Ex-Gay Watch

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

The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexual is no longer offering continuing education to therapists in the state of California, according to SFGate blogger Susan Davis.

Although some activists had tried to have NARTH‘s rights to provide continuing education revoked on the basis of its homophobic, pseudoscientific beliefs and practices, Davis reports the actual reason is unpaid fees to the California Board for Behavioral Science. In the article, she reveals, surprisingly, that the CBBS doesn’t have the ability to remove an organization from membership for erroneous scientific claims:

As it stands now, the BBS can’t reject a continuing education provider due to its philosophy or even the validity of its scientific claims, executive officer Kim Madsen says, and “that’s been a challenge.” Instead, as long as the provider “meets the requirements as set forth in current law, we have to accept them.” (Those requirements include providing direct or indirect patient care, having qualified instructors and submitting the appropriate applications and fees.)

At its September meeting, however, the BBS will be reviewing those laws and requirements and having a discussion about what Madsen describes as “long-identified deficiencies in the continuing education model.”

An ex-gay therapist who surrounds himself with muscular men to help him feel masculine will be the main speaker at a reparative therapy conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, tomorrow (Tuesday, June 14). He’ll be joined by a Christian therapist who was found guilty of professional malpractice after she told a client his homosexuality was due to Freemasonry and unacknowledged sexual abuse.

David Pickup will speak at Belvoir Church of Ireland in the city, during a conference for the group Core Issues. A flyer for the event announces, “You don’t have to be gay,” and says there will be “tolerance for all views” as the supposed evidence for reparative therapy — clinical treatment to turn homosexuals heterosexual — is discussed.

Core Issues has, frankly, chosen two sitting ducks as its guest speakers. David Pickup is an enigma, to say the least. In 2008, we reported on the strange notions underlying Pickup’s understanding of gender and sexuality. In common with his compatriots at the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or NARTH, he believes that being gay stems from inadequate male role models while growing up. With that end in mind, Pickup apparently believes that the key to treating his own homosexuality is to surround himself with muscular men to admire. Read more…

Image: BTB

Conservative Christian psychologist Dr Warren Throckmorton says that the story of Kirk Murphy, aka “Kraig,” should provoke “a serious re-examination” of gay-to-straight therapy.

Yesterday, Box Turtle Bulletin and CNN broke the true story behind the “Sissy Boy” experiment, during which Kirk, then five, underwent psychiatric treatment intended to turn an effeminate, “gender-confused” homosexual-in-waiting into a masculine, heterosexual boy. That was in 1970. In 2003, aged 38 and gay, Kirk committed suicide. The experiment — which George Rekers hailed throughout his career as an “ex-gay” success — was a failure.

Now Throckmorton, a former advocate of reparative therapy, says the revelation calls all ex-gay therapy into question. He found that the “classic” reparative therapy volume A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, by Joseph Nicolosi, refers to Rekers over 20 times and cites the 1974 paper about Kirk — renamed “Kraig” — as evidence that such therapy can change children with “Gender Identity Disorder,” or GID. Nicolosi writes:

GID Children Can Change

In fact, experts have reported that GID children who were assumed to have a biological problem may in fact respond surprisingly well to therapeutic intervention. Researchers Reker, Lovaas, and Low describe one of their young clients:

When we first saw him, the extent of his feminine identification was so profound (his mannerisms, gestures, fantasies, flirtations, etc., as shown in his “swishing” around the home and clinic, fully dressed as a woman with long dress, wig, nail polish, high screechy voice, slovenly seductive eyes) that it suggested irreversible neurological and biochemical determinants. At the 26-month follow-up he looked and acted like any other boy. People who view the videotaped recordings of him before and after treatment talk of him as “two different boys.”

Interestingly, a look at NARTH’s 2009 literature review, which purported to represent a century’s worth of research into reparative therapy, makes no mention of the 1974 paper. Yet the Journal of Human Sexuality — the discredited NARTH created this and published the literature review in the first edition so it could claim to have published this “significant milestone” in a “peer-reviewed journal” — lists George A Rekers as an associate editor.

Could it be that Rekers and his colleagues, knowing by now that Kirk had committed suicide and was a failed experiment, ensured the paper went uncited? The omission may be telling.

Part 2 of the CNN investigation “The Sissy Boy Experiment: Uncovering the Truth,” will air tonight (Wednesday, June 8th) at 10pm ET on Anderson Cooper 360. According to yesterday’s preview, George Rekers will appear in the segment.

See also Jim Burroway’s online project about Kirk: What Are Little Boys Made Of?

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is once again attacking the veracity of noted geneticist Dr. Francis S. Collins.  For a review of the history of this issue, please see the summary and links in our previous post.  The original NARTH article that started this is “Homosexuality Is Not Hardwired,” Concludes Dr. Francis S. Collins, Head Of The Human Genome Project” from 2007.

This latest effort comes in the form of an article identified as submitted to the NARTH website by David C. Pruden, NARTH’s Vice-President of Operations.  We will assume from here on out that Pruden is the author unless or until we receive information to the contrary (see below).  In it, this writer is painted as having wooed Dr. Collins into making statements favorable to a pro-gay position by “misinforming” him about NARTH.  Supposedly, by not telling him what a good and wholesome organization it is (cough), we hoodwinked Dr. Collins into perverting the science in our favor.

In the US, all correspondence to and from government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where Dr. Collins worked (and is now Director), is archived and can be obtained by making a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  Apparently, four years after the fact, someone at NARTH got the idea to request copies of my email exchange with Dr. Collins.  While they did not quote from them, they did strategically paraphrase and then claim that I had misinformed Dr. Collins.

While all very cloak and dagger, they could have saved some effort and a stamp by simply reading the three year old post here.  We made that exchange public in its entirety, email headers and all, back in 2008.  As noted then, the original emails were not written with public consumption in mind, so they are a bit personal but nonetheless sincere and honest.

So what about the latest article? Read more…