Ex-Gay Watch

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.

The Belfast News Letter reports that the World Health Organization has “affirmed the view of controversial groups which say it is medically orthodox to seek treatment for unwanted homosexuality.”

In an article published yesterday, the site said the affirmation followed this month’s Core Issues conference, featuring reparative therapists David Pickup and Lesley Pilkington.

The News Letter continues:

A WHO spokesman said Ego Dystonic Sexuality is a disorder where “the gender identity or sexual preference (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or prepubertal) is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders, and may seek treatment in order to change it.”

WHO was also clear that it does not consider homosexuality per se a disorder.

The suggestion that WHO has recently affirmed reparative therapy in light of the Core Issues conference is puzzling. The above is, in fact, simply a direct quote from the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. It is taken from F.66 of ICD-10 (2006), the most recent version of the index:

F66 Psychological and behavioural disorders associated with sexual development and orientation
Note: Sexual orientation by itself is not to be regarded as a disorder.

Egodystonic sexual orientation
The gender identity or sexual preference (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or prepubertal) is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders, and may seek treatment in order to change it.

I can find no evidence outside the article that WHO has made any recent announcement. At best, what may have happened is someone queried WHO about this, and a WHO staffer simply sent them the relevant excerpt from ICD-10.

This makes the story rather misleading. It is true that WHO in the past has affirmed the right to seek treatment to change sexual orientation — without endorsing a particular reparative therapy — and it’s true that WHO denies homosexuality in itself is a mental disorder. What is questionable is whether WHO has made a new statement on the subject in direct response to Core Issues, which is certainly the impression the report gives.

Incidentally, the American Pyschiatric Association (APA) removed ego-dystonic homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1987, having removed homosexuality in 1973.

Arthur Goldberg, the ex-gay leader exposed earlier this year as a convicted Wall Street felon, will speak at a conference in Northern Ireland in November.

Arthur Abba Goldberg was jailed in 1989 after being convicted of fraud. He later founded JONAH, the Jewish ex-gay ministry originally known as Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, but whose recent name change made it the confusing Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing. Goldberg appears to have deliberately hidden his identity, and stepped down from the highly anti-gay NARTH when the story became public in February. He subsequently blamed everyone but himself for the fiasco.

Evidently none of this has affected his standing among some conservative evangelicals, including the Northern-Ireland-based Core Issues, who have made him their main speaker at a November 1 event named for Goldberg’s anti-gay, ex-gay polemic Light in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Power to Change. (Actually, the book had the word “Torah” in the title, too.)

Goldberg will be joined by “gender wholeness” counselor Baxter Peffer, erroneously referred to as Baxter “Beffer” on the Core Issues website.

Core Issues joined Goldberg in hitting the headlines in February when gay activists criticized it for hosting a conference by Mario Bergner, an ex-gay Anglican priest who claims to have been miraculously healed of the “symptoms” of AIDS.

Update, October 15: The Core Issues website now says the event has been postponed, due to the untimely death of Matthew Davidson, the son of Core Issues director Mike Davidson. Hat tip: XGW commenter William.