Box Turtle Bulletin

Ex-Gay Question to be Central to Federal Lawsuit

Timothy Kincaid

July 1st, 2009

In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal lawsuit by Ted Olson and David Boies to overturn Proposition 8, the judge has decided against placing a hold on Prop 8 and instead is opting for a swift consideration. This is the position that was requested by Gov. Schwarzenegger and Atty. Gen. Brown; they felt that placing a hold would lend to confusion for all parties.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle reveals that Olson and Boies will be relying on the precident set by Romer v. Evans in which the US Supreme Court determined that states cannot deny rights to gay people as a class based solely on animus.

The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason.

“Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.”

This case also will ask a question that is at the core of all civil rights legal issues: are gay people really a distinct group of people. Or, in other words, is sexuality immutable.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court.

Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.”

There is little doubt that ex-gays and ex-gay groups will testify before court. And there is little doubt that they will claim “change”.

However, will they be truthful? Will they admit that “change” is only in perspective, in behavior, in identity, but not in attractions?

Sadly, the history of ex-gay activists suggests that they will seek to confuse the court and to leave the impression that orientation can be “overcome through the power of Jesus Christ”. I hope I’m wrong.

Christian Groups Defend Abusive Ex-Gay “Exorcism”

Jim Burroway

June 26th, 2009

This video documents severe abuse, pure and simple:

It shows church members standing the youth on his feet by holding him under his arms, and people shouting as organ music plays. “Come out of his belly,” someone commands. “It’s in the belly — push.” Later, the teenager is back on the floor, breathing heavily. Then he’s coughing and apparently vomiting into a bag. “Get another bag,” a participant says. “Make sure you have your gloves.”

Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Connecticut, posted a twenty-minute video on YouTube, but took it down amid mounting criticism of its abuse of the sixteen-year-old boy. (Other copies of that video are now available on YouTube.) This sort of abuse is not that uncommon:

It’s nearly impossible to say how often similar exercises occur in churches nationwide. But Kamora Herrington, who runs a mentoring program at True Colors and has worked with the youth, said she believes it’s fairly common. “This happens all the time,” she said. “This is not isolated.”

Robin McHaelin, executive director of True Colors, an advocacy group for gay youths, said her organization is aware of five cases in recent years in which youths in her program were threatened with exorcism.

At least one Christian dominionist group, Gary Cass’ Christian Anti-Defamation Commission pulls the religious exemption card — along with the race card — on this abuse, saying  that no church should be “maligned” for abusing teens. Exodus International gave its classic non-condemning response:

Exodus International, a Christian group that believes gays can become straight through prayer and counseling, does not advocate the church’s approach, said Jeff Buchanan, director of church equipping.

There are a lot of things I don’t “advocate” either, but that’s a very far cry from condemning that which is clearly in the wrong. This really shouldn’t be difficult, but then I thought that about Exodus’ refusal to address their board member’s active association with a known Holocaust revisionist and hate-group leader Scott Lively. There was a time, believe it or not, when Exodus was able to provide a measure of responsibility on those areas which were obviously dangerous and abusive, but those times appear to be long gone.

Update: According to Rod 2.0: “A minister and trusted source of Rod 2.0 reports the 16-year-old boy no longer attends the church and has found an LGBT ‘inclusive and affirming’ church.”

Santa Rosa CA Ex-Gay Pastor Not So Ex-Gay

Jim Burroway

June 23rd, 2009

Pastor Matthew C. Manning heads an outfit in Santa Rosa, California known as Lighthouse World Evangelism, which promises to deliver people from alcohol and drugs, mental struggles, homosexuality and HIV/AIDS. The last two are core to Manning’s own story. He claims to have been “delivered” from homosexuality in 1989, and miraculously healed from full-blown AIDS in 1994. Pat Robertson was impressed enough with that claim to feature Manning on an episode of the 700 Club in 2002. Mike Airhart, then writing for Ex-Gay Watch, tried to get to the bottom of those claims, but Manning refused to provide documentation from his doctors.

That was six years ago. Mike moved on to Truth Wins Out, and David Roberts picked up the thread. He recently re-opened the investigation and tried to find proof — any proof — that Manning had once tested positive for HIV for nine years and was then cured more than a decade ago. Unsurprisingly, Roberts was unable to find any evidence for a Manning’s cure, miraculous or otherwise.

But in looking around, he managed to find something else entirely different. Turns out that Manning has been charged in 1998, 2000, and in 2005 with complaints of soliciting other males for sexual encounters in public parks and other venues. The 2005 episode includes an order to stay away from 24 Hour Fitness locations in Santa Rosa for one year.

There are many more details, including source documentation in PDF form, in David Robert’s outstanding investigative report. He promises to have more information in the next few days.

Ex-Gay Advocate Seeks to Out Gay Co-Workers

Timothy Kincaid

June 12th, 2009

Philip Irvin ain’t so fond of The Gey. And he very much objects to the way in which his employer, Seattle City Light, allows an LGBTQ employee association to meet. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Speaking to seattlepi.com Thursday, Irvin said the city has previously opposed his efforts to start a group for employees who had identified as homosexuals but have since become heterosexual.

“They are the most vilified sexual minority, and I’m sorry to say that they’re not really welcomed in the religious community either,” Irvin said. “This is something where they are vilified on the right or the left.”

He also tried to get Seattle City Light to send him as a representative of the company to the Love Won Out ex-gay seminars. In order to make his point, he sent his request by email - and included some gay co-workers on the distribution list.

I don’t know if there are many - if any - employees that identify as ex-gay at Seattle City Light. I think it likely that this was less about a demand for an ex-gay employees group and more of a means to harass gay fellow employees.

Now Irvin has come up with an all new way to annoy and frighten his co-workers. He has used public disclosure laws to try and find out who might be gay so he can out them. In his own words:

Seattle Public Utilities sponsored a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and friends” employees group which has free use of City e-mail and meeting rooms and most likely even has a city job number to charge their organizational time to. They have even got an all-employees e-mail invitation persuading employees to attend a one-sided forum on lesbian mothers child custody issues. Curious to find out who was using City resources, I, a City Light employee, filed a public disclosure request seeking the names and attendees of their meeting.

The Post-Intelligencer reports

According to court documents, Irvin has also requested the names and city departments of those who are members of the group, or who have attended the group’s meetings, as well as copies of the group’s sign-in sheets, minutes and agendas.

He sees it as a logical extension of reporting the names of those who sign anti-gay petitions for referenda. Anti-gay activists are circulating petitions to overturn rights and benefits granted to domestic partners by the State of Washington. And WhoSigned.org seeks to make those names available to their neighbors.

Irvin argues that if the names of persons who sign a legal petition to achieve the numbers necessary to qualify for a ballot to remove civil rights are public, then so too should the names of employees who attended an LGBTQ workgroup be publicized.

His co-workers did not agree. They sought, and received, court intervention. (the Stranger)

King County Superior Court issued a restraining order that temporarily blocks the city from releasing personal information about members of the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Friends (LGBTQ&F)” affinity group.

Irvin isn’t pleased

I was stunned when told that the gay group would be filing an injunction to block release of this information. There seems to be rank hypocrisy among the gay community. Publishing names and addresses on a website of those who oppose them by signing a petition is fair game but releasing the names of those who use city resources to promote their agenda causes them to howl. Call me a homophobe if you want to but I don’t think the City should fund a secret gay employees group.

But the attorney for the employees sees distinctions between the public dissemination of petitioners to the State on matters of legislation and individuals attending a workplace meeting.

But Coffman says the comparison is apples to oranges. The key in determining whether personal information should be made public rests on state law, which says the public must hold an interest in accessing private information. In the case of a referendum, Coffman says, the public needs to verify that authorized voters signed a petition—thus that information needs to be publicly available.

However, Coffman argues, “I don’t think there is a public interest in identifying who these people are.” He says that it’s unclear what city resources were invested in the group, what the threshold for membership was, or what personal information (such as email addresses) the city might have. For instance, he is concerned that someone who attended one meeting but had no real stake in the group could be outed.

“The interest is Mr. Irvin’s alone, and I would suggest it is for nefarious purposes,” says Coffman. It’s an intimidation tactic that “smacks of something that would happen in the South, circa 1962.”

Willful Blindness

Timothy Kincaid

May 11th, 2009

I sometimes wonder how anti-gay activists can knowingly and purposefully say things that simply are not true. I wonder how they can see the decency and normalcy of gay people and yet ascribe to them the most evil intentions and agenda.

Somehow these folks have created a world in which the evidence before their eyes is far less important than a blind faith in the opposite. They choose to believe that all that they see in front of them or hear from those who know is to be discounted, dismissed, and argued away unless it fits with their pre-conceived view of existence.

I believe that a faith that cannot subject itself to scrutiny is not a faith at all; rather it is based in fear - a fear that it we look too closely and see too clearly that what have always believed may disappear leaving us without a foundation or protection, alone. So those whose faith is fear must seek self-blindness, willfully.

Today I ran across an example, a truly tragic story. Cherie Rowe, a volunteer for ex-gay group Exodus International, tells of her struggle over the past 13 years to deal with her daughter’s homosexuality.

Now this is not a tale of “that dangerous lifestyle”. The daughter has a “sweet partner”, wonderful friends who have become family to her, and still tries to keep a relationship with her mother. But despite recognizing that her daughter has a blessed life, Cherie still longs that God work a miracle and remove all that goodness from her daughter.

I do confess that seeing their demonstrations of affection to one another is sometimes difficult, but God’s amazing grace allows me to accept them and love them without approving of their lifestyle.

I am so aware of how I might have been swayed by the tides of emotion in favor of these same sex relationships, had I not been rooted and grounded in the infallible Word of God.

The extent to which Cherie Rowe’s self-absorption is present on the page is astonishing. And no doubt that ability to see the world only in terms of herself has given her certainty that she and her faith are absolute, steadfast in the face of all evidence to the contrary - so she is careful not to see it.

She is so “rooted and grounded” that she can see love and think that it is evil. She is so “rooted and grounded” that she thinks that her own selfish desire to control her daughter is a passion to see God glorified.

Masters and Johnson Gay “Cures” Were Likely Faked

Jim Burroway

April 23rd, 2009

Ex-gay groups are on the constant lookout for data to bolster their claims that efforts to change sexual orientation can be successful. One study which has been a cornerstone for ex-gay therapists’ claims was the book, Homosexuality in Perspective, by William Masters and Virginia Johnson. That 1979 book purportedly presented the results of a 14-year study of 300 gay men and women who underwent a particularly intensive course of treatment lasting two-weeks. That’s right, only two weeks!  And those two weeks must have been pretty intense, because Masters and Johnson claimed some pretty astounding results: a better than 70% success rate.

That was in 1979. Now let’s fast forward thirty years. Biographer Thomas Maier was looking into the Masters and Johnson data for his new book Masters of Sex, and he encountered considerable evidence that the data had been faked:

When the clinic’s top associate, Robert Kolodny, asked to see the files and to hear the tape-recordings of these “storybook” cases, Masters refused to show them to him. Kolodny —- who had never seen any conversion cases himself -— began to suspect some, if not all, of the conversion cases were not entirely true. When he pressed Masters, it became ever clearer to him that these were at best composite case studies made into single ideal narratives, and at worst they were fabricated.

Eventually Kolodny approached Virginia Johnson privately to express his alarm. She, too, held similar suspicions about Masters’ conversion theory, though publicly she supported him. The prospect of public embarrassment, of being exposed as a fraud, greatly upset Johnson, a self-educated therapist who didn’t have a college degree and depended largely on her husband’s medical expertise.

With Johnson’s approval, Kolodny spoke to their publisher about a delay, but it came too late in the process. “That was a bad book,” Johnson recalled decades later. Johnson said she favored a rewriting and revision of the whole book “to fit within the existing [medical] literature,” and feared that Bill simply didn’t know what he was talking about. At worst, she said, “Bill was being creative in those days” in the compiling of the “gay conversion” case studies.

“Being creative” is a very polite way of saying the presumably scientific data wasn’t all that scientific. But the best evidence we have that the data was bad is this: You can bet your ex-gay dollar that if anyone offered this kind of success with a two-week course of treatment, NARTH and Exodus would be all over it like sequins on a drag queen. Any treatment program with that kind of success rate would have been adopted by therapists around the world, with countless ensuing opportunities to replicate these findings.

But guess what? Neither Exodus nor NARTH, which have the greatest motivation to repeat Masters and Johnson’s amazing performance, have never tried to offer a two-week intensive course of treatment. And more significantly, the Masters and Johnson findings have never been replicated in the thirty years since the book came out. Not by NARTH, Exodus, or anyone else.

Virginia Johnson was right. It is “a bad book.”

And yet, the Masters and Johnson book is referenced in twenty-two individual documents and web pagesat NARTH’s website, and there are seven referencesat Exodus. The Masters and Johnson success figures are also touted at Love Won Out conferences put on by Exodus and Focus On the Family. BTB’s Timothy Kincaid has several more examples of how Ex-gays used Masters and Johnson’s book.

But like much of the “science” we see which ex-gay proponents claim as supporting their work, this too is falling like a house of cards.

Anti-Gays Rely on Masters and Johnson

Timothy Kincaid

April 23rd, 2009

William Masters and Virginia E. Johnson were sex researcher in the 60’s through 90’s. Their books Human Sexual Response in 1966 and Human Sexual Inadequacy in 1970 were considered classics that broke through misconceptions and myths about human sexuality.

But unlike their predecessor, Alfred Kinsey, they are not hated and reviled by anti-gay activists. Because in 1979 they released Homosexuality in Perspective, in which they claimed that homosexuality could in most cases be cured. And this is a claim very much treasured by those who seek to deny rights and equality to gay citizens.

For example, Thomas E. Schmidt writes in his article Homosexual Causation: Nature or Nurture? hosted on the Exodus International website:

W. Masters and V. Johnson conducted a study of fifty-four men and thirteen women who expressed a desire to convert or revert to a heterosexual orientation. Therapists chose candidates for their apparently high degree of motivation and for their accompaniment by an understanding opposite-sex partner who could serve as a support during the transition period. The treatment format consisted of an intensive two-week program followed by periodic follow-up over a five-year period. The client couple worked with a man-woman therapy team who focused on nonjudgmental identification and explanation of the influences that had led to the client’s homosexual behavior.

The therapists then worked to reduce these influences within the context of the clients’ value system and to encourage heterosexual function on the part of the client couple. About 20 percent failed during the initial treatment period, but the five-year follow-up revealed no more than a 30-45 percent total failure rate, much lower than even Masters and Johnson had expected.

Such well known and respected names as Masters and Johnson lend great credibility to the insistence that homosexuality is not an orientation and can, indeed, be reversed. See how prominently NARTH displays their names.

Is homosexuality immutable? Is it fixed, or is it amenable to change? The 1973 decision to delete homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association had a chilling effect on research. The APA decision was not made based on new scientific evidence-in fact, as gay activist researcher Simon LeVay admitted, “Gay activism was clearly the force that propelled the APA to declassify homosexuality” (1996, p. 224).

In reviewing the research, Satinover reported a 52% success rate in the treatment of unwanted homosexual attraction. (Satinover, 1996, p. 186). Masters and Johnson, the famed sex researchers, reported 65% success rate after a five-year follow-up (Schwartz and Masters, 1984, pp. 173-184). Other professionals report success rates ranging from 30% to 70%.

And anti-gay gadflies Stephen Bennett and Peter LaBarbera hauled out a 1979 Time Magazine article about the book as evidence that “a permanent, or at least longterm, switch to heterosexuality is possible more than half the time among gays who are highly motivated to change.”

However, as time passed, other researchers were unable to duplicate Masters’ success.

A study conducted by conservative evangelical researchers Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse which sought to validate the reorientation efforts of Exodus International found that a change from homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation was nowhere near 65%. They reported a “conversion” rate of 15% and defined conversion in such a way as to allow for roaming eyes, sex dreams, and other attributes that are not generally considered to be indicative of heterosexuality.

The study, while the best published to date, is fraught with problems including sample size, measurement and definition of change, comingling of retrospective and prospective samples, and lack of follow-up. At best it could be said that

Perhaps eleven percent of an nonrepresentative sample of 98 highly motivated gay people who went through Exodus programs reported that after four years there was “substantial reduction in homosexual desire and addition of heterosexual attraction and functioning”.

But even that statement is challenged by the fact that one of the eleven successes wrote to the study coordinators to inform them that he was not truthful with them and that he had no change in attraction at all. He simply wanted to tell them what all parties really wanted to be true.

So why then is it that the optimistic results of Masters and Johnson are not readily evident in later studies? After all, Masters was reporting success within the first two weeks.

Well new information suggests that the secret may not be the inferior methods of more current attempts. Rather, the fault may lie with the source.

For more information see Masters and Johnson Gay “Cures” Were Likely Faked

NARTH To Export Ex-Gay Message To London

Jim Burroway

April 21st, 2009

PinkNews is reporting that two American ex-gay proponents will conduct a conference in London this coming weekend. The conference is sponsored by an organization called Anglican Mainstream, which seeks to push the Anglican mainstream to the far right.

Speaking at the conference will be Joseph Nicolosi, a co-founder and past President of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). He is well-known for his “reparative therapy,” which blames a male child’s homosexuality on the father. He is fond of telling stunned audiences, “Fathers, if you don’t hug your sons another man will” Nicolosi used to be a featured speaker at Love Won Out conferences in the U.S. until he displayed his famous temper on CNN.

Jeffrey Satinover is the author of Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, in which he contends that homosexuality was improperly declassified by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental illness. He contends that there is no such thing as “sexual orientation,” and therefore there should be no civil rights extended for something that doesn’t exist. This line is now a pervasive theme in ex-gay circles.

The conference is to be held at a thus-far undisclosed location in central London. Anglican Mainstream, despite its name, is a far-right organization which cites the work of discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron, as well as holocaust revisionist Scott Lively.

Alan Chambers Addresses Developments In Uganda

Jim Burroway

April 20th, 2009

Late yesterday, I posted about the latest disturbing developments in Uganda as the tabloid Red Pepper published a full-page article publicly outing forty LGBT Ugandans. I also wondered aloud what it would take for Exodus President Alan Chambers to finally address the events in Uganda.

Today, Exodus International President Alan Chambers addressed the situation in Uganda with this statement on his personal blog:

A recent hullabaloo over a conference in Uganda has had me thinking and praying about some things. The conference centered on a conservative, presumably Christian, response to gay issues in that country. In Uganda, homosexual behavior is punishable by imprisonment and there is talk of stiffening the penalties. Several American gay activists and even some conservative Christians have raised a ruckus about the event and rightfully so. Uganda’s policies seem reprehensible. Publicly exposing or arresting gay-identified men and women for homosexual behavior or forcing them to undergo therapy is a true violation of free will and a compassionless transgression.

Chambers’ statement departs from Uganda to provide a broader context of past Christian failures toward the LGBT community. He lauded the gay community for having stepped up to the plate to do the hard work that should have been the work of the church, particularly contrasting the LGBT community’s response to the AIDS crisis with the reaction of Christian leaders. He also wonders aloud “what things in California might be like if the Church had spent the $39 million dollars they raised for Proposition 8 to show the love of Christ to the gay community.”

In the final paragraph, Chambers returns to Uganda:

Confession is good for the soul, they say. There’s a reason for that. So, to my fellow Christians in Uganda, California and elsewhere around the world, my suggestion as you engage in social dialogue over this issue is this: pray, confess your own sins and remember where you were before God found you. And to the gay community: it is my great hope that we as a Christian church will give you no more reasons to justifiably doubt God’s love for you. I am sorry for the times when I have contributed to that.

Chambers covers a lot of ground in this confession. It can mark a great first step, but the statement alone remains insufficient. It was action that sparked the latest events in Uganda, and it will take action on Exodus’ part to address what Exodus board member Don Schmierer helped wrought.

This statement and others like it need to get into the hands of Uganda’s media, much like Warren Throckmorton’s statement a month ago. The typical Ugandan, after all, isn’t likely to be a regular reader of Chambers’ blog. In fact, they are less likely to have reliable Internet access at all, hence the importance of following Throckmorton’s example and going to Uganda’s media directly.

It’s too early to know whether Chambers’ statement will remain an exercise in absolving his conscience or if it signals a resolve to try to set right what has been broken. My cynical side says it’s the former, but my inner cynic is wrong at least as often as he’s right. I am hopeful for the latter, but that hope is tempered with the experience of seeing similarly noble sentiments followed by inaction. In either case we will remain watchful.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Uganda’s Anti-Gay Vigilante Campaign Is Now In Full Swing

Jim Burroway

April 19th, 2009

This is what Exodus International helped spark. It is today’s issue of the Ugandan tabloid, The Red Pepper, which featured this “killer dossier.” Yes, those are the Red Pepper’s own words:

This is a killer dossier, a heat-pounding and sensational masterpiece that largely exposes Uganda’s shameless men and unabashed women that have deliberately exported the western evils to our dear and sacred society. …

This is what we have long feared: names, identifying features, places of employment, residences, boyfriends and girlfriends, and other unfounded charges and illicit gossip intended to destroy their reputations and worse. It is a repeat of the 2007 vigilante campaign which was also trumpeted by — you guessed it — the Red Pepper.

In fact, this latest article is a retread of the Red Pepper’s infamous 2007 “Homo Terror” article, which was a centerpiece of that year’s campaign. And like before, the Red Pepper doesn’t intend to stop with just this article. Today’s Red Pepper promises to publish “more shocking things you don’t know about Homos” in next Sunday’s edition. Interestingly, this “killer dossier” does not appear in the Red Pepper’s website.

For the latest round, LGBT Ugandans are bracing for the worst while drawing strength from one another:

It is Saturday evening. I debated whether or not to show my face in public. My lover convinced me it was no big deal. Just go, and show my mug. And anyone have a problem, well, to hell with them.

So, I went to my favourite pub. And, found that most other kuchus [gays] had also gravitated there. Showing there [sic] faces.

…But nothing could hide the anger, and the sense of community. We were together to take strength from one another. We have been exposed to the merciless gaze of hate of a homophobic society. We were, and are, hurting. There is little that we can do, but we can brave it out, and give strength to one another. We don’t know what the actual fall out will be, individually, on a person to person basis. Or, to the community. There were some photos, this time, too. As if the need was that it was necessary to sheer up the believability of the red rug. Just a few photos. But enough.

This is the fruit of Exodus International board member Don Schmierer’s participation alongside Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively in an anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda during the first weekend of March. The conference, in which Schmierer was intended to serve as the “ex-gay expert,” announced a policy proposal to change Uganda’s draconian laws against homosexuality to force those convicted into unproven and unregulated “therapies.”

Because Schmierer and Exodus have decided to remain silent about their roles in this fiasco, Ugandan anti-gay organizer Stephen Langa has used Schmierer’s and Lively’s talks to lend legitimacy to a series of meetings which followed the original conference. Those meetings then culminated in a press conference carried live on national television featuring George Oundo, who claimed to be “ex-gay.” Oundo has since been fueling a public outing campaign on radio and in the newspapers, culminating in this long-feared feature in the Red Pepper.

This latest development is very worrisome because the Red Pepper was the major cheerleader in past public anti-gay vigilante campaigns. Those campaigns resulted in innocent people being arrested, tortured, fired, and driven into hiding and exile.

Exodus President Alan Chambers’ only response to Schmierer’s associations is to “applaud” Schmierer’s role. Neither he nor Schmierer have spoken out in any meaningful way, either to forcefully condemn the aftermath of that conference, or to own up in Exodus’ role in facilitating the actions stemming from it. For some inexplicable reason, Exodus remains silent as their handiwork in Uganda continues to exact harsh consequences to innocent people.

For the love of all that is decent and holy, when will Chambers do the right thing? What is he waiting for? What will it take for him to finally man-up and do the right thing? Is he really waiting for bloodshed, as it seems right now? Is that what it will take?

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Alan Chambers will say ANYTHING

Timothy Kincaid

April 16th, 2009

The Baptist Press says this about Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International:

For Chambers, the Day of Truth is personal. He struggled with and overcame unwanted homosexual attractions as a teenager and young adult. He is now married, and he and his wife and have two children.

“Many people don’t know that change is possible or that there’s any alternative out there for people,” he said. “… There was a time when I was trying to fit that with my life, trying to marry my homosexuality and my Christianity and trying to see if I could be a good gay Christian. It didn’t work.”

Really? Alan overcame unwanted homosexual attractions as a teenager and young adult? And his wife and children are evidence of this?

Now that’s a fascinating retelling.

Because I also happen to know that Alan has said that while his attraction has greatly diminished over the course of 16 years, he still struggles with homosexual temptation and lives a life of denial of what comes naturally to him. And it seems that in their effort to paint Alan as an ideal family man they forgot to mention that Alan took nine months to consummate his marriage or that his two children are adopted.

If Alan’s going to tell kids about the “alternative out there for people”, he should tell them what that alternative really is. But I guess telling the truth wouldn’t serve his goal of vilifying and hindering those good-hearted students who are trying to stem the flood of abuse against their gay classmates in public schools.

Sentinel Op-Ed on “Day of Truth”

Gabriel Arana

April 16th, 2009

There are opposing editorial pieces in today’s Orlando Sentinel about Exodus’ “Day of Truth.” On the “Day of Truth,” which takes place three days after the Day of Silence, Exodus encourages students to pass out note cards and wear t-shirts declaring the “truth” about homosexuality. They also offer to have a “conversation” about it.

One of the pieces is written by me, the other by Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International. The Sentinel doesn’t let you see opposing op-eds before they are printed, so I’d like to respond here.

Chambers’ tactic is to elicit sympathy for those “tormented by their sexuality”:

I hear from them every day. I hear about the jokes they endure from ignorant and unfeeling friends. I hear about the rejection they fear.

Then, he identifies the source:

I hear about the pressure they feel to identify themselves as gay and how that pressure conflicts with what they believe and know in their hearts.

So people struggling with their identity suffer because they are pressured to identify as gay? When distilled from the column, this sounds ridiculous, and it is. Students are of course mocked for being effeminate, but it’s not because they refuse to come out; it’s because being gay is stigmatized in many places. The real source of all the jokes is anti-gay animus like that espoused by Exodus International. They are making the problem worse, not better.

Here are Chambers’ hopes for the “Day of Truth”:

I hope they will talk about how everyone needs to be empowered with more information, not less. I hope they will talk about every person’s right to determine his own course in life. I hope they will talk about how to show compassion to their gay and lesbian peers. I hope they will talk about the thousands of men and women, like me, who are living beyond the gay life we once thought was our only future. It’s a conversation I wish I could have had back then.

Basically, Chambers thinks homosexuality is a sickness that others aren’t compassionate about. The solution? Send them to ex-gay therapy so they can fix it. The call for “more information” is incredibly disingenuous given that anti-gay groups like Exodus do everything they can to discredit scientific organizations that disagree with their views on homosexuality. This is false compassion; at heart, it’s borne of the prejudiced assumption that being gay is something wrong. Who wants to engage in a conversation about how they are disordered?

Chambers is trying to portray his movement as one that seeks to help people, but the website reveals their real aim: “to counter the homosexual agenda.”

More Lies from David Benkof

Timothy Kincaid

April 14th, 2009

Last summer I started a project of exposing the lies of David Benkof, a man who had been gay (going by David Bianco), then bisexual, then queer with mutable identity, and now is “deliberately living traditionally”.

At that time Benkof was writing articles in straight publications in which he claimed to be a columnist for gay newspapers (he thought it gave credibility to his anti-gay rants). He also briefly had some articles published in some gay magazines until the editors or publishers discovered his intent.

After a bit of observation, it became clear to me that Benkof suffers from what I’ll call “Truth Deficit Disorder”. He found it almost impossible to go more than a few paragraphs without busting into hyperbole, exaggeration, distortion, or just flat-out falsehoods. And David’s favorite subject about which to, ahem, wax creatively was same-sex marriage.

However, David’s desire to support Proposition 8 exposed him to those who were running the effort. And in what was a great surprise to him (but no one else) he discovered that bigots are generous in the extent of their arrogance and animus. Homophobes don’t have much fondness for Jews, either.

And, feeling disillusioned, on July 13 of last year he blogged his final good-bye.

I wished him well and promptly put him out of mind.

Well now he’s back and it seems that his methods haven’t changed much since he saw the ugly side of bigotry. He’s still more than eager to trot out dishonesty and deception as his hallmark and calling card.

Today Benkof has an article in the New York Post in which he uses a false pretext to spread more dishonesty about gay folk. Big surprise.

First Benkof praises Vermont for enacting religious liberty protections in their marriage laws. But the praise is artificial, based on a false premise, and nothing but a vehicle for attacking the gay community. Again, big surprise.

The Green Mountain State’s new law says in its “Public Accommodations” section that religious groups “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges to an individual if the request . . . is related to the solemnization of a marriage or celebration of a marriage.” It also bars civil lawsuits against religious groups that refuse to provide goods or services to same-sex weddings.

Benkof sees this as a real difference. It isn’t.

Churches can already deny services, accommodations, advantages, etc. to married couples of the same sex based on their religion. They always have and always will. What the Vermont law does clarify is that religious organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, may also deny their halls or their facilities for marriage ceremonies.

And this is a clarification that I believe to be beneficial. I think that those religiously affiliated non-profits or fraternal organizations that wish to uphold their religious convictions about orientation or race or religion should be able to do so…. provided, of course, that they are not receiving special benefits from the state for being “open to all”.

But that’s where Benkof and I cease to see eye to eye. What he does next is typical Benkof:

Without serious religious freedom guarantees, disturbing punishments have been meted out to people and groups who have acted consistent with their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and that children are best served with both a mother and a father. The following actions have taken place in states with gay marriage, marriagelike institutions or even strong nondiscrimination laws on the basis of sexual orientation:

Now that is a carefully written paragraph. If one cares little for honesty and only wants to try and claim some technical truth, then one can feel all clever with oneself for writing it.

He doesn’t say that what follows has anything to do with marriage. He just implies it by saying that this is how Vermont differs. In other words, deliberate deception rather than a direct lie.

These thing all happened “in states with marriage, marriagelike institutions or strong nondiscrimination laws.”

Or with running water.

Because the truth is that not a single example he lists had ANYTHING to do with marriage. Or with marriage laws - the subject he’s pretending to be talking about.

Then Benkof trots out the usual half-truths of anti-gays about a New Mexico photographer, eHarmony, Boston’s Catholic Charities, and the lesbian denied fertility treatment.

Geez, the average reader – the one that Benkof is counting on reading his piece – would think, “Gosh, that’s all due to gay marriage”. And if they missed that connection, Benkof slams it home by immediately talking about “the courts in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, and Iowa”.

Now we’ve covered all of Benkof’s talking points before. But you may enjoy taking a good look at this video rebuttal by Rob Tisinai to the type of claims that Benkof’s making (including a few of his actual complaints). It shows just how dishonest Benkof and his ilk are and how they will say anything in the advancement of their attack on the lives and freedoms of gay men and women.

Uganda Columnist: “Happy Easter …Irrespective of Sexual Orientation”

Jim Burroway

April 10th, 2009

Columnist Bernard Tabaire, writing for Uganda’s Daily Monitor, offers a very refreshing and sane take on the latest round of anti-gay agitation taking place in Ugandan media. His column is so wonderful and refreshing, it’s hard to know where to start. He starts this way:

It is Holy Saturday, today, the final day of Holy Week and of Lent – “a period of spiritual preparation for Easter which typically involves fasting, penance and prayer”. Besides fasting, penance and prayer, the Lent period in Uganda this year has been characterised by something else: virulent gay-bashing.

Tabaire calls out Stephen Langa, director of Kampala-based Family Life Network, on this latest round of public gay-bashing with remarkable clarity and logic. He notes the obvious rivalries between Langa and other “Christian” leaders — petty rivalries which appear to behind charges that one prominent Catholic priest was gay. Those charges were made by some so-called “ex-gays” that were trotted out by Langa at a press conference. But of the more concerning accusations — that gay Ugandans are “recruiting” schoolchildren, Tabaire asks the questions that ought to be obvious:

But enticing minors into sexual activity, any sexual activity, is illegal as well. So why are the Georginas [referring to George Oundo and Emma Matovu] not reporting this matter to the police? Why do they report to Mr Langa’s little outfit? If they do not know about the rights of children, surely, Mr Langa knows. Why does he then not encourage them to report these things to the police?

In fact, the police should swing into action and arrest anyone, straight or gay, who has lured children to sexual activity. Otherwise they will stand accused of going along with Mr Langa’s posturing as the guarantor of morality in Uganda.

Indeed, the main point that has come out of Mr Langa’s shrill anti-gay crusade is that adults are messing with our children. This, though, begs the question: what has recruitment of children into homosexuality got to do with two consenting adults having a sexual relationship? In his zeal, Mr Langa appears over his head here. He needs to straighten his priorities not gays and lesbians.

Tabaire also points out the obvious dangers which stem from this latest upsurge of anti-gay rhetoric and accusations:

There is something potentially dangerous in what Mr Langa is doing in inveighing against fellow Ugandans just because they are not heterosexual. It will come as no surprise if individuals falsely name others as gay or lesbian to settle personal scores.

Tabaire’s column is a very welcome island of sanity in the sea of madness we’ve seen lately. I hope this will encourage others to raise their voice as well.

And maybe — just maybe — Exodus President Alan Chambers will be moved by the celebration of the Easter season to muster the courage that Bernard Tabaire has demonstrated. Maybe.

Chambers rushed to Peter LaBarbera’s defense, and LaBarbera’s life and liberty isn’t close to being threatened. Meanwhile, we hear that Ugandan television followed police as they arrested two gay men in their own homes. Those men will reportedly spend their Easter weekend in jail.

I hope that in this season, Alan Chambers may find the courage to contact Ugandan media — as Warren Throckmorton did, so we know it’s not that difficult to do — and call for a halt to the vigilantism that his fellow Exodus board member facilitated. A member of his organization helped to create this mess; he can make a big difference in trying to correct the situation.

Alan, the ball is in your court. You can choose to do the right thing, or you can continue to remain silent. The choice is yours. Happy Easter, irrespective.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Uganda Press Crank Up “Predator” Rhetoric

Jim Burroway

April 6th, 2009

The recent flare-up of anti-gay activity in Uganda has taken on a very dangerous turn lately, with two tabloids providing “tips” on how to spot gays and lesbians. These “tips” are based on common misinformed stereotypes, some of which were promulgated from the recent series of anti-gay gatherings taking place in the aftermath of a conference earlier this month featuring three American anti-gay activists.

Uganda’s Weekly Observer’s “tips” is in the form of person-on-the-street interviews, in which random Ugandans offer their suggestions on how to spot gays and lesbians, like this one:

Sarah Nakiwolo, 22, Student
What I know is that men who are gay tend to like all the fancy things that are normally appreciated by women. For example they will want to always treat their hair, apply make-up and act like women by pulling at their blouses (shirts) and jeans, which are normally tight. They also tend to gesture around like women by folding their hands, you know. Then for women, they will behave like men. They wear men’s clothes a lot and would rather cut their hair to appear like men and do not fuss about make up. God made sex for man and woman, period. It will be hard to stop gay acts unless government comes out with a strict law.

Of the nine interviews, only one cautioned that “it would not be wise to stereotype.” There were no counterbalancing interviews of gay people or experts, legitimate or otherwise.

The second, more disturbing element is that the Red Pepper is beginning to get involved. The latest issue featured this story:

Researchers told us last night that over three million Ugandans have engaged in homosexual activities knowingly or unknowingly…. Last week Sunday Pepper talked in confidence to some people who had ever been cornered into homosexual acts and below we give you their chilling confessions.

Those researchers are unnamed. What follows is two “confessions.” One was subtitled, “I survived being bum-drilled by a senior journalist,” and the other, “I became a lesbo unknowingly.”

The Red Pepper’s entry into the latest round of anti-gay grandstanding was expected, but it’s disturbing nonetheless. In previous anti-gay campaigns, the Red Pepper became notorious for printing first names and identifying details of those it alleged were gay.

The Red Pepper’s “confessions” article isn’t the only recent story the tabloid has run recently. The Red Pepper also ran this story, which carried lurid allegations against named individuals who are members of an opposition political party. Stories like these are common means of discrediting legitimate opposition in Uganda, and the Red Pepper’s accounts are typically the most intentionally outrageous:

Monster whopper wielding homosexual activists last year reportedly grabbed and attempted to drill the tiny bums of Uganda Young Democrats (UYD) members, Red Pepper exclusively reveals.  UYD is a vibrant youth wing of the opposition Democratic Party.

The chilling story is that late last year, UYD boss, Fred Mukasa Mbidde ferried 40 UYD members by bus to attend a conference on African Democracy at Victoria Hotel, Nakuru in Kenya. Sources that attended the workshop say it was organized and financed by AUF, a Norwegian based political party well known for bankrolling bum shafting and gay activities worldwide.

The organization which was represented by a bummy lady identified as Anja Riiser, has been secretly securing visas for bum-bonking experts and gay stars to countries like Spain, Norway, Italy and Canada.

The article goes on to names of several “UYD boys whose bums survived being cracked by bazungu’s [sic] monster whoppers.”

The recent anti-gay conferences led by Stephen Langa featuring Exodus board member Don Schmierer, Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and Richard Cohen Protegé Caleb Lee Brundidge gave a legitimizing gloss on the image of “predatory homosexuals,” an image which has been the main component of past anti-gay vigilante and extrajudicial campaigns. Both Schmierer and Lively, cited as American “experts” on homosexuality, pointed to child sexual abuse as a means for “recruiting” youth into homosexuality.

Schmierer, in particular, used his credentials as an ex-gay “expert” to push the “molestation” theme as a pathway to homosexuality.  In his book, An Ounce of Prevention: Preventing the Homosexual Condition in Today’s Youth, Schmierer writes, “Sexual abuse, including molestation and/or rape is a key factor in homosexuality. We will return to this repeatedly because it is so significant.” And indeed he does, repeatedly. As do the extremists who are whipping up dangerous levels of vitriol in Ugandan newspapers, radio and television — backed by the “expertise” of Exodus and Lively.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Exodus Maintains Month-Long Silence Amid Ugandan Gov’t Calls For LGBT Arrests

Jim Burroway

April 2nd, 2009

Update: Calls for mass arrests on radio continue. For more information, see the end of this post for the latest update.

The situation in Uganda continues to escalate. Late yesterday, Uganda’s New Vision followed up on Stephen Langa’s launch of a public forced “outing” drive against Ugandan LGBT individuals and against rivals who are alleged to be gay. On Monday, Langa sponsored a press conference in which another allegedly “former gay activist” Paul Kagaba accused a very popular Catholic priest and gospel singer, Fr. Anthony Musaala, of being gay.

Musaala is a well-known figure, and the Catholic church is seen as a rival to Stephen Langa’s evangelical organization. New Vision followed up with a statement from Fr. Musaala’s colleagues and from Musalla himself:

Father Francis Ssemuddu, the head of St. Matia Mulumba parish in Old Kampala, said the accusations “were untrue”. Ssemuddu said the church was clear about aberrant sexual practices and how to guide offenders get out of “the abnormal behaviour”.

Musaala, the charismatic preacher and gospel music award winner, was on Tuesday accused by a self-confessed former homosexual of eight years of promoting the illegal practice. Paul Kagaba said the priest had often held parties for the gays at his residence in Gayaza near Kampala.

…Musaala argued that as a church minister, he had given spiritual guidance to homosexuals, lesbians and prostitutes since 1999, but he was not gay himself. “But ethically, I cannot name them,” he said.

Explaining why people take to homosexuality, the dancing priest, as he is sometimes called, blamed the desire for money and “inherent feelings that drive them”. His involvement, he said, was limited to helping the gay abandon the practice some of whom “want to commit suicide”. “I want to show them the true path to salvation,” he said. “This is a journey that requires someone to walk with as a guide.”

“These people are stigmatised and I am totally against this because they need our help,” said Musaala.

Meanwhile, parliament members are outraged that Ugandan authorities permitted Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) to hold a public news conference. In an indication of the risks that are taken whenever anyone identifies themselves as being gay, members of parliament are demanding that those identified at the news conferences be arrested:

Latif Sebaggala (DP) said the Government was tolerant because donors had threatened to cut funding if homosexuals were stopped. “We are worried about our children. If the Government is silent, it means it is silent approval,” he said.

Henry Banyenzaki (NRM) blamed poor enforcement of laws which he said had escalated homosexuality, rape, defilement and child sacrifice. In reply, Daudi Migereko, the Government chief whip, argued that anybody was free to hold a press conference without permission from the Government.

However, he said, by doing so, the gays had exposed themselves and the Government would go after them.“Homosexuality is illegal. The Minister of Ethics, Dr. Nsaba Buturo, has been clear on the matter. Those involved will face the long arm of the law,” he said.

Henry Kajura, the second deputy Prime Minister, said the Government would not compromise on moral and cultural values because of donor pressure.

“The Government will soon show its teeth,” he warned. “Our society abhors homosexuality.”

Uganda’s latest spasm of anti-gay actions is a direct outcome of a three-day conference organized by Family Life Network’s Stephen Langa, featuring three American anti-gay activists, including Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and Exodus board member Don Schmierer. Leaders of that conference applauded Uganda’s draconian anti-homosexuality laws, which provide a life sentence for those convicted. Conference leaders called for strengthening the law to proved for forcing gays and lesbians into conversion therapy. Schmierer, the supposed “expert” on ex-gay therapies and policies at the conference, remained silent on policy questions, and instead pointedly referred those questions to other speakers at the conference, including Lively.

Exodus released a very tiny three-sentence statement claiming to be against the policy proposals coming out of Uganda, while simultaneously “applauding” Schmierer’s participation in the conference which promulgated those proposals. That statement has not been released publicly, and it does not appear anywhere on Exodus’ web site. There is also no evidence that Exodus is making any attempt to convey any statements to Uganda media.

Grove City college professor Dr. Warren Throckmorton, meanwhile, was able to get an interview into the news outlet Uganda Pulse condemning the conference. This indicates strongly that if Exodus wanted to make a statement to the Ugandan people, there are means with which they could do it. Instead, Exodus continues to do nothing.

Update: The public calls for mass arrests continue in the media:

At 6 p.m., popular radio station KFM played clips from interviews with Dr. James Nsaba Buturo and Member of Parliament, Latif Sabagala. Sabagala said that homosexuality is unacceptable because it interferes with the moral values of Ugandans. He sent out a message to government agencies telling them to hunt down homosexuals and arrest them since they have exposed themselves. Dr. James Nsaba Butuaro said that they would discuss the issue in Parliament and get some action. The 9 o’clock news played another clip of Sabagala, saying that there are no laws protecting gays in Uganda.

…I spoke to Frank Mugisha, the chairperson of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). “The LGBTI-community is still scared,” he said. “After our press release yesterday, the public is confused. They do not know what to believe. Those who are thinking through everything they have heard from the ex-gay activists have begun to realize that this is just an agenda to crush the gay rights movement, and it is full of lies.”

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Uganda Activist Cites Disbarred “Therapist” As Authority on Homosexuality

Jim Burroway

March 31st, 2009

David Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch has posted another exclusive video of Ugandan pastor Stephen Langa, as he cites Richard Cohen’s 2000 book, Coming Out Straight, as an authority on the homosexual agenda. The video was taken during a March 15th follow-up meeting to the three-day conference conducted by American anti-gay activists, which included Richard Cohen protegé Lee Caleb Brundidge.

What are some of their strategies? One: redefine homosexuality as an inborn condition based on genetics and biology, so that it will be regarded as irreversible. There is no proof, there is no study that has found that homosexuality is genetic. None, none. In fact, this man has a whole chapter on it. Now this man is a former homosexual, he has a whole chapter on all the science, on all the studies that homosexuals claim [...] the genetics of homosexuality, and all of them don’t qualify. They are unrepeatable. You cannot politicize… [...] an experiment cannot be done, it cannot happen. It doesn’t work. It’s not there. But we see they portray it as such. They portray it as such.

Second, focus on who they are and not what they do. It’s a very critical tactic. A very critical tactic. What does that mean? This shifts the debate from the arena of morality, ethics and psychology to politics, human rights and social injustice. Here’s how clever they are. This is a matter of morality. This is a matter ethics. This is a matter of psychology. But now they shift it to politics, human rights and social injustice. They play on your sense of justice. “Oh, but look at the injustice. See?” They’re like the Blacks, and that is wrong. You see, and here it is. “In this way they emulate the pattern of the Civil Rights movement.” In America, what was the civil rights movement? People are being discriminated against because they are Black.

Now the difference between that and a legitimate civil rights issue and an issue which is not a civil rights issue is this: If that thing is something you have no choice about and something inborn, then it is a civil rights issue. For example, your tribe, if somebody discriminates against your tribe, your color, you know? Those kinds of things. Those are things which are legitimate civil rights and human rights items. But issues of choice, if I choose to be a thief, if I choose to be a murderer, I cannot stand up and say, “Oh, you see, I was born this way.” No.

But you see, these guys are clever. They want to equate legitimate issues that demand or that deserve human rights protection with things that don’t. And that is how they were able to win in South Africa, because they say, “Well oh, Blacks were discriminated against, the Blacks in South Africa. So we are also like that.” And so the South African government, as the other people passed, they also passed. And in America, this came up at the time when they see Black civil rights had just gained prominence and had just got their rights, and so they also smuggled themselves into the middle of it. And they came together with the Blacks. But that’s the tactic. It’s the tactic. It’s the tactic.

There is so much in this short clip that is wrong that it’s hard to know where to begin. But there is one thing that bears mentioning. Anti-gay activists who assert that there is no biological basis for homosexuality for anyone pretend that there were only three studies worth mentioning. Those studies include Simon LeVay’s 1994 brain study, Bailey and Pillard’s 1991 twins study, and Dean Hamer’s 1993 X-chromosome study. As far as activists are concerned, these are the only studies that have ever been published, and none of them “proved” that homosexuality is biological or genetic.

The truth is however that there have literally been hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals in the past twenty years or more, the preponderance of which suggest a biological basis for homosexuality in many people. Anti-gay activists refuse to acknowledge those studies. Instead, they only pick on the three weakest and easiest to disprove studies.

This is the sort of “science” one would expect from Richard Cohen. He has been banned for life from the American Counseling Association, and his controversial “holding” or “touch” therapy techniques — which are also clearly demonstrated in that same book Langa is so fond of — has made him the laughingstock of the ex-gay movement. Seeing it being used as fodder for Uganda’s latest anti-gay campaign, while Exodus — America’s largest and best known umbrella organization of ex-gay “experts” — remains silent is no laughing matter.
Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Uganda Situation Continues To Deteriorate; Exodus Washes Their Hands

Jim Burroway

March 30th, 2009

The anonymous blogger GayUganda is reporting that Stephen Langa, the director of Family Life Network who has been leading the latest anti-gay vigilante campaign, is now speaking on Ugandan FM radio stations advocating the arrests of Ugandan LGBT leaders. GayUganda also reports that Langa is calling some of those very leaders requesting meetings. No word on what he intends to say or do at the proposed meeting. LGBT Ugandans, naturally, are very cautious.

Meanwhile, GayUganda has a very prescient suspicion about Exodus:

Did his American friends know that they were stirring up this kind of hatred and hate mongering? They will throw up their hands in helplessness. They never planned this, they will say, with wide eyed innocence.

GayUganda nails it, as this describes Exodus’ behavior perfectly. Publicly, we’ve only seen the lame three sentence statement that was issued on March 13. But privately, we do know that they are playing the innocence card exactly as GayUganda predicts.

Exodus has the capacity to contact Ugandan media to publicly condemn the latest anti-gay campaign. After all, if a professor from a small northeastern Christian college can do it, so can Alan Chambers. And that professor didn’t have the benefit of direct contacts that Don Schmierer has. Yet Exodus continues to wash their hands of any responsibility for their own board member who has provided “expert” cover for Langa’s latest campaign.

GayUganda writes that plans for April including gathering signatures for a petition and, more worrisome, a mass rally in one of the stadiums with a march on Parliament.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Videos Surface of Ugandan Activists Stirring Anti-Gay Fervor; Fears of Violence Grow

Jim Burroway

March 28th, 2009

We’ve gotten word from three separate Ugandan sources that local gays and lesbians in Uganda are worried about imminent violence, with many making plans to go into hiding or leave the country. The word on the street is that police detentions are pending (which one government minister has already promised) and that Stephen Langa’s Family Life Network is preparing another round of public vigilantism. LGBT citizens believe that Wednesday’s press conference, carried live by three television channels, was just the opening salvo. This press conference follows well-recognized patterns from previous anti-gay campaigns, which were cheered on by the media. Gay sources in Uganda report being terrified, with few daring to venture out of their homes.

David Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch has obtained exclusive video of the March 15th meeting conducted by Stephen Langa. That meeting was a follow-up to a March 5-8 conference at Uganda’s posh Triangle Hotel featuring three American anti-gay activists: Exodus Board member Don Schmierer, Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and Richard Cohen protegé Caleb Lee Brundidge. That conference applauded Uganda’s draconian law which calls for life imprisonment for those convicted of homosexual acts, and called further for those convicted be subject to forced ex-gay therapy. Schmierer’s continuing silence on those proposals have been taken by Ugandan activists as an endorsement of those policies by American ex-gay experts.

In the first of the two videos posted at Ex-Gay Watch, we see Stephen Langa quoting material from Scott Lively’s The Pink Swastika in this perverse version of the history of the gay movement:

“Alright. The history of the modern gay movement. This is from Mr. Lively, he was here last week, and he was one of the people who was having a lot of research on homosexuals. He wrote this book you can see, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality and the Nazi Party. He has a lot of data, lot of data, lot of data on homosexuality and on the homosexual movement.

“Now, in America this gentleman, Henry Garber [sic], was a German-American soldier who served in Germany after the First World War. He was among the occupational forces that was in Germany during and after the First World War. And then he went back to America and began activism, but in a very small way, a very small way. And Henry Garber [sic] molested a boy by the name Champ Simmons. When Champ Simmons grew up, he also molested a boy known as Harry Hay. This Harry Hay is the grandfather of the modern gay movement.

“This man here in the ’40s, they guy who really began what is now today the gay movement that has taken over the whole world. He taught communism for eighteen years, and during that time he learned how society can be taken over. Because communists taught how society can be taken over using economic means. But he understood those tactics and taught the gay activists on how to overthrow the moral fiber of the Western World, which was based on marriage and the family. So he took these guys’ tactics and strategies on how to overthrow a society. And so they began to do their work, they began to do their work. And the gay movement you see today and all these things you see around the world are as a result of what this guy taught these people, and his disciples are now busy and enforces what he has said, including those who are in this country. They all came out of this guy’s movement.”

As we’ve reported throughout this series, these activists have exhibited a particular obsession with the idea that homosexuality can be transmitted like a virus through child molestation. Notice Langa’s macabre assertion that homosexuality passed via molestation from Garber to Simmons to Hays, as though it were a simple yet genealogical line. This idea that was reinforced by Exodus board member Don Schmierer, who provided the germ of that scientifically untenable theory in his talk at the March 5-8 conference in Kampala.

(This “genealogy” is a very good example of the many distortions which thoroughly permeate The Pink Swastika. Jonathan Katz, whose 1976 book Gay American History is purportedly the “source” of Lively’s genealogy, reports Hays’ “recruitment” very differently. Quoting Hays: “I enticed an ‘older’ gentleman (he must have been at least 33) to ‘bring me out’ by finagling his picking me up in Los Angeles’s notorious Pershing Square. Poor guy — he was appalled to discover, subsequently, that I was both a virgin and jailbait!” Hays was seventeen at the time. So much for his innocent “molestation.”)

In the second video, Langa remains focused on the gays-as-predators theme, citing Michael Swift’s satire, “A Gay Revolutionary,” as though it were a factual manifesto. As he dramatically reads aloud portions of that now-famous satire, notice the camera panning across the room to the shocked audience which is taking it all in:

“…as we see here. This is not a joke, what we’re dealing with here is not a joke. And of course, their cause — they don’t care about you. They want your children! Look at what this homosexual activist said:

“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums in your seminaries, in your church groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your houses of Congress, wherever men meet with men. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They shall be recast in our image.”

“Criminals! That’s what the gays want to do, that’s what the gays want to do. They are after your children.”

“It’s not a joke”?

As a matter of fact, this passage is a joke. It’s an intentional, outrageous joke on the part of the writer, and that fact is part of the public record. While anti-gay extremists love reading this aloud to incite hatred towards gays and lesbians — and Langa’s dramatic recitation is par for the course — they invariably omit the preface, which sets the context for the entire piece:

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

That’s right. It’s a work of fiction, a satire — and the author said so when it originally appeared in the Gay Community News way back in 1987. In fact, the anonymous writer used the pseudonym “Michael Swift,” which is an obvious homage to the English language’s most famous satirist, Jonathan Swift.

It’s hard to improve on David Robert’s observation:

Depicting this work of satire written in the heat of the AIDS crisis as having serious intent is nothing less than an incitement to violence. Combined with the prestige provided by supposed American “authorities” on homosexuality in the meetings of March 5-8, Langa here brings to the surface the greatest fear, and one that has been used by so many campaigns against marginalized groups throughout history — they are a danger to your children. A lie served up by a “man of God,” backed by “experts” from the West and representatives of their own government. This is all a dangerous recipe for violence against anyone who is, or is perceived to be, gay in Uganda.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Study: Therapies To Attempt Change In Sexual Orientation Still Offered In UK

Jim Burroway

March 27th, 2009

Annie Bartlett, Glenn Smith, Michael King. “The response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change or redirect same-sex sexual orientation.” BMC Psychiatry (March 26, 2009): in press. Pre-release article available here (free registration required). Assigned DOI: 10.1186/1471-244X-9-11.

There have been remarkably few studies on attempts the change sexual orientation in clinical settings. There’s very little evidence that such attempts are effective, and there is some evidence that these attempts may be harmful to many clients who seek change.  A recent study from the U.K. has looked at the issue and came to some surprising results.

According to the study, only about 4% of British therapists reported that they themselves would attempt to change a client’s sexual orientation if the client asked for such therapy. But in a surprising finding, another 10% said they would refer their client to another therapist to help them change their sexual feelings. And 17% — about one in six — reported that they had assisted at least one client to reduce his or her same sex attractions.

The study is based on a survey conducted in  2002-2003. The questionnaire was sent to 1848 practitioners, of which 1328 completed responses were returned, resulting in a remarkably high response rate of 72%. Participants were a geographically distributed random sample based on their membership in the following professional organizations:

• British Psychological Society (BPS)
• British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
• United Kingdon Council for Psychotherapy (UKPC)
• Royal College of Psychiatrists (RPC)

BACP members were most likely to counsel clients to accept their sexuality and least likely to assist clients to change. Psychiatrists were most likely to refer other colleagues who might help clients to adjust to their sexuality.

The first question of the survey asked therapists how they would manage a client seeking to change their sexual attractions. The responses were:

• Assist them to accept their sexuality: 731 (55%)
• Assist them or give them treatment to change their sexuality: 55 (4%)
• Refer them to another colleague who has more experience in helping clients to accept themselves: 310 (24%)
• Refer them to a colleage who may help them change or redirect their same-sex feelings 131 (10%)
• Assist them to gain more effective control of their sexual feelings with a view to reducing personal and/or social difficulties: 456 (34%)
• Other: 491 (37%)

The “other” category is surprisingly large. There’s no insight into what those respondents might have in mind in this particular survey.

The 222 (17%) therapists who had tried to reduce or change their clients same-sex attractions reported treating at least 413 clients. (The structure of the survey only permitted examining up to five clients per therapist.) These therapists were asked about their clients reasons for wanting to change:

• Confusion about sexual orientation: 236 (57%)
• Social pressures including the family: 59 (14%)
• Mental health difficulties: 45 (11%)
• Religious beliefs: 28 (7%)
• Gender confusion: 15 (4%)
• Legal pressures: 14 (4%)
• Heterosexual relationship difficulties (i.e. married): 9 (2%)
• Victims of abusive relationships: 8 (2%)

These therapists reported very little follow-up after treatment. In 117 (28%) cases, there was no follow-up. In the remainder, the medial follow-up period was only eight months. Citing the American Psychiatric Association’s opposition to conversion therapy, the authors conclude:

Thus, it is hard either to understand or recommend the actions of the one in six psychotherapists, counsellors and psychiatrists who undertook these treatments. The qualitative data suggest that they made therapeutic decisions based on privileging client/patient choice where there was a wish to avoid the impact of negative social attitudes to same sex relationships. They appeared to take little account of the potential harm of applying treatments with no evidence for efficacy. Furthermore, the commonest reason for the referral was confusion about sexual orientation rather than an expressed desire to change it. It is well known that confusion is both a feature of a developmental trajectory, often part of the “coming out” story, and a common reason for seeking help. It appears unlikely that therapists were responding straightforwardly to the demands of patients as direct requests for change were very rarely reported.

Speaking to The Independent, Prof. Michael King was much more blunt:

He said: “There is very little evidence to show that attempting to treat a person’s homosexual feelings is effective and in fact it can actually be harmful.

“So it is surprising that a significant minority of practitioners still offer this help to their clients.”

He went on: “The best approach is to help people adjust to their situation, to value them as people and show them that there is nothing whatever pathological about their sexual orientation.

“Both mental health practitioners and society at large must help them to confront prejudice in themselves and in others.”

The study was conducted by Dr. Annie Bartlett (St. George’s, University of London), Dr. Glenn Smith (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Prof. Michael King (University College London Medical School). Together, they established the web site TreatmentsHomosexuality.org.uk, which Prof. King introduced in a BTB guest post last September. That web site seeks oral history contributions in written, audio, or video form from former clients and therapists who participated in sexual reorientation therapies.

This study is an outgrowth of previous papers that the three have published on clinical attempts to change homosexuality. The British Medical Journal in 2004 published two papers which were oral histories of treatments since the 1950’s. Dr. Smith’s paper focused on the experience of patients, and Prof. King’s paper focused on the experience of professionals. Dr. Smith found that “The definition of same sex attraction as an illness and the development of treatments to eradicate such attraction have had a negative long term impact on individuals.” And Prof. King observed that:

With hindsight, professionals realised that they had not appreciated the influence of social context on sexual behaviour. Most now regarded same sex attraction as compatible with psychological health, although a small minority considered that the option to try to become heterosexual should still be available to patients who desire it.

Social and political assumptions sometimes lie at the heart of what we regard as mental pathology and serve as a warning for future practice.

In 1999, Prof. King and Dr. Bartlett published a historical overview of treatments of homosexuality in the British Journal of Psychiatry. That overview included accounts of electric shock and other forms of aversion therapy, which some therapiests continued to defend into the early 1980’s. They stated in their concluding remarks:

In December 1997, in documents released by the British government under a 30-year rule, it was revealed that ministerial approval was given for experiments in aversion therapy on gay men. Even today, criticism of the ‘treatment’ of gay men is regarded as mere political correctness. Few other psychiatric labels have led to such pain and disarray. This peculiar history has exposed the conservative social bias inherent in psychiatry and psychology, damaged the lives of gay men and lesbians, and provided grounds for discrimination.

…Mental health professionals in Britain should be aware of the mistakes of the past. Only in that way can we prevent future excesses and heal the gulf between gay and lesbian patients and their psychiatrists.

It appears that a surprising number of mental health professionals have not yet learned from the mistakes of the past.