hope of finding out today’s official Exodus position on being gay and Christian.