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Peterson Toscano served as Grand Martial of the Memphis pride parade this weekend which prompted another round of media coverage on the ex-gay movement there. Check out this passage from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

But according to [Love In Action], Toscano’s experience differs greatly from those of most other people getting treatment. Of 400 people who have gone through the program, more than 300 have been turned straight, the group says.

“Our success rate is higher than our dropout rate,” said Love In Action director Jim Scott. [pictured above]

“It works for some people, and for some people it doesn’t.”

Perhaps Scott is equating successfully completing and graduating from LIA with “turning straight.” Long term “success rate” isn’t addressed leaving Scott’s claims laughable at best and misleading at worst for those unfamiliar with the contrived working tricks common in the exgay movement.

Zach was the sixteen-year-old gay teen who, in 2005, gained worldwide attention when he wrote on his MySpace blog about coming out to his parents. They quickly shipped him off to Love Won Out’s Refuge program for teens. But before entering the program, Zach posted Love In Action’s rules online for everyone to see, and those rules provide a very revealing glimpse into the very strange world of Love In Action. After weeks of protest and worldwide condemnation, the Refuge program was finally shut down. But Love In Action remains active, a dark stain on an ex-gay movement running amok with no oversight or accountability.

Here’s an extended opening sequence for the documentary, which is set to for an official release later this summer. Zach’s post-LIA appearance at the seven minute mark represents a small glimpse of a full-length exclusive interview.

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Frequent sexual intercourse and masturbation protects men against a common form of cancer, suggests the largest study of the issue to date yet.

The US study, which followed nearly 30,000 men over eight years, showed that those that ejaculated most frequently were significantly less likely to get prostate cancer. The results back the findings of a smaller Australian study revealed by New Scientist in July 2003 that asserted that masturbation was good for men.

In the US study, the group with the highest lifetime average of ejaculation – 21 times per month – were a third less likely to develop the cancer than the reference group, who ejaculated four to seven times a month.

I wonder if John Smid has heard about this? He’s the outgoing Executive Director of the Memphis-based Love In Action ex-gay residential program who gave an entire workshop on the evils of masturbation at the 2007 Exodus conference last summer. It was definitely the single most bizarre talk have I ever attended in my lifetime. Especially when he bragged, “My wife’s vagina is enough… God created her for my fit” to a room full of struggling celibate ex-gays.

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The “good part” is at the 2:18 mark.

Smid also told his audience that he heard from a Brazilian physician that masturbating actually harmed the immune system. This is how Smid described that conversation:

He said, men actually, when they live in sexual self-control and restraint, actually those hormones and those secretions are reabsorbed into the body, which stimulates the immune system of the male. This is a physician. He said that’s something that’s not often taught because the physician world is built up of a lot of men that don’t want to teach things like that because they don’t want to let people know that they can’t, you know, it’s really kind of a secret. He said we really don’t let that out as physicians.

… And I thought okay, now, think about, who are probably the most unhealthy people? Sexually addicted people. Physically unhealthy. You know, because first of all we’re not taking care of ourselves, we don’t feel good about ourselves. But we’re also possibly eliminating a source of our own immune system boosters. I mean it was very interesting when he said that.

I think we’ve met the very definition of “junk science” here.

Meanwhile, back in the world where real science takes place, Dr. Michael Leitzmann at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda found that spankin’ it about every other day ought to do the trick:

More than 12 ejaculations per month would start conferring the benefit – on average every second day or so,” he says.

However, whilst the findings are statistically significant, Leitzmann remains cautious. “I don’t believe at this point our research would warrant suggesting men should alter their sexual behaviour in order to modify their risk.”

But on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt.

Last Friday, Christine posted a very thoughtful essay inspired by Peterson Toscano’s comments that ex-gay ministries are still depend on the developmental theories of Sigmund Freud — “Refried Freud” he called it. Which, when you think of it, means that the ex-gay movement is stuck in a very peculiar time warp. Most of their operating theories are founded on some rather ancient Freudian theories that the rest of psychology has largely abandoned.

Some of us are old enough to remember when Freudian psychoanalysis was all the rage back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Everyone who was anyone, it seemed, was seeing an analyst. And everyone who was anyone was just as messed up after seeing their analyst as they were before. It’s no wonder that Freudian psychoanalysis has largely fallen by the wayside. As a discipline, they remained too wedded to a narrow set of untested and untestable theories, while the rest of psychology and psychiatry honed their methods and understanding over generations of research and observation, throwing out old theories when they were disproved and adopting new ones as they came along.

Meanwhile, Freudian analysts and their ex-gay therapy counterparts, undeterred by the march of time, continued to press forward with their oft-parodied opening gambit: “So now, tell me about your mother.”

Christine Bakke knows where that leads all too well:

The fishing expeditions (a friend started to believe he didn’t feel his father’s love after being badgered with, “did your father say he loved you? It doesn’t matter if you knew; did he say it? He didn’t say it? Then you didn’t really know it, did you? Of course you didn’t know it; didn’t feel it. How can a child know it if they’re not explicitly told it?” and so on) and leading questions and suggestions (one pastor’s wife suggested I make up abusive things that might have happened to me, so that I could break the curse of satan, just in case I didn’t remember specific things that might have happened to me in my life. I forcefully refused.) I was even told that sometimes women can be gay because they have not been able to grow out of the stage of penis envy.

I knew one women whose therapist gave her assignments to flirt with men. An ex-gay guy who went on several dates to try to learn how to be with a woman (without disclosing that he identified as ex-gay), on the recommendation of his therapist. A woman who was counseled by the leader of the ex-gay group that women should wear makeup (”need to put some paint on the side of the barn”). A man who changed his last name because his ex-gay therapy led him to believe that his parents were to blame for him being gay. A woman who insinuated that she had been abused because she felt like her story didn’t “fit” the ex-gay model without some kind of a root cause. A young man who said that after he got out of the ex-gay movement and was finished with reparative therapy, that’s when the real repairing began. He had to repair the relationships with his family after buying into the belief that they were distant from him and made him gay.

The American Psychological Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. In doing so, they relied on non-psychoanalyitic studies like those of Evelyn Hooker. But the American Psychoanalytical Association dismissed non-psychoanalyic studies as “superficial.” This created a strange closed-off echo chamber where evidence that ran counter to a theory was thrown out because it didn’t fit the theory. In fact, the APsyA remained hostile to homosexuality until 1991, when openly gay candidates were for the first time allowed to apply for acceptance by the APsyA.

Since then, the APsyA has begun to consider the implications of research in a whole host of mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which today are regarded as being at least partly physiological disorders. This would have been anathema to psychoanalysts a mere generation ago. Last year, the APsyA issued a statement supporting same-sex marriage. That’s quite an improvement since 1991.

But ex-gay therapies continue to rely on the same outdated theories that once threatened to make psychoanalysis a historical footnote. While the APsyA are allowing nonpsychoanalytic research to inform their work, ex-gay ministries remain stuck firmly in the past. But the problem with relying on untested and untestable theories is that they are no more scientific than any other folk remedies or superstitions. And some of these remedies may be damaging. Christine Bakke contrasts her experience with therapists and misguided religious-based lay leaders, and concludes:

Of course, like in my case, even licensed therapists who have an ex-gay mindset and agenda can be just as damaging as the lay leaders. Sometimes I can’t decide which is worse. Counseling by a therapist we think should know the best because we think they’re the experts and we trust them more, or lay leaders who we think love us more because we are not paying them. No matter what, ex-gay counseling done by therapists or lay leaders, many poorly equipped through books, Exodus conferences, Living Waters training programs (one week long), Love Won Out day-long conferences, on-the-job training, or for some, nothing more than being ex-gay themselves, mixed with refried Freud, is a recipe for disaster.

I highly recommend you read her entire essay.

Love In Action gained worldwide attention in 2006 when a gay 16-year-old by the name of Zach posted on MySpace blog that he was about to be involuntarily committed to Love In Action’s youth live-in program “Refuge.” Thanks to Zach’s mySpace post, the world was able to learn about the complicated and bizarre rules that all house residents are expected to follow. When he was committed to a two-month stay in the residential program, his plight spawned international outrage along with unprecedented protests in Memphis. It also inspired filmmaker Morgan Fox to begin filming the documentary, “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like,” which is currently in post-production. Last July, it was announced that the controversial youth program was shut down.

More recently, we examined just a little bit about what goes on in Love In Action. I talked about my reaction to hearing him talk at last summer’s Exodus conference on the evils of masturbation. Particularly disturbing: Smid’s bragging to an audience of mostly celibate men that “my wife’s vagina is enough for me!” (You will hear him say that at about the two minute mark):

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Last February, former Love In Action client Jacob Wilson bravely talked about his emotionally battering experiences at Love In Action. His frank talk is quite jarring:

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I was standing near another former client of Love In Action as Jacob spoke. He described his experience at a different “friends and family weekend” which was very nearly identical to Jacob’s. I cannot imagine a more outrageous form of abuse short of physical abuse than to force anyone to speak like this in front of their parents.

I talked a bit more with Jacob the next day. He spoke about “drinking the kool-aid,” having convinced himself his same-sex attractions were lessening. He also speaks about how Love In Action made him feel like “part of myself was dying inside”:

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I am running to do a show and just got a voice mail from a former Love in Action staff member who said, “I’m sure you heard the news, but if not, you may be interested to know that John Smid resigned from Love in Action.”

John Smid has been the executive director of the Memphis-based ex-gay residential program Love In Action since the early 1990’s, when he moved the ministry from California. If this is true, it is probably a good move. Here’s just a small taste of what this man thinks is good advice for struggling “ex-gays” (Hint: The best part is at about the two minute mark):

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So now that you’ve heard that, read the rules that the residential clients at Love In Action are expected to follow. I’d say that his leaving Love In Action can’t be anything but a good first step — assuming it’s true.

Update: It’s official.

Separating The Person From The Sexuality

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How Much Do Ex-Gay Programs Cost?

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Quoting Scientific Studies

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Jacob speaks about “drinking the kool-aid” having convinced himself his same-sex attractions were lessening. He also speaks about how Love In Action made him feel like “part of myself was dying inside” and lastly the value of affirming friends, family and loved ones now that he’s trying to move beyond his ex-gay experience.

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I’m posting the videos of that press conference a bit out of order because I really want to highlight Jacob Wilson’s comments. Jacob was a client at Love In Action, the residential ex-gay program in Memphis made famous by Zach, the sixteen-year-old blogger who was forced into the program against his will. Listen as Jacob describes his experience there, especially the infamous “friends and family weekend,” which was an integral part of the program. If you don’t watch any other video in this post, you must at least see this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was standing near another former client of Love In Action as Jacob spoke. He described his experience at a different “friends and family weekend” which was very nearly identical to Jacob’s. I cannot imagine a more outrageous form of abuse short of physical abuse than to force anyone to speak like this in front of their parents. Coupled with Love In Action’s bizarre rules, we would be calling this outfit a brain-washing cult if it weren’t being operated as a “Christian ministry.” Christians everywhere should be outraged.

Other videos from the press conference, in order of appearance:

Yours truly, talking about what was said at Love Won Out, and how real live parents who were attending responded to what they said:

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Brandon Tidwell went into Love In Action six years ago, soon after coming out to his parents:

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After Brandon and Jacob spoke, John Holm talked about the collages which ex-gay survivors put together to describe their personal experiences which they will share tomorrow morning at the Love Won Out conference:

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And finally, the hardest working woman in the whole program, Christine Bakke took reporters on a tour of the art show that she oversaw at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

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