Ex-Gay Watch

A number of British conservative evangelical leaders have written to the Daily Telegraph to express their support for Lesley Pilkington, the Christian therapist found guilty of professional malpractice for offering a “gay cure” to an undercover journalist.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is among the 70 signatories of the letter. Also joining him are the former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, the current Bishop of Chester the Right Reverend Peter Forster, the Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham — and several names representing the most extreme end of the anti-gay, ex-gay movement in the US. They include JONAH’s Arthur “Abba” Goldberg, PFOX’s Regina Griggs, and David Pickup, Jeffrey Satinover, Julie Hamilton and Benjamin Kaufman of NARTH.

To defend the practice of gay-to-straight reparative therapy, the signatories rattle off the names of Joseph Nicolosi, Dean Byrd, Robert Spitzer, and Jones and Yarhouse, apparently ignorant of just how limited – and sometimes outright misleading — the scope and results of such research have proved.

But Carey et al have also glossed over the reasons why Lesley Pilkington was banned from practising psychotherapy in the UK. That she offered to help journalist Patrick Chapman to change his sexual orientation is almost beside the point — she insisted, despite his denials, that the roots of his homosexuality were in low self-esteem, (non-existent) childhood sexual abuse and (also non-existent) a family history of freemasonry. Lesley Pilkington was guilty of sheer quackery.

It’s no surprise that Lisa Nolland and Chris Sugden of the ultra-homophobic Anglican Mainstream would support Pilkington. But that leading Church of England evangelicals such as Lord Carey and Bishop Michael Nazir Ali would not only support her but throw their weight behind the anti-gay pseudoscience of NARTH is indefensible.

[Edited to reflect the fact that Michael Nazir-Ali is the former Bishop of Rochester.]

A conference taking place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, today offers ways for conservative Christian churches to minister to “the lepers among us” — namely, gays and lesbians, or those who “struggle with same-sex sins.”

Astonishingly, Core Issues, which organized it and an identical conference taking place in London, England, tomorrow [correction: next week], failed to foresee the offence the “leper” label would cause.

A press release issued yesterday said:

The conference organisers recognise that the event’s title “The Lepers Among Us” has caused some misunderstanding, being taken as a call for the church to treat LGBT people in the way that lepers were treated by society in biblical times – shunned and regarded as untouchable. In fact the intention is the opposite. This conference criticises the church for behaving in this very way – treating LGBT people as “outcasts” – and calls upon it to help end prejudice wherever it is found, especially within the church.

So what can we expect of a conference organized by Core Issues? Their dubious choice of speakers in the past, including Lesley Pilkington, David Pickup and Arthur “Abba” Goldberg, of JONAH, shows a strong identification with the type of anti-gay, ex-gay conservatism promoted by NARTH in the US.

Core Issues Trust’s claim that it does not offer conversion therapy is somewhat disingenuous, for while it doesn’t directly offer therapy at all, it clearly stands for the NARTH approach. The homepage currently links directly to an article by David Pickup promoting “authentic reparative therapy” and decrying Exodus International for rejecting it. To support its claim that gay orientation is unnatural, the Core Issues website links approvingly to a PFOX article labelling homosexuality a “public health crisis” and citing the discredited “gays die at 41″ claim. The science section of its websites offers links to articles by Neil Whitehead and Jeffrey Satinover, both of NARTH. The latter is a Core Issues board member.

Core Issues promotes a “compassionate” approach to the “same-sex attracted,” but ultimately its message to gay Christians is that they need healing, and it is clear that by “healing,” they mean healing NARTH-style:

There is a growing body of research evidence indicating that sexual preference is neither immutable, innate nor chosen. As a consequence of our basic sinfulness we all have desires that we do not choose to have but we do have choices with respect to what we do about them. As a consequence our sexual identity can be reinforced or altered by either gender-affirming or gay-affirming lifestyles or therapies. CORE works with people who voluntarily seek to change from a “gay” lifestyle to a gender-affirming one. This is sometimes referred to as a “sexual re-orientation” process.

Merely abstaining from homosexual activity, although admirable, cannot be regarded as healing. Heterosexual preference is the goal of gender-affirming therapy and this may lead to marriage. However there will always be those who choose to remain celibate and single. Such singleness should be valued and respected.

NARTH founder Joseph Nicolosi, arguably the father of modern reparative therapy, has retracted his claim that a patient was able to change his sexual orientation through an SSRI.

In 2009, Dr Nicolosi said his client had made no progress in eight years of therapy, but after a course of Lexapro, a brand of the antidepressant escitalopram, “he discovered that he had no more sexual attractions to men.” Although his claim failed to find a publisher, it didn’t stop NARTH using it as evidence in its 2009 ground-breaking, peer-reviewed study, the notorious publication that turned out not to be ground-breaking, peer-reviewed or even a study — it was a mere (very selective) literature review, published by NARTH and reviewed internally.

Nicolosi has now said the evidence doesn’t support Lexapro as a gay cure. Writes Dr Warren Throckmorton, who reported this story:

Instead of noting that the case reported was only one success out of four tries, the authors [of the NARTH paper] only noted the one case which appeared to be a success at the time. Now, according to Dr. Nicolosi, Lexapro has not lived up to that claim.

This report can be added to others where significant questions have been raised (e.g., the Bieber study, the Kaye study, the work of Masters and Johnson, the Pattison and Pattison research).

Ex-gay guru Richard Cohen of the International Healing Foundation has published an “apology” to gays and lesbians he has hurt:

“We at IHF wish to offer a sincere, heartfelt apology to everyone in the LGBTQ community,” said IHF founder and director, Richard Cohen. “I apologize and ask forgiveness to those who were hurt by our message.” Cohen, a leading expert in the field of sexual orientation and married father of three, knows first-hand how it feels to be ostracized having lived a gay life.

Beginning today, IHF’s doors are wide open to everyone in the LGBTQ and straight communities. The new mission, “Coming Out Loved,” is the catalyst of true tolerance, real diversity, and equality for all. IHF staff will assist anyone who is conflicted about their sexuality and other challenging issues that arise for many in the gay community.

Could there be a more cynical attempt to jump on the “I’m sorry” bandwagon? If he really understood the gravity of how his message has hurt LGBT people, he certainly wouldn’t be presenting himself as “a leading expert in the field of sexual orientation.” Nor, having said he’s now promoting a message of diversity and tolerance, would Cohen throw in his lot with NARTH, the supposedly professional organization actually made up mostly of anti-gay religionists and activists, not the mental health professionals it says it represents. From Cohen’s press release:

IHF has adopted therapeutic guidelines from the American Psychological Association for members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities; American Counseling Association guidelines for the transgender community; and National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality therapeutic guidelines for anyone questioning their sexuality and/or experiencing unwanted SSA.

In 2007, former ex-gay leaders Jeremy Marks, Darlene Bogle and Michael Bussee unambiguously apologized for the harm they had done. Canadian ministry New Direction really did take a new direction when it turned its back on the false promises of Exodus International. More recently, John Smid went further than ever before in acknowledging how badly he had gotten his message wrong, and it was clearly one more important step along a journey he has been making since the events surrounding Love in Action in 2005.

Now Cohen, sensing the tide is against him, emerges from nowhere and rattles off a glib apology, announceing that his organization will embrace everyone, gay and straight. The smell of cold, calculated fakery is nauseatingly potent.

Hat-tip: ThinkProgress.

Although the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality promotes itself as a professional organization, mental health professionals make up a mere quarter of its 1,000-strong membership.

Dr Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian and psychology professor who has become increasingly skeptical of ex-gay “science,” obtained the figures directly from a senior NARTH official:

Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists.

Throckmorton observes the sharp contrast with the claims of the Family Research Council (FRC), who last month said NARTH was

primarily composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professional therapists and counselors who offer ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.

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.

Exodus International has relaunched its online bookstore at Exodusbooks.org, but some key titles are missing from the shelves.

In particular, there appear to be no books by the notorious Dr Joseph Nicolosi, the father of ex-gay reparative therapy and former president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.

Nicolosi’s seminal work Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality (1992), in which he articulated his view that distant fathers and overbearing mothers cause homosexuality, is no longer listed. Also missing are Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and NARTH’s Handbook of Therapy for Unwanted Homosexual Attractions, although I can’t confirm if those two were previously in the catalogue.

So is it an oversight, or has Exodus made a conscious decision to disassociate from NARTH and its promise of a gay cure through psychiatry? If the latter, I can’t help but note that Exodus chief Alan Chambers has harsh words for apostates who try to distance themselves from his own organization.

Anyone notice any other glaring omissions from Exodus’s new bookstore?

Anti-gay activist Dr Michael L Brown will be a guest speaker at NARTH’s conference in Arizona this fall.

Brown, who recently self-published a massive diatribe against the “gay agenda” titled A Queer Thing Happened to America, will appear at a plenary session on November 4.

We’ve already documented extensively Brown’s anti-gay rhetoric and his hostile, inflammatory stance towards gays and lesbians. To this history of homophobia, he recently added a skewed interpretation of the death of Lawrence King, the California teen shot dead by classmate Brandon McInerney. Writing on OneNewsNow.com, Brown placed the blame for Larry’s death on gay activism:

And how can I claim that gay activists are complicit in Larry’s death? To start, there are plenty of unstable children in our schools today, just like Larry and Brandon, yet gay activists are encouraging kids to come out at young and younger ages. This is downright irresponsible.

After all, it is gay activists who constantly remind us that LGBT kids are bullied and even beaten up at school. They tell us how dangerous the school environment is for kids who identify as LGBT, and yet at the same time, they praise kids like Larry for coming out at 10. They even want more Gay Straight Alliances in our middle schools, where pre-teens can declare their gay identity to their peers and faculty advisors without their parents’ knowledge. Why? So they can become targets of hatred and potential violence? If our schools really are so “homophobic” and dangerous, why not encourage these kids to keep their sexual orientation to themselves until they’re in a safer environment?

More of my review of A Queer Thing Happened to America  is forthcoming, as promised — when I have the stomach to pick it up again. Alas, discovering Brown had written seven pages comparing my arguments to those of NAMBLA left me literally feeling nauseated.

Hat-tip: Dr Warren Throckmorton.

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 National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality has congratulated gay-to-straight conversion therapist Marcus Bachmann for “sticking to the science.”

Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential runner Michele Bachmann, runs a clinic in Minnesota offering ex-gay therapy. His description of gays as “barbarians [that] need to be educated [and] disciplined” made headlines, prompting his embarrassing attempt to deny ever having made the remarks, claiming the recordings were doctored. (They weren’t.)

Defending Bachmann in its July 26 bulletin, NARTH said that

change therapies have been offered for the past century and have been found to be successful. In fact, over the past 125 years, change of sexual orientation has been documented via case studies, clinical reports, and research studies (NARTH, 2009). It is clear that change of both behavior and attractions is indeed possible.

This is false. For an idea just how poor some of these case studies have been, familiarize yourself with the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, aka “Kraig,” the subject of experiments by disgraced change therapist Dr George Rekers, who claimed to have cured him of his “sissy boy” tendencies.

More recent studies, such as those by Robert Spitzer, and Jones and Yarhouse have fared badly in proving the ex-gay mantra that “change is possible.” Dr Jack Drescher recently summed up the reality of orientation change by likening success to a winning lottery ticket: “Planning your financial future on a lottery ticket is like planning your sexual future on a conversion therapy.”

Undeterred by the absence of scientific evidence, NARTH continues to manipulate the data to support its belief that sexual orientation can be made to change through psychiatric therapy. Unfortunately for NARTH, at a time when such claims are under increasing scrutiny, its support is dwindling rapidly, as its message regarding Bachmann acknowledges:

Those candidates in the public spotlight, and it will get far more intense as we get closer to election-day, are to be congratulated for sticking to the science and supporting client rights no matter how politically incorrect it is to defend truth and freedom regarding homosexuality.

Knowing it’s an uphill battle, however, NARTH makes sure to trumpet its most pressing concern loud and clear before getting to its defense of Bachmann: Money.

Screenshot from NARTH