Ex-Gay Watch

Anglican Mainstream has once again demonstrated its deep-rooted homophobia. The British-based organization teamed up with ex-gay group Core Issues to coach a disappointingly small audience on how to treat gays and lesbians — and it took the opportunity to deliver vile smears against the LGBT people it claimed to help.

According to Changing Attitude‘s report, American lawyer and pastor Jim Reynolds, came across the most gracious at The Lepers Among Us, the conference held in London last weekend. The level of compassion declined considerably when Anglican Mainstream’s Lisa Nolland took to the stage:

We were then treated to what can only be described as a lip-quivering and blazing-eyed rambling rant from Ms Nolland about the evils of sex education. She seemed set on outdoing all previous speakers in the smearing of the LGBT community. We had already heard about gays as paedophile child molesters, gays as threats to the family and marriage, gays as spreaders of disease.

But now Ms N was going for gold with her bitter denunciation of LGBT organisations, and especially the Terrence Higgins Trust, for producing perverted and obscene curriculum materials intended to corrupt the innocence of children. Apparently gay activists have conned their way into schools to tell kids that ‘eating faeces’ is great sexual fun (Lisa taught us to call this ‘scat’) and to teach them how to do ‘cock and ball torture’ really well (Lisa said we should refer to this as ‘kink’).

Ms Nolland is also an enthusiastic advocate of the spurious slippery slope argument: tolerate homosexuality and we will be engulfed by all manner of perversions and we will drown in vile pornography. She distributed several ‘information’ sheets including a list of the most popular acts advertised and depicted on the internet such as ‘double anal’ in which ‘a woman is penetrated anally by two men at the same time’, ‘multiple men ejaculating onto a woman’s face’, ‘a penis thrust so far down a woman’s throat that she gags’ etc etc.

Ms Nolland seems to be a world class scaremongerer, alarmist and demoniser. Her presentation was very ugly indeed. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I suspect that even amongst her own constituency there was embarrassment about a lack of balance which appeared to border on pathological obsession.

Even conservative Anglican Peter Ould describes the damning account, which you can read in full here, as “sobering reading.”

As I have written before, Anglican Mainstream is anything but mainstream. By slandering gay men and women, and promoting myths and misconceptions about homosexuality, it proves itself hateful and homophobic.

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.

Roger Crouch, the British activist who led the charge against homophobic bullying following the death of his teenage son, has died.

Dom Crouch committed suicide in 2010, saying he had been the victim of malicious gay rumours. His father, Roger, and mother, Paola, have since dedicated themselves to fighting homophobia and speaking out against bullying.

Earlier this month, the UK LGBT lobbying group Stonewall awarded him the title of Hero of the Year, an honour voted for by the organization’s supporters. Receiving the award, Roger said:

I see this as an award for Dom. I want to say by choosing us for this award you’ve also chosen to take a stand alongside all the young people whose lives have been ended by bullying. We are parents who loved our son. We stood by him in life and we stand by him in death.

Below, watch Roger speak about his son:

Roger’s passing was reported by his wife on the Friends of Dom Crouch Facebook Page last night.

Local government, police and community investors have distanced themselves from Frontline Church in Liverpool, England, after details of its “gay conversion” ministry were publicized.

In July, I wrote for The Guardian‘s Comment is free about Liverpool LIFE ministry, a group patterned after LIFE NYC, an extreme, anti-gay organization founded by Joanne Highley.

Although Frontline’s defenders are quick to claim they’re only following traditional Christian teaching, Joanne Highley’s teaching goes far beyond the “orthodox” Christian view of homosexuality. Among other things, she believes and practices casting demons out of any bodily orifice that has been penetrated and received an “ungodly deposit of semen.” For Highley, gay sexual orientation in itself is sinful, and it’s something that can be completely cured through prayer, exorcism and dealing with the emotional wounds that supposedly caused it in the first place. She tells her clients to cut off all gay friends completely, as they were never true friends in the first place.

Frontline Church has said it doesn’t follow all of Highley’s teachings, but it has not explained why it made and retains such close ties with an obvious extremist.

The church’s allies in the community are evidently not impressed by the revelation of Frontline’s ex-gay ministry. According to the Liverpool Echo, Merseyside Police has asked the church to stop referring to the regional police force as an “official partner.” Housing association Plus Dane has pulled funding from the church’s Food Bank. And Liverpool Council has said it “would not fund an organisation or its activities where they contradicted our equalities and cohesion policy in the way alleged in this case.”

The story has also been picked up by national newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail. Also, check out Ex-Gay Watch’s previous coverage of the backstory on Liverpool Frontline Church’s promise of a gay cure.

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Correction (11/17/11): The original article incorrectly stated Plus Dane would continue to fund the church’s Food Bank. Plus Dane has, in fact, withdrawn all funding from Frontline.

In the Wavertree district of Liverpool, England, Frontline Church has a ministry to gays and lesbians. It’s an ex-gay ministry, LIFE Liverpool, that they say helps people work through childhood pain to overcome their homosexuality.

It was founded in 2000 with the help of Joanne Highley, head of LIFE New York City, whose unusual teachings and practices include exorcizing demons out of bodily cavities such as the anus, the mouth and the uterus. She says that the homosexual orientation is itself sinful and can be overcome by a combination of counseling and prayer. Writing for The Guardian‘s Comment is free last week, I described LIFE Liverpool’s relationship to Highley:

I spoke to Frontline about the Life connection. They said they were “relationally connected” rather than “formally affiliated” to the New York ministry, which had no official authority over the Liverpool ministry. They have a “positive, ongoing friendship” with Highley’s organisation, and they adapt Life materials, combining them with their own resources, to reflect Frontline’s own beliefs.

Questioned about specific statements by Highley, Frontline said as they were not aware of everything Life publishes, they couldn’t say for sure they agreed with all the teaching. Demonic influence can play a part in homosexuality, but not always, and Frontline discourages members and leaders from identifying themselves as “gay”, preferring the descriptor “Christian who struggles with homosexual feelings”.

But let’s be clear that concern over the Life connection is not a simple matter of guilt by association. Joanne Highley, a woman who teaches that homosexual orientation is a sin that can be cured by a combination of psychological therapy and prayer, personally visited Frontline multiple times to help establish an ex-gay ministry based explicitly on her teachings and methods. The church runs that ministry to this day, although it says very little about it publicly.

An Ex-Gay Marriage Machine?

I first encountered LIFE Liverpool in 2006, when I was researching an article for Third Way magazine about ex-gay ministries in the UK. I’d heard about it from someone else involved in another type of ex-gay ministry in the area, who told me of its existence in a raised-eyebrow sort of way. So I phoned Frontline Centre myself to find out more. Pastor Dan was startling in his boldness. Read more…

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.

British teenager Michael Causer died on August 2, 2008, aged 18, a week after being beaten and stabbed for being gay.

Almost three years after this brutal, homophobic hate crime, Michael’s family, along with the LGBT community in Liverpool and across the UK, are asking why the story was largely ignored by the national media in the UK. This short documentary on the subject, The Invisible Death of Michael, retells Michael Causer’s story and features interviews with his family and gay activists, including Peter Tatchell.

Michael lived in the village of Whiston, Merseyside, in the neighbourhood I call home. He was murdered a short distance away, in the adjacent town of Huyton. This documentary was jointly produced by Light Factory and Homotopia, the queer arts festival based in nearby Liverpool. If one positive has come of Michael’s tragic story, it’s that its horrific injustice has strengthened the resolve of the local LGBT to unite and fight homophobia in the city.

A UK psychotherapist may lose her license if a disciplinary hearing finds she attempted to cure a patient of homosexuality.

It is almost a year since Patrick Strudwick published an article in The Independent (London) detailing his experience of ex-gay reparative therapy in the UK. As part of his investigation, the journalist secretly taped sessions with Christian therapist Lesley Pilkington, whom he met through a NARTH conference.

In Strudwick’s recordings, Mrs Pilkington, 60, told him that homosexuality was “a mental illness, an addiction [and] an antireligious phenomenon.” She agreed to provide SOCE — Sexual Orientation Change Efforts — after he said he was a Christian and wanted to leave the “homosexual lifestyle.”

According to the Sunday Telegraph (London), a letter sent to the therapist by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) accused her of “praying to God to heal [Strudwick] of his homosexuality … [of] having an agenda that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people can change and that [she] allegedly attempted to inflict these views on him.”

Pilkington denied she had forced Strudwick into therapy, saying she only offers the treatment to people who choose it because they are “depressed and unhappy” with their sexual orientation.

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.