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).

The founder of a Brazilian group that claims to heal homosexuals has come out against them in an interview with the “Flying Teapot Project” blog.

The English and philosophy teacher, also a theologian, Sergio Viula, 42, born and resident in Rio de Janeiro, was one of the founders of the Movement for the Healthy Sexuality (MOSES), an evangelical NGO which helps people interested in quitting homosexuality.

He tells a tale familiar to that of John Smid, who recently came out against Exodus. Viula recounts how he got married and had children, only to admit that his attraction to men never went away. In fact, according to him, no gay person had ever succeeded in changing their orientation.

[Interviewer] Didn’t you ever get convinced that you had become ex-gay? Did you ever know that you were deceiving yourself?

[Viula] Today I know that I was deceiving myself. But back then, I thought that every sentiment or attraction was a mere case of ‘temptation’ and that it could be overcome with prayer and dedication to god. In the group, we used to think, basically speaking, that being gay was a sin, which should be confessed and abandoned and, therefore, we would proselytize, counsel, pray, preach, recommend certain books, read the Bible – things that believers usually do, but focusing on homosexuality itself … I worked 18 years totals with the church, MOSES started in 1997. In 2003 I was out. I spent about seven years within the group.

Viula is left with much anger toward the ex-gay industry, and tells of MOSES’ utterly abysmal success rate:

Nobody really quit being gay. There were relationships even within the group, between an activity and another, they would always find time for that. Can you figure out how much suffering to myself and to all of those who have already worked or been influenced by this kind of ‘ministry’? That’s enraging! And there are people repeating that stupid discourse until today.

After Smid and former Exodus Global Alliance counselor Paul Martin, Viula is the third ex-ex-gay leader to come out recently against the movement. The dominoes seem to be falling.

H/T commenter James

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?

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

It’s not news that the solution Exodus gives to young people for their attraction to the same sex is to refrain from acting on it and “deny themselves for Christ.” But a recent article brings Exodus to a new Orwellian level, this time by saying that being ascetic with one’s interpersonal relationships is a Godly calling when you are gay.

In “Loneliness is Good,” an article cross-posted to the Exodus Student Blog, Mike Goeke tells of his struggle to find Christian male friends after being told doing so would be a way to help heal his homosexuality.

I read many books, and a common ‘cure’ for my problems included finding some good male friends with whom to have healthy, authentic relationships.

This is in line with the disproven hypothesis that gay men become gay because their lack of “authentic” relationships with other men, especially of their fathers. But despite joining an inter-denominational Bible group, Mike found himself more alone than ever:

I sat alone most nights, and rarely spoke to anyone.  I looked around the room and everyone seemed to know everyone else.  Instead of finding friends, my loneliness only seemed to grow heavier.

One night, after he had decided to give up on Bible study altogether, God caused him to come to a realization.

In the dark of my room, as I expressed my frustration, I sensed God speaking into my heart.  He said, not audibly but clear nonetheless, “go to the Bible study to meet ME.”

In the days that followed, I realized that my greatest need at that moment was not connecting with a friend.  My greatest need was connecting with my God.  As I quieted myself down, it became clear to me that God could not entrust me with the kind of friendship I longed for at that time.  I had set up ‘friends’ as a sort of idol and made friendship the key to my joy and my fulfillment and my healing. I would have devoured friends had He given them to me then. God was gracious in many ways to deny me what I so longed for because it compelled me to Him and the true source of my affirmation and identity.  And, amazingly, as I pursued a deeper relationship with God, I found myself developing relationships with other men, and the friendships I had longed for began to happen.

For ex-gays, just about any red flag or stumbling block can be justified as part of the struggle, maybe even as a message from God Himself. Struggling to make friends? God must be denying you friendship for some reason. And it must be related to your struggle with homosexuality. Exodus’ real purpose, it appears, is helping one rationalize all of life’s stumbling blocks into something God intends.

I have gone through several seasons of loneliness.  I believe that God orchestrates those seasons in my life – in all of our lives – to help pull us back to Him.  We can be so prone to lose sight of Him and to make something else or someone else our center.  But when He becomes all we have, we realize more clearly that He is really all we need.  When He, in His godly and relational perfection, speaks affirmation and friendship and love and acceptance into our souls, we are perfectly satisfied.  And when we are perfectly satisfied in Him, we are so much more ready to be a true friend to someone else, and to receive true friendship in a healthy way.

I agree that any obsession or extreme dependency can be unhealthy. It can indeed cause one to lose sight of what’s important – for the religious person, it can cause one to lose sight of God. But why must simple social awkwardness or a struggle to connect with strangers be conflated with one’s struggle with same sex attraction?

God designed us to be in community and to be in friendship.  Those are good things, and things we all must have.  But God did not design us to idolize or worship friends and relationships.

It’s natural for human beings to seek out communion with other human beings. We are, with few exceptions, social creatures. Experiencing loneliness, even in an extreme way, does not mean one is ultimately “idolizing friendships.” But I suspect a different motive behind Goeke’s longing for and wariness of male friendship.

Befriending someone is a natural first step to a romantic relationship – something disallowed as a celibate gay person.

He promises that He can satisfy you, and you will discover the immensity of what it means to be fulfilled and have abundance in Christ alone.  And when your eyes are off of you and on God as the true center of your existence, you might just realize that you are not alone after all.

But such ethereal comfort is not the same thing as earthly comfort. This article does nothing to address specifics of a lonely, if religiously devout, life. The plain fact is, not all religious people are called to be celibate, and being forced to embrace such a lifestyle can cause extreme loneliness that feels anything but “good.” In fact, it can lead to depression, despair, and all the consequences associated with it.

It is a twisted way of telling young gay people that a “Godly” life of loneliness is how it “gets better.”

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.”

Influential Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler has defended gay-to-straight conversion therapy by telling readers of his latest column that being gay is in itself “deeply sinful.”

Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote in the context of the controversy over the ex-gay views of therapist Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential runner Michele Bachmann.

Most conservative Christians are careful to distinguish between orientation and behavior, or at least they keep the language very fuzzy, but Mohler firmly nails his colors to the mast:

Actually, the Bible speaks rather directly to the sinfulness of the homosexual orientation — defined as a pattern of sexual attraction to a person of the same sex. … Paul identifies the sinful sexual passion as a major concern — not just the behavior. … The New Testament reveals that a homosexual sexual orientation, whatever its shape or causation, is essentially wrong, contrary to the Creator’s purpose, and deeply sinful. Everyone, whatever his or her sexual orientation, is a sinner need of redemption. … But those whose sexual orientation is homosexual face the fact that they also need a fundamental reordering of their sexual attractions. About this the Bible is clear. [Emphases mine.]

Mohler’s message to gays is that they are sinning simply by having the desires. They must change.

CNN Religion yesterday suggested Mohler was one of “many Christians cool to conversion therapy for gays.”  Well, he is, in a sense, but not in the way CNN portrayed. Mohler admits secular scientists and therapists are almost unanimously against reparative therapy, and he describes in detail just how many scientific and professional organizations have denounced or cautioned against it recently. His hazy response is this:

Christians cannot avoid the debate over reparative therapy, nor can we enter the debate on secular terms.

It is, as my colleague David Roberts just said to me, “the final cop-out.” So what is Mohler’s answer to the sin of same-sex attractions?

We must bring to this conversation everything we know from God’s Word about our sin and God’s provision for sinners in Christ. We will hold no hope for any sinner’s ability to change his or her own heart, and we will hold little hope for any secular therapy to offer more than marginal improvement in a sinner’s life. … We know that something as deeply entrenched as a pattern of sexual attraction is not easily changed, but we know that with Christ all things are possible.

Well, at least Mohler is honest. His answer to the sin of homosexuality is effectively what Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out has said time and again is the essential message of the ex-gay movement: Pray away the gay.

Photo: Timmy Brister