Ex-Gay Watch

Journey into Manhood, the immersion course that claims to help men solve the problem of homosexual attractions, is hosting a weekend retreat in the UK later this month.

According to JiM, 80 percent of participants report a decrease in homosexual attractions following the course, and over half say they have experienced increased heterosexual attractions. Patrick Chapman addressed the survey’s flaws briefly, but decisively here on Ex-Gay Watch.

JiM is not strictly Christian, but participation does require belief in a “higher power,” and the course’s contents mimic all the familiar traits of the mostly Christian ex-gay movement. While the website says JiM is “not a gay-bashing weekend” and it will “affirm your inherent value as a man, just as you are,” it also suggests that, as a gay man, you have “issues that are alienating you from your authentic heterosexual masculinity.” Same-sex attraction is due to a lack of “masculine affirmation and healthy male bonding,” among other things.

If you need more convincing that Journey into Manhood is comfortably in the lap of the mainstream ex-gay movement, anti-gay UK group Anglican Mainstream proudly names Arthur Goldberg and Dr Joseph Nicolosi among JiM’s endorsers. Arthur Abba Goldberg, who heads up Jewish ex-gay ministry JONAH, was forced to resign from NARTH in early 2010, after his conviction for fraud–which he has tried to conceal for almost two decades–made headlines. Joseph Nicolosi, also of NARTH, is the chief proponent of the theory that absent fathers and overbearing mothers are the cause of male homosexuality.

To mark the 10th anniversary of People Can Change, Journey into Manhood will also be hosting weekend programs in Texas and Florida.

Two men have accused Alan Downing, a life coach with Richard Cohen’s ex-gay International Healing Foundation, of using sexually inappropriate therapy techniques, according to Truth Wins Out.

On separate occasions, Downing allegedly asked Ben Unger and Chaim Levin to undress in front of a mirror and fondle their genitals while he watched, saying this would help them affirm their masculinity.

Downing is a close associate of JONAH, the Jewish ex-gay organization whose leader Arthur Abba Goldberg was exposed as a convicted Wall Street felon earlier this year. He has also run courses and retreats for the controversial Mankind Project., and worked with the gay-to-straight outreach People Can Change and its affiliate Journey into Manhood.

Downing is ex-gay, but admits he is still attracted to men, according to TWO.

First Goldberg, then George Rekers, and now Downing–they’re falling fast this year.

See also Wayne Besen’s follow-up editorial at Huffington Post: Ex-Gay Therapy Is Scandalous.